20. MOVING ON
I hate my life right now. Since I gave up on the phone-sales job, I’ve been looking for a third job. Bussing at Mintrer’s isn’t enough to live off of, and walking Mr. Dakapoulous’ dogs doesn’t pay enough to be significant. Sometimes I wish I’d accepted Ciro’s offer to get paid for walking Princess.
Then there’s Mom. She’s aflame with brilliant ideas at all hours again, and I’m the first one she calls about them. As always, they involve moving really far away and starting over. It’s everything from cults to animal shelters in exotic places, to opening a shave ice store in Hawaii from which she can keep an eye out for the Paroaria Coronata—the red-crested cardinal, of course. He needs her.
My mother has become a ticking time bomb. Luckily, her cleaning-lady gig and the few clay-blob sales she’s made haven’t amassed any savings for her.
I’m relieved to have my roommates. I’m not big on branching out, so I don’t get new friends hand over fist like some. But the ones I have don’t tend to get sick of me. Lin, Sam, Charlotte, and Frieda. They’re there and so close I can knock on their doors if we’re not already hanging in the kitchen.
I’ve stayed true to my decision of not encouraging what Ciro and I are not, so we haven’t been in contact since he left for South Africa. Doesn’t mean I’ve been fully good. I don’t follow Drake, but I’ve been on his social media. Basically, I make it about twenty-four hours at a time, but then I’m right back to watching his train wreck.
The pictures he posts are of palm tree alleys leading up to cathedrals, a water fountain at the center of a lake against the backdrop of a lush forest. A Christ statue against the sky. The silhouette of a bridge at sunset. “Wish my lady was here with me,” the text on the bridge says. My lady. My chest pangs again. Ciro is the expert at making my chest pang.
I think about how easy it was to talk Mom down from her China idea with him there leveling with her. Between Paul and me, we’ve at least kept her from packing her suitcases again. So far.
I miss him. I went out with Frieda the other night, on the lookout for a new man. Seriously, it’s like that. I dressed up with the sole intention of finding someone who could stop my mind from churning on my ex.
This guy hovered around us most of the night, patient while Frieda and I danced with wannabes and over-enthused waiters. I guess I liked that he didn’t give up. He was a talker too, like Ciro. Check-check, right? Then we kissed, and it was bullshit.
Skip forward to the morning after. Frieda was still excited. “Come on. You’ve got his number. You should give him a go. Gah, I wish you’d let him come home with you.”
“Right, especially since he was already falling short in comparison to Ciro. Me, after a one-night stand from Whatever Central right now: can you imagine the angst? You just like him for his name.”
She grinned through a sluggish blink. “If I had a twin, that would’ve been the name. Did I tell you that?” She raised her hands, looking at an imaginary neon sign and spelling it out. “‘Frieda and Freddie.’ It would’ve been like my best friend was dating my brother.”
“God, you’re weird.”
She sets me up on a blind date—only because she’s having one. My thought on that? She’s setting herself up, via-via friends, so there’ll be a date for me. She knows I’d never do that stuff on my own.
It’s at a fancy sushi place. So fancy I’m delighted my wallet isn’t involved. And as it turns out, we’re blind-dating twins. What are the odds, right? In the restroom, Frieda admits to not being the slightest bit attracted to her twin, but, “Damn, girl! We need to stick this one out. What if we end up seriously in love with twins? We could buy a house together and have one part of it each, and then we’d have a common kitchen.”
“Sounds familiar. Though we’d have separate bathrooms.”
“Of course.” She grins.
“And we’d need three bedrooms, at least. Two for my twin and me, because never!, and one for yours and you,” I say.
She bursts out laughing. “Make that four bedrooms.”
I smack my fresh layer of lipstick and put on my determined-face. “Alrighty. Time we head on back and describe our future living arrangements.”
My twin has lost the lemon from his water into his wine. It’s sunk deep already, and he’s trying to fish it out with a fork. Frieda’s twin is passing him a second fork, mimicking how he can pull it out between the two forks like tweezers.
“I wonder if they help each other with every mundane task?” Frieda ponders. “Like, what if one has problems opening a condom. Would he call for help?”
“Stop it.” I cover my mouth to hide my amusement as I sit down. Beady eyes look up from the glass and at me.
“I lost my lemon.”
“I can tell. You want a new one?” I joke, and the guy looks relieved.
“Oh right. Good idea. I don’t know what happened.”
Seriously?
I flag down the waiter, like the good Samaritan I am. “We’re going to need another slice of lemon over here. For him.”
