She waits several beats, and when I say nothing else, she closes her notebook gently and presses it into her lap. “Thank you, Lake. I believe that’s all we have time for today.”
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry,” I say, a little bit embarrassed, but her smile is warm and unbothered. I haven’t told her about the scavenger hunt or about how I know the wishes, even my own forgotten one, are waiting at the end of it. She might have understood why I needed them, but then again, she might not have. In any event, she briskly ushers me out of her office.
Time is money after all, I think drily, before realizing this is something Matt would say to me when I was a kid. Back then he’d lean over and share these quick observations and it made me feel grown-up, the way the two of us both knew something that no one else in the room did. Of course, he still makes the side comments, it’s just that now they’re mean and I’m often the punch line.
On my way out of Garretson, Smith & McKenna, the door opens abruptly before I can reach for it, and the edge knocks me in the forehead. I yelp, clutching the center of my skull.
Strong hands grasp my shoulders and steady me. “Lake? Whoa, are you okay?”
I lower my hand and stare up into a face cut in half by a strawberry birthmark. “What’s the saying? Adding insult to injury?” My laugh is forced and limp. As though my month could get any worse.
Ringo chuckles. “Sounds like you’ll live.”
He lets go of my shoulders and, for a hairsbreadth, I have a quick pang of wishing that he hadn’t.
I miss Will, I remind myself. It’s the missing Will that makes me crave contact. Any human contact.
I rub again at the spot where the door knocked me. “Do I have a mark?” I ask, without widening the space between us.
He squints, one eye shut, and studies me. “I think you have quite a ways to go until you can compete with this.” He gestures around the side of his face.
Despite myself, I smile. “I thought you’d already left today. Later appointment?”
He shakes his head. “No, I just went for a walk. Finished up an hour ago.”
“Still with the late ride?” I ask. I imagine his mom on the couch watching her soap operas and sipping out of her Big Gulp and it makes me angry.
He folds his hands dramatically over his chest. “My cross to bear.”
Another person comes through the door. Ringo and I press our backs against opposite walls to let them through, and I have this annoying sensation, like an adult has just caught us making out. I clear my throat and nod toward the exit. Ringo follows me out into the waning sunlight.
“So how are you feeling?”
I touch the tender spot on my head. “Fine, fine—I was just being dramatic. I mean, I seriously doubt I’m concussed or anything.”
“I meant about your decision.”
“Oh, right, that.” I bite my lip. “Swinging wildly between heaving into a paper bag and total denial. Honestly, it feels like I’m living in, like, a great big hourglass and the little granules are falling on me faster and faster until I’m pretty sure I’ll suffocate.”
“Healthy.”
“Yeah, well, my cross to bear, right?” I mean it to come out as a quip, but the moment the phrase leaves my lips I can tell it sounds more like a jab at Ringo.
“You…” He takes a sudden and deep interest in his tennis shoes. “Haven’t texted or anything since the coffee shop. Did I do something?”
“You?” I can’t help it, I laugh. “No! God, you’re, like, the only sane person I know right now.” What with my parents, who I can hardly look at, I feel so guilty—even though I shouldn’t feel guilty, but I do feel guilty—and then, of course, there’s Matt and Will’s parents and Penny’s too: if I had to spend time in a room with one living person, it would be Ringo. I determine not to study the implications of that too hard.
“Sane?” he says. “You might want to take a look at where we’re standing.” He glances back in the direction of Dr. McKenna’s office.
“That’s just geography,” I say. “I’ve been kind of busy.”
“Oh, then…” Apparently there is more territory to cover with those shoes, since Ringo goes for another look.
“Matt told me the first clue.”
Creases form in his forehead as he looks up at me. “So you’re on your way. Good for you.”
“Sort of,” I hedge. It feels good to be having a real conversation, one without a hidden agenda, but it’s been nearly forty-eight hours and I still haven’t opened the second clue. I thought that starting the scavenger hunt would make me feel better. And it did, visiting Taterelli’s, remembering the early days of my relationship with Will, only it hasn’t drowned out the other needling worries swirling around in my head. The words I read kept surfacing at all the wrong moments.
Like I’m constantly on stage performing the part of great guy…maybe I’m just a phony….
Instant nausea. Because, see, the thing is that the Will I know is the Great Guy, he doesn’t just act it. But if I’m being 100 percent honest, the scavenger hunt itself and all my birthdays before have a way of feeling like evidence of a performance now. I just always thought Will relished the showmanship. After all, parts of that personality were there before his dad left. He was outgoing and made everyone love him. Then Penny and I worried during the whole my-father’s-secretary-is-having-his-baby fiasco that he would become quiet, sullen Will. But he recovered, right? And Will Bryan was bigger than ever and he was mine.
Here’s the truth: a guy that makes a show of being a great boyfriend is a great boyfriend. What I can’t wrap my head around is the fact that it might not have been genuine. And if it wasn’t, then I’m stuck right in the middle, following one of the stage pieces, playing out a scene that Will didn’t really want to be acting in any longer. “I haven’t exactly figured out the next clue,” I say. Then again, I think, maybe the last few days are just messing with my mind. “Ringo?” I say, and I already know that I’m not thinking through what I’m about to propose next. “Will you go to a shiva with me?”
He raises his palms to me and shuffles back a couple of steps. “Ah, Lake, sorry if I gave you the wrong impression, I’m not really into kinky stuff like that.” But his eyes are squinted into moon-shaped crescents, so I know that he’s joking.
I put my hands on my hips, tilting my head. “It’s a Jewish tradition for when someone dies. I don’t understand the exact details. It’s for my friend, Penny….”
Ringo’s eyes don’t leave mine for a second. A lock of his hair falls into the lashes of one eye, and I have to clench my hand into a fist to fight the urge to gently push it back off the purpled skin and into place. Luckily, he does it for me. “She was Jewish?” he says.
I feel a pang at the use of the past tense. I wonder how many times I’ve used it myself in the last few days. “Penny? God, no. She worshipped, like, Mother Earth, pretty much. But her parents are.” I get the distinct feeling that Ringo doesn’t want to go, which only makes me want him to more. “There will be food and drinks and—”