TWENTY - FIVE | IVY

I’D LIKELY SCREWED UP one of the best things about that summer through an embarrassing lapse in self-control and ensuing insensitivity, and knowing that wasn’t conducive to getting a good night’s sleep. I spent more time tossing, turning, and eyeing the changing digits on my alarm clock than I did unconscious. With thirty minutes still to go before my morning alarm went off, I hobbled over to the computer and wrote the only person left that I could confide in. I told Shaye the entire history of Lucan and me, beginning with his allergy attack at Aunt Grace’s and ending with last night when he’d asked if I wanted him to go. I even explained our in-joke about being delicate, which wasn’t remotely funny considering the fragile state of our friendship at the moment.

An email from Jeremy arrived while I was typing, and I popped it open, almost as a reflex.

I hope your friend is doing okay. By now Beverley has probably told you that Mr. Amara is currently on holiday in Spain and that a lot of us AVL past & present have emailed or phoned in complaints re the T-shirt. Yesterday I was in a Westside Depot branch that had sold out which is very disturbing. Everybody is passing the info on and urging others to voice their disapproval. Ishmael’s post about the issue will be up on the blog and social networking accounts today. He’s also been in touch with someone from the Students Against Violence org at Forester College who will be pursuing this issue too. We need to keep spreading the word, any way we can.

Any further updates/discussion from now on will be of the group variety. I understand if you want to block me on email and social networks. I’m sure someone will keep you in the loop if that’s the case.

I don’t want to make any excuses for myself when we both know there really aren’t any. I would like to have been someone better for you. You were always wonderful and I wasn’t one of the smart/good ones. I’m sorry for suggesting you may have been lying on Sunday. Considering the circumstances that seems especially pathetic. I’m so sorry for everything.

Jeremy

The reply I sent him was much shorter. If not for last night I probably wouldn’t have sent one at all. But it turns out he was never really my enemy. Things were much more confusing than that.

My friend is fine & thank you for Tanice’s number. Also for not trying to get into the personal business between me and you last night.

Ivy

Next I finished my email to Shaye, showered, and then ate breakfast with Mom. “It looks like Lucan’s overslept,” she commented as I rinsed my orange juice glass. “You better wake him so you two aren’t late for work.”

After what had happened in the park, creeping into a room where a pajama-clad Lucan lounged around in a double bed didn’t sound like a respectable prospect. The best I could do was knock at the door, hollering his name. I tried that for several seconds, but the silence on the other side forced me to swing the door open and confront an empty bed, its yellow bedspread pulled neatly across it. There was no sign of his clothes or any other clues that he’d ever been there. The room even smelled of lemons again. I checked the wall and confirmed the presence of the plug-in. Lucan had left everything just how he’d found it.

I opened drawers, searching for a note he’d probably never written in the first place, but the only thing I found was my father’s green checked pajamas folded in the bottom drawer of the dresser. When I’d suggested Lucan should make alternate plans for today I hadn’t meant before the sun was up. I wondered if there was anything I could say to get us back to the place we’d been before last night. Then again, that past place was one where I’d suspected this one was just around the corner.

I believed you could be friends with someone of the opposite sex, best friends even, but that wasn’t the sum of what I felt for Lucan. In the light of day, with some distance from last night’s conversation with Jeremy, I knew better than to believe I could blame my feelings for Lucan on my ex-boyfriend. If there’d never been a Jeremy, I’d doubtless have noticed Lucan’s appeal sooner, but other than that, my feelings had nothing to do with Jeremy. Lucan was terrific; it was our timing that was terrible.

The attraction didn’t necessarily put friendship beyond our reach, at least from my point of view, but it did mean that I needed to be clear with myself about what was good for me. In five weeks I’d be heading up to Ottawa, and with my old strings snipped I didn’t mean to entangle myself with new ones. If I were still speaking to Betina she’d stress that Lucan was gorgeous and that I didn’t need to think that far ahead, but look where that kind of thinking got her. Consequences. They were difficult to forget when my relationship with Lucan hung in the balance. If I’d blown it with him over an impulsive moment I’d be endlessly pissed off with myself.

I drove to work, where a steady supply of credit notes interrupted my internal debate. “I’m glad there’s lots of this stuff,” I told Anwar, patting my pile of yellow sheets appreciatively. “I don’t think Rory wants me back in Marketing.”

