The Square Root of Summer(33)

“It was a joke,” he drawls. “Your hair’s wet.”

“Tuna melt,” Counter-man grunts irritably.

“Oh. Yes. Ha-ha-ha,” I say to Jason, then fumble in my pocket for change, swapping a handful of coins for two greasy paper bags. The combined smell of Papa’s herring and my melted cheese hits my anxious stomach with a hurl.

“You okay?” Jason tilts his head. But he’s still leaning against the counter, not reaching out to me. I wish I believed he was as nervous as I am. I want to believe it so, so much.

“I’m fine,” I say queasily as he pays for his coffee, and we sit down.

“You going to eat that?” My sandwich is still in its bag. Jason’s building a tower out of the sugar cubes.

I lift it up, mechanically take a bite. It takes an hour to chew and longer to swallow around the moon-sized lump in my throat. My ankles twitch, wanting to wrap themselves around his, make both our bodies a pretzel. We were in this café once before. Everyone else was at the beach that day, so we came here instead of the food stand, even though the chips aren’t as good. We barely ate anyway, just smiled goofily at each other while they got cold and congealed. That was the day he asked, “Do you love me?” That was the day—

Get it together, Gottie. You have to ask about the wormhole.

“Jason, when you came by the house the other week—when we were in Grey’s room, packing his things. What happened?”

His sugar cubes tumble down onto the table. This is it. This is where he tells me I disappeared.

“Ouch. Hot,” he says after a slurp of coffee. “Yeah, it was awkward, wasn’t it? It’s been a while. We’re out of practice.”

He smiles at me, and I try to smile back.

“But,” I persist, “I was, um. I was there?”

“Yeah, I see what you mean.” He frowns. “You were a bit daydreamy.”

I fumble for a neat way of asking, I didn’t disappear like a magic trick? There isn’t one. Jason’s rearranging the sugar, unconcerned. He’d mention it, if I’d vanished. But I have to ask.

“Sorry, so, what was awkward?” I imagine watching me sucked into a cardboard box would fall into that category.

“Oh, I was trying to tell you about college—how busy it is, all the work. How it wasn’t fair to you, me being distracted. Then Ned interrupted us talking, and like I said—we’re out of practice. You need to work on your subterfuge.” He winks.

I should be relieved. I’m not disappearing. I’m right about the split screen—my brain wanders off down memory lane, but at the same time, I’m still walking and talking in this reality.

But all I can think about is how last time we were here, he said, Margot. Forget the chips. Let’s go to my house. That was the day we had sex for the first time.

“But we’re cool, right? We’re friends,” Jason assures me now. He reminds me of Sof, telling me what my opinion should be.

“Tuna melt! Coffee!” Counter-man interrupts. “Sorry, folks, I’m going to close up. If this is the lunchtime rush, I’m going home.”

Our chairs scrape the floor as we stand up. In the doorway, I hesitate, my fingers tightening round the greasy sandwich bags.

“Have a good swim,” Jason says, nodding at the rain. “Shit—you were going to tell me something about Ned’s party.”

“You want to come to the bookshop? Papa’s upstairs, but it’s warm. You can share my sandwich…”

I will him one last time to follow me outside, across the grass, onto my spaceship. Fly away through the rain, kiss me like it’s last summer. But he just crumples his coffee cup and throws it in the trash.

“Can’t. Sorry. This is like a whatdyacallit?” He snaps his hands into a finger gun, an echo of Fingerband’s fratty vibe, when he finds the word he wants: “Halfway. It’s halfway. I can catch the bus from here—my girlfriend lives in Brancaster. You know Meg.”

He keeps talking but my ears are roaring with that word—girlfriend, girlfriend, girlfriend—and of course it’s Meg, perfect pretty Meg. I was a secret but not her, and I’m running out the door: outside, across the grass, through the rain, the storm roaring too. The Book Barn door has blown open but inside it’s not the bookshop, it’s not my spaceship. It’s nothing, it’s television fuzz, it’s a wormhole, it’s a rip in the f*cking spacetime continuum.

And this time, I choose to run right into it.

*

… we tumble into the kitchen, laughing and kissing. I don’t even care if someone sees us. But Jason lets go of my hand.

There’s a note on the blackboard. It’s in Papa’s handwriting, but it doesn’t make sense. The words swim in front of my eyes, I have to spell the letters out one by one and even then it can’t be right because they spell

G-R-E-Y-’-S-I-N-H-O-S-P-I-T-A-L

I can’t deal. I want to be back in the field with Jason, sun on his skin. I try to grab his hand, to show him.

“Shit,” he says, running both hands through his hair. “Shit.”

I look at him, wanting him to get it, to say: let’s pretend we didn’t read this, let’s pretend it’s not true, let’s have a few more hours. We never came into the kitchen. We’re still in the fort in the field, in the sunshine.