Authors: Shannon McKelden
Was I really so comfortable with Chris because I was who I really was, deep down inside, when I was with him? Was he, of all the guys I’d dated and lived with in my life, the one person I wasn’t afraid of? The one person who didn’t make me afraid of myself?
Chris met my gaze over the top of the head of a lady in a purple hat. He winked at me, and I felt my heart well up. What if my mom was right? What if every man, for the rest of my life, left me afraid, except for Chris? Best friendship only went so far. What if Chris was the only man I could ever be sure of myself with?
“As many times as it takes.”
I laughed. “As many times as it takes to what?”
Chris rolled his eyes. “See that chick in the black lace top over by the cake?”
I turned—
“Don’t look!”
“Then how am I supposed to see her?”
Chris danced us in a circle until I had a clear shot of the cake table…and the girl in the black lace top.
“She’s glaring at us,” I said.
“She had her tongue in my ear a few minutes ago.”
I shoved down a nasty little territorial gremlin. It wasn’t my place to decide who did or didn’t stick their tongue in Chris’s ears. They were, however, strictly off-limits to me. Instead, I very casually examined first his left ear, then his right. “You have lipstick on your earlobe.” I rubbed it off with my thumb.
“Thanks,” Chris muttered as we moved to the swaying rhythm of Sinatra, his arms around my waist and mine around his neck.
Rule number one for getting over a crush you shouldn’t have: push your crush on someone else. “Why don’t you just give her the Kiss Test? At least her tongue would be someplace other than your ear.”
He looked at me for the briefest of moments and then looked away. “Haven’t felt much like giving the Kiss Test lately.”
Oh, God. He probably couldn’t do it anymore because he remembered what happened the last time. “I guess I can understand that after last week’s failure.”
Chris’s face was so grim, I cringed, wishing I hadn’t brought it up. “Failure?” he asked.
“Yeah.” I shrugged. “I mean, you found out the Kiss Test isn’t as accurate as you thought. Otherwise we wouldn’t have…you know.”
The silence grew to a painful length, until finally Chris spoke. “I have complete confidence in the Kiss Test.”
A laugh escaped me. “Okay. Whatever you say. I don’t know how you can have confidence in something with such an obviously wide margin of error.”
“Maybe you’re right.” Chris went back to staring into space, but didn’t let me go when one song ended and the next began. I actually liked dancing with Chris and didn’t want him to stop. Which was bad. I shouldn’t even entertain the idea of getting used to this.
When we returned to Manhattan, things would get back to normal. We’d meet for Friday-night beers. Hit the Knicks games together next season. Go back to the status quo we’d upheld for the last twenty years.
Yet, somewhere inside me, I couldn’t believe anything would ever be normal again. Not when it felt so good to be in Chris’s arms, to feel my body against his, to move together. It would be hard to forget this. But it had to be done.
Unless…I was honest with him.
Looking at it logically, what was the worst that could happen? He could hate me, but I’d put him in his place if he even tried that. After all, he was Mr. Gotta Be Honest. He was the one who said no one should ever be mad at someone for being honest. If he got angry at me for telling him that sleeping with him the other night hadn’t felt like a mistake at all, that being in his arms, dancing like this, felt more right than anything I’d ever done, that I thought I might love—
Oh, God. I couldn’t—
I mean, I didn’t—
A wave of dizziness and nausea swept over me and it didn’t have anything to do with falling down stairs. It had to do with falling in—
Be honest,
I thought.
Just say it.
I opened my mouth to speak, to spill my guts.
Nothing came out. I was pathetic. A psychiatrist would have a field day with me…
“Just close your eyes, Ms. Gentry. Now tell me what you’re feeling,” the imaginary analyst said inside my head.
“I don’t know what I’m feeling,” I replied. “That’s the problem.”
“And why do you believe this is a problem?”
“You’re not supposed to have thoughts like this about your best friend.”
“What thoughts would those be, Ms. Gentry?”
“Uh, sexual thoughts.”
“But, you’ve had sex, have you not?”
“Yes, but that was a huge mistake!”
“A mistake you enjoyed very much.”
“Well, yes, but—”
“A mistake you would like to repeat?”
“No. Well, yes. But we can’t. We’re like brother and sister, for crying out loud.”
“At least you were before you had sex. And how do you feel about Christopher now?”
Supine on the imaginary analyst’s couch, I sighed. “I feel like I want to be with him all the time. Like I want Friday-night beer to become Friday-night dinner and a movie. I feel like, when we get back to Manhattan, I don’t want to move into my apartment. I want to stay with Chris.”
“And how do these feelings make you feel?”
“They make me feel…needy.”
“As if you
need
Chris in your life.”
“Yes! And…and I can’t need him. We’ve never needed each other. We just always knew the other was there. But, if I
need
him…”
“He could leave?”
“Yes,” I whispered, a tear welling up and running down my cheek. “I don’t
need
Chris. I don’t
need
anyone. That way, when they aren’t there for me, I’m not disappointed.”
“Hmmm,” the therapist murmured, putting down her pen. “Sounds lonely.”
I didn’t answer. I felt sick.
How could I be sure this neediness wasn’t simply me wanting to fill the empty space left by Kevin? Like I told my mom, I’d never been without a man for any length of time. Maybe these irrational feelings about Chris were about my fear of being alone. Maybe it wasn’t Chris I needed, but someone—anyone—to fill in that empty space.
