Girlfriend Material (11 page)

MY MOM CAME IN
at one in the morning. I’d finally fallen asleep only to be woken up by her and Jamie giggling at the door. If you haven’t been awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of your tipsy mom giggling her head off with some guy who’s crushed out on her, all I can say is you’d better hope you never are. For a minute I had the horrible thought that she was going to invite him in, and I was torn between: A) flipping on a light to remind her that,
Hello! Maybe instead of acting like a teenager, you should remember that you
have
one,
and B) feigning REM sleep so I wouldn’t have to interact with my mom and her … whatever, when I heard her say, “Good night, Jamie,” in this way that made me think maybe he’d wanted their evening to continue. She shut the door, and I heard her humming quietly as she headed to the bathroom.

When I woke up at seven, I couldn’t stand the idea of trying to be quiet while my mom slept off her wine, but the thought of going over to the main house and possibly having to talk with Jamie was even worse.

Since I didn’t want to deal with anyone, I decided to go for a run. I got dressed, grabbed my iPod, and headed out the door and down the narrow sandy path through the grass that led to the beach. The mist and the dark clouds actually made me smile.

Have fun at your barbecue, Sarah … in the rain!

Even though I knew (thanks to Sarah) that I was looking out at the bay and not the ocean, I understood how I’d been confused. Maybe on a clear day you could see that this body of water didn’t stretch all the way to Europe, but with the clouds and fog, the feeling that there was no land as far as the eye could see was impossible to shake. I set off, trying to stay close to the water’s edge, where the sand was tightly packed and easier to run on.

Salt Lake City is surrounded by mountains, the Wasatch to the east and the Oquirrhs to the west, so I’m used to looking up and seeing them whenever I run. During tennis season, when I run with the team, it’s daytime, and they’re shadowy and green with the afternoon sun, but in the summer, when I run alone, usually as the sun’s going down and as it’s getting cooler, they’re lit up bright pink against the dark blue of the evening sky. I guess being surrounded on all sides by mountains could make a person claustrophobic, but it always made me feel safe.

The water was having the exact opposite effect on me. Every time I looked over and saw its flat, gray surface, I felt sad. Maybe it was because of the mood I was already in, but something about the vast expanse of water seemed so … lonely. Technically there were probably fishermen and scuba divers out there, just like in Salt Lake there were skiers or hikers up in the mountains, but instead of making me feel less isolated, like in Utah, the thought of all of those faceless people going about their (aquatic) business just made me feel more alone. I ran for half an hour and then turned around and ran back.

Halfway through the return trip I passed an elderly couple. They were studying a stick or a feather that the woman was holding, but at the sound of my footsteps on the sand, they looked up and waved.

Through the music playing on my headphones, I heard the man say, “Morning,” and the woman said, “Good morning.” They smiled at me.

“Good morning,” I said, and then they both waved, and I waved back.

I guess it was objectively a meaningless exchange, but something about how friendly they’d been to a total stranger made me feel less alone. As I trekked through the fine dry sand of the dunes toward the house, I looked around and saw the crisp green sea grass waving in the wind against the slate gray of the sky, and it all struck me as a little more beautiful than it had just an hour before. I breathed in deeply, feeling the briny air sink into my lungs. My legs were tired, and it had been long enough since my last run that they were starting to ache from the strain, but it was a good ache.

My sense of contentment would, no doubt, have faded eventually, but seeing Sarah headed down to the beach along the same path I was headed up made it disappear faster than a bug scuttling out of the way of an approaching shoe. I could have stepped to the side to avoid her, but the path was about six inches wide, and tall beach grass grew up along either side of it.

I wasn’t about to get Lyme disease just so Sarah could get to the beach faster. “Hi,” she said, clearly surprised to see me. “Hi,” I said. I was glad I’d caught my breath down on the beach and wasn’t still panting from my run. My voice was cool, collected.

Sarah was wearing a pair of running shorts and a jog bra, and her hair was up in a high ponytail. “Did you just go for a run?” she asked.

Considering I was wearing sweat pants and running shoes and that my face was, I knew, bright red and drenched in sweat, I didn’t see what else she thought I would have been doing.
No, Sarah, I’m just back from enjoying a leisurely cup of coffee
. Yesterday I might have felt obligated to say something about how I liked running on the beach or how long it had been since I’d worked out, but remembering Sarah’s irritated “Fine” from last night, I wasn’t in the mood to make small talk.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I’m going for one now,” she said. “I’m supposed to be training for field hockey, but I’ve been kind of lazy about it.”

“Oh,” I said.

My terse response seemed to unsettle her. “So, I was going to invite you to the Fourth of July barbecue at the club tonight,” she said.

Oh, I bet you were, I thought. But I didn’t say anything.

Now my silence was definitely making her nervous. She ran one hand up and down her thigh a couple of times and bit her lower lip. “But it looks like it’s going to rain.”

I looked up at the sky. In fact, the gray looked a little lighter than it had an hour ago, as if the sun might actually break through after all, but I didn’t say that. In fact, I didn’t say anything.

“So I don’t think they’ll have it. If it rains, I mean.”

“Probably not,” I said. I liked the effect my failing to utter more than two consecutive words was having on her.

“Um, are you like, pissed at me or something?” she asked. For the first time since she’d seen me coming up the path toward her, Sarah looked directly at me.

I always say no when people ask if I’m mad at them. If you say yes, then you have to say why you’re mad, and that usually involves getting into something you’d rather not get into; whereas if you say no, the thing you’re mad about usually passes without some big awkward confrontation. Plus I think people want you to say no when they ask if you’re mad at them. I mean, if someone thinks you’re mad at them, you probably are, and if you’re mad at someone, they probably know why, and the only reason they’re asking is because they feel guilty about whatever it is they did, and they’re hoping you’re not going to confront them. Once they’ve asked, they can feel all superior, like,
Well, I
asked
her if she was mad and she said no, so what was I
supposed
to do?

