Would it have been that easy all along? If I’d asked her to stay over at my place any of the nights we’d gotten it on, would she have?
It seemed that skipping morning swims wasn’t the only opportunity I’d missed this past month.
I lay there in my big spoon position thinking about how we’d never done her leave-in conditioner, or even combed our hair. We’d gone straight to dancing in the moonlight. I was going to have a mess of tangles in the morning, but I didn’t care. I wondered what Gretchen’s hair would be like when she woke up.
“Mm,” she sighed.
I hadn’t realized I’d started playing with her hair. She liked it—she was angling her head into my touch like a cat chasing scratches.
So I lay there stroking Gretchen’s hair as she fell asleep. Until long after she fell asleep, actually. I was content, partly. But underneath that contentment was a hole, and as Gretchen’s breaths expanded, so did the hole. I had the oddest sense that like Gretchen’s literal hole, I’d dug it myself.
14
REALITY IS FOR LOSERS
Gretchen
I woke up to the sound of a piano. I was confused at first, thinking I’d fallen asleep in Teddy’s cabin. But then last night came rushing in. The swimming, the shampoo, the dancing. “Moon River.” My huckleberry friend.
My camp boyfriend.
It was still dark. And dawn came early here, so I could be fairly confident it was still night.
I let my eyes adjust. There he was, sitting at the keyboard in my cabin. He was playing—
Oh my God, he was playing “Lemon Tree.”
I sat up, but then I froze. I wasn’t sure if he wanted an audience. But I also didn’t want him to stop.
This was a big deal. This song that had been haunting him all month, this song he said he could never seem to make himself play. But here it was, now, the music at least. It felt like he was doing some kind of ritual. An exorcism, maybe.
He turned and made eye contact with me. I expected him to stop playing, or to look away at least, but he didn’t do either.He had to break with my gaze occasionally to look down at the keys, but he always found it again.
As the song neared its end, instead of winding down, he segued into starting over, and this time he sang. “When I was just a lad of ten…” He made a face like,Can you believe this?
I nodded vigorously. I hoped he understood what that nod meant.Yes. I believe it. I believe in you.
It was a funny song to be serenaded with, because it was very much not a love song. It was, as I’d thought the first time I’d heard it, the opposite of a love song.
Of course, he wasn’t serenading me. I just happened to be here. He was doing his ritual. And I was a crone in training, right? Rituals should be right up my alley. Before I could overthink it, I joined in on the next chorus.
The smile he gave me was a blow to the chest. I was no singer—I didn’t know how to harmonize, and I had to trail off on the verses because I didn’t know the words, but it didn’t matter. We were singing together.
The second time the song ended, he stopped. Left his hands on the keyboard and just looked at me.
I didn’t know what to do. Usually this was the point at which I’d get up and leave—I had been careful all summer about not overstaying my welcome with Teddy or doing anything that could be considered too coupley—but we were in my cabin.
He stood. He was dressed. I wanted to tell him not to go yet. I wanted him to stay until morning.
But those were not things I could have. And really, they weren’t things Iwanted. They were like craving another drink when you’d already had one too many.
I reminded myself that I’d gotten exactly what I wanted from Teddy. I’d gotten my last hurrah—boy, had I ever.
I was trying to think what to say when he shot me a crooked, fond smile and said, “See you, Miller.”
The minimalist approach. I liked it. I did have to swallow a lump in my throat, though, in order to say, “See you, Knight.”
I wouldn’t have thought it possible to fall asleep after Teddy left, but a couple hours later, I awakened to the beeping of my alarm. I lay there staring at the pine ceiling, “Moon River” and “Lemon Tree” zipping around inside me.
