Mike and Emelia looked at me blankly for a while, and I realized that I had lost them with my cooking analogy.
“Bottom line,” I stated, “I’m just not good at making and keeping friends. I’m probably just not friend material.”
Emelia looked at me for a while and then started shaking her head vigorously. “That’s such crap! What are you talking about? I’ve known you for five minutes and I like you a lot. I was thinking how much I’d like to be friends with you.”
“Really?” I asked softly.
“You’re so wrong about that,” she stated, matter-of-factly.
“You sure?” I asked.
She nodded again. “You probably just haven’t met your tribe yet.”
“My tribe?” I said thoughtfully.
“Everyone has a tribe!” Emelia said. “And, I’ll have you know, most tribes prefer to eat pizza, not coq au whatever. So, maybe you do have the right recipe, you just don’t know it.”
“Huh?” I looked at her, confused for a moment or two, trying to work out how my analogy had come full circle, to this, and if it even made sense anymore.
“You’re so easy to get along with,” Emelia continued. “Don’t you think, Mike? It’s sort of impossiblenotto like Becca.” She turned and looked at Mike, who’d been standing silently during this conversation. “Don’t you think?” she asked again. This time, her voice had taken on a strange, knowing tone.
Mike didn’t answer and, on that rather awkward note, Emelia walked out and left us alone together.
I quickly took another sip of my wine and tried not to look at Mike. I could see that Emelia’s rather pointed statement was having the same effect on him as it was on me. That was obvious from the way he was shuffling his feet from side to side. The silence dragged on until it was broken by Emelia bursting back into the room. She stopped when she came inside.
“God, I could cut the tension in here with the back of a spoon.” She put her hands on her hips and gave us both a suspicious look.
I shrugged. “What? It’s nothing. It’s . . . you know . . . nothing.” I drank more wine and deliberately avoided looking at Mike.
“Nothing,” I heard Mike say.
“Well, obviously, it issomething, or you wouldn’t both be saying ‘nothing’ so emphatically.” She looked from me to him and back again.
“Well, I guess it wassomething, and then, I guess, it wasn’t,”
I said.
I heard Mike clear his throat. “There was a very clear reason for it beingsomethingand then suddenlynotbeing something,” he said pointedly. “And that hasn’t really gone away fully.”
“Um . . . sure,” I said, “I know that, but it seems that, in light of what’s happening now, maybe thatsomethingshouldn’t be such a something, after all?”
“Trust me, thatsomethingis still something. Just because everyone else is over it, doesn’t mean I am.”
“You seemed over it an hour ago, when you had your arm around my—Shit!” I cut myself off and put my hand over my mouth. I hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
“Arm around your what?” Emelia asked, as if she was enjoying this far too much.
“Nothing,” I quickly said.
“Something!” Emelia reiterated.
“Nothing,” Mike exclaimed, a little too loudly.
“Itwassomething!” I said, as loudly as Mike had spoken. Oh dear, the wine seemed to be acting like a truth serum now, and all my true feelings were tumbling from my lips. “And it meant something,” I whispered into my glass.
“Interesting,” Emelia said, after a moment’s silence. “So, what I’m getting from you two,” she said, smiling ear to ear, as if she was finding this highly amusing, “is thatsomethinghappened between you . . . Actually, shall we just be adults and call it what it is? You had sex. And, now, I’m guessing that you’re not having sex anymore—except for that moment where Mike had his arm around you—because something else happened. And now nothing is happening, but you’re both struggling with that because it may or may not have meantsomethingto both of you. Have I summed it up?” she asked.
I looked over at Mike. We held each other’s gaze for a few seconds and then both looked away.
