Rhys
The Drought [thuh / drout] n—A phenomenon caused by the change in
missionary age for women from twenty-one to nineteen, resulting
in less women on campus to date
The storm door slams against the kitchen wall, startling me, and I hit my head against the underside of the kitchen sink.
“I’ve met the girl I want to marry,” Supe announces Monday morning.
I rub my forehead and feel something wet. I look at my fingers and see blood. Great. “What’s her name?”
“No clue. But she has the sweetest spirit, and she’s beautiful, so I’m going to ask her out,” he says, settling into a kitchen chair. “This drought is killing every RM on campus. It’s sucked the dating scene dry, but this girl is like a fresh drink of water.”
A fresh drink of water? “You are one strange man, my friend.”
“Maybe, but she could be the one.”
“If I had a nickel for every time you’ve said that.”
He snorts. “I know, I know. You’d be a rich man.”
Focusing on the clogged sink, I wiggle the wrench, trying to loosen the connector. After several attempts, it still won’t budge. I shimmy out of the cupboard and try forcing the connector from a seated position, where I have more leverage. Pressing my body weight into the wrench, the piece finally yields. A thick, greasy sludge drains out of the pipe onto the floor.
“Can you hand me the snake?”
Supe jerks his feet up, his eyes wildly searching for a rogue reptile.
I laugh. “That wiry contraption over there”—I point to a tool on the table behind him—“is a snake, and I need it to make sure the drain is clear before I put everything back together.”
He slowly lowers his feet to the ground and leans back in his seat, trying to play off his exaggerated freak-out. “Right.” He hands me the snake and watches me thread it into the pipe. “Why don’t you call management? Isn’t this part of their job description?”
This is part of management’s job. I’m sure the owners are paying them a nice sum each month to keep this place running. They don’t have to do much, but if they did, I’m sure they’d be all too happy to pass along the extra cost to the owners, who would then hand down the expense to us. I sigh. “Because I’m quicker than they would be, and I can’t afford to have my rent raised.”
Supe nods. “I fully support you as resident maintenance man.”
“Knew you would.” While Supe is probably in a better place than I am financially, he’s living in this hole for the same reason I am: money is money, and neither of us has any to spare. I pull the snake out of the drain, and my cell chimes with a text.
Supe picks up the phone to hand it to me, but then, seeing my hands dirty with sink gunk, asks, “Want me to read it to you?”
“Yeah. Thanks.” I begin reconnecting the pipes.
“It’s Emmy. She wants to know if you’ll meet her before class.” He looks up from the screen with a raised eyebrow. “Things going okay?”
I shrug. “Fine. I guess.”
“You guess?”
“She’s a nice girl. I just feel awkward around her.”
“Why? You’re just studying.”
After standing, I set the wrench down on the sink and wash my hands.
“You like her,” he guesses. “That’s why you’re uncomfortable around her.”
I keep washing my hands.
Supe laughs. “Rhys, that’s awesome.”
“It would be.”
“But . . . ?” Supe frowns.
I turn off the faucet and dry my hands on the back of my pants. “I’m not a member, and she is.”
“You’re the only person defining yourself by member versus nonmember labels. And I think you’ve built it up to be bigger than it is.”
“Maybe you’re right.” I’ve had too many bad experiences with member girls not to be cautious.
“I understand why you’re gun-shy. All I’m saying is maybe you’ve let that ruin your time at BYU. If you like this girl, she’s got to be pretty great. So have a little faith in her and let her get to know Rhys, not Rhys-the-Nonmember. You can tell her about not being Mormon when the time is right.”
“When’s that?”
“You’ll know when you need to say something, but you’re definitely not there yet, so enjoy BYU, get to know this girl, and chillax, man.”
“Chillax?”
“You heard me.” Supe hands me my phone as he walks out of the room.
I lean against the counter. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I have built up my past experiences to be worse than they actually are. Just because a few girls were closed-minded doesn’t mean all the girls at BYU are. Emmy seems cool, and I enjoy talking to her, so what’s the harm in getting to know her? In letting her get to know me?
I send her a quick text that I’ll meet her before class today.
* * *
I get to the JSB ten minutes before class starts, ready to apologize for not texting her back this past weekend—again. Emmy is standing next to a bench, and her back is to me. I tap her shoulder, and she spins to face me, nearly dropping her phone. She pulls out her earbuds and slowly winds the white cords, not looking at me.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey,” she mumbles. She digs through her oversized purse, and I get the impression it’s more to avoid eye contact than to find anything.
This apology might be harder than I’d hoped. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get together this weekend. I—”
“It’s fine. We knew scheduling would be difficult.” She shrugs, but I can tell by the way she still hasn’t looked up that not calling was a mistake.
I run my apology in my head one last time to make sure I don’t mess it up, and it hits me. Emmy told me personal things about herself, about her dyslexia, and admitted she was attracted to me. Emmy doesn’t care about my not calling. She thinks I’ve rejected her. I’m a jerk.
“E-mail might be better for you than meeting in person anyway.” Her voice doesn’t waver.
“Better for me?”
She nods, gaze still down. “Because of your busy schedule.”
I shift my feet side to side, then settle into a wide stance. E-mail would solve our time issues but would make her have to read more. I wonder if that would be more difficult for her. Though, not having to read in front of me might be more comfortable for her. “If you think it’s best, I guess that’s okay.”
“Great.” She turns toward the JSB.
I stand in the middle of the sidewalk for a moment, watching her walk away. “Actually, no. It isn’t great.” I jog to catch up and stop short in front of her, causing her to almost run into me. “I think we’d both get more out of this class if we meet each week and discuss the material face-to-face.”
She rubs her sparkle-glossed lips together, but she doesn’t say anything.
“You’re acting funny,” I say.
“I’m not acting funny.” Her chin inches up, but her eyes stay on the ground. Proof that she is in fact acting funny.
“You are, actually.”
Her perfect posture straightens even more. “S-sorry?”
And now she’s apologizing to me. Great. I’ve messed this up. “Emmy, no. I don’t want you to be sorry.” I want her to give me a chance to say I’m sorry. To clear up what I should have cleared up the first day of class, to start on the road to becoming friends. “I had a great time with you last Thursday. I’m sorry I had to run off so quickly. It had nothing to do with you.”
“It’s fine,” she says, but what she means is It’s anything but fine.
“I’m sorry about everything. I’d like for us to be friends.”
“Friends. Sure.” Her voice is carefully casual, like she’s trying hard to be cool with how I treated her. “Listen.” She traces a line on the sidewalk with a pointed toe. “If you want to change partners, I won’t be offended.”
“Why would I want to change partners?”
“I can think of a few reasons.” She widens her eyes but keeps them cast to the ground.
“Name some.”
She pales. “Name some what? Reasons?”
“Yes.”
“Well, uh. My dyslexia, for one.”
“We’ve already talked about that. Not a reason. What else?”
She hesitates. “Y-your girlfriend?”
“My what?” My voice raises an octave. How on earth did I give her the impression that I have a girlfriend? I told her I thought she was cute too. She must really think I’m a jerk.
“Your girlfriend,” she says again, this time without stuttering.
“I don’t have a girlfriend.”
She glances over her shoulder at the JSB like she’s planning to make a run for it but then shakes her head and addresses me instead. “Of course not. I’m sorry. I figured that since you were so eager to leave Thursday, and then you didn’t text me about getting together to study—I thought it may have had something to do with your having a significant other.” Her face turns red, and then she brushes past me into the building. I hurry to open the door for her. She mumbles a quick thank-you, her eyes flashing to me almost as if by accident, and then she does a double-take. “You’re bleeding!”
I touch my fingers to my forehead. Sure enough, blood. Stupid sink.
Emmy fumbles to open her massive bag, then slides it off her shoulder and props it against the wall. “Give me your hand.”
I hold out my hand to her, and she flips it palm up, then sets a first-aid kit in it. No wonder girls carry big bags.
“What happened?” she asks.
My lips tug into a grin. “The bottom of my kitchen sink attacked me.”
She looks up in question.
“It was clogged. I wanted to fix it. It put up a fight.”
She pulls out a strip of gauze from the kit, dabs a little hydrogen peroxide on it, and mouths, “Sorry.” She touches the medicine to my cut, and I try not to wince. “Did you win?” she asks.
“That’s debatable.”
She blows cool air on my wound. Coconut. But there’s still something else. She leans closer to study my forehead, and I breathe her in. What is it? Before I can answer my own question, I stop myself. This is not something a friend would do. My chest tightens, and I level my head, pulling away from her. Her cheeks flush, and she pushes off my chest. She takes longer than needed to dig through her kit but finally pulls out a small Band-Aid.
I hold up a hand. “No Band-Aid.”
She narrows her eyes at my cut. “You sure?”
“Can’t let the sink know it won this round.” I lift her bag off the ground and hand it to her. She slings it over her shoulder, and we start down the hall again. We don’t take more than a step before awkwardness creeps in like a slow-moving fog. I can’t let that happen. Not if I want to pass this class. Not if we’re going to be study partners. Not if we’re going to be friends. “So what are you doing walking around with a first-aid kit?” I ask. “You pre-med or something?”
“Dance major, remember?”
“You always carry one of these around?”
Emmy looks up. “On ballet days, I do. For my feet.”
I’m not sure why girls in satin slippers would ever need a first-aid kit to prance around the stage, but whatever. Brother Clark walks into the classroom right behind us and starts booting up his computer.
“Before I forget,” I say as we take our seats. “You free Thursday to study?”
Her fingers tap double-time against the desk. “Uh-huh. I mean, yes. Thursday is okay. Where?”
“I would suggest my place, but it’s not exactly hospitable to studying.” I laugh. “I have a ridiculously small living room and a loud roommate.”
“No worries. Evie should be home, so you can come to my place. I have rehearsal until seven though. Is eight too late?”
“Nah. That’ll work. You sure though?”
“Absolutely.”
* * *
I look at Emmy’s address in my notebook. Her house isn’t far. Nothing in Provo is far. But it is up the hill in the tree-streets neighborhood near Kiwanis Park. Makes sense. She drives a Land Rover. Where else would she live?
White house, black shutters, pink-and-purple flowers overflowing from the front planters onto the brick walkway. Two white rocking chairs sit on the porch. It’s exactly where I’d picture a girl like her living only it’s nestled at the base of the mountains instead of on a cliff next to the ocean.
I pull my keys out of my ancient truck, noticing the discrepancy between her house and my ride. Study partners or not, I should have found a neutral place to meet.
At her front door, I tuck my keys into my back pocket and then tap my knuckles on the door. I readjust my backpack while I wait.
The door swings open. “Hello.” The girl’s hot-pink lips curl into a practiced smile. “Come in.”
The dark wood floor gives slightly under my weight as I step inside. “Emmy here?”
“I’m impressed. You can tell us apart already.” Emmy’s twin smiles. “You must be Rhys. I’m Evie. It’s nice to meet you.”
“You too.”
“Sorry, Emmy isn’t home yet. When were you supposed to meet?”
“Eight.” It’s fifteen after; I got held up replacing the oil in the deep fryer at work.
Evie pulls out her phone like she has to double-check the time herself. “She wouldn’t be late. Not for this.” She looks up. “That means she’s in flow.”
“Flow?”
“Yep. When Emmy dances, she has zero sense of time. I think it’s a dyslexia thing because it never happened to me. I can’t prove it, but I’d bet it’s what makes her so good at ballet. It’s like the laws of time and gravity don’t apply to her.”
“Right. I’ll call her, then.”
Evie shakes her head. “Don’t bother. She’ll never hear it over the sound system. Do you know where the RB is?”
“Yeah.”
She grins. “Great. Emmy’ll be there. Upstairs, at the end of the hall, in the ballet studio.”
“Thanks, but if you could just tell her I stopped—”
“Uh. No.”
My eyebrows furrow. “No?”
“Sorry, but no. She’ll be mad at herself when she realizes she missed you.”
Feeling that I’m getting nowhere fast, I decide to cut my losses and take a step toward my truck.
“Rhys,” she says, stopping me. “She waited all weekend for you to text, and you didn’t. Go to the studio.”
Evie shuts the door in my face. Apparently she likes to have the last say. And unlike her sister, she doesn’t mince words.
Even though I doubt it’s a good idea, I drive to the RB. Partly because I feel bad about everything, but also because Evie scares me to death and I don’t want to cross her.
After parking, I jog up the front stairs and then up another flight to the second floor. The hallway is long. At least the length of a football field, and it gives me plenty of time to ponder the lunacy of being here.
Amplified piano music pours into the hallway. The closer I get to the sound, the slower my steps become. When the music suddenly stops, so do my feet. I don’t dare get any closer without music to hide the sound of my footfalls—I might still decide to bail. But then the music begins again, and sane or not, my feet move as if pulled by some unseen magnetic force. When I get to the door, I stop, paralyzed because she’s balanced on her toes and I don’t want to startle her. And because I have never seen anything so beautiful in my life.
She’s in tights and a black bathing suit thing with a sheer skirt over the top. A few strands of hair have escaped her bun and are stuck to her flushed face.
She has this far-off look in her eyes as she dances. Swaying, swirling, soaring, she tangles my insides into a knot.
This is not the same timid girl I met in BOM. This girl is confident, self-assured. Every move she makes is exact. She’s good. Better than good. She’s incredible.
Emmy glides across the floor and leaps into the air. She appears weightless, suspended in time. Her sister was right; gravity doesn’t apply to Emmy.
Her strength, her confidence, everything about her is larger than life.
I should leave. But I can’t. I’m mesmerized.