The Lighter Side of Life and Death (4 page)

Only the last thing I need at the moment is the safety of a group dynamic. I need to be alone with Kat and discuss this one thing until I understand it clearly. Because from where I’m sitting it looks like she just wants to pretend the whole thing never happened.

I feel like a stalker when the bell goes. Kat’s got me in her peripheral vision but her eyeballs don’t move. It’s like Jamie all over again, like I turned into a social pariah overnight. Then, just when I think I’m going to have to cut her off in the hall like an angry boyfriend demanding face time, she stops walking and turns to look at me. “Coming to lunch?” she asks.

“Yeah.” I stop next to her and bob my head. “But can we talk first? You’re sorta freaking me out with—”

“Mason.” She bows her head, squinting like I’m giving her a migraine. “I don’t want to do this.”

“You don’t want to do what?” I ask, voice rising. “You don’t even want me to mention it?” My reaction makes me angrier. Why should I be insulted? Who cares if it was casual—as long as we’re still friends?

Except this could be such a good thing for us. It doesn’t need to be an embarrassment.

“Be quiet,” she hisses. Her lips are doing their sexy-pout bit again. Believe me, it doesn’t help. “I’m sorry,” she adds immediately, head snapping up to look at me straight on. “I know how it must seem. I got your message yesterday and I didn’t call you back.”
Her nails scratch nervously against her chem textbook. “I just don’t want to have this conversation, Mason. We both know what happened and I’m not saying I regret it or anything like that.” She sips in air and smooths the tension out of her voice. “We’ve been friends for years.
Good
friends. I don’t want this to change anything and I don’t want you to be mad but please …” Her hair falls forward and she flips it back behind one ear as she looks away. “Let’s just go on from there. Just keep it as this separate thing, you know? Something that happened but doesn’t affect us.”

“So I guess it wasn’t as good for you as it was for me?” I kid. The thing is, it doesn’t come out sounding like a joke.

“See, this is what I’m talking about,” Kat snaps, her right hand clutching at her crystal necklace.

“Jesus, Kat. Give me a break. You expect me to get my head together in the thirty seconds it took you to give me that speech?” She’s killing me here. I can’t even say that it was my first time. No way I’m sharing that info with her now.

“So you coming for lunch or not?” she asks, teeth scraping against her lips.

“Yeah,” I reply, walking alongside her. There’s nothing else to say. Sure, I’m pissed and offended, but the naked Saturday-night Kat’s still in my head, rocking against me like I’m a good thing she can’t get enough of. Besides, I don’t want to be the one who cares more. If she can give it up to a friend on some drunken Saturday night without a second thought, I should be able to do the same. It’s not like I was even trying to save my virginity; I just didn’t want my first time to be with someone like Monica G.

The lunch crowd helps distract me. I grab a seat between Charlie Kady and Miracle and they’re both still all about the play. In fact, they remind me of me. Because, yeah, I already miss being up there on stage with them. I miss showing off my skills and admiring
theirs. I miss the people we have no reason to be anymore, the Kellers. I even sort of miss the pain that came with that.

Jamie doesn’t join in the conversation. He’s a few seats away, latching on to Y and Z. On any given day, depending on the seating arrangement, I could go through lunch without speaking to Jamie or Kat. To go through the period without speaking to
either
of them, that’s gotta be a Mason Rice first. They’re my two closest friends.

Nina drops by on her way home from work. She’s cradling a cardboard box in her arms and smiles brightly when I open the door. I take the box off her hands and motion towards her Nissan in the driveway. “Got any more today?”

Nina’s been dropping boxes off for the past couple weeks, to cut down on official moving day hassle. She has a key but always rings the doorbell first. Nina’s thirteen years younger than my dad, which means she was just nineteen when Brianna was born. She married the guy and eventually they had Burke. Right after they split up, her ex got into a fatal car accident in a snowstorm. You never know what’s around the corner, I guess. Just look at Saturday night and this morning. It makes my head spin thinking about it.

