As Freddy and I turn onto Duval, I see Teddy walking toward us, half a block away.
“Dammit,” I mutter.
“What?”
He’s with a girl. Not touching her, but walking close. His hands in his pockets. He says something to her. She laughs.
I look around, but there’s nowhere to hide. He finally notices me. It’s dark on the sidewalk, but I see him hesitate. Then he keeps walking.
“Lily.” He nods. “Hi.”
“Oh, hi!” I hold out my hand to the girl. “I’m Lily.”
She smiles. “I’m Melanie.”
She has long, strawberry-blonde hair. She’s tall. Thin. Tan. Pretty.
Bitch.
What is wrong with me?
I turn to Teddy. “I can’t believe we’re running into each other like this.”
“It’s a small town,” he replies. He’s gazing at the ground, looking like he’d rather be anywhere but here.
“Right,” I say. “Right.” I’m still shaking Melanie’s hand. I stop. “Are you guys on your way to dinner?”
She looks puzzled. “It’s like one in the morning.”
“No kidding!” I laugh. “That’s late!”
“Yeah,” she says.
“You shouldn’t have left so quickly last night,” I say to Teddy.
He looks up at me, and his face is grim. I turn back to Melanie. “It’s not like that,” I tell her. “We’re old friends. We were talking at my hotel. Not my hotel—I don’t own it. I’m staying there. And we were in the lobby, not my room or any—”
“Lily,” Teddy says quietly.
“He was meeting someone else,” I continue, not able to stop myself. “Not a woman, of course. A witness. Who could have been a woman, I guess. But not me!”
“Lily,” Teddy says again.
“We’re old friends,” I say. “Did I say that already? So, yeah.” I turn back to Teddy. “It was so good to see you, and to meet you—”
“And now we’re leaving!” Freddy says, taking my arm. “Bye!”
We walk a few more blocks and come to a crowded bar. We go inside and find seats. The bartender comes over. “Two Jack Roses, please,” Freddy says. She turns to me. “What was that?”
“What was what?”
“Your violent attack of extreme stupidity. Who was that guy?”
I don’t answer. She waits.
“His name is Teddy,” I tell her. “We were best friends when we were kids.”
“Just friends?”
“Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
“Probably because of how you look at him,” she replies. “Who else is asking?”
“Will. We ran into Teddy last night. How do I look at him? Wait,” I say. “Don’t answer that.”
Our drinks arrive. We clink glasses.
“How come you’ve never told me about him?” she asks.
I raise my glass to eye level. I gaze at the cloudy red liquid inside. I turn my wrist, making it swirl gently.
“We fell out of touch,” I say at last. “I haven’t seen him in thirteen years.”
I down my drink in three quick swallows and set the glass on the bar. Freddy waits, but I don’t say anything more. I order another round. We turn on our stools with our fresh drinks and survey the crowd.
“Do you see that guy over there?” I say. “By the jukebox?”
“That’s my perfect man. Tall and thin. Slightly scruffy. Intelligent-looking. But drinking a beer. I like a man who drinks beer.”
She squeezes my hand. “Is it hard, having such rarefied tastes?”
“I mean he looks intellectual, but he’s doing something earthy. I like that,” I say. “I like hidden depths. Someone soulful, but lusty. Cultured and crude. Someone who takes me to see some old French film, but we end up making out in the back row of the theater.”
“That sounds more like hidden shallows,” Freddy remarks.
“Hidden shallows,” I repeat. “I want hidden shallows.” I gesture to the bartender. “Two more, when you get a chance?”
“Here comes Perfect Man,” Freddy says.
He walks up and grins at us. He’s a little drunk. I grin back. “Howdy, pardner.”
He takes my hand and kisses it. “You are the most beautiful woman in here,” he says.
I look around. “That’s not saying much.”
“I can’t believe you’re alone. Wait.” He looks at Freddy. “Are you two …?”
“Hell no!” Freddy says.
“You never know these days,” he says. “Two lovely ladies such as yourselves. You might be … you know. Which is totally fine. Awesome, in fact.”
“He seems to have the right amount of shallows,” Freddy observes.
I take his face in my hands and kiss him on the lips. “He certainly does.”
“You’re doing it again,” she says.
“Please, Freddy. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
“Talk about what?” asks Perfect Man.
“You’re distracting yourself so that you don’t have to deal with what you know you have to deal with,” she says. “You’ve done it over and over. Yesterday, the wedding finally became real to you, and what did you do? Got drunk and alienated your in-laws.”
“In-laws?” Perfect Man says.
“Saturday at the club,” she continues, “no sooner did we start talking about your impending nuptials than you headed in to work. Now you’re messing around with this random guy, right after everything we’ve been talking about? I bet it happened Sunday night too, when you took off on your own. Am I wrong?”
I gesture for another round. “I have to tell you, Winifred, for someone who claims not to judge, you sound awfully judgmental right now.” Freddy takes my hand. “I’m not judging. Marry him, don’t marry him. I don’t care.”
“Marry who?” says Perfect Man.
“You know I’ll support you no matter what,” she continues. “But I think you should actually decide, and not just let it happen.”
