A Little Hope(11)

“Luke,” she says, her eyes so wide, her face delighted.

He pretends to be surprised. “Oh, hey.” She comes closer, and he doesn’t know what to do. Should he hug her? His hands are full with the large Bozo box. Right away he can smell the familiar perfume: Chanel. He looks down at his boxes as though offering an explanation for not touching her, but she doesn’t make any effort to come closer. “What are you doing in town?” he finally asks.

“Just here for the weekend.” She smiles and tucks her hair behind her ears. “I’m actually going to be in Suzette’s wedding next month—remember her? The bridal shower is tomorrow at The Manor House.”

“Suzette,” he says. “Yeah, I remember her. Didn’t she move to Iceland or someplace?” This sense of being so familiar with a person feels like what he’s been missing. He suddenly just wants to smile. He feels like he can tell Ginger anything. He stares into her round eyes, so sincere, and is proud of her. He knew, he knew, she was headed for good things. She was easily the best thing that ever happened to him, wasn’t she? He has a flash of memory of the day they broke up before she left for Georgia. Late summer. Her dog lying lazily on her parents’ porch. She kissed his forehead. Be good to yourself, Luke, she had said.

“Finland.” She grins now. “She only stayed for four days.”

“Huh,” he says. He advances in line, and she stays near him. He likes that she doesn’t try to leave just yet. “So what brings you to toy heaven?”

“Oh.” She looks around. The cash register jingles again, and one of the hippie’s children is on the floor in a full-blown tantrum. “One of the other girls in the wedding asked if I could get some kind of princess crown for Suzette to wear tomorrow when she opens her gifts.” She rolls her eyes. “Always something, right? My mom told me about this place.”

“Well, you’ll find that here.”

“Definitely.” The man who’s paying is writing a check, which makes almost everyone in line sigh and grumble. But Luke marvels at his luck. His body remembers her. At a time like this, waiting in line, their hands would reach absently for one another. He remembers the feeling of her standing behind him and resting her head on his shoulder. He remembers how she closed her eyes whenever they kissed. Now here they are, both in their thirties, but sensing her so close makes him feel like he’s twenty-two again.

He and Ginger had been broken up six or seven months when his dad died—is it really ten years now?—and the night he came home from the hospital, when they left his dead father there in that quiet room with the nurses starting to take everything apart, when he held the small cactus someone had bought his father and the Sports Illustrated rolled up that he meant to read to his dad, and the stack of cards people had sent, that night when he came home from the hospital, he remembers how Ginger rang the doorbell. She was home for spring break in her first year of vet school.

He heard her soft footsteps coming up the stairs after Mary Jane let her in. She stepped into his room without knocking and hugged him and let him sob and sputter into her light blue turtleneck. She rubbed his soaked face and kissed his cheek, and kept saying, “I’m so sorry, Luke,” and listened to him bawl and talk in a way he never could with any other person. At the funeral, he glanced back every so often, and there she was in a far-off row, smiling dutifully at him. And then she was gone.

“So how’s work?” he says now. “How’s Savannah?”

“I love it,” she says. “But it’s too hot sometimes.” He notices an emerald ring on her finger and wonders if a guy gave it to her. Maybe she’s married. Could she be? He feels a familiar wave of disappointment, but what does he expect? Who wouldn’t be lucky to have Ginger? “It’s so nice to be here in the fall. I caught the leaves at just the right time.”

“You really did,” he says. He looks down at his toys. “Do you know Mary Jane has a kid?”

“I did see that, yes. She and I exchange messages on Facebook every so often. Her daughter looks like you, I told her.”

“I don’t know about that,” he says. Something about her keeping in touch with Mary Jane makes him feel grateful. As if they could get back together and it would be seamless. What a silly thought. He wonders if she and his sister ever had a heart-to-heart, if Mary Jane ever says things like, If Luke hadn’t been such an idiot… The cashier motions him forward.

“All set, sir?” she says, and holds the scanning wand to his purchases. “Some cool stuff here.” Luke’s palms start to sweat. He pulls the credit card slowly from his pathetic-looking wallet with the worn leather. He wishes he had cash. Cash is so definitive.

“Twenty-four fifty,” the cashier says.

He hands her the credit card, and she swipes it. He doesn’t breathe until he hears the paper printing. She tears off the first receipt and hands him an oversized purple pen. “Sign here.”

Thank God. Thank. God. He holds the shopping bag. Ginger waits for him by the door. “I guess I should go find that crown,” she says, and shrugs. She reaches out and touches the side of his arm, such a familiar gesture, and he wants to freeze time, feeling her hand there in just that right way she always had with him.

He knows his mother thinks he ruined things with Ginger. And he probably did. Of course he did. He had nothing going on when she graduated pre-vet from Fairfield. He could have told her he’d go anywhere with her when she was deciding which program she should attend—Cornell or Penn or Michigan State. She was accepted everywhere.