Anyway, Dad and Nina work in the same office building. That’s how they met. Dad’s been a dentist in the same practice since I was, like, five, around the same time we moved into this house. Every time Nina drops a box off, the fact of her imminent move seems a little more real to me. When they first mentioned moving in together I didn’t seriously think it would happen, but the stack of boxes in the basement proves me wrong. The house is already changing. Dad’s in the process of cleaning out half of his closet, and his home office now stands empty, waiting to be repainted the
color of Burke’s choice. So far the spare room’s untouched. Brianna can’t decide whether she wants to keep the futon where it is or sleep on her old twin bed.

“I have two more in the trunk,” Nina says, turning back towards the car.

I put the box down in the hall and follow her outside. The two boxes from the trunk are so light that I scoop them both into my arms at the same time. “Looks like you’re really on top of the packing,” I tell her. “What’s left at the apartment?”

“Plenty,” she says emphatically. “The place looks like a war zone.” Nina swings the front door open for me and watches me set the boxes down. “Thanks, Mason.”

“Anytime.”

Nina’s standing in the open doorway, letting the cold air in, but I know she won’t stay. She’s got the kids waiting at home. “I’d say I’ll see you on Sunday but I have a feeling I’ll be back before then,” she says lightly.

The engagement shower/housewarming is happening here on Sunday so Nina won’t have to move her presents. The wedding itself won’t be a major production (courthouse chapel followed by cake and champagne with family and a few close friends at a restaurant down the street) and Dad says Nina didn’t want a big bridal shower but that her sister had her heart set on hosting some kind of prewedding celebration. The result is this more laid-back combo party thing and apparently Dad and I are welcome to stick around and hang out with the girls. I’m not sure whether I’ll do that or not. I haven’t gotten used to having all this free time yet.

“Same time tomorrow?” I kid.

Nina nods like that’s entirely possible and says she better hit the road. Once she’s gone I haul her boxes downstairs and stack them against the others. Our basement is partially finished and one
hundred percent my space. It’s where I spent most of my downtime pre-play, stretched out in front of the TV, playing video games or watching movies. Of course, now it looks more like a warehouse than a place to hang out. Maybe I’m better off aboveground.

So I head upstairs, and then I remember that Dad said something about the two of us eating out tonight. We usually do that at least once a week, plus another night of takeout. The rest of the time we grab stuff solo, which was what I was about to do before I remembered about eating out.

Now that I’ve remembered, going out for food seems like an inspired idea. Any more time to myself and I’m bound to start running Kat details again. I can already feel it happening, and the worst part is I don’t want to stop. I’d rather sit here thinking about Saturday night than go anywhere and that’s seriously messed up.

I don’t want to be that guy.

The rest of
the week pans out pretty much like the Monday that kick-started it. Kat and I pretend we’re friends same as always only she won’t look at me for more than ten seconds at a time. When my cell rings it’s never her and every lunch hour there’s at least one person sitting between us. I figure we just need some time to get through it, that things will even out eventually, but in the meantime she’s got me. I can’t look at her without thinking about it. I can’t focus when she speaks. Twentieth-Century History class may as well be in Russian or Hebrew.

On the plus side, Jamie lightens up by midweek and asks if I want to hang out with Miracle, Charlie Kady and a couple other people on Friday night. Miracle’s a year older than most of us and fully licensed, which means whenever we go out she usually picks everyone up in the van. She doesn’t like to kid around much but she’s sociable enough.

There’s such a wide range of personalities involved with the
play that you learn to tolerate anything. At worst, it’s claustrophobic. Like in the past few months I’ve found out all about Charlie’s addiction to Asian girls on the Internet and how Zoe acts bitchy with the entire world when she’s fighting with her mother. Miracle had a cold for the first half of February and it made her sound like Demi Moore on two packs a day, like you wanted to ply her with cough drops and beg her to keep quiet. Then, by the time she started to recover, I was totally cool with the new voice. It didn’t bother me a bit.

Anyway, that’s what it’s like with us and why Friday night will probably be the high point of the week. In fact, I feel my energy spike the second Miracle pulls into the drive and I shout goodbye to Dad, who is just about to leave for Nina’s to help pack more boxes.

