All You Need Is Love (13 page)

I’ve done the drive from Hadley to Harvard Square enough times that I have a little back route I like to take, driving in third gear on Brattle Street, past the huge old homes and weaving into the cluttered academic area near the shops. Unable to find a parking meter, I snag a resident parking spot and hope I don’t get a ticket. Then I figure if I do it’s money well spent — if Mable wants craves a Bartley’s meal, then she should have it.

The streets are less crowded now, the college students have dispersed for summer break and the ones that remain don’t walk in herds with books and bags, they sit with iced coffees outside, lolling in the warm day, watching old guys play chess and buskers sing. I stand and watch a woman play guitar — she sings a song she presumably wrote and has a couple of her own cds available for purchase. Would I ever stand on a street corner and sing? It’s hard to imagine I would unless it were on a dare. Maybe this means I just don’t want to sing as badly as I once thought I did. In fact, I really haven’t done all that much singing save for my Carly concert at the music buildings.

With a sinking feeling, I walk past the stores and students toward Mr. Bartley’s and consider that maybe I’ll just be one of those adults who sings loudly in the car but leads an otherwise regular life, job, house, kids, whatever. Or maybe I would stumble into some other cool field — I still love music and I still like singing. It just isn’t a driving force for me any more. I try to think if this is in reaction to Mable or just getting older or what — but it’s hard to differentiate between life events on the outside and what’s happening in my head. My best guess is that I was always more interested in the lyrics than the music — and if art is a way of expressing yourself, maybe my true art is in the words not the song. Then again, give me a chance to sing or put my voice into a Martin Eisenstein movie and I’d be thrilled.

“One order of regular fries, please and one sweet potato. A Kraft burger with sautéed onions and a Messy Special.” I look at the menu boards — several oversized chalkboards that hang from the ceiling — to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything. “Oh, and vanilla frappe — extra thick.” I like frappes regular, more on the milkshake side but Mable prefers hers to be nearly impossible to suck through a straw. I pay and wait at one of the small tables off to the side while my order cooks.

Looking around, I can see ghost images of myself — when I first came here with Mable, when I came here with Lila Lawrence on a double date with my first Hadley crush, Robinson Hall and his friend, Channing. When I brought Arabella here and she ate three orders of sweet potato fries in one sitting then sat nursing an oil-hangover on one of the benches in Harvard Yard afterwards and we’d named the various squirrels we’d seen.

I try to picture Asher here, imagine him at one of the communal tables sharing relish and spicy mustard, but I can’t. In fact, when I try to picture him visiting, I have a clear vision of parading him around campus, of being psyched to be with him, but I can’t get past the feeling that he exists only in England. Or Paris. Somewhere European. Some place with castles. Should I break up with him? The thought is revolting but also makes sense. How could I have been so close to sleeping with him and now haven’t heard from him after leaving five messages?

Then, my posterior seems to vibrate and I reach for my phone. The caller’s ID is listed as “withheld” which usually means Mable’s calling from her room phone.

“I got the goods,” I say as my hello.

“Which goods might those be?” Asher asks.

“Oh, hi!!!” I say so enthusiastically the exclamation points are hanging in the air for all to witness. Hearing his voice makes all my prior thoughts of breaking up or never kissing him again seem remote and like a big mistake.

“Sorry sorry — a million times sorry about not ringing you back sooner. My excuse is that I was in Scotland with very poor cell phone reception and no land line.”

“Why, were you at a castle or something?” I say, joking with myself about my earlier vision.

“Yes, I was — how did you know?” Asher asks but doesn’t wait for me to respond before he goes on. “It started off with just me and Valentine — she’s mad as I’ve mentioned before but in this very mobilizing way.”

Cue the return of my doubts. “Insane like a highway?”

“What? Oh, right. Anyway, we just suddenly got this idea to try to get these fringe artists together to form a sort of collective and bring a traveling show — imagine a massive mural that contains pieces that work separately but then also forms a whole entity…”

I swear I’m listening to him, I’m hearing what he’s saying and I like how excited he is about his work. But I can’t stop hearing the first part…it started off with just me and Valentine. In a bed? On a beach? In a pub? Where were the two of them as they suddenly got inspired with artistic groove and created their little minstrel show? “It sounds really interesting,” I say.

