Chapter 11: Fay

When I heard the knock on my front door, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I had hardly slept at all the night before. As a result, I’d fallen asleep on the couch while I was supposedly cleaning the living room. Even this much-needed sleep was broken and unsatisfying.

It seemed like, whether I wanted it to or not, my mind kept going back to last night. It kept going back to Neil, which made it hard to calm down enough to get any rest. My pathetic excuse for a nap was the closest I had come so far, and it was cut woefully short by the rapping at my door.

“Hello?” I called out uncertainly, my voice sounding pathetically weak in my own ears. “Who’s there?”

“It’s Courtney, bitch! What’s the matter with you? Did he drug you or something? Because I swear to God, if he did I’ll go up there to his big fancy house and kick the shit out of him. I don’t care how rich he is!”

“Hold on, I’m coming. And stop yelling about kicking people’s asses!”

I pulled myself up to a sitting position, trying to adjust to, or at least ignore, the feeling of dizziness that came over me with the movement. Part of me would have liked to have just ignored the knocking altogether, shove a pillow over my head, and get back to sleep, but I also knew that wasn’t really an answer.

Courtney wasn’t the kind of girl to just give up and go away. If I didn’t let her in, she was likely to just kick the door in and see what the hell was going on with me. I pulled the door open, squinting against the glare of the sun as it hit the snow, and then winced when Courtney started her yell-talking all over again.

“What the hell, lady? Do you know how long I’ve been out here knocking?”

“No, but judging by how shrill your voice is, I’m going to guess it’s been a little while. I know how good you are at being patient.”

“You’re damn right it’s been a while! Also, you sort of look like shit, you know it? What happened to you last night?”

“Ugh, I’m not really in the mood for your friendly critiques this morning, Courtney. If it’s all the same to you.”

“Who said anything about morning, girl? It’s the afternoon.”

I couldn’t help it. My mouth fell open when she told me that, and the look on my face must have been a pretty comical one, because the edge she’d had to her ever since I’d opened the door vanished. In its place was a general sense of merriment over my confusion and distress.

She started inside, and I stepped out of the doorway, shivering in the cold air the open door had let in. I tried to figure out how I had slept so late. It was totally uncharacteristic of me, but then again, pretty much everything I had been doing for the last couple of days was out of character for me. So why should this be any different?

“You coming?” Courtney called out to me, already almost all of the way to the back of my house and headed towards the porch. She didn’t bother to turn and look at me as she spoke but waved a little baggy over her shoulder, making her intentions clear. I rolled my eyes but followed her nevertheless. If we had lived in a bigger town in a different kind of place, the idea of Courtney smoking weed on my back porch would probably have given me a coronary, but Ashville was a different kind of place than most others.

Smoking weed wasn’t the kind of thing I chose to do, but it also wasn’t something people ever got in trouble for if they kept themselves in check. There was literally zero chance of some cop showing up and asking her just what in the hell she thought she was doing. So I would sit with her while she smoked, just like I had been doing for years.

We settled into our accustomed seats on the screened-in porch that had always been one of my favorite places in the world. I waited while Courtney lit up, sitting silently and staring out at the snow-covered land I loved so well. We stayed quiet that way for some time, her filling my porch with the sweet, herbaceous scent of pot, and me trying very hard to get a handle on what it was I was feeling. I’d been trying to do that same thing ever since he’d walked into the diner without knowing it was me he would find there. It had only gotten harder as the time ticked by. Honestly, I was grateful for Courtney being there. There had been very few times in my life when I had felt the kind of confusion I was feeling now, but having Courtney there as a sounding board always helped me to feel better.

“So girlie, for real. What happened last night? The two of you went out?”

“We did indeed,” I said. “He came to pick me up and everything, Court. You would have been proud.”

“Ha! Sorry, but it’s going to take a lot more than that to make me proud of that boy. Don’t forget, I’ve known him for a while, too. I remember the way things were when he left. I was younger than you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t remember.”

“I know, but come on. You wanted me to go out with him, right?”

“That’s very true, I did. I’m glad you did, too, but that doesn’t mean I’m just going to fall all over myself with how awesome I think he is. At least, not right away.”

“No, I get it,” I said. “But it seems like something’s different about him, Courtney.”

“Oh yeah? And you’re sure that’s not just because you’re glad to have him home? I’m not trying to be too hard on you, Fay, but you know how you are. You would forgive anyone just about anything. It’s one of the things I love about you, but it also scares the shit out of me sometimes. I don’t want anyone hurting you. That’s all.”

