How to Love (20 page)

I didn’t answer. “It’s going to cost them a lot of money,” I said instead.

“That’s what insurance is for.”

“I guess.” I pushed a CD into the stereo. John Coltrane:
A Love Supreme.
I leaned my head against the window as the music started up.

“So,” he said. “About before.”

I exhaled. “Sawyer, can we please, please, please just forget about before? I was a bitch for no reason. Sometimes I just act that way.” That was a lie. I’d had a reason—in fact, I’d had two—but I’d rather have Sawyer think I had a random mean streak than that I’d been jealous of the attention he’d been paying to other girls. Jealousy made you vulnerable. Meanness just made you an ice queen. “Let’s just not talk about it, okay? I’m sorry I was nasty to you.”

“Don’t be sorry. I’m not sorry.”

“Of course you’re not.”

“Why do you keep saying shit like that to me?”

“I don’t know. See? Bitch for no reason.” I closed my eyes and moved as close to the window as the seat belt would
allow. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, exactly, but if I kept looking at him I was afraid I’d lose it completely, in front of this boy I had wanted and wanted and wanted for so long that wanting him was built into me, part of my chemical makeup, part of my bones, so that now, even when I had him, I couldn’t stop waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Okay.” He was quiet then, let the music play on and on until I had lost track of how long it had been. The engine growled, steady and loud.

“Oh, Christ!” he said next, half laughing but stepping hard on the brakes.

“What?” My eyes flew open as Sawyer’s Jeep skidded for half a second in the middle of the deserted road. “What’s wrong?”

He nodded at the windshield. “Look.”

I squinted. “Is that a … ?”

“I think it’s a peacock.”

It was. A full-grown peacock stood stock-still in the center of Campos Road, tail feathers spread. It was enormous. It blinked once. I peered at it through the glass as Sawyer pulled over. “Do we have peacocks here?”

“I don’t think so.” He unbuckled his seat belt.

“What are you doing?”

“I just want to see if it has tags or something.”

“Like if it’s someone’s pet? Sawyer, that thing probably has rabies.”

“Do birds get rabies?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re supposed to know smart-person stuff, Reena.” He grinned once. “Relax over there.” Sawyer got out of the Jeep. “Maybe it’s from the reserve or something.”

The bird allowed Sawyer to get within several feet, watching him with cautious eyes. Of course he would be a peacock whisperer on top of everything else. Sawyer crouched down. “Hey, buddy,” he said.

The peacock didn’t reply. They stood there staring each other down for what must have been a full minute, and eventually I couldn’t take it anymore. I opened the door.

The motion startled the bird and it let out a loud squawking noise before sweeping its plumes back, a swish like a paper fan snapping shut. It galloped away toward the opposite side of the road with a lot more speed than I would have expected. I blinked. “Did that seriously just happen?”

“You scared him away,” Sawyer said mildly, coming over to stand by the passenger side of the car.

“Well, I tend to have that effect on people.”

“Nah.” He reached down and picked up my hands, pulling me out of the Jeep and onto the grassy shoulder. I could feel the calluses on his palms. “Don’t go feeling sorry for yourself.”

“Oh, I don’t.”

“No?” His hands moved up my arms, so lightly, then back down until he was holding mine again. He pulled
them up and locked them behind his neck.

“I don’t even
like
birds,” I said, and Sawyer laughed. I blushed a little, glanced down at the negative space between us. “I like you, though.”

“Well,” he said, and kissed me. “That’s good.”

I could still hear Coltrane. I couldn’t decide if I was hot or cold. Sawyer’s face against mine was soft, like an apology. He was standing closer now, impossibly close, and when I leaned back against the Jeep I could feel the metal through his sweatshirt. “You my girlfriend?” he muttered into my ear, so quiet. I laughed, loud and singing, to say yes.

Shelby’s sitting at a table in back when I get to the restaurant two days after my breakup with Aaron, wiping down the thick folders we use for menus and adding the inserts with tonight’s specials. “Don’t talk to me,” is all she says.

My stomach twists meanly. I hate the idea of fighting with her, of having screwed up the one great friendship in my life: I’ve been down this road before, and it’s lined with total suckage. “Shelby—”

“No,” she says, barely glancing up. Her red hair, curled today, falls into her face like a veil. “I need you not to talk to me for a little while. I’m pissed at you. And I don’t usually get pissed at you, Reena, I don’t have a whole lot of experience doing it, so what I need right now is to just sit here and
wipe the crap off these stupid menus and have you let me be until I figure out what I’m going to do about it.”