She’s right. Of course she’s right. And I will decide. Soon. Just … not now. I take Perfect Man’s hand and lead him through the crowd. We find a storeroom. I shut the door behind us. I grab him by the belt and pull him close. We stumble back against the shelves. An empty box falls on us, and we laugh. He’s pressing his hips into mine, his hands cupping my face, but I pull back a little, making both of us wait. I like the anticipation. I reach up and run my fingers through his hair. He leans in again, but again I pull back. I kiss his eyes—left, then right. His cheeks. The line of his jaw. I take my time with his ears, biting the lobes. I press my cheek to his and inhale the scent of him. Swimming pool, lime, whiskey. I slip my hands under his shirt. I brush my closed lips against his, softly, right to left and back again. I kiss his top lip. I take his bottom lip between my teeth and tug on it gently. I kiss his throat. Finally I kiss him full on the mouth, opening his lips with mine. I give him my tongue. I taste his, which is sweet and smoky. I feel his hands on my hips, my waist, under my shirt and up my back. I put my hand between his legs and feel the hard outline of his cock. He presses into me. He bites my throat, then he’s back at my mouth, kissing me deeply.
God, I love cute boys. They make all my problems disappear. I don’t have to think about anything. Just this, these mouths and tongues and lips and teeth and hands. These bodies. We’re crushing each other now, both breathing hard. He unhooks my bra and caresses my breasts, pinching my nipples gently with his fingers. I gasp a little, and he covers my mouth with his again. I’m about to ask him if he has a condom when he murmurs, “That was pretty funny, what you said.”
I reach for his belt, begin to unbuckle it. “What?”
“That you’re getting married.” He pushes aside the collar of my blouse and kisses my shoulder.
“But it’s true,” I say. “I am getting married.”
He pulls back. “When?”
“Saturday.” I lean forward and kiss him again.
Such a look of puzzlement on his handsome face. “What are you doing with me?”
“What do you mean?” I laugh. “I’m doing … this. I’m having fun.”
“But why?”
At that moment, a bartender walks in and kicks us out. I’m glad. It spares me from bursting into tears.
I lose Perfect Man and go back out front. Freddy’s talking to a girl. I start chatting with the guy on my left, but he doesn’t have anything interesting to say. I head for the bathroom. I trip and spill my drink on someone. “I’m so sorry!” I cry. I grab some napkins off a nearby table and offer them to him.
That’s when I get a good look at him. He’s in his late thirties, red-faced and balding, golf shirt stretched tight around his sizable gut. He’s surrounded by three or four other drunk, sunburned men.
He reaches out and strokes my arm. “Honey,” he says, leering, “you can spill a drink on me any day.”
Suddenly, I’m filled with fury. Not at this random drunk, happy guy saying something dumb to a girl at a bar, but at myself. Still, I decide to take him up on his offer. I lift a full pint glass off a nearby table and throw it at him. He jumps off his stool and starts shouting at me, and his friends are upset, too. Then Freddy is at my side and hustles me out of the bar.
“Where to?” I ask.
“Home, love,” she says. “Home.”
We head back to the hotel. I shouldn’t have thrown that drink. I shouldn’t have made out with Perfect Man. Obviously. Still, it’s okay. I had a hard day. Practically the whole thing consumed by work. Thank God I won’t have to deal with EnerGreen and its sweaty little accountant any longer. What a bunch of crooks. Think they can do exactly as they please, with no fear of repercussions. Those poor seagulls. EnerGreed. The protesters are right. EnerGreen deserves to be brought low. Lying and cheating with … what? Blithe abandon, that’s what.
No. No no no no no.
That’s not … I’m not … I’m not that bad.
I trip on a root poking out of the sidewalk.
I wish I could talk to Teddy about all this. Wish I could talk to him about anything. But he doesn’t want a thing to do with me. I don’t know how I looked at him, but I definitely know how he looked at me. His eyes gone opaque, like they used to when he was angry. Teddy. And Freddy. Hey, I never realized that before! Will all my best friends rhyme? Will I be sitting on the porch of some old-age home seventy years from now, Hetty and Betty on either side, rocking in my rocking chair, swapping tales of the good old days with Eddy and Neddy?
Probably not. There won’t be porches on old-age homes when I’m old. Or windows. The olds will be stuck in little pods, tiny televisions strapped to their eyeballs. Or spewed into outer space, like—
This is why I live in the moment. I think about the future and I become little-old-lady space garbage. I think about the past and … I don’t. I don’t think about the past.
We’re back at the hotel. The party is over, all my friends dispersed. The band has packed up, and the bar is closing. As I stand next to the pool and look down into the turquoise water, the lights go off.
I shouldn’t be doing this.
It’s a huge mistake. The truth of it hits me like a physical blow. I wander away from the pool, out onto the beach. I kick off my sandals and step into the surf. The water is icy. I sit at the edge of the dry sand and stretch out my legs. The moon is so bright I can see everything.
Freddy is right. My family is right. I have no business getting married. I’ve known it for five months, deep down. It’s not in my genes. It’s not in the way I was raised. And whether or not I can change, I haven’t.
But what about Will? He’ll get over me quickly. Find someone more suitable. This is better for him, too, in the long run.
It’s not going to be fun, what I have to do. In fact, it’s going to kind of suck. I’ll have to ask Freddy how she broke off all those engagements. What she said, how she said it. What happened after. She’ll show me the way. She always does.
No I don’t. I feel awful.
What have I done?
A wave rolls in, pulling at the sand under my feet, dragging it back out to sea.
It’s okay. Better late than never, right?