Which meant I could just as easily fill the space with someone else and avoid fucking up my friendship with Chris.
“Margo?”
I sighed and didn’t bother lifting my head from the smooth fabric of the analyst’s couch. I felt like I’d just run a marathon. And I was no closer to the finish line than when I’d started.
“Margo?”
Blinking, the imaginary therapist’s office disappeared and the wedding reception reemerged, my cheek resting against Chris’s chest. I lifted my head and dashed away the tear that trickled down my cheek. Thankfully, the room was dim and he didn’t see it.
“Remember the last time we danced like this?” Chris asked with a faraway smile. “Your junior prom.”
I groaned and laughed at the same time. “Will Barlow dumped me the night before. Said he couldn’t study for the SATs and date at the same time. That his IQ was slipping from too much making out and not enough studying. Wonder what I ever saw in him?”
“Told you.” Chris smirked as we moved slowly around the dance floor. I’d have to thank my mother for choosing so many slow songs for the reception.
“That’s not polite to say. Especially when I’m fully aware of it.”
“You were dying to go to that dance.”
“It wasn’t the dance,” I corrected. “I was on the decorating committee. If I hadn’t shown up, it would have been humiliating.”
“So you called
me.
” He looked smug and amused.
“To commiserate, not to get you to take me to the dance. I had no idea Vanessa Lakey’s father had caught you two in a compromising position in the back of your Mustang.”
Chris shuddered. “That was gruesome.”
“So we were both out dates for the prom.” I thought back wistfully to that night.
“Let’s go together,” Chris had suggested all those years ago.
“What?” Surely I hadn’t heard him right.
“We’ll go together. You can save face. I’ll pick out my new girlfriend.”
“Well, gee, when you put it that way, how could a girl resist?” I replied, applying the sarcasm thickly. I figured we’d show up, Chris would dance with every other girl there but me, picking his next prospect, and I’d stand around admiring our decorating skills and fending off questions about where Will was. It would be embarrassing, but not nearly as embarrassing as showing up alone or not showing up at all.
But Chris had surprised me. He danced every dance…with me. He made sure everyone in the room knew we came together. It didn’t matter that everyone knew we were best friends. He told everyone I’d broken up with Will and he’d broken up with Vanessa, just so we could go to the junior prom together. By the end of the evening, the sting from Will’s break-up was gone. Chris hadn’t replaced Vanessa, but he
had
helped me save face. It meant a lot that he’d sacrifice his chances at future conquests, even for one night, just for me.
Obviously, as evidenced by the past few weeks’ events, Chris spent a lot of time sacrificing things for me.
“No. No objections,” I assured him with a nervous smile, “but I really need a moment with my mom. Just a second. Please.”
I grabbed her hands without waiting for his permission and hauled her away, behind a tall palm tree.
“Margo, what is it?”
“What you said before…about admiring me for being independent. About thinking it was a good thing I didn’t need to be with a man all the time. What did you mean?”
My mom smiled, rubbing her thumbs across the backs of my hands. A month ago, if someone told me I’d hold hands with my mother and like it, I’d have told them to bite me. Today, it felt almost natural.
“Did I tell you Quinn and I met before, ten years ago?”
I shook my head.
“We met at the country club. I was married at the time—I’m not even sure to whom—and had only been in California a short time. Quinn had been widowed for a year. We really hit it off.”
“Did you—”
“No, we didn’t.” She looked mildly shocked. “I may hold the world record for the most marriages, Margo, but I do have morals.”
“Sorry.”
She squeezed my hands. “Don’t be. It’s not like I didn’t think about it.”
We shared a smile.
“When we met up again, and fell in love—and I mean
real
love, the first real love I think I’ve ever had other than your father—I spent a lot of time beating myself up for needing to be with a man so much that I’d married the wrong one more than once. If I hadn’t been married when I first met Quinn, maybe we’d have been together these last ten years.”
“You’re together now,” I reassured her.
“Ten years older. Ten years closer to—” She shrugged. “We won’t live forever. I’ve been a widow enough times to have had that point driven home. Maybe if I’d been more independent, a bit more like you, I’d have been free when I first met Quinn. Then, instead of being unsettled, unhappy even, a lot of these last ten years, instead of him waiting around for someone he wasn’t even sure was coming…maybe we’d have been together.”
“He waited for you?” The idea surprised me. Someone had waited ten years to marry my mother? Not knowing if it would ever come about, but knowing that’s who he wanted? My mother?
She nodded. “He waited. But because we only saw each other occasionally, every time we met again, I was married. Because I wasn’t like you.”
In the distance, I heard the gulls cry and followed the sound of their calls with my eyes. Then, sensing I was being watched, I turned toward the church. Chris leaned against the wall. Our eyes met, not for the first time tonight, and I felt…recognition.
I turned back to my mom. “I’m not sure I understand your logic. I think we already determined I’ve basically been hiding out from getting close to men for the last ten years.”
“And now look at you.” My mother cupped my cheek in her hand and leaned close.
“Now, the real thing is looking you right in the face, and you have nothing keeping you from it.”
Her eyes strayed for a moment in Chris’s direction, and I knew by her soft smile the instant they made eye contact.
“Don’t let fear of what your father did take away any more of your life, Margo. I’m certainly not.”
With a soft kiss on my cheek, Mom was gone.