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“He did sign it. It’s just kind of messy.”
“How was he?”
“Fu
“Was he just as handsome in person?”
I nod. “Even more.”
She reaches across table and grabs my hand. She pretends she’s looking at the Darras photo, but really she’s looking right through it. A light breeze curls the corners of the photo and ruffles her pale yellow curls. In the distance, Father Mike and the kids are ru
“Are you staying?” she says. “For the fair?”
“I can’t.”
She nods; I can tell she expected that. I watch her gaze shift to the crowded food tables and the jumble of raffle prizes. She’s scrawling one of her checklists in her head, thinking about all the stuff she has to do before the Funfair starts, and if I fast-forward the future I can see her and Dad here year after year, arranging decades of gelatin stars and angel eggs and repainting the same ten game booths until the two of them are finally old and sitting side by side in their blue canvas lawn chairs, counting fireworks together.
The sun’s starting to slip away. More volunteers are coming with stacks of raffle-ticket rolls, bags of game prizes. She’s still holding my hand. I let her, for a long time.
Then I’m like, “Save me an angel egg?”
I squeeze her hand twice.
“I’ll save you two,” she says, and then she lets go.
***
I’m already in the car by the time Father Mike realizes I’m leaving. I see him with his guitar as I ride the brakes past the Funfair field: strumming another song with the kids, a whole fresh flock to teach. He looks small and breakable, like one of those ceramic saint figurines Gram keeps on her windowsill.
If this were a hey_mamacita fic, I would have confronted him before I left. The dialogue: “Bring back any nice souvenirs?” “Yeah—a boyfriend.” That would’ve left him comically stewing, his face purple and steam shooting out of his ears. I remind myself he’s not a cartoon. He’s not even a bad guy. I don’t need him now, but I don’t need to hurt him, either.
He glances up, catches me idling in the car. He lifts a hand from the guitar strings and waves, like C’mon over, bud. Come back. I stick my hand out the open window and give him a gentle return wave. Goodbye.
I slip Cadmus and Sim out of my pockets and drop them both in the dashboard cupholder, their limbs tangled loosely together. Then I shift into drive and start rolling forward, down the winding road away from St. Matt’s.
Chapter Thirty-One
I’ve got a plan.
Home first, to shower and change my grubby travel clothes. Francie’s Florals next, for the biggest arrangement of sunflowers I can afford (which at this point isn’t much). Then the candy shop in the mall—do they have ci
I’m three stoplights from my street when the phone rings.
ABEL CALLING.
This was not part of the plan.
I white-knuckle it past the post office. Plastic Sim and Plastic Cadmus shoot plastic glares of judgment from the cupholder: Pick up, dumbass. My thumb hovers over the Answer button. Why did I send him that stupid scene? I know exactly what I’m going to hear. What is this fairy-tale crap? You think this fixes things? Just stay out of my life, okay?
“It’s not completely horrid,” he says, “for your first fic.”
Relief flushes through me. “Hello to you too.”
“I was deeply offended by a few things, though. Number one—Where are you, by the way?”
I picture him sprawled on his fancy metal platform bed, tracing the blue and yellow squiggles on his vintage 80s sheets. “Driving home,” I tell him. “From an errand.”
“What kind of errand?”
“Can’t tell you. So what’s number one?”
“The bubble bath.”
“Huh?”
“I mean, hello. It’s humiliating. You come to my house with sunflowers, all sexy and disheveled in your dirty khakis and your black Castaway Planet shirt, and I’m sulking alone in a lemon-scented bubble bath?”
“Sorry. Is that not in character?”
“Not the point. I could at least be lifting weights or something.”
I grin. “Feel free to edit.”
“Oh, I have. ‘Kay, number two—this is a larger issue with plotting, unfortunately.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“Well, it’s really sweet and heartwarming, having Brandon drive out to my house in a summer storm to deliver this impassioned speech and all, but at this point in the narrative it’s basically Abel who’s been the giant jackhole. So that whole scene kind of falls flat—no?”
I swerve to miss a squirrel. “I don’t—”
“—Like, Abel’s the one who broke it off the second Brandon had a relapse, right?’
“He had good reasons, though.”
“What, the Jonathan thing? So not an excuse. What kind of self-involved assclown bails at the first sign of Catholic guilt? And then doesn’t even call for like days, which basically forces Brandon to nut up and send him that amazing email even though the last thing Abel deserves is a grand romantic gesture.”
“Abel had a point, though.”
“Doesn’t matter. See, when you love someone, the gentlemanly thing to do is stick with them and willfully ignore your differences and draw little valentine hearts over all their weird hangups and just be in love for as long as you possibly can because how often does that happen? And then when you finally start making each other miserable or you meet some perfect guy in your freshman philosophy class, then you can have your tearful heartrending ‘it’s over’ phone call and a nice long satisfying wallow.” He sighs. “So see, there’s no way we’ve earned a tragic breakup yet. We didn’t put in enough time. I pulled the plug too early.”
My heart’s going phosphorescent. When you love someone. “So you’re saying…”
“We need a rewrite. Abel shows up at Brandon’s house, all apologies.”
“Really.”
“Well, mostly apologies. Know what would really be romantic, too?”
“What’s that?”
“If he’d fixed that mechanical heart he stepped on. Like if Susa
“Kind of an obvious metaphor.”
“Yeah, but so? I mean, just think how sweet that scene would be.”
“What if Brandon’s parents were there?”
“Oh, they wouldn’t be. Not in this part of the story.”
“No?” I turn onto my street.
“It would be a criminally gorgeous early summer evening…Abel would be standing on the brick front steps of Brandon’s white split-level…”
I brake in the middle of the street. Plastic Cadmus and Plastic Sim knock heads in the cupholder.
“…taking in a scene of awesomely adorable Americana: the birdhouse, the red geraniums, the Fourth of July wreath made of pom-poms…”
I creep forward.
“…thinking about the ‘hi, we’re boyfriends again’ vlog post we could make from your cute little bedroom if we got back together—oh, and figure out the logistics of doing Castaway Planet recaps from different colleges, and draw up a shared-custody arrangement for Plastic Cadsim…Bran? You still there?”
“Keep going,” I whisper.
“…so I watch a butterfly flutter around your mom’s flowers, and while I practice exactly the right things to say to win you back, I watch patiently for an old blue Jetta to putter into view—it is a Jetta, right?” I spot him down the road on my front steps now, a perfect action figure in tight jeans and snakeskin boots. He’s standing up, showing me the back of his head as he cranes his neck at the opposite end of the street. In his hand is a little silver box, glinting in the fading sun.
“You getting any closer, Tin Man?” he says.