“That’s not fair,” I protest. I sit down across from her against my better judgment, hoping at least to plead my case. “You said you weren’t going to get involved in whatever happened between me and Aaron—”

Shelby looks at me now, rolls her eyes like I’m being stupid on purpose. “I said I wouldn’t get involved in whatever happened between you and Aaron as long as you weren’t shitty about it, which—
whoops
.”

I have the strangest, sharpest flash of Allie just then, that night in front of her swing set a hundred years ago.
You want to win this fight?
Here I am all these years later, still fighting with my best friend about Sawyer. It makes me hate myself a little. It makes me hate Shelby a little, too. “Fine,” I say, cavalier as I can manage. “I’m a shitty girlfriend, and a shitty friend.”

“Okay,
listen
.” Shelby sighs noisily and sets the menus down on the table, an expression on her face like she didn’t want to do this but I had to go ahead and push her, so here goes. “I know you’ve had a rough couple years, Reena. And it sucks in an Alanis Morissette, isn’t-it-ironic kind of way that you were like, the least risk-taking person in the history of the world and all this shit still happened to you, but I feel like you did a pretty good job making a life for yourself in spite of that and now that Sawyer’s back you’re just acting like it’s junior year all over again.” She ticks off
a list on her fingers, like potential side effects of some new, unapproved medication. “You fight, you make up, he’s your favorite person, you hate his guts, and maybe it’s out of character for you or maybe he’s the only person you can really be yourself around, I don’t know. That’s fine, that’s your business—as long as other people don’t get dragged down while you’re figuring it out.”

“I was trying not to drag Aaron down!” I argue, bristling. “That’s why I broke up with him in the first place.”

Shelby makes a face. “Oh, Reena, don’t even kid. You broke up with Aaron because of Sawyer, directly or indirectly. And that’s not—” She stops short, shakes her head. “I don’t want you to think I’m mad at you for dumping my brother.”

“Then why are you mad at me?” I explode. I glance around, self-conscious—there are a couple of businessmen drinking late lunches at the bar, an elderly couple or two eating early dinners. I lower my voice. “Seriously. Why are you mad at me?”

“I’m mad at you—” Shelby sighs again. “I’m mad at you because Sawyer got back here and you like, forgot that you’re kickass. It’s like now that he’s around again all the hard work you did doesn’t even matter. And it’s not anything against Sawyer, I don’t want you to think that, either, especially when everybody in your family thinks he’s the Antichrist—”

“Thanks,” I interrupt, and Shelby pushes out a noisy breath.

“I just feel,” she says crisply, “like you’re forgetting yourself over a dude.”

Now I’m the one who’s pissed. “What am I forgetting, exactly?” I demand. “That I live at home with my father who can’t even look at me most days because he legit thinks I’m the whore of Babylon? That I’m a waitress, and I’m probably always going to be a waitress? Or that I’m eighteen years old with a baby to take care of and no conceivable way of getting out of this stupid place?” God, where does she get off, honestly, Shelby with her college scholarship and brainy girlfriend and limitless doctor future, who gets to pack up at the end of the summer and fly thousands of miles from here? What on God’s green earth could she possibly know about how
kickass
my life here supposedly is? I shove my chair back noisily, grab my purse off the tabletop. I’m so sick of everyone’s opinions I could scream. “Thanks, Shelby,” I tell her, nasty as humanly possible. “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”

*

Sawyer doesn’t give up, of course. I’ve spent my life reading his face like tea leaves, and there was something about the way he looked at me before I went tearing out of his parents’ kitchen the other night that let me know that, as far as he’s concerned, we aren’t done. By the middle of the week, it’s only a question of when.

He holds out until Thursday. I’m stretched on the porch swing with my laptop when his Jeep pulls up, and even in
the orange half-light I notice again what bad shape it’s in these days: It was never a particularly nice car to begin with, and now it’s dented like a coffee can, rust speckling the doors. From the sound of it, the muffler is shot.

