He shrugs one shoulder. “That’s why they pay me.”
I laugh through my nose. Just once. It’s the first time my face has done anything that felt like mine since she walked in the door.
My beer is empty, so I stand up. My shoulder grabs again, and I don’t let the wince show, because Percy will tell me to get it checked. I just need rest. I don’t need Coach Fuller to sit me on Tuesday. Percy stands when I stand. He doesn’t ask. He follows me to the back door and goes through first.
The kitchen is fuller now. Mara is at the kitchen island. She’s swinging one leg and telling a story to a girl with bangs I don’t recognize, who is laughing too hard at every other sentence. Penelope is by the fridge with a glass of wine in her hand, not drinking it, listening to Mara with the half-smile of a person who has heard the story before. Mila is leaning against the far counter with her phone in one hand and a red cup in the other.
And Melly.
Melly is standing under the arch between the kitchen and the dining room with the guy. His arm is around her shoulder. Hers is around his waist. He’s telling Gianna something. Gianna is being polite. Melly isn’t really listening — I can see it in the small middle-distance of her eyes.
I cross to the cooler under the window. I crouch, dig past the ice, find a beer, and twist the cap. I toss the cap into the trash. I don’t look up.
I straighten.
And —
Huh.
For the first time, I’m in a room with Melly Sorcha in it, and she’s not looking at me. The thing that has lived between myshoulder blades since I was in the sixth grade, the soft, constant, low-frequency awareness of being looked at, of being tracked, of being one corner of a triangle where the other two corners were her and whatever room we were standing in — it’s off.
I take a pull of the beer and keep my eyes on the floor a second longer to make sure. I let myself, very slowly, lift my head.
Sure enough, she’s not looking at me. Still. She’s looking at her boyfriend. Then at Mara on the island.
She’s not looking at me.
This is new.
I used to pray for this.
I have actually, literally prayed for this. I’m not a praying man. My mother dragged me to Mass until I was fourteen, and I stopped going to anything religious approximately ten minutes after she stopped checking. The only times I have spoken to God in my adult life have been at the bench between shifts when a game is getting away from us. But I have prayed for this. I have lain in bed at night in my senior year of high school, and asked whatever was up there for one full day, where I did not feel her on me. One full week. One month. One room.
I’m in that room right now. She’s here, and she’s not looking at me.
God came through.
I drink the beer.
The thing in my chest that I was not going to look at gets a little louder.
I look at her boyfriend’s hand on her shoulder. His fingers are spread loose over the bone. He’s not gripping her. He’s wearing her. There’s a difference, and I have done enough drunk anthropology at parties in two college towns to know which is which. He’s wearing her like a guy who is sure of her, which is —fuck— which is a thing I should be glad about, because sheis finally with somebody who is sure of her, which means her attention is off of me.
Mila looks up from her phone. I meet her eyes for the half-second courage allows, and then I break, and her mouth does a small thing at the corner that I’m going to ignore.
I look back at Melly without meaning to. The boyfriend leans down. He says something into her ear. The kitchen has one of those momentary lulls where the music takes a breath, and the words land across the ten feet that separate us.
“Wanna get out of here?” he says.
I drink my beer to have something to do with my mouth.
She tilts her face up to him. Her eyes find his. She smiles. It’s a soft smile. It’s a familiar smile. Something hits me in the chest, and I don’t know why.
It isn’t jealousy. I know what jealousy is. I felt it in the second period tonight when a kid I’m better than made a clean read off me. I felt it in juniors when a guy three months younger went round one and I went round four. This is not that. Jealousy is a thing you can sit with. This is something with weight. This is something thatsits. She’s moved on.
The Melly Sorcha I have been managing since the sixth grade is not in this kitchen.
The Melly Sorcha in this kitchen is somebody else’s.
