A Little Hope(12)

But his dad was sick, and things with Jimmy and Murph and Chucky were going great. Their band had a monopoly on all the local haunts—two gigs a weekend sometimes, and he was happy doing that. His hands on the guitar, the encouraging audience, the way he and Jimmy would lean in to each other on the songs they’d cowritten and belt out the words. He loved being onstage and in the moment, forgetting all the bad stuff: his dad’s eyes when he would sit feebly on the back patio and stare at the trees, his mother’s insistence he find “something stable.” Looking back now, he wonders what he thought he wanted then. Did he just want to go on that way forever because nothing bad had happened yet, or did he have future plans—maybe a record deal, marriage? A home with Ginger where she could run her vet practice right out of a downstairs office? Had he ever gotten that far in his mind?

Yes, he remembers hoping all that would eventually happen. He remembers thinking they’d have a nice Connecticut home where he wrote lyrics or banged away on his drums in the basement, her coming downstairs with some injured animal in her arms. “I couldn’t leave him in the cage for the night,” she’d say. But he was so damn afraid of the future then. How could he wish their relationship were further along when he knew it meant his dad would be gone and Luke himself would be older with fewer and fewer chances of having made it (didn’t you need to make it when you were young?), and, God, his mother’s impatient prodding. Ginger’s future was so bright, it was guaranteed to be bright because that’s who she was, so where did that leave him? Her definite future made his feel scrawny. At times he was jealous, wondering what it felt like for everyone to know you’d end up well. For him, it was only if he stayed with Ginger that he’d be successful, and that slowly ate away at him.

Ginger stopped coming to their concerts, and one night he kissed that girl with the eyebrow ring behind the stage, and he drank more than he should have, slept more than he should have, started messing with pills Chucky gave him. “Are you okay?” Ginger kept asking. “Fine and dandy,” he’d reply.

When Ginger said University of Georgia offered her a great scholarship package, he said, “Hey, go for it. Take the midnight train, right?”

He wanted to trick her with that pathetic statement. He wanted her to say she might go far away but he was worth waiting for. He wanted to feel good enough for her. He needed convincing, didn’t he? He wanted her to ask him to visit whenever the band wasn’t playing. Maybe he wanted more fight: them to fight for their love the way his father was fighting for his life. And he felt betrayed. Why in the world would she choose a school thirteen hours away?

He didn’t know about the uncertainty of right then, but he had no doubt they would be together down the road. He wanted Ginger to say no place would be right without him.

She didn’t. The girl with the eyebrow ring was the proof he needed. Their kiss was too dry, too foreign, and he bolted from her immediately afterward, saying, “Sorry. I’m sorry.” He only loved Ginger. He wanted to know she loved him as fully and as achingly as he loved her. It was a childish want, but he needed to be sure. If she had said she needed him, he would have quit the band then, wouldn’t he have? He likes to think yes. But her eyes looked so hurt after he said she should just go without him that he still tries to forget her expression. They were sitting in his car in her parents’ driveway. She had just moved out of her apartment. Her eyes were red, and he saw the late-day sun hit the small diamond on her necklace. “Be good to yourself.” She closed the car door gently, and he watched her walk inside the way he always did when he dropped her off.

He meant to fix it. He meant to call her in Georgia some night, have one of their epic long talks, and all of a sudden, he’d be buying a train ticket, or she’d be in town, and little by little they’d reclaim what they had. But as the months went by, he knew she was doing better and better, and there he was, right where she’d left him, sinking.

Now, at the toy store he tries to stand straighter (the way his mother would instruct). “Well, I hope you have fun at the shower,” he says. “It was great bumping into you.”

“You, too, Luke.”

“If you’re ever in town again, we should—”

“Yeah,” she says. “