Twenty minutes later, we’re all paid up, out of there, and in Frieda’s car. I open my hand and look at the crumpled napkin with my twin’s phone number on it. Then I look at Frieda, who does the same thing.
“Wanna swap?” she asks.
I nod like I mean it.
“I can get us another blind date, pretty sure. My cousin works at this dot-com place that survived the heyday. They’ve got tons of nerds in need of saving.”
Mr. Dakapoulous is sick. It’s just a cold, but he’s so thankful when I get him his pharmacy remedies and take the dogs for the day. He’d hate it if Daisy/Dolly/Dixie and Ralph/Rough had to lie around watching him like this all day. He wants to pay me a babysitter price, but I can’t. The man is old and has no one else. How can I rip him off just because he’s sick?
I don’t have work until late, so I bring the dogs to Mom’s.
“Ooh, looky at the babies,” she coos. “You know what I need to do? There’s this place up north. Have you heard of the Arctic? The polar bear is suffering because of everything. The climate and all that. Did you know it’s almost extinct?”
“Mom. What the heck would you do in the Arctic? There’s hardly any people there. Anyone you know? Any job? How will you survive?” I go for the kill right away, shortening Ciro’s longer, nicer version that worked miracles weeks ago.
She folds her hands, a patient moment while she waits for me to come to my senses. Then: “Savannah. How can you be so worried all the time? Let people live their lives and do what makes them happy. Have I ever tried to stop you from pursuing your passions?”
“I don’t have any passions, Mom,” I mutter. “All I want is to survive financially and make sure you don’t get into trouble.”
“No? No passions? I beg to differ. For instance, I don’t believe in marriage.” She slaps her chest like she wasn’t married for twenty-one years to the most patient man in the world. “But did you hear me complain about your relationship with that boy, Ciro? I want what’s best for you, and I could tell right away that you are happy when you’re with him. I’d be a poor mother if I tried to stop something that made my girl happy just because of my own principles.”
“Wow. Well, that’s a little different, don’t you think?” I make a scale with both hands, tipping it in the air. “Having a boyfriend versus uprooting and hightailing it to the North Pole.”
“It’s not the North Pole, silly. I think.” She frowns, scanning the room behind me and stretching her head to see out the window toward my car. “Where is that boy anyway? You haven’t brought him in a while.”
“Traveling.” I don’t feel like going into detail with her.
“Oh cool. When’s he back?”
“In five and a half days.” And yes, I know I shouldn’t be so aware of this.
“Aww, I bet you’re excited, sweetie.” Her face takes on a mischievous sheen, and I’m pretty sure I won’t like what comes out of her mouth next.
“When your dad had been away for a while, he always made it up to me. I’d get you kids off to school, and he’d take a sick day, and we wouldn’t leave the bedroom until it was time to pick you up.”
“Oh Jesus, I did not need to hear that.”
“What, is it so hard to believe that your mother and father also had a sex life? Did you think the three of you were brought to us by the stork?” She laughs heartily, and that’s when Daisy has an accident on the kitchen floor. It’s a happy accident; it gets me out of my mom’s house.
It bothers me that he hasn’t tried to contact me. It’s been ten days! He proposed to me for crying out loud. Doesn’t that count for something?
I’m in class, supposedly listening to the professor, but my pen shakes too hard in my hand. Or more like I wiggle it, whip-whip, whip-whip, between index and middle finger, slamming it against the top and the palm of my hand.
“Miss Nichols. Do you mind?” Professor Hargrove juts his face forward and stares over the rim of his glasses.
“Of course. Sorry.” I put the pen down and cross my arms, staring up at the whiteboard. Bottom-line Business Growth. Closed-Loop Marketing. It doesn’t ring a bell at the moment. Better study when I get out of here. We have a quiz on Tuesday, also according to the whiteboard.
Texting Ciro wouldn’t do any good. He probably has roaming off on his phone, what with it be crazy expensive to keep on in another country. And again, texting your ex never does any good, no matter where he is.
I check his Twitter. Oh wow. There are photos of him in a stunning suit holding some trophy. He has the same girl at his side in all of them. She’s a dark-skinned, dark-haired beauty, co-star from the film that won Hottest Scene of the Year, and she smirks in all of them as if she’s aware that I’m stalking his Twitter.
So then I stalk her Twitter too. @EsmeBabe isn’t as shy about videos as @DrakeC is, and she’s apparently very proud of their “work” in said film. I glance around me, but my classmates pay no attention to me and my sick new hobby. I get off Twitter and onto Facebook. I find him there too, but not to read his wall. I just re-friend him. He accepts immediately.