The hair on my arms perks up even though it’s still eighty degrees, and I close the laptop harder than I mean to, not wanting Sawyer to get a look at the screen: While all my magazine subscriptions have lapsed and I’ve taken my email address off the contact list of every travel website clear across the internet, I’ve still got a weakness for the blogs. I can waste whole nights clicking through: staring at the bright, hypersaturated images captured by women passing through San Diego or spending a year in Jakarta, reading stories about the food they’ve been eating and the people they’ve met along the way. It’s torturing myself. I don’t know why I go out of my way to do it.

So far, I haven’t been able to make myself quit.

“Hey,” Sawyer calls softly, making his way up the front walk. He’s wearing dark, holey jeans and a T-shirt, and he’s left his shoes in the car. His feet are pale against the concrete. There’s a giant plastic cup in his hand.

“Okay, I’ve gotta ask,” I tell him, squinting a little across the lawn. “What’s with all the Slurpees?”

Sawyer shrugs, tips the cup in my direction. “Cheaper than booze.”

I bite the inside of my cheek, wondering about the full story there, but in the end I just leave it alone. “Your teeth
are gonna rot right out of your head,” I warn him; then: “What were you going to do if I wasn’t sitting out here?”

“Who said I was here to see you?” He smiles as he climbs the steps, then sits down sideways on the top one so he’s facing me, leaning against my house. It’s quiet inside, the windows dark. My father had a stress test this afternoon and went to bed early. Soledad followed not long after that. “I was going to knock on the door.”

I raise my eyebrows. “It’s late.”

“Ah. Woulda thrown rocks at your window then, maybe.” He nods at the laptop. “Were you writing?”

“Nope.” I shake my head neatly, taking some weird perverse pleasure in saying it. “I told you I don’t write anymore.”

“I remember you saying that, yeah.” Sawyer looks at me carefully. “It’s a bummer, though. I thought maybe you were just giving me a hard time.”

“Because obviously everything I do is about you?”

Sawyer rolls his eyes. “Is that what I said?” he asks, no particular irritation behind it at all. It sounds like he knows he’s got to wait me out and is willing. “Seriously. Did you hear me say that just now?”

“Screw you,” I fire back, imitating his tone. His patience riles me up, makes me want to fight him. “What do you want me to do?”

“I want you not to hate me.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“You don’t
like
me.”

I raise my head and look at him, sitting on the floor like a penitent. I sigh and I tell him the truth. “Sawyer, me liking you has never, ever been the issue.”

He smiles—I wish he didn’t have such a pretty smile—and changes tactics. “Come sit by me,” he says this time.

“Why?”

“’Cause I’m asking you to.” He bends over and grabs a handful of shiny white pebbles from the path leading up to the porch, begins to throw them onto the lawn one by one. They skip across the slick green grass as I shake my head.

“Sawyer,” I tell him. “No.”

“Why not?”

I don’t really have a good answer for that one—not one I can tell him, at least—so I get off the swing and perch on the top step. He slides down so he’s sitting below me, his chin about level with my knee. “That one is new,” I say. There’s a deep blue star on his bicep that wasn’t there before; it stands out against his skin like a brand.

“Got it in Tucson.”

I feel my eyebrows go up, that expression Shelby calls the Big Furrow, when she and I are speaking. “What were you doing in Tucson?”

Sawyer looks up at me, smiles a little. “I worked on a farm.”

“Seriously?”

“Soybeans,” he tells me, nodding once. “And in a pottery place.”

I laugh, I can’t help it. “You are out of control.”

“What’s out of control about that?” he asks, all innocence. “I ran the kiln.”

“I see.” Of course he did. Probably Sawyer could have any job, do anything, drive a forklift or a race car or turn water into wine. “Where else did you go?”

“Oh, man.” Sawyer considers. “Well. New Orleans, right when I left here. LA.”

Los Angeles is dirty and full of neon. You can’t drink water from the tap in Los Angeles. I know this: not because I’ve ever been there, but because like so many other things I read it in a book.

“Kansas, for a while.”

“Kansas.”

“Uh-huh. I’d never been. It’s flat there.”

“So they tell me.”

“Missouri. Flat there, too.”

I close my eyes and wonder how I am doing this, how we’re talking just like we used to. On the breeze I smell the ocean, close and endless; my pulse ticks like a bomb inside my throat. I hum at him a little, unwilling to commit either way.