“But what about Scotland?” he asks.

Clearly, I missed something. “Scotland?”

“Yes, it’s a small country that’s grey and windy and filled with Scottish people,” Asher says. “I asked if you had interest in coming to the festival with me. The Edinburgh Arts Festival is world famous, you know, it’s in August…”

“Wow — August — I’d love to go to Scotland. With you. But would you still come here?” It sounds petty but I really wanted him to see my life — I know where he lives, who his friends are, but he’s never met my dad nor met Mable. Plus, I like the idea of making out with him in front of Lindsay Parrish, even though that’s about as superficial and petty as I can admit to being. And…what about that infamous next step? I was fairly ready in London, but maybe I’d be very ready here on home turf. Or maybe having Asher here with me would make me less sure. It’s all confusing and muddled which probably means it’s not an immediate course of action. But I can think about it, dissect it, and wonder. Plus, he hasn’t even said he’d visit.

“Of course I’m still visiting — I said I would — and I’m always good on my word,” Asher says. “And I saw Arabella yesterday — she’s really looking forward to your summer. She showed me photos of your cottage.”

“Yeah, we’re actually not living there, though. I thought we were but…” My voice sinks a little as I explain. “It turns out it’s rented for part of the summer so Mable figured it was easier just to sublet the space above the café. So we’ll be up there. Which is pretty convenient.”

The counter guy yells my order number and rings a bell, and I make may way over to pick up the delicious, artery-clogging food. “Well, just tell me when and I’ll pick you up at Logan,” I say and hand the cashier some money.

“I’ll let you know soon, all right?” Asher pauses. “Is there anything else you wanted to tell me? Something we haven’t talked about? Your messages seemed pretty insistent.”

I collect my change and wonder if now is the time to talk about my feelings, my insecurities — valid or not — about Valentine, how I want to know what Asher’s take is on a long-distance relationship and on and on. But as I figure out how best to start off, I collide — as in chest to chest — with Charlie.

I am this close to saying “Boat Boy!” just out of the sheer shock of seeing him in all his rugged glory. A) Seeing him at all and B) seeing him in Harvard Square. It’s totally close-minded of me but it’s as though I assumed he never left the island of Martha’s Vineyard, and if he did it wouldn’t be to go to the mecca of all things academic. Actually, right now he isn’t so much rugged as prugged, a preppy-rugged, not that I’d describe him as preppy to his face because he would rather whip himself with a whale belt than wear one, but his rough edges don’t seem as rough as they did the last time I saw him. Which was, of course, in the romantic fireside glow at the cottage. Before he stood me up.

It doesn’t even occur to me to come right out and ask what the hell he’s doing here in Cambridge, plus I don’t want to insult him — I mean, people who live on Martha’s Vineyard year-round do leave the island — it’s not like he’s a fisherman bound to his boat forever. Even if that was my mental image of him.

But I manage not to say anything except “Oh, crap!”

Of course I have my cell phone pressed to my ear and Charlie has ranted before about my public phonage but he doesn’t say anything. In the movie version of this he would either walk away without saying anything or have some witty line but the reality of the moment is this:

My frappe spills onto my new pink tee-shirt (granted it was in the sale bin for only three dollars, but still) and forms a sticky icy web between my front and Charlie’s chest.

“I take it from your silence that you don’t have anything to say,” Asher says and I click in to action remembering I’m on an international call.

“I’m an idiot,” I say into the phone, trying to shake off the extra milkshake but succeeding only in splattering more onto Charlie who looks half-amused and half like he’ll press charges.

“Love we need to talk,” Asher says, very serious.

“Do you want a towel?” Charlie asks me. He grabs a stack of waxy paper napkins and tries to wipe my shirt off and brushes against my boobs in the process which embarrasses us both and makes me drop the rest of the frappe on the floor.

“Asher, I have to go — I made a mess here,” I say.

“No,” he corrects me, “I’ve made a mess and I’m sorry. I really am.”

So there, right in the middle of Bartley’s, right in the middle of crashing into Charlie and Vineyard past, in the middle of picking up a simple burger, my life gets further complicated.

