Loud Awake and Lost, page 10
“What are you doing here?”
He shrugged, a little self-conscious. “Can’t a guy come check on his ex?”
“I guess. If he’s feeling unloved.” I crossed my arms and leaned against the doorframe. “But I thought college guys didn’t need to make time for their high school exes.”
His smile deepened. “Here’s the thing, High School Ex. I was home doing my Sunday-laundry drop-off, and that’s when I heard a voice in my head saying to go treat you to lunch. So my advice is you better hurry up and say yes before I realize I’m way too cool to hang out with you.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you? I’d need to dig up my rain boots.”
“No rush.” He gestured to the cab idling at the curb.
“You are serious. Okay, hang on. Let me change real quick and leave a note for my parents. If they come home to find me gone, they’ll freak.”
I’d missed one cab last night—this time, I was getting in. Holden and cabs went way back, on account of the fact that he didn’t like to drive. After I’d passed my driver’s license test, I was always the designated driver, picking him up in the Volvo whenever we wanted to get out of the city. Of course, Holden was also always totally fine to bike, walk, or subway. But if he had half a choice, he defaulted to cabs, which wasn’t very Brooklyn. I wouldn’t say it was Holden’s fault. His mom didn’t even know how to drive; Holden and his older brother, Drew, had been given credit cards to pay for rides since they were in elementary school.
“Those Wildes have their heads in the clouds,” my mom always remarked.
“Or up their arses,” my dad liked to respond. Dad, who’d grown up on “old” egg-creams-and-Dodgers Brooklyn, thought the Wildes were a perfect example of everything that was wrong with “new” boutiques-and-cafés Brooklyn.
But Dad had a point. The cabs, the credit cards, and the endless supply of twenty-dollar bills had always set Holden apart from the rest of us. Even snotty Claude lived in a regular apartment with two parents, one sister, one and a half bathrooms, and a Murphy bed for guests. But the Wildes, who presided over the neighborhood from their five-story town house on Columbia Heights, had never known what it meant to want what you couldn’t have. As far as I’d ever witnessed, being a Wilde meant that life passed in an easy spin of private lessons and extra-long vacations at their genteel-shabby lake house upstate.
I’d always dealt with the Wildes just fine, without ever warming to them. They could be arrogant, but they’d been nice to me—except right after my breakup with Holden, when Mrs. Wilde had pulled some strange moves. Like once she’d crossed the street right in the middle of Montague so she wouldn’t have to talk to Dad and me. Another time she and Mr. Wilde both painfully, deliberately ignored me in line at Key Food. Since money couldn’t fix our relationship, it was as if they’d made a pact to quietly reject me.
The Wildes would have been displeased to see me in this cab with Holden, after I’d hurt him so badly. Even considering all that had happened to me afterward. None of them—especially not Drew—was generous with forgiveness. Not by a long shot.
“So what gives?” I asked as we whooshed down the rainy streets.
“Rain makes me think about you.”
“Ha. That sounds like bad Taylor Swift.”
“We-ell, dang,” he drawled. “You got me.” Then Holden began to sing “Love Story” with a croaky country accent. Joking through the earnestness.
Don’t let me go. Kai’s words—I heard them again, rough and honest and deeply vulnerable in the moment. Last night with Kai was a bruise on my lips.
Last night with Kai, I’d never have thought that I’d be sharing my next day with Holden.
Who looked great as always, casually slouched with a knee knocked lightly against mine. Over the bridge, we watched the East River glide past, slate water touching the sheen of a pearl-soft sky. I couldn’t help wondering (okay, maybe a little gloatingly) why Holden had decided to spend the day with me and not Cassandra. I knew they’d gone to Oktoberfest together. Plus a dinner-and-a-movie thing. Holden played a close hand with the details, but even from his bare-bones report I got a sense that he liked this girl. And while I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, I’d resolved to play the role of former girlfriend with as much grace as I could.
We exited onto the FDR uptown, and then on Holden’s instruction we pulled off the highway at Sixty-Third Street.
“Midtown, interesting. What’s your master plan?” I asked.
“Serendipity.”
