I walked up to his Adirondack chair, where he was leaning back, a bottle of Sprite in one hand, listening with a faint smile on his face as the guy in the chair next to him was leaning forward, saying something about galaxies.
“For years, man,” he was saying, gesturing vaguely up to the sky and spilling some beer on his own arm, “they’ve thought the galaxies were just fixed, done, boom, that’s it. These perfect orderly systems, right?”
“Who’s ‘they’?” Topher asked, in a way I knew from experience meant he didn’t really want to know but had just seen a flaw in an argument.
“Astronomers!” the guy said, gesturing again, sending more beer flying. At this rate, he’d be out before he was done talking. “NASA people. You know. They weren’t even studying some of them any longer because they thought all that was done eight billion light-years ago. But then they started noticing stuff.”
“Really.” Topher was looking away, not even listening to the guy anymore, but that didn’t seem to be stopping him.
“Yeah,” the guy said. “Galaxies don’t start perfect. They start crazy disorganized, and they change over time.” He looked at Topher, waiting a beat, clearly expecting more of a reaction. “Doesn’t that, like, blow your mind?”
“Sorry,” Topher said, finally noticing me, or at least acknowledging that he noticed me. “My friend just got here.”
“Hi,” I said, giving the guy a halfhearted wave.
“Want to hear this crazy thing about galaxies?” the guy asked, leaning forward again, clearly glad to have found a potential new audience.
“She’s good,” Topher said, giving him a nod. “Thanks, though.” The guy seemed to notice then that he’d lost most of his beer while gesticulating, pushed himself up, and headed off toward the keg, still murmuring under his breath about star formations.
“Hey,” I said, adjusting my purse on my shoulder, then folding and unfolding my arms.
“You made it,” Topher said, looking up at me. “I was getting worried.”
I nodded, starting to feel weird standing while he was sitting and making no move to get up, so I took the galaxy guy’s seat, settling back into it and looking over at Topher. “Really,” I said, not phrasing it as a question.
Topher gave me a sleepy smile. “Sure,” he said, in a way that was designed to let me know he was lying and that this was supposed to be funny, that he’d forgotten about me. I gave him a half smile as I crossed my legs. I could feel it happening, this pattern we always fell back into, but for some reason it didn’t feel like it normally did. It was feeling more like the time Bri accidentally took my shoes after a sleepover and I had to wear hers all day, aware with every step of how they didn’t fit me right. I took a drink of my Diet Coke, waiting for this feeling to pass. It had just been a while since I’d seen Topher, that was all. Things would go back to normal soon.
“So what’s been happening?” I asked, after we’d sat in silence for a few moments. I somehow knew that Topher wouldn’t be the first to break it, that he’d wait for me to get the conversation rolling. Once, these kinds of games had made every interaction with him feel somehow exciting, but tonight they were exhausting me, and I was struggling to remember what the point of them was.
“You know,” Topher said with a tiny shrug. “Doing the intern thing. Beyond thrilling.” He looked over at me and frowned. “Wait—what did you end up doing again?”
“Dog walking,” I said immediately. Topher just stared at me. “Some cats, too, but mostly dogs. Walks and hikes.”
“Are you serious?” he asked, a laugh somewhere behind this. “You’ve really been walking dogs all summer?”
“Yep,” I said, nodding. I knew that a month ago I would have lied, or at least spun it, told him that I was working in an assistant capacity in a small independently owned business, in the service sector. But the last thing I wanted to do was to diminish what I’d spent the summer doing. “It was actually really great,” I said, realizing it was true as I said it, seeing, all at once, Clark and Bertie, and Maya and Dave, and walking with two leashes in each hand and the sun on my shoulders, driving back with a dog on my lap and a head sticking out of every open window.
“Well,” Topher said, looking a little discomfited by this, like I’d just gone off script on him. “I’ll take your word for it.” We lapsed into silence again, and before I could think of something else to say, he asked, “So it’s finally over with Clark?” Topher asked, putting a snide spin on his name.
“Uh-huh,” I said, not saying it, but really thinking that people named Topher weren’t exactly in a position to throw stones.
“So what happened?”
I shook my head, then made myself shrug, trying to force myself back into this role I’d played so often before. Totally over whoever it was I’d been dating and ready to move on with Topher. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “It’s over.”
Topher took a sip from his Sprite bottle, eyes still on me, like he was trying to figure something out. “That lasted a while,” he finally said.
“Well,” I said, giving him a smile I didn’t even partially feel, “now it’s over.” I looked at him for a moment. Even though we were sitting on outdoor furniture by a pool, Topher looked, as always, beyond cool and composed—like he could have been in an ad for cologne, or Adirondack chairs, or Sprite. “You?” I asked, hoping I knew the answer. I had a feeling Topher wouldn’t have told me about the party if he was seeing anyone, but I wasn’t entirely sure. “With anyone?”