“Nope.” Angie’s voice has a finality like her certainty while talking about her daughter. “It wasn’t there with you guys.”
I can’t disagree, but I don’t like her seeing something in me that I didn’t know about myself. If it was obvious to her that our relationship wasn’t meant to last, how dense was I to have missed it?
“How did you know it was Finny’s though?” I ask. “We haven’t seen each other in months. I could have met someone new.”
“No way.”
“I don’t see why that’s an impossibility,” though I don’t know why I’m protesting.
Angie gets off the floor and comes to sit next to me on the couch.
“It was obvious at the hospital after Guinnie was born that something had already happened with you guys,” she says, but I shake my head.
“We were only friends then.”
Angie rolls her eyes so hard that it looks like it hurts.
“You guys were never just friends, Autumn, and you know it.” She studies my face. “You know that everyone knew, right?”
“I didn’t know that there was anything to know,” I say in a daze.
“You didn’t know that Finn Smith was into you?” She says it like I’m telling her I don’t know my middle name.
“You really didn’t know?” he asked me that last night.
“I thought you never talked about it because you were embarrassed,” Angie says.
“Embarrassed by what?”
“Well, for years, I thought you were embarrassed because he was like a brother to you or whatever? But then I started noticing how you both did the animal thing with each other.”
“The what?”
“Like, have you ever seen an animal see another animal?”
“Have I ever seen an—”
Angie puts both hands up to stop me. “You remember my dog, Bowie, at my parents’ house? Whenever I walked him and he saw another dog, he would go real still, and the other dog would too. It was like you could see the million thoughts going on in their brains. And then suddenly, they’d either want to fight or play. Whenever you and Finn Smith would see each other, at school or the mall or whatever, you guys would freeze for a split second. And then you would be moving and talking again, but it was like part of you was still frozen, waiting for the other person to do something.”
Flashes of memories assault me, a montage without music. Finny. My Finny. I cannot speak. Angie doesn’t seem to expect anything from me though.
“After a while, I was like, okay, she’s going to break up with Jamie and be with Finn,” Angie says. “But you never did. I thought maybe your moms didn’t want you dating or something.”
“No,” I whisper. “I just didn’t know it was an option.”
“That’s really sad,” Angie says gently. “But obviously, you had some time together.” She motions with her eyes towards my midsection.
“A day. Or rather a half a night and then a day.”
“Oh, Autumn.” The weight of him, smell of him, of Finn—
“Shit,” Angie says.
“I don’t know if I can talk about it anymore,” I tell her.
She nods, then reaches over and hugs me. I relax into it. Like seeing her, I hadn’t realized how much I needed it until it happened.
When Angie pulls back, she looks over at her baby. “I–I–It’s been kinda lonely, Autumn.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Guinevere is pushing herself up on her elbows. We both watch her.
“What about Dave?” I can’t call him “Preppy Dave” now that he’s a dad. It doesn’t seem right.
“When he’s not at work, he’s at school, and when he’s home, I need him to look after the baby so I can have a minute to myself, because somehow—even though I’m so lonely—I’m also never alone.” She looks from her daughter to me. “Shit, I’m scaring you, aren’t I?”
“It’s not that I wasn’t scared before,” I say, “but I’d kinda thought that you had it made. The perfect teen mom situation.”
“I don’t think such a thing exists,” Angie says. “The whole nature of the job is…” She looks up at the ceiling. “It’s a lot, Autumn. It’s worth it, but it’s a lot. You’ll understand.”
Everyone keeps telling me this. No one will elaborate. I don’t bother asking her what she means. I look at the baby practicing push-ups on the floor, and I count the months. She’s five months old. A year from now, I’ll have a baby a month younger than that.
I’d think that was impossible if it wasn’t for how much has already changed in a year.
“Have you been keeping up with everybody?” I ask.
Angie doesn’t answer at first. I glance over, and her eyes are closed, and for a moment, I think she’s dozed off while sitting up, then she speaks.
“At first, they all emailed or called from school once a week, and I was like, ‘Cool. That seems reasonable.’ But then it stopped.” She pauses again. Her eyes are still closed. “And I tell myself, ‘I’m busy too. We’re all going through stuff. Doing new stuff.’ And I know that we’ll hang out when they’re home for Christmas, but I guess I already know it won’t be the same. Because I’m not the same. And they won’t be the same, but at least they’ll be the same kind of not the same.” She takes a deep breath and opens her eyes.
I nod at her. Everything she has said makes sense, but I’m not sure what to say about it.
“I hope this doesn’t come off as ‘misery loves company,’” Angie says, “but I’m glad that I’m going to have a friend who knows what it’s like to be a mom.”
It has come off that way, but I know that if I voice it, Angie will only assure me that motherhood is worth it, that I’ll understand later.
Angie yawns again, rubs her face, and glances over at her daughter. The baby has fallen asleep on the play mat, and Angie brightens. She puts a finger to her lips.
“Should I leave?” I whisper.
“No, and you can talk in a normal voice as long as you’re quiet. She’s a deep sleeper. I’m lucky.”
“Okay.”
“So kinda like with the Finn thing,” Angie says as she picks at the upholstery. “I know I said it in my email back in July, but I had no idea about Jamie and Sasha.”
“I believe you,” I say. I have no reason not to, and I want it to be true.
“When they told me they were a couple, I was really pissed. I tried to tell them how shitty it was, but they kept saying ‘We know! We know!’ and talking about how terrible they felt about it.”
“They should have felt terrible,” I say.
“That’s what I said!” We both look at the baby who gives a little snore. “That’s what I said,” Angie says in a stage whisper. “That they should feel bad. It was a couple of weeks before Guinevere was due, so it was easy to avoid them. But then at the hospital—well, you said you didn’t want to talk about that stuff anymore.” She glances at me. “When I saw you at the hospital, you seemed great, and then I went home with the baby, and, well…” Angie bites her lip.
“What?”
“I feel bad that I let us go this long without talking,” she says. “I should have called you first.”
“It’s okay.” I haven’t told her about my hospital stay, but something tells me she knows. I’m not ready to talk about that yet. “So when you were hearing from everyone,” I say in my best casual voice, “how were they doing?”
Angie tells me that Brooke and Noah had a harder time with their planned breakup than expected, but last Angie heard, they were both glad they went through with it. We laugh about Noah joining a frat. Brooke had a big date for Halloween, but Angie never heard how it went.
“Sasha told me that you never answered her or Jamie’s emails or texts or anything,” Angie says. “So I don’t know if you want to know how they’re doing?”
“Oh.” I shrug. “I kinda want to hear. Not wanting to hear from them isn’t the same as not wanting to hear about them. When I say that I don’t forgive them, I mean I don’t want them in my life anymore, not that I wish them ill.”
“Last I heard, they were fine, still together.” She adds, “But that’s easy in a new place where you only know each other.”
I prod deep for any hurt, and there is none.
Except for the memories of the time after they cheated, that final spring in high school.
If I had known.
If I had only known.
Things would have been different.
That place still hurts.