Even though I knew what she was doing, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her the truth.
Yes, Sarah, I
am
mad at you actually. And you know why? Because from the second I arrived in your time zone, you’ve made it crystal clear that I’m what stands between you and a good time.

“No,” I said, hating myself. “I’m not mad.”

“Oh,” said Sarah. “Good.” She looked up at the sky. “Well, if it doesn’t rain later, you should come to the barbecue.”

This was my moment.

Like I’d
ever
accept an invitation from you, Sarah.

Like I even
want
to come to your stupid party.

And then I heard the following words come out of my mouth: “Great. Sure.”

Sarah slipped her headphones into her ears, and we sidestepped around each other.

I like to think that if I had lived at a time when tremendous bravery was called for—in Nazi Germany, for example, or in the South before the Civil War—I would have been one of those people who risked her life in order to do the right thing. That I would have hidden Jews in my attic or helped slaves escape along the Underground Railroad.

I like to think that.

But I have the bad feeling it might not be true.

AS IF IT WERE ON MY SIDE
, the weather held for the rest of the day. It never completely cleared up, but by the time I headed over to the main house to go with Sarah to Larkspur, the sun was making a truly valiant effort to poke its way through the clouds, and not a drop of rain had fallen since morning.

I’d spent the day trying on and rejecting outfits. I kept telling myself,
You don’t even know if Adam will be there. Maybe he’s a vegetarian with a moral objection to barbecues. Maybe his parents make him stay home every Fourth of July and read the Constitution out loud to them.

But no matter how many times I told myself not to get my hopes up about seeing Adam, I couldn’t stop their hovering just above the stratosphere.

Even if I hadn’t wanted to wear something that would make Adam notice me, I would have faced a major fashion dilemma. The problem was, I had no idea what to wear to a Fourth of July barbecue at a place like Larkspur. If we had been going to the Olympia Club, it would have been easy—even when people just go to play tennis or swim, they can barely lift their arms because of all the jewelry they’re layered in, and when Laura had her sweet sixteen there, and the invitation said “festive casual,” I bought a fancy new dress and so did my mom.

Maybe fancy was the way to go. Just because the Larkspur population wasn’t particularly bejeweled didn’t mean they weren’t the type to get dolled up to celebrate our nation’s birth.

I’d only brought one real dress with me, a strapless wild profusion of purple and red flowers with a stiff crinoline under it. For a minute I wondered if crinoline + sand = major catastrophe, but slipping the dress over my head and feeling its smooth, stiff bodice glide over my shoulders erased that fear. I spun around. The dress was sooo pretty. Adam just had to be there to see me in it.

Satisfied with my wardrobe choice, I took off the dress and went to shower, and when I got out, I saw that Meg had called me back; I’d completely forgotten about the message I’d left her. The message on my voice mail was typical Meg. She was
so sorry
she’d missed me, and she was
sure
I’d misunderstood Mom’s behavior, and this was
such
a hard time for everyone, and blah blah blah blah.

I barely listened to the whole thing since I’d realized in the shower that I had a major shoe dilemma on my hands. The high-heeled red sandals I’d bought to go with the dress were going to be kind of hard to walk in on sand, even sand that had been packed hard by the morning rain. I put on the dress and slipped on the sandals. They were really high, and I felt unsteady just crossing the room. I took them off and put on my flip-flops— maybe together they’d look all elegant yet sportif! I went over to the mirror to check out the combination.

Disaster.

I took off the flip-flops and put the shoes back on. It wasn’t like I was going to have to walk miles or anything. They probably had waiters and stuff to bring food to your table.

I checked myself out in the mirror. The dress was low-cut without being tacky, the three-quarter skirt coy yet sexy.

I looked like a total New York girl. Or at least I thought I did. Right up until I saw an actual New York girl.

When I walked into the living room, Tina and Henry were lying on the couch, each of them reading a section of
The New York Times
. I’d said hello to Jamie, who was puttering around in the kitchen, and I tried not to let the delicious smell of tomatoes and garlic emanating from whatever he was cooking make me nervous about his ability to get with my mom. Why did Jamie have to be cute, crushed out on her,
and
a good cook?

“Don’t you look pretty,” said Tina, looking up. Henry nodded his agreement.

“Thanks,” I said, heading to the foyer to wait for Sarah.

And then she came downstairs, and I knew I’d made the fashion mistake of a lifetime.

Sarah was wearing jeans rolled up at the ankles and a tiny black T-shirt with cap sleeves. It looked as if she was going to one event and I was going to another.

“Um, hi,” she said.

I could feel my face blazing.

“Hi,” I said. No way was I staying in these clothes if everyone else at the barbecue was going to be dressed like Sarah. I waited for her to make a crack about what I was wearing, but she didn’t say anything. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore. “I guess … I thought I should get dressed up.”

I could already hear her response,
Well, you thought wrong.

There was a pause, then she said, “It’s probably okay if you wear that.” Surprisingly, she didn’t say it in a snotty way, like,
It’s
probably
okay if you wear that. I mean, if you want to win the club’s annual biggest loser award.

I thought about what she said. The key word seemed to be
probably
. “Do you think other people will be dressed like me or like you?” Oh God, could I trust her answer? “Honestly?” she asked. She was looking me up and down, but her gaze was more measured than critical. I nodded. “I think it’s a really pretty dress, but you’ll probably be more dressed up than most people.”