“Aha.” I settled back. Sweet. Serendipity was a well-known café slash ice cream parlor around the corner from Bloomingdale’s. It was also where Holden and I’d had our first date.
The place was usually packed, and today was no exception. A ponytailed waiter led us to a table behind a fat potted fern.
“It’s so cute here.” I looked around as we sat. “You should have seen the dive that Rachel and I were at last night.”
“Yeah. She told me.”
“Ah.” I could feel the smile drop off my face as I opened the menu to hide behind it. The Holden-Rachel cousin bond could wax and wane, but it was always there. Whether I liked it or not. “She told you everything?”
“That you might have had a disgusting green cocktail, and it impaired your judgment to the point where an hour later, you were jumping into cabs with strangers? Yes.”
Over my menu, I wrinkled my nose. “It happened, it was awful, I guess I was following an impulse. What can I say?”
“There’s not much to say, except I think you should just order the everything nachos and a frozen hot chocolate to share.”
“Done.”
He’d chosen the items deliberately. It was as if by unspoken mutual agreement we were taking a nostalgia leap two years backward. Back to the thrill of our first date, my sophmore and his junior fall at Lafayette, when we’d only known each other for a couple of weeks.
We’d sat right there, a stone’s throw from this table. It had been so fantastically awkward. Staring at each other, sometimes laughing at each other for no reason, and then, over the shared frozen hot chocolate and everything nachos, seeking and finding the million things we had in common, including a mutual appreciation of anything dashed with cinnamon (from French toast to applesauce to gum), our dueling collections of retro board games, and our major sneezing allergies to pollen—which my mom was obsessed with and Holden’s mother totally disregarded.
“I love Serendipity,” I exclaimed in a rush of unfolding relaxation. Or else it was the Advil I’d taken just before I’d left, finally working its muscle-softening magic. “I mean, it’s the coolest, dorkiest scene. You can be in first grade or grandparents, and you’re never out of place.” Other tables were filled with young couples, families, and seniors, all plowing through their sundaes and grilled cheeses and banana splits, plus the frozen hot chocolates that were the house specialty.
“So where does that put Dave and Busters?” Holden asked.
I laughed outright. “Unforgettable.”
“Okay, for the last time. I had no idea that it was the Champion League soccer final that night.”
“Mmm, I don’t know, Hold. I thought it was kind of fun trying to talk to you over the sound of two hundred drunken grown men swearing and drinking Guinness.”
“I’m amazed that I had a chance with you, after that night.”
“I’m not.” We exchanged a glance. What was happening here? It was light, but meaningful. And I didn’t mind it. “So how was your Halloween?”
Holden passed me his phone. “You want the short story? Check out the last three videos.”
I took it and watched them, mostly of a gang of guys roaming wild up and down a crowded dormitory hall, all wearing crazy hats (cowboy, Viking) and masks (monster, vampire) and mugging for the camera. At one point, Holden flipped the camera on himself to show that he was dressed like Jack Sparrow, which had been his go-to costume ever since I’d known him. It involved a gold clip-on hoop, eyeliner, and a skull scarf wrapped around his head.
“Why does college fun look so much better than high school fun?” I asked as I passed the phone back.
“Hey, high school fun has its charm. Just ask my ex.”
Holden’s beard scruff seemed to make his eyes three shades bluer. I knew that he also knew that these moments between us were peculiar, charged with memories, affection…maybe more? Whatever it was, I was relieved when the waiter reappeared to take our order.
And the rest of lunch was easy, as we launched back in time. Which felt amazing. I loved stretching into the weight of time remembered. The day we went on six rides on the waterfront carousel, or when we crashed a party on the roof deck of Soho House. It was a nice change to reminisce easily, with no inconvenient blacked-out trauma section.
As we strolled out of the restaurant, Holden bought me a giant lollipop from the selection of toys and candy at the cashier.
“I remember that wallet.” It had been a gift, one of my first to Holden, for his seventeenth birthday. Ralph Lauren calfskin, not on sale; plus it had cost another thirty dollars to monogram. I’d used up all my babysitting, allowance, and catering-with-Smarty money. It had seemed crazily extravagant, but with parents like Holden’s, who gave him everything, it was almost like I’d needed to spend the extra.
