“Yeah.”
“You know you can tell me anything,” said Jude.
Penny regarded her roommate’s big, sorrowful eyes and knew it to be true.
“I’m going to hug you now,” Jude warned.
Penny nodded.
The pressure felt good.
SAM.
Sam stared at himself in the mirror of the medicine cabinet. He was wearing his second nicest button-up, a white dress shirt that he typically saved for weddings or funerals. His first nicest was the Ralph Lauren Lorraine had gotten him two Christmases ago, but he didn’t want to wear it. He didn’t want to remind her of the other memory. How he’d gotten her a bracelet so cheap it turned her wrist green. Sam buttoned the shirt all the way up to the top. Then unbuttoned the top button. And then buttoned it again. He sighed. He looked like a LinkedIn profile pic.
It wasn’t a date or anything. You can’t actually date someone you used to date and vowed to never date again. No way Lorraine would call it a date. Yet when she texted him for dinner upon ignoring his texts, he was nervous. She probably had something awful to tell him.
On the upside, he hadn’t had any panic attacks since the first and he imagined his body was saving up for just such an occasion. Sam pictured himself stumbling in slo-mo through the dining room of Mother’s Italian Restaurant, grabbing tables for support, sending plates of tagliatelle crashing to the floor. He’d ruin Liar’s expensive dress and wouldn’t hear the end of it. Sam wanted to shoot a selfie to Penny for outfit approval except they didn’t do that sort of thing. As if she could sense him thinking about her, Penny texted him.
Should I read Harry Potter from the beginning again?
He took a selfie in the bathroom mirror and sent it to her.
She wrote back:
Um
And then:
So I SHOULD read them or . . .
OK
wait
did you do that on purpose
I need advice
Help me
OK
Take the plea deal!
Ask me something else
my advice RN is en FUEGO
Stop
WAIT so you don’t have a court date?
I’m seeing Lorraine
Penny fell silent. Bubble. Then no bubble.
So he wrote:
It’s not a date
Sam didn’t know why he was explaining himself. After a long moment she responded.
So no bowling or Putt-Putt?
Ice skating
Then karaoke
Waterfall picnic at dusk Very cool
PS hay rides > karaoke
Don’t forget flowers
Carnations!
NO!
A corsage!
Dinner
Just dinner
I want to die
Why die?
Probably have a panic attack
“Calm down”
Ha.
So shirt? Y/N?
Shirt seems desperate
Dress regular
Sooooo . . . orange bell-bottoms
Yah and pink Uggs
Pls delete this foto
NEVER
Send n00dz
Sam took off the shirt and grabbed a black T-shirt. The blue veins coursed along his body like tributaries until they disappeared under the indelible black tattoos that his friends had carved into him. He had sixteen in all. Several crappy stick-and-pokes—crossed arrows, diamonds, snails, hands, and hamsas to ward off evil eyes—and the rest from an artist whose house he’d painted in exchange for twenty hours in his chair.
He stared at his chest, curving his shoulders inward and creating a golf-ball-size divot on his sternum. For a brief period during sophomore year, he’d tried to gain weight, filling gallon plastic jugs of water and using them as dumbbells, hoisting them above his head over and over in front of the mirror. The hopeful determination in his reflection as he stood in his underwear was embarrassing even in memory.
Growing up, the problem wasn’t so much the lack of strength training as it was food. Groceries were scarce and money for school lunches was a non-starter. Brandi Rose, who was not above collecting workmen’s comp on dubious grounds, was somehow too proud to fill out the paperwork for her son’s need-based meals. “We don’t do handouts,” she’d say. By junior year, Sam said to hell with it and forged the paperwork himself.
At first he’d gotten the tattoos to create a diversion from his slight frame but now he no longer hated his body. It was tidy. Contained. Efficient. Though Penny would probably be horrified if she ever did see him with his clothes off. Objectively, his body was alarming.
Sam picked Lorraine up in Fin’s Ford Festiva slightly before eight. It was a mud-brown fourteen-year-old beater that was so rusted through you could lift the mat on the driver’s side and watch the highway rush by from a quarter-sized peephole.
Sam buzzed at the gate as she’d requested.
“Hey,” she said. She wore what she usually did when she was off work—a somewhat abbreviated version of a nightie.
Lorraine. Lorr. Lore. Or Lola as she called herself lately, though Sam never did.
He could practically feel his pupils dilate when he saw her.
“Nice dress,” he said when she opened the door to his car. He wondered if he should’ve gotten out and opened it for her, though she would’ve made fun of him for it. It wasn’t as if she were infirm.
“Uh, thanks for picking me up.” She pulled him in for a hug. It was an awkward sideways embrace where you’re both sitting down and the non-hugging arm gets mashed, but still, it knocked the wind out of him.
As was customary for when he saw her, he felt his thoughts go all soft and watery. She smelled so good, exactly the way she was supposed to. He knew every bit of real estate on her body. He thought about her feet again.
Lorraine pulled away and started laughing. “This is so absurd,” she said, putting her seat belt on.
“I can’t believe Fin loaned you his car.” She looked into the backseat and wrinkled her nose. “I could have picked you up.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
Sam partially regretted leaving Fin’s empty soda bottles in the backseat even if he’d done it on purpose. This was not a date.
By the time Sam pulled up at Mother’s, a spot far enough off campus that it wasn’t overrun with students, they’d exhausted small talk. And when Sam got her door, she didn’t make too big a deal out of it. She thanked him primly and touched his forearm.
They slid into the deep, padded booth. On their early dates, they were the annoying couple that sat on the same side, whispering, canoodling, picking up bits of food to feed each other like lovesick birds.
“Do you want to split the ziti and the sausage and peppers?” Lorraine asked, scanning the menu. Sam had been dreaming about meatballs, yet he found himself shrugging. “Sure.”
Sam remembered why they shared food whenever they went out. Lorraine would order the two things she wanted and strong-armed him into wanting them as well.
“Are you sure you don’t want to get a vegetable or a salad?” he asked, eyeing the sides. “Something with folate?”
Lorraine peered over the leather-bound wine list.
“Sam, what is folate?”
“It’s in broccoli,” he said. “Pregnant ladies have to take it so the baby’s spine doesn’t grow outside of their bodies. Don’t do an image search. It’s upsetting.”
She laughed.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t laugh.”
Lorraine picked up a piece of focaccia, dipped it in olive oil, and took a bite, chewing slowly.
She crossed her arms, and Sam noticed the glint of a new charm bracelet on her wrist. It was visibly expensive—crowded with ornate silver beads and intricate replicas of what appeared to be shoes. He wondered who’d bought it for her.
“How are you, Lorr?” he asked. What he wanted to ask her was: “Do you miss me?” But it didn’t quite seem the right time. Maybe after tiramisu.
Sam also really wanted to ask what all of this was about. Whether she’d had her appointment and discovered complications. Why else would she not have texted him back?
“Before you light into me,” she began, “I haven’t gone to the clinic yet.”
He couldn’t believe it.
“What? Why?”
“I couldn’t make it,” she said, snapping a breadstick in half. “It was insane at work. But I made an appointment for tomorrow. I’m going tomorrow.”
Sam couldn’t believe how cavalier she was being. Period lateness count: seven weeks.