Girlfriend Material (9 page)

“Morning,” I said.

“There’s coffee,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said. I actually don’t drink coffee, but I wondered if I should start. In
The Sun Also Rises
, Jake is always meeting someone for coffee before he goes to write up a story for the newspaper he works for. Then again, he often met them for several bottles of wine too.

Maybe it was a slippery slope.

“Sarah left for work already,” he said.

“Oh,” I said. Were our parents never going to realize that Sarah and I were just not going to be friends? “Okay.”

“And I think your mom and Tina are in Orleans getting supplies for the big dinner tonight.” He mimed a drumroll … . “Uncle Jamie! But I can give you a ride to the club if you’d like.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I can just bike, though.” “Either way,” he said. Going to Larkspur didn’t sound like such a bad idea.

I could swim some laps or work out if there was a weight room. For a second I worried about running into Jenna or Lawrence and its being weird, but probably if that happened they’d just say hello and then ditch me. I made myself not think about running into Adam. He’d probably be at work anyway. I grabbed a swig of OJ and a bagel and headed out the door.

There was a bulletin board on the wall of the Larkspur clubhouse, and tacked to it was an enormous Xerox that read, “Stopping Lyme Disease Starts with You!” A huge drawing of a truly disgusting, engorged tick took up most of the paper, and around it were all of these warnings about not walking in the tall grass that bordered established paths and checking yourself and your pets on a daily basis. I couldn’t believe people chose to vacation in a spot where every time you went for a stroll you were taking your life in your hands.

Not only was I never going to step off an established path, I didn’t even want to step off the clubhouse
porch
. I shivered and clutched my bag close to me like there was a blade of grass nearby that it might brush up against and catch a tick from. Crossing the lawn to get to the pool suddenly felt a million times less appealing than it had a minute ago. I looked around at the overstuffed armchairs scattered around the wide porch and decided I’d just sit and read for a while.

I walked the length of the house, passing at least half a dozen adults reading copies of
The New York Times
and
The Wall Street Journal
. I had my eye on a sunny patch of porch at the other end of the building, and I’d almost reached it when a voice said my name.

I looked toward the railing, and there were Adam and Lawrence sitting on two of the overstuffed armchairs. Adam was looking up at me, and I felt my breath catch a little. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been hoping to see him again.

“Hey,” I said, glad my voice sounded normal even though my heart was beating really fast.

“Hey,” he said. He pointed at Lawrence. “You remember Lawrence, right?”

Just how many people did Adam think I’d been introduced to since my arrival? “Right,” I said.

“Hey,” said Lawrence.

Then nobody said anything for a minute.

In
The Sun Also Rises
, Lady Brett is always running into guys she doesn’t know all that well. When she sees them, she says,
Hello, chaps!
and they all go off to drink a Pernod together. But since I’m not exactly British, I couldn’t really see myself addressing Lawrence and Adam as “chaps.”

Plus, I don’t even know what Pernod is.

“So how come we haven’t seen you around?” asked Lawrence. He sounded genuinely bewildered, like he’d extended numerous invitations only to have me repeatedly RSVP
no
.

“Oh, I …”
Well, maybe if you or your friend Sarah ever told me I was welcome, I might have shown up more.

I was still trying to figure out what to say when a voice behind me said, “Don’t start in on me.”

I turned around and saw Jenna coming up the stairs.

“You’re late,” said Adam.

“I’m ten minutes late,” said Jenna. “Chill.” She had pulled her blond hair back into a high ponytail, and was wearing a white tank top and a short blue skirt. “Hey,” she said, seeing me. “Long time no see.”

Once again I was at a loss for a truthful but decorous response. I just shrugged and smiled, as if I too was sorry I hadn’t joined them more often but circumstances beyond my control had prevented it. Which, when you thought about it, was kind of true.

“So, are you guys ready?” asked Jenna. “We’ve been ready for—” Lawrence started, but

Jenna interrupted him. “Dude, relax. It’s not like you have a job or anything.

Adam and I are the ones deserving of some R and R.”

I felt really weird just standing there. “Well, I should probably go,” I said. “Nice seeing you all again.”