“I know that, and I love you for it, but I don’t think I’m wrong on this. At least, I hope I’m not. I can’t put my finger on it, at least not yet, but it feels like something about him is different now. I want to figure out what that something is.”

“Are you thinking he might be the guy?”

“What guy?” I asked.

“Come on,” Courtney scoffed, somehow managing to look uncomfortably authoritarian despite the massive inhale of smoke she took in while she spoke. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. Is he the guy? You’ve been waiting all of this time, and we both know how in love you were with Neil. Have you basically been waiting for him?”

I wanted to tell her no, because I didn’t want that to be what I had been doing. I liked to think that I was stronger than that, that I wouldn’t have allowed my girlhood heartbreak to have such a long-lasting effect on my life. The thing was, I wasn’t actually so sure.

I hadn’t been waiting to have sex for religious reasons, and it wasn’t like I was attached to the idea of getting married before I did the deed. But still, I had waited all of this time, and I wasn’t even sure what I was waiting for. Maybe Courtney was right, and it had been him all of this time.

Just the thought made me tingle all over, and I wondered if Courtney could see my thoughts written all over my face. With how long she had known me, I was almost sure that she could, but thankfully, she had the wherewithal not to rub it in my face. She just sat there smoking, waiting to see what I would say next. It was only after I asked my question that she showed any kind of feeling at all, and when she did, it was a look of genuine surprise.

“What’s it like, Courtney?”

“Like? What’s what like?”

“Oh, so now you’re asking the questions you know the answers to? Come on, Courtney, don’t make me ask you in a bunch of different ways. I’ll die if you do, and I really want to know the answer.”

“You’re asking me what sex is like?”

“Yes! That’s what I want to know. That’s the million-dollar question.”

“It’s a hard one to answer. I guess some of it depends on who you decide to do it with. It’ll probably hurt some. I won’t lie to you about that, but then it’s something I don’t really know how to describe. It’s like falling, you know? It feels like falling, but in a good way. It’s warm and hot and makes you shiver all over. If you’re with the right guy and he takes it slow, you’ll start to enjoy yourself real quick. It’s one of the best things in the world, if you want to know the truth. Why do you think I do it so often?”

I laughed, trying not to be embarrassed by the answer to the question I had almost been too shy to ask. I wasn’t sure what kind of answer I was expecting to get from her, but the one I got was a whole lot more thoughtful and less vulgar than I had thought would come out of her mouth. It left me daydreaming about something I had never even done before, which made the timing of my ringing phone pretty fortuitous.

“Hold on. I’ll be right back.”

I made my way inside, my head still full of the things Courtney had just told me. I laughed out loud when I saw who was calling me.

“Hey there,” I answered, that odd tingling feeling still running through me. “Were your ears burning?”

“Hey yourself,” Neil said in a voice that let me know he was smiling on his end of the phone. “And I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Never mind. Just ignore me. I’m just being silly. What’s up?”

“What’s up is, I’m sitting here in my empty house, and it occurred to me that I’d like to see you again.”

“Sure,” I said, in what I hoped was a light, casual voice. Something that would make my excitement a little bit less obvious. “What did you have in mind?”

“Depends. Are you available tonight?”

“I could be, depending on what you’re thinking.”

“I was kind of thinking that I’d like to make you dinner.”

“Make me dinner?” I asked. “Like, you’re going to cook for me?”

“That’s kind of the idea, yeah.”

“You sure about that? I don’t exactly remember you being a master chef or anything. No offense.”

“None taken. But don’t count me out just yet, Fay. I might have learned a thing or two since we were in high school, you know? I might even be able to make something you enjoy eating.”

“You’ve got a deal, but only if you let me bring the wine.”

“It’s a deal, babe. I’ll see you tonight.”

Babe. After I had given him my yes, Neil had hung up the phone about as fast as a person could do, but he’d called me babe right before he did. That was something new about him. Something new for sure. He’d never called me anything like that when we’d been in high school. It was a new kind of smooth, and it scared me.

It made me wonder what other slick tricks he’d picked up out there in the wide world. The thing was, it didn’t scare me enough to make me want to call him back and tell him I’d changed my mind. In some ways, it only made me want him more. Everything I had told Courtney was true. There was something about him, and there was no way I wasn’t going to find out what it was.

“Hey, Courtney?” I called down the hallway, my voice shaking just like the rest of my body.

“What’s up? You sound weird?”

“Looks like I’m going to need your help. I’ve got a date at the Driscoll house tonight.”