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He gave me a weird look instead of answering. But he was done pushing it. He was done doing anything, apparently, but getting me to his car—getting me there as fast as possible—because I was starting to show it in my eyes. That I was going with or without him.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the party, Josh had finished carrying back yet another case of wine from the bartender’s van to the bar. From over by the table, where she was still sitting with Bess, Meryl took a photograph of him placing the case down. Like many good photographers, she was already starting to see, in the dark, what she had captured with her wide lens. She couldn’t quite make out that desperate look on his face, but she knew something was there, something off, that was bound to become more clear—more certain—when she developed it. It was, after all, becoming a little impossible to miss.
I didn’t really want to be in the car with Justin Silverman, obviously, but those of us in need of rescuing can’t always be particular as to who our rescuer will be. And what I was starting to understand, driving away from my house, was how very much I was in need of it.
I was trying to avoid looking at Justin, who was confused and a little giddy, talking too fast about midwestern winters and first-year exams and a story about how he owned a bar for a little while or worked at a bar for a little while and had thought about taking it over. He was talking a lot about the Illinois border to Wisconsin. I wasn’t blaming Justin, though. It was my fault, if it was anyone’s, that we were in his car now, that he was feeling the need to entertain me, to keep this strange momentum going.
This wasn’t because he liked me, I was sure. It had more to do with him banking on what we of wedding age had all become witnesses to—how during these wedding weekends, single women, feeling a little lonely, maybe, or just feeling a little too far from being the bride, found themselves loosening their own rules, opting to be more flexible, more quickly. Considering my own blundered bridal history and the desperate frenzy with which I’d greeted him, Justin probably thought he was going to get lucky sometime in the next thirty seconds.
“I should tell you,” I said as he made a left into Scarsdale Village, “that I really haven’t been feeling very well. I th
ink I could be contagious.”
He turned toward me, like he was about to say something really important, something like he didn’t care anyway, that it didn’t bother him. He wanted to kiss me. I knew it. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. It was going to be awkward and weird. And what was I going to do then?
“I’m sure you can’t catch anything from sitting over there,” I continued. “I mean maybe you can, but I just wanted to tell you. I just wanted to be honest with you.”
He got quiet for the first time since we had been alone together—neither of us saying anything else until the main stretch of town came into view. It was mostly closed down: the Häagen-Dazs ice cream shop and DeCicco supermarket, the only two stores still lit up.
“Emmy, you know I’m gay, right?”
“What? You’re gay?”
He nodded. “I prefer the term Gay-American.”
I shook my head, confused. I wanted to tell him to slow down, but I guess there was no slowing down now. I guess there was no time to do anything, now, but hurry along. Josh’s wedding was coming, and the Berringer-Celia nuptials were probably soon to follow, and Matt was in New York City somewhere, and Meryl was waiting eagerly to tell me what she knew about him, and I was in a car with a friend I hadn’t seen since right around the time we learned to drive in the first place. And, of the two of us, he was the only one brave enough to be honest so far.
“I was trying to figure out how to tell you,” he said. “Not that I had to tell you, but I don’t know . . . it was making me nervous that you didn’t know. Not that that’s the only thing there is to know, but that’s why I was talking so much. Do you do that too?”
“Talk a lot when I’m nervous? Yes, and I also tend to make up illnesses.”
“It’s just weird coming back here because no one knows. It’s strange how that works, you know? We can live a totally different life away from here, and come back and pretend that it doesn’t count. Pretend that we’re still the same person we were when we left here.”
I nodded, because if there were anything I understood, it was that. It was pretending. Justin seemed to understand who he used to be, who he was now. And while I could kind of see who I used to be too. I couldn’t say with much certainty who I currently was. Someone’s ex-fiancé, a noncommittal filmmaker? It was all still too defined by what I no longer had. Did Justin want to hear that?
I turned and looked at him. “So I’m taking it your mom doesn’t know, huh? Because I think my mom was under the impression that the two of them were hooking us up.”
“Yeah, well, my mother and I tend to have a don’t-ask, don’t-tell policy,” he said.
I shook my head. “I’ve got to get myself one of those.”
He circled around the supermarket parking lot, pulling into a spot right near the ice cream shop.
“The problem is, now there’s a guy in Chicago. A great guy. Who is about to be a great guy in New York. At least that’s looking like the plan. But not until I tell them. He doesn’t want to come until I tell everyone what’s what.”
“You better get on that, Skippy.”
“Right. Tell them. Tell them. I knew I was forgetting to do something.”
I laughed, thinking about my to-do list: finish my documentary (was that even possible?), make it through this weekend unscathed, help Josh fix his life.
He turned off the ignition. “So now that you don’t think I’m trying to jump your bones. Banana split? Unless you have to get back sometime in the next five minutes.”
“I definitely don’t have to get back any time in the next five minutes,” I said, smiling at him.
He smiled back. Then he opened the car door, starting to laugh. “Gay-American. I’m pretty funny sometimes, you know?”
“Wait.” I reached for his arm, stopping him. “I think I’ve got a better idea.”