“What makes you say that?” he asked, picture perfect in a whiter than baking soda shirt and camel and aqua striped tie.

I explained about my lengthy protest phone call, and Anwar stopped typing, his fingers hovering over the keyboard as he said, “You said it’s a cartoon, so maybe the people that designed it were just thinking of it in that way, not as a social statement.”

“Tolerating something like that makes it a social statement,” I told him, flashing back to the way Des had clapped his hands in front of McKenna’s face, using the threat of violence without even touching her. “If we say it’s okay to make jokes about violence against women, it’s like saying it’s not a serious problem.” I cited the fact that it was the biggest cause of death worldwide for women aged nineteen to forty-four. “More than car accidents, war, and cancer.”

We continued on with the discussion, Anwar typing faster than the speed of sound and me tapping along at my usual pace, until Vivienne ambled by on her way back from the water cooler. “Where did you spot this thing?” she asked me. “I’ve seen lots of ‘please tell your boobs to stop staring at me’ and blow job joke T-shirts, but I’ve never seen the one you’re talking about.”

I showed Vivienne and Anwar the photo stored on my cell. Anwar tapped his mouth with his finger as he studied it. “Maybe everyone’s not going to see it on the level you’re talking about, but looking at the illustration you don’t have to go very far out of your way to arrive at that interpretation.” He tilted his head to the left and added, “I never go into Westside Depot, but I can fire them off an email.” He handed the phone back as Vivienne promised to email too.

Anwar and I headed down to the cafeteria together at lunch, and I was glad he was next to me when we passed Sheri on the stairs because that kept me from asking about Lucan. She’d wonder why I didn’t know where he’d gone, which would aim questions straight back in my direction. Besides, it was possible she didn’t know where he was, either. The thought created a domino effect in my brain: if she didn’t know, who would, and how was I supposed to find out?

After lunch I decided to stop being so immature and texted him: Where are you staying?

An hour later, presumably while he was on break, he texted back: At work.

Me: Ha ha. But seriously.

Him: Staying with my dad.

It’s strange how quickly you can get used to having someone in your life. Why couldn’t forgetting people come as easily?

Neither of us followed through with another message. Dad was microwaving popcorn in a faded red T-shirt when I got home. “We should’ve put in a pool years ago,” he commented, motioning towards the backyard. “There’s not much point now that you’re going off to Ottawa.”

“You and Mom might still use it,” I said. You and Mom, like they were a unit. The microwave’s insistent beep prompted Dad to retrieve the still crackling popcorn and empty it into a bowl. Three uncooked kernels from the bottom of the bag spilled onto the counter, and I glanced expectantly down at them. If Dad had broken his wedding vows by sleeping with another woman, like Sheri believed, the absolute least he could do was pick up after himself for a change.

“Are you going to get that?” I asked, pointing the spillage out with a sharp dose of attitude. “The kitchen doesn’t clean itself, you know.” Dad stared at me like I was speaking in Urdu. “I think it’s sad that Mom and Sheri stopped speaking over money,” I added swiftly. “I hope I’m never that hung up on money.”

“That’s easy to say when we’re not talking about your money,” Dad said, clearing his throat. He scratched at one of his sideburns, eyeing me with a measure of suspicion. Then he swept the stray kernels into his palm and tossed them hastily into the garbage under the sink.

“Things would be different if we were talking about me,” I agreed, promising myself that would be my final word on what was likely an old, buried subject between my parents. If Dad knew what I was hinting at he didn’t say, but the wary look remained as he told me he was taking his popcorn outside to “enjoy the day since I’m home from the office early for once.”

Shaye called while I was walking up to my room, replaying the conversation in my head. “I got your email,” she said bluntly, “and I have questions.”

My mind skipped back to the topic I’d been avoiding for most of the day. “Ask me in person, I’m on my way over.”

“Cool. But I have a guitar lesson at seven-thirty.”

“I didn’t know you were taking guitar,” I told her. “That’s awesome.”

“Actually, I suck eggs at the moment, but I’m hoping that will change.”

There was no doubt in my mind. With a guitar in her hands and her trademark poetry put to music, Shaye would be unstoppable. People would sell her scribblings on eBay. She’d have 500,000 views on YouTube, and fans would gush when I mentioned that I’d known her when she was fourteen. It wasn’t difficult to imagine.

Shaye’s baby brother, Ethan, was wailing as her mom let me in. Real live babies — along with chlamydia, HIV, gonorrhea, etc. — are the world’s best advertisement for condoms. Shaye handed baby Ethan over to her mother as she disappeared to change the cream top he’d spit up on. “He’s beautiful,” I lied as Ethan scrunched his face into a painful shade of red. Shaye’s mom smiled as though it was the truth, and I suppose it was, regardless of what he looked like or the terrible noise he was making.

Shaye and I hung out in the backyard, grilling chicken on a barbecue that appeared to have been carted along on a dozen too many camping trips. I described Jeremy’s concern over the phone last night and the details of his morning email. “He’s still gross,” Shaye proclaimed. “Marginally less gross for realizing his epic grossness, but still.”

“I know.” I squirted more honey mustard marinade onto the chicken. “It just made me feel strange. Like there are so many things that are bigger than us.”

“Perspective is a good thing,” Shaye said, “but wouldn’t you rather talk about Lucan? Because after everything you said in your email I know I would.”

I shivered when I should have been breaking into a barbecue-induced sweat. “I should’ve kept my hands off him,” I told her. “I just wish I could figure out how to get things back to some kind of normal, if that even exists.”

“Doesn’t it freak you out, having these feelings for your cousin?”

“Second cousin,” I corrected. “It’s not like our families are even close — just the opposite.”

“Okay, but let’s say you two get cozy and then crash and burn, it’d either mean a ton of awkwardness or cutting off part of your family again, wouldn’t it?” Shaye wrinkled her nose in disapproval. “And wouldn’t your parents totally lose it if they found out you were involved?”

“We’re not involved. It was a single incident, which was entirely my fault.” The fact that we were second cousins hadn’t made much of an impact on me until Shaye had mentioned it. Maybe in part because I knew Sheri and I weren’t blood relations. “Don’t you think you’re being a bit closed-minded about this? There’s no law against it. Some people are married to their first cousins. There’s not even a law against that here.”

“Really?” Shaye pointed the tongs at me as I nodded definitively. “But you do realize that you sound like you’re defending the idea.”

“You’re supposed to be supportive and help me figure this out,” I complained. “Can we get past the second cousin thing and explore other possible reasons why this isn’t a good idea?”

“Why do you need more reasons?” she asked, eyebrows curving skyward. “You already said you wanted to forget about what happened.” She prodded at the sizzling chicken like she hoped it would fly away. “Are you sure first cousins are legal?” Shaye shuddered.

“Of course I’m sure,” I snapped. “But if you really want to get technical, his mom was adopted, okay?” Betina wouldn’t have had a problem with Lucan and I being second cousins, even without the adoption factor. She would’ve known what to say to crystallize my opinion in a helpful way. Not like what Shaye was doing.

“His mom was adopted?” she repeated. “Why didn’t you say that in the beginning?”

“You kept going on about it being gross. I didn’t have a chance.” Frustration chafed at the back of my throat. Even at our best, a small part of me had always known Jeremy and I weren’t destined to stroll along beaches hand in hand together in our seventies, but I’d never suspected I’d be without Betina. If Jeremy wasn’t my enemy, she wasn’t either. But that didn’t mean I was ready to forgive her.

“I did not.” Shaye’s eyes shifted towards sympathy. “I said Jeremy was gross. But I’m sorry, okay? I’m listening.”

I sighed into my hand, no longer hungry for chicken.

“Talk to me,” she continued. “Tell me about the other reasons.” She watched me, waiting for me to kick in with my own thoughts. “What’s the worst-case scenario? You hook up for the summer, end up hating each other, and take off for Ottawa in September the same as you would’ve anyway, only with your parents acting all disappointed in you.”

But nothing would be the same. It already wasn’t. Were Lucan and I even friends anymore?

Shaye rooted one hand to her hip, the other loosely clasping the tongs, and I knew that she’d decided to try for me, to ignore her reservations and dissect the pros and cons until her guitar teacher showed up with instructions on how to conquer the universe, but it suddenly seemed crystal clear that the only person who could help me resolve this was Lucan himself.