Hey, baby girl.
My heart kick-starts in my chest. Hey, yourself. Grats with the award.
You saw that? he types.
I did...
You don’t like it.
It’s whatever.
It’s just a job.
Just a job.
It looks like he’s writing again, but then he stops. He starts up again a moment later, and I can picture him do what I’m doing in my head, formulating and erasing stuff I want to tell him.
I miss you, he finally says. I want to go straight from the airport to see you.
Do you ever take no for an answer? I key out, and neither of us follow up with the obvious, that I’m the one who contacted him this time.
Not with you, I don’t.
You should.
I disagree.
I smile.
Ciro...
Yes, baby girl.
When you come back, can we just be friends? Because I miss being with you too.
So just being friends will be good? he asks.
Yeah. I won’t have to worry about “faithful.”
But I would be faithful. He adds an emoticon of a small animal shrugging.
I know you say that. Anyway.
Around me, people are packing their bags. The girl next to me apologizes and gives my pen back after accidentally putting it behind her ear. I tell her no worries.
Savannah, can I call you?
I get up too. Shove my notebook and pen and laptop into my backpack and leave the room behind the others. When my phone buzzes, I take a deep breath and appropriate one of the chairs by the lobby vending machine.
“Hey.” I puff it out as if I’ve been running.
“Hey, you. How are you?” he asks, and he sounds so close, that silky voice almost more than I can bear after ten whole days without him. I shut my eyes and inhale deeply. I can almost smell him.
“I’m okay.”
“Just okay? What’s wrong?” The concern in his voice is so genuine.
“No, it’s all good. Just, you know—life. How about you? Is South Africa everything you hoped it to be?” I deflect.
“How’s your mother?”
“She’s fine.” I groan. “For the most part.”
“So it’s her, then. What’s she up to? Any more terrible ideas?” We chuckle quietly together, bonding.
“Yeah, you could say that. I haven’t seen her this... active in years.”
“Oh boy. More traveling? Saving the world””
“Yeah. On the good side, she hasn’t started packing yet. She seems to consider the practical side of things at the moment. Like, she might not move to save polar bears in the wild without having financial stability and a job up there first.”
“The North Pole, huh? Has she applied to Santa? From what I know, his toy factory needs upbeat, energetic people.”
I laugh. “Yep, she’d fit right in.”
He joins me, but our laughter dies quickly. “Keep her safe until I get there. I’m home in five days,” he says as if we live together and my mother is our common problem. “I’ve got an idea, but it’s better to talk about it in person.”
“Ha, you’re making me curious.”
“So, Savannah. I have questions about the friend zone.”
That’s not an expression to be uttered in a deep-red-pillows-and-smooth-sheets voice. I should disclose this to him.
“What about it?”
“How far do friends go with each other?”
All the way, every day! That wasn’t me screaming. It was my girly-parts.
“Not as far as you’d think.”
“Only as far as to the dog park?”
“Maybe a little farther. Probably to the grocery store. Maybe the boardwalk.”
“Hmm. If friends go to the boardwalk, do they buy popcorn for each other?”
“They could, I believe.” I bite my lip, smiling.
“Okay, and after they’ve polished off a couple of churros or what-have-you, would friends go on rollercoasters together?”
“Definitely.”
“Sit in the same seat?”
“If they’re two-seaters.”
“Now, let’s say, hypothetically, that the girl friend is very scared of the rollercoaster and needs a hug after they stop.... Are you picturing the scenario?”
“I am.” Definitely.
“And the boy friend needs to comfort her and make her feel safe again. You see it?”
“I do.” Sadly, my smile is growing.
“Would he put his arms around her and hug her close, perhaps even let her rest her head under his chin?”
“I think that would work.”
“And if he kissed her head, would he have overstepped?”
“Kissing of heads should be within the roam of opportunity for friends,” I say. “Don’t see an issue with that.”
“Cool. What if—”
I snort, because I can’t see him stop any time soon. He’s too entertained.
“Are you laughing at me, Miss Nichols?”
“A little bit?”
He lets out the softest snicker. “What if he tilted her head up, pressed his lips to hers and opened her mouth with his tongue. Then he kissed her until she was panting and wanted him to lift her and carry her to the car so he could drive her home to his funkis bunker. When they got there—”
“Shut up, you’re so naughty.” I laugh, tingling.
“See you in a few days, friend.”