Miracle has Lily Allen on in the van and people are talking over the sound of “Everyone’s at It,” trying to decide where we should go. As soon as we’ve picked everyone up—me, Jamie, Charlie Kady, Yolanda (but not Zoe, who’s grounded for giving her mom attitude) and Dustin—the Chinese food vote easily sweeps the van. We head over to North Star Chinese Buffet, the cheapest place around, and make ourselves comfortable. I overdose on hot garlic spareribs and listen to Charlie talk about saving the Canadian boreal forest from toilet paper companies.

After the food we head over to the rink arcade but Yolanda hates video games so we don’t stay long. We end up in front of Zoe’s house where Yolanda dials Zoe and asks if there’s any way she can sneak out back. There really isn’t and I tell everyone they can come over to my place as long as they don’t have an aversion to boxes.

“When’re they moving in?” Yolanda asks.

“Next weekend.” I’ve been thinking of it as a future event for at least a month but saying it straight out like that feels strange. Next weekend is no time away.

“And do you like her?”

“Sure, she’s pretty cool.” I don’t have any worries about her. It’s just weird how the situation snuck up on me when I’ve been aware of it for a while.

“I hated my stepfather when he first moved in with us,” Miracle confesses. “The harder he tried, the worse it got. He was perfectly nice, perfectly reasonable, but that almost made him more annoying, you know what I mean?”

“You’re so stubborn,” Charlie says, shaking his head as he grins. “Didn’t your mother warn him?”

Miracle’s lips poke up into a sharp smile. “I don’t think she realized I was such a tough case—which she definitely should’ve after seventeen years of living with me.”

“Not like Mason here,” Charlie observes. “I’m sure he’ll go easy on her.”

Everyone voices their agreement; I’m notoriously easy to get along with.

Once we’re settled in my basement Charlie commandeers the remote and starts flicking channels. At first he’s the only one interested but then he hits this show on sex toys and amateur erotic videos and suddenly everyone’s ogling the screen. It’s nothing compared to the hardcore stuff you run into on the Internet, and normally it wouldn’t faze me at all, but now my mind’s sparking something fierce. I need another chance with Kat. All the things we could do. Unbelievable.

“That one looks uncomfortable,” Miracle says, tilting her head as she glances away from the TV. “Weirdly industrial.”

“And that’s only the low setting,” Yolanda adds. “If you’re smart you’d take out insurance before plugging it in. How much do you think something like that costs, anyway?”

Y turns to face me and I’m wondering why I’m the resident sex toy expert but I just hunch over, shrugging and trying not to notice that the redhead on the receiving end of the low setting has thighs exactly the same shape as Kat’s.
Unbelievable
. Seriously. I’d rather watch back-to-back episodes of
The View
than sit through another ten seconds of this. It’s pushing me over the edge. “I’m starving,” I announce. “Anyone want food?”

“I’ll help you,” Miracle offers, following me upstairs. We rifle through the fridge, decide on butterscotch ripple ice cream and carry the tub downstairs with six spoons and bowls. Charlie’s switched over to
That ’70s Show
and relief leaks into my smile as I kick back on the couch. At the moment, PG comedy is just my speed.

Dad and I do lunch and a movie on Sunday afternoon. It turns out he’s not overly into the engagement shower idea himself. He says we can make celebrity guest appearances at the end and then everyone will be happy.

When we pull up to the house later, it’s surrounded by cars and there’s a collection of white and purple helium balloons floating from the mailbox. From outside I hear a baby wailing. I can’t remember the last time we even had a baby in the house, and for the first time I wonder if Dad and Nina will have kids together.

“The boys are home!” someone cries as we walk through the front door.

I glance across the living room and search out the face belonging to the voice—Nina’s younger sister, Andrea, who’s driven over
from Peterborough to play hostess. Aside from Nina and her kids, Andrea’s the only person I know in the room. I wave hello to everyone and let Andrea introduce Dad and me to at least twenty women and a handful of kids. “There’s plenty of food left in the kitchen,” Andrea tells us.

“Great,” I say. I’m one of those people who can eat forever and not gain weight. It got me ballistic when I was about twelve and sick of being smaller than other guys my age but now that I’ve seen some of those guys pack on excess pounds, I like to think of it as a bonus.

“I’m okay, thanks,” Dad says. Unfortunately for him, he doesn’t have my metabolism. “Any coffee?” he adds as an afterthought. “Decaf?”