“Can you stay a second?” Charlie asks. “I wanted to explain—”

“I can’t…” I start to say and then I shake my head and hand him the damp sticky napkins as a consolation for bolting. “See you?” I ask over my shoulder and go outside.

I walk to the car all the while listening to Asher. My hands are glued together with leftover spillage, the burgers are seeping through the white paper bag, and the fries have left an oil stain on my khakis. The frappe has formed an adhesive bond and made my hair into sticky points. I am truly a mess.

“Can you talk for a minute?” Asher asks. He sounds far away, distant from the happy buzz of the Square and it’s a lonely feeling, talking to him from one place here while he’s off somewhere completely different, experiencing a totally separate world.

“Sure,” I say and take a seat on one of the metal chairs that’s bolted to the ground outside a sandwich shop. A block away, Charlie — and yes I’m blushing as I realize I don’t know his last name — is dealing with the stain on his shirt, the frappe-speckles on his legs and forearms. Those forearms. Oh dear.

“I’m so glad you say that you think things are mess,” Asher says.

“Oh, no I’m not
glad
glad — I was just…” I try to explain the milkshake debacle but before I can, Asher is giving a monologue.

“I love you, Love. I do.”

“You do?” I smile. My gorgeous English boyfriend loves me. Forget Charlie’s forearms.

“I do. But.”

“But? There’s a but after the love thing?” I can’t believe he’s got a but. A butt, yes, a but? No.

“When you and I met I was actually in the throws of ending something with someone.”

My stomach lurches. He never thought to tell me this before? Or did he really mention it and in my gushy haze it slipped by? Do I really just overlook what I don’t want to deal with? Suddenly I have no desire to even be near French fries let alone a burger.

“But I’ve been sorting through the various…”

Ways to say I love you? Plane tickets and they’re expensive? Problems but I’m sure we can fix them?

“Asher — are you saying what I think you’re saying?” My feet flip flop against the pavement even though I’m not going anywhere. And, apparently, neither is this relationship. Fifteen minutes ago I thought about breaking up with him but it feels much worse now, having him do it.

“I never planned on falling for someone — you — so soon after being in a relationship — and it’s not your fault, that’s not what I’m implying here.”

“I didn’t even know about that relationship,” I say it like relationship is synonymous with rabies.

“Of course you didn’t — we just got swept up in the magic of your being here and…”

“You make it sound like it wasn’t real,” I fight off crying because I don’t want to be that girl crying while sitting outside talking on her cell phone, and I can’t go to the car because then I’d have to walk and cry and the air conditioning is broken so I would overheat.

“Remember when we were on the houseboat, lying there, having that discussion?”

I nod and say, “Yeah.” It seems like one of those memories now that I’ll always be able to describe but that feels impossibly far away, like those photos Mable showed me of her and my dad before I was born.

“I want that —”

“I want that, too,” I say.

“But I want it all the time — the long-distance part of this won’t work for me. It feels wrong. It’s like I walk around missing you and so I’m not really in my life here.”

“So it’s worth trashing it all because you can’t have it every day?”

“Most of life is every day, Love.” Asher sighs. Or maybe he’s crying, I can’t tell. “And I just don’t want to feel bad all the time because I’m not calling you or haven’t booked a ticket and even if I did visit it would just be a band aid for the larger cut.”

“The way you say it makes sense,” I say and let him hear me cry. “But it feels wrong to break up.”

“Then perhaps we could call it something else,” Asher suggests in his calm English tone.

“Like semantics are going to make this better? What if you visited and we saw how it went, you know, took it as a trial thing?”

“I don’t think that’s a wise idea.” Asher sighs and breaths into the phone. “If I were to see you — to be with you — I’m pretty sure I couldn’t end things at all…”

I sit up straight — taking this as my tiny window of opportunity. “So that’s the answer — let’s be together in person and we’ll realize breaking up isn’t —”

“But it is the answer, Love. For me, anyway.”

“Oh.” I don’t know what else to say. I don’t want to be clingy and needy even though part of me feels exactly that. So I stay quiet until my tears dry, sticky on my face and Asher coughs.