“Do you feel like playing?” asked Jenna.

Even though she was looking directly at me, I couldn’t believe this was an actual invitation. “Me?” I asked.

Jenna laughed. “Yes, you,” she said.

“I think what Jenna means”—Adam leaned forward and looked me up and down in an exaggeratedly lascivious way—“is, would you be interested in a foursome?”

Because the last time the three of them had discussed a foursome in my presence, their conversation had included the words
court
and
time
, despite Jenna’s wearing a blue (not white) skirt, I’d just assumed they were playing tennis again. What I hadn’t realized, what hadn’t even occurred to me, was that today they weren’t talking about tennis.

They were talking about golf.

If you’ve never held a golf club in your life, you should know that the experience is totally counterintuitive. Holding a tennis racket feels like shaking hands: you wrap your fingers around the racket, and if it feels comfortable, you’re probably doing it right.

Holding a golf club is exactly the opposite: you hunch over and grab the club with both hands wrapped around it in opposite directions. If it feels comfortable, you’re definitely doing it wrong. “That’s great,” said Jenna, observing my stance. Adam looked over at us. “Wait,” he said. Then he came over to me. “Hold your right hand a little lower.” He reached down and moved my fingers around, and I could feel myself blushing beet red. “Now, pull the club back and swing all the way through, over the horizon.”

“Okay,” I said, even though I’d been too distracted by his touching me to listen to what he was saying. I lifted the club and felt a weird tension in my lower back, like I was moving a muscle in a way it was never meant to move. Then I looked up at the horizon and swung with all my might.

“That was good, that was good,” said Jenna enthusiastically.

I looked around to see how far I’d hit the ball. It was nowhere in sight. I felt a surge of warmth and excitement. Maybe I was some kind of golf natural—could I have gotten a hole in one on my first try?

Lawrence nodded his approval. “Good swing,” he said. “Good form.” I got the sense he took the game of golf pretty seriously; when Jenna had suggested that I try one of his clubs since they were the lightest set, he responded as if she’d offered me a pair of his underwear—more specifically the pair he was currently wearing.

Adam knelt down and picked my ball up from the tee it had never left. “Practice makes perfect,” he said, handing it to me.

I looked at him, truly amazed. “You mean I didn’t even hit it? All that and I didn’t even hit the ball?!”

“It’s a really hard game,” said Jenna. “I’ve been playing for years and I’m always making lame shots.”

“That’s true,” said Adam.

“You have no idea,” said Lawrence.

“It’s practically taking your life in your hands to play with Jenna,” said Adam.

“Sometimes they actually clear the course when she’s coming through.”

“Hey,” said Jenna, “I believe the point has been made.”

Lawrence bent down and put his ball on the tee, then chose a club from his bag and got ready to make his shot. I looked down at the ball in my hand.

“I didn’t even hit the ball,” I said.

Jenna put her hand on mine and squeezed it gently. “Don’t overthink it,” she said. “You’ll just choke on the next hole.”

“How many holes are there again?”

“Eighteen,” said Jenna. When she saw the look on my face, she added, “But you’ll be amazed at how fast it goes.”

“So,” I said, “how do you guys all know each other?” Jenna and I were looking for a ball I’d actually managed to hit, unfortunately in the exact opposite direction of where it was supposed to go. As we searched for it in the high grass that edged the green near the fifth hole, I silenced my fear of Lyme disease by focusing on the brilliant opening for a romantic interlude the universe had had the good grace to offer me.
Hey, Adam, when the game’s over, would you mind if I asked you to check my body for ticks?

“You mean besides all of us being in school together?” Jenna surveyed the grass around her as I did the same. “Well, Sarah and I have been friends for like, ever, so that’s how I know her. And my boyfriend and Adam are really good friends, so I guess I started hanging out with Adam when I started going out with Biff.”

Biff?
She knew an actual person with the name Biff? I managed to hide my laugh with a cough. “And we started hanging out with Lawrence last summer when he and Sarah were going out.”

“Sarah and Lawrence went out?” Now I really
was
choking. Though, was it so surprising that the most gorgeous guy I’d ever seen outside of a magazine would have gone out with Sarah?

I just hoped his dumping of her had been brutal.

“Yeah,” said Jenna, shaking her head (whether at what she was thinking or the ball she was [not] finding, I didn’t know). “He was really psyched when they got together. But she just wasn’t into it. They still fool around sometimes, but I don’t think she’ll ever be his girlfriend again.”

“But I thought …” I stopped.

“What?” Jenna looked at me.

Was it weird that I’d been listening to their conversation that first day? I mean, they
had
been talking right in front of me. “I thought Lawrence got with a lot of girls. He seemed like—”

“A slut?” offered Jenna.

Slut
is a word I always associate with girls. “Can a guy be a slut?” I asked.

“They can, and Lawrence is,” said Jenna, and we both laughed. “But it’s kind of tragic. I think he’s still into Sarah.” Suddenly she let out a scream of triumph. “Found it!”

“Oh, you totally rock!” I said. As we high-fived, I felt psyched about way more than the ball we’d just found. She’d told me about her, Sarah’s, and Lawrence’s love lives.

But she hadn’t said a word about Adam’s.

Later, as the four of us were sitting by the pool drinking lemonade, I started to get a little nervous about Sarah. I had no idea what time she had to work until. What if she stopped by for a late-afternoon swim and found me hanging out with her friends? It wasn’t like I thought she’d stand there, hands on her hips, going,
Okay guys, it’s
89

Kate or me. Choose.
Still, wouldn’t her arrival make things a little … chilly for me? Nobody had said anything for a few minutes when Lawrence asked, “So what’s the plan?”

“I’m thinking your house, I’m thinking movie, I’m thinking clam strips, and I’m thinking seven thirty,” said Adam.

“Done, done, done, and done,” said Lawrence. “But we pick the movie. I’m not watching another crap chick flick.”

“Oh, please,” said Jenna. “You’ll watch one and you’ll like it.”

“Adam, I need you to back me up on this.”

“You’re man enough to handle a chick flick,” said Adam, his eyes closed against the afternoon sun. I didn’t want to be caught looking at him if he opened his eyes, so I forced myself to refill my lemonade from the pitcher.

“I want to watch an old movie,” said Jenna. “Hitchcock or something.”

“Oh, you should rent
Notorious
,” I said. It was practically the first sentence I’d uttered all day that I hadn’t played over in my head first. Talking without planning felt surprisingly good.

“Excellent call,” said Adam. “We’re watching that.” Right at that second I remembered the list Laura and I had come up with—things we liked that girls who had boyfriends didn’t.
Playing tennis. Reading and talking about books. Watching old movies.

I couldn’t help noticing how many of those things Adam and I had in common.

“It’s almost five,” said Lawrence to Adam. “We’ve got that court.” He stood up, and so did Adam.

“I should get going too,” said Jenna, checking the time on her cell phone. “The tide is high.” She sang a few bars of the Blondie song, which was apparently meant as an explanation of her destination; but what exactly the song was supposed to explain remained opaque to me.

“What happens when the tide is high?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m doing this internship at the Audubon center,” said Jenna. “We’re charting the salinity of tide pools.”

“I can never understand how you’re so interested in something that doesn’t involve people,” said Adam.

Even though I thought it was cool that Jenna had such an unusual-sounding internship, I had to agree with Adam. If I had a summer job studying something, I’d want it to be people.

“I’m interested in people too,” said Jenna. “For example, I’m going to call Biff before I go.”

“Aah,” said Lawrence, “monogamy. It’s so beautiful.” His tone indicated he found it anything but, and I wondered if Jenna was wrong about his having a thing for Sarah.

Jenna reached over and hit him on the side of the head. “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.” She looked around to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything, then took a step away from the table.

“So we’ll see you guys around seven thirty?” she said.

For the second time that day it took me a minute to realize she was talking to me.

“Ah, yeah,” I said. “I’ll, um, tell Sarah.”

Now
there
was a conversation I was looking forward to.
Hey, Sarah, Jenna said we’re supposed to be at Lawrence’s at seven thirty. And by “we’re,” I mean you and me, honey.

“Great.”