“Yeah.” He flipped it over. “If it ain’t broke…”
“Your stash of twenties gets skinnier by the hour,” I noted as I unwrapped my lollipop.
“Easy trade,” he said. His smile was wry. I never liked Holden to feel that I was interested in him for his money, but the issue was always there, an unpleasant little twitch. He liked to treat; he liked solving problems with a credit card. Again, not his fault. It was like hailing cabs—it was part of his background.
As we stepped outside, I wondered what that would feel like, to have so many solutions ready via my wallet. This was where my mind had often drifted when I’d gone out with Holden. Smarty and I were always talking about ways to make extra cash. With Holden, it was as if those bills just appeared by magic. And yet it also took away another kind of magic—of scheming, of hoping, of saving.
The rain had stopped. Water dripped from trees and awnings as we strolled down Lexington.
“Thanks for this afternoon, Wilde. It doesn’t even feel real. More like some gorgeous Sunday daydream.”
“Anytime.” Holden twined his fingers through mine. “Only thing is, I’m not sure I’m exactly ready to deal with my Sunday-night reality yet. Look, the sun’s just about to break through—wanna walk to the park?”
“Okay.”
It was a few blocks to Central Park, where the trees were in burning-leaf autumn glory. On a park bench, an old man was smoking a pipe. The woody tobacco smoke mixed in heady with the mushroomy, wet-soil scent of the park after a rain.
“Which way? North south west east?”
“Strawberry Fields,” I said without thinking.
“The girl knows what she wants.”
Yes, I did, apparently. Hand in hand, we took a rolling footpath that led north and westward across the park.
Why didn’t Holden-and-me work out? The thought had been percolating in my head from the moment he’d picked me up. This day was a gold coin; it was shiny and perfect and I knew I would treasure it. I wanted to ask the question right then, with the sounds of raindrops plopping off the trees, the tobacco smoke in the air, and the whole afternoon hushed and serene.
What happened to us?
Holden was giving me another Raphael the RA tale. “This dude, I don’t know what his hygiene issues are, but he’s got a huge bucket—honestly, it’s more like a bin—and it’s just crammed with all his shower supplies. Shampoo, hair conditioner, bodywash, body oil, zit cleanser, back scrubber, washcloth, loofah, you name it.” We were both laughing as Holden used his hands to try to describe it. “So one day, this other guy who lives down the hall, Jackson, so he and I decided that every night, we’re gonna take exactly one item out of it, just to see if Raphael’s gonna notice or put up a fight, if he cares or gets—”
It came at me like a handful of sharp stones thrown into my path, tripping me up—swsssp swsssp swsssp.
Let me take you down, ’cause we’re going to…Strawberry Fields.…
He was singing it in my ear. I could hear his voice as if he were as close as Holden—and nothing to get hung about—because he was always singing, because he loved music, he loved Strawberry Fields and the “Imagine” mosaic and the wistful desire in John Lennon’s lyrics and message.
In fact, that’s why I was here. That’s why I’d picked this place.
The voice was gone. I could feel that I’d locked myself up in tension—was this the whisper of another memory of Anthony Travolo? A song in my ear the way he whispered about his painting? Had he and I come here, to the park, together?
And if we had, so what? What good did it do me to think about it now? I could feel myself in a mental crouch, self-protecting and wary. So what? He was gone, and so was most of my memory of him, and today I was here with Holden, and that would have to be enough.
Holden was still talking, his voice pitched in a comic imitation of Raphael, though I’d utterly lost the thread of conversation. I blinked down at my rain boots. Grape-juice purple. I’d never buy these rain boots today.
“You still with me?” Holden reached an arm around my shoulders.
“Of course. So, hey, I heard about my breakup boots,” I said. “And Tom called me a club rat.”
“A tad harsh. Club-rat lite,” said Holden. “But where are the mysterious boots? Donated back to the Salvation Army?”
“I haven’t seen them. I’m sure Mom knows. She probably hid them.”
“What got you thinking about your boots anyhow? Are your feet cold? Are you tired?”
“Not at all. Couldn’t be better. But this coat must weigh three hundred pounds—there’s all this loose change that’s fallen into the lining. Can we sit for a second? I’ve got to dig out some of it.”
“Yeah, sure.” Holden found a bench and we sat. My free hand reached deep into my coat pocket. There must have been over three dollars in quarters, dimes, and nickels jangling around.
“Your coat is like your own personal wishing well,” Holden observed.
“No joke.”
Something else was lodged in the corner of the hem. I pulled it out.
A red and banana-yellow matchbook. In feet-shaped letters, the words EL CIELO were dancing a salsa above a Cobble Hill address.
“Oh. From last night.” As I flipped open the matchbook, I saw that a number of the matches were missing.
Because Kai had used them, striking all of those matches before tossing the matchbook to me.
This morning, almost everything about last night had seemed unreal. And when Kai hadn’t called me—again—I could feel the memory begin to tamp itself down to a disappointing near unreality. Just like our afternoon on the fire escape. But last night had happened. Kai had been lighting matches from this very book, tossing them into the air like tiny fire batons. My brain reshuffled and redealt the memory. He’d taken my hand and spoken my name. “Don’t get burned.”
He’d been shy, but also mischievous, as he’d flipped the matchbook to me—and then we’d moved out of that room, our bodies nudging and jousting to be close and closer.
Had Kai come to the club with another girl, maybe? In the haze of my head, in the shadows of the cab, I’d had and lost Kai. He’d slipped off and out of my reach as if testing me.
“Ember!” Holden was shaking me. “Focus!” When I looked up, his eyes were flooded with concern.
I must have dishragged. My Serendipity lollipop had dropped to the ground, and I was holding the matchbook clutched to my heart. Heat in my cheeks and at the top of my head and the back of my neck.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Something. You were like a million miles away.”
“I’m just light-headed.” My fingers quietly slipped the matchbook into my jeans pocket. It was a comfort, to feel it lumped there. “It happens. It’s nothing. I’m still tired from last night, I think.”
“It’s not nothing. You’ve got your doctor looped into this, right?”
“Yeah, of course.” I broke the intensity of his gaze, then took a breath and rechanneled. “Speaking of last night, I saw Lissa Mandrup. We hung out a little. Kind of lucky—it wasn’t a plan; I just ran into her. She had some warm and fuzzy New Year’s Eve memories that I couldn’t access, but I’m getting used to that feeling.”
“Yeah, but the good thing about Lissa is she’s a girl who’s always fully committed to the moment she’s in. Funny how after our breakup, you went for noise and I went for quiet. I spent most of that time in the library or holed up in my room.” Holden’s hand in mine was always so sure. I could feel myself returning to equilibrium. Safe. Holden made me feel so safe. “Guess we both went more extreme than we actually are.”
“That’s true. Anyway, it wasn’t the perfect atmosphere for a conversation. I got really winded on the dance floor. God, Holden, sometimes it feels like someone else borrowed my body for a couple of months, trashed it, and gave it back with all these dings and scars and missing mental pieces.” I was embarrassed to hear the shake in my voice.
But Holden knew me well enough not to keep making me talk. After a few moments, he stood. Pulled me up with him. We began to walk down the other side of Strawberry Fields. “My advice, for what it’s worth?” he said after a few more silent moments. “Let go of all that. These lost weeks are only a ripple across your life line. How could they be equal to the amount of effort you put into worrying about them?”
“Right. I know.” I nodded; I was resigned to the fact that nobody could truly understand. The kindness and the pep talks from Holden, Rachel, my parents—they were all so incredibly well-intentioned, and came from such a place of yearning for me to be better. But in my heart, I knew my friends and family were trying to solve a darkness that there was no way for them to mark, let alone dig into. “And I’m in good shape, considering,” I told Holden instead. “I know I’m lucky. I’m obsessed with what I’ve lost. But the whole reason I want to be in this world, living my life, is because I know the value of what I got to keep.”
