I don’t even know why I’m crying so hard. I just feel so stupid. And shocked. And overwhelmed. Sort of betrayed, too, but that’s ridiculous, because how could that be? Then I stop crying and gasp a little, because I realize that’s exactly how Porter must have felt when he found out.
He sits down on the bench and lifts my head onto his lap, sighing heavily. “Where are you at in the screwed-up-ness of it all? Because there are all kinds of layers.”
“We basically cheated on each other with each other,” I say.
“Yeah,” he says. “That’s pretty messed up. When I told my mom, she said we pulled a reverse ‘Pi?a Colada,’ which is some cheesy 1970s song about this couple who write personal ads looking for hookups, and end up meeting each other.”
“Oh, God,” I groan. “You told your mom?”
“Hey, this is some crazy shit. I had to tell someone,” he argues. “But look at it this way. We ended up liking the real us better than the online us. That’s something, right?”
“I guess.”
I think about it some more. Ugh. My dad knew. He was trying to tell me with all that talk about blinders and horses. Another wave of YOU ARE THE WORLD’S BIGGEST IDIOT hits me, and this time, I let the wave wash over me, not fighting it. The older couple that was hanging around on the lookout has left—guess a bawling teenage girl was ruining their peaceful sunset view—so we have the area to ourselves for the moment, and for that, I’m grateful. Below the lookout, hundreds of people throng the beach, but it’s far enough away that I don’t mind.
“You didn’t know until game night at my house, right?” I ask.
“No.”
That makes me feel somewhat better, I suppose. At least we were both stupid about this until he heard my nickname. Oh, God. He watched The Philadelphia Story with me on purpose. He knew then, and he didn’t tell me. My humiliation cannot be measured. “Why?” I ask in a small voice. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was bewildered. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t believe you’d been living out here the entire time. Couldn’t believe you . . . were her—Mink. At first, I thought you’d been screwing with me, but the more I thought about it, I knew that didn’t fit. I just freaked for a while. And then . . . I guess I wanted to hold on to it. And I wanted you to discover it on your own. I thought you would. If I dropped enough hints, I thought you would, Bailey—I swear. But then I started thinking about why you didn’t tell me—Alex—you moved out here, and how it felt as though you’d been lying to me . . . and I wanted you to come clean.”
“Quid pro quo.” I close my eyes, fully aware of the irony now.
“I didn’t mean for things to go sideways,” he insists. “When you got fired . . . Grace told me what happened in the Hotbox. For the record, she also made some threats to my manhood that gave me a few nightmares.”
I groan. “I don’t blame you for what I did in the Hotbox. I was upset at the time, but I’ve moved past it.”
“I just want you to know that what Scott and Kenny were saying that day . . . I didn’t think it was funny. I’m not even sure why I laughed. I think it was just a nervous reaction. I felt awful afterward. I tried to text you and tell you, but you weren’t speaking to me. And then Davy happened . . .”
I sigh shakily, completely overwhelmed. “God, what a mess.”
After a second, he says, “You know, what I haven’t been able to figure out is why you lied about where you lived before you moved out here.”
“I didn’t. My mom and her husband moved from New Jersey to DC a few months before. I just never told Alex. You. Alex You. Ugh. That’s not a random screenname, is it?”
“Alex is my middle name.”
“Alexander. Like your father?”
“Yeah. It was my grandfather’s, too.” He pushes a curled lock of hair behind my ear. “You do realize this whole mishegas could have been avoided if Mink You would have just told me from the beginning that you were moving out here . . . right?”
I use his hand to cover my face. And then I uncover it and sit up, facing him, wiping away tears. “You know what? Maybe not. Let’s say I’d arranged to meet up with Alex You at the Pancake Shack when I first moved here, and that I hadn’t gotten that job at the Cave. Would we have hit it off? I don’t know. You don’t know that either. Maybe it was just the situation we were in at the Cave.”
Porter shakes his head and winds his fingers through mine. “Nope. I don’t believe that, and I don’t think you do either. Two people who lived in two different places and found each other, not once but twice? You could stick one of us in Haiti and the other in a rocket headed to the moon and we’d still eventually be doing this right now.”
I sniffle. “You really think so?”
“You know how I said you were tricky like the fog, and that I was afraid of you running back to your mom at the end of the summer? I’m not afraid anymore.”
“You’re not?”
He looks toward the ocean, dark purple with the last rays of light. “My mom says we’re all connected—people and plants and animals. We all know one another on the inside. It’s what’s on the outside that distracts. Our clothes, our words, our actions. Shark attacks. Gunshots. We spend our lives trying to find other people. Sometimes we get confused and turned around by the distractions.” He smiles at me. “But we didn’t.”
I smile back, eyes shining with happy tears. “No, we didn’t.”
“I love you, Bailey ‘Mink’ Rydell.”
I choke out a single sobbed laugh. “I love you too, Porter ‘Alex’ Roth.”
We reach for each other and meet in the middle, half kissing, half murmuring how much we’ve missed each other. It’s sloppy and wonderful, and I’ve never been hugged so tightly. I kiss him all over his neck beneath his wild curls, and he cups my head in both hands and kisses me all over my face, then wipes away my cried-out makeup drips with the edge of his T-shirt.
Applause and cheers startle both of us. I’d nearly forgotten all about the movie. Porter pulls me up with him, and we lean over the railing together to peer into the dark. Flickering light fills the beach, and the old MGM logo appears with the roaring lion. The music starts. The opening titles dart over the screen. CARY GRANT. EVA MARIE SAINT. Chills zip up and down my back.
And then I realize: I get to share all of this with Porter. All of me. All of us.
I glance up at him, and he’s emotional too.
“Hi,” he says, forehead pressed to mine.
“Hi.”
“Should we head down to the beach?” he asks, slinging an arm over my shoulder.
“I seem to remember hating the beach at some point or another.”
“That’s because you’d never been to a real one. East Coast beaches are trash beaches.”
I laugh, my heart singing with joy. “Oh yeah, that’s right. Show me a real beach, why don’t you, surfer boy. Let’s go watch a movie.”
“I wanted it to be you. I wanted it to be you so badly.”
—Meg Ryan, You’ve Got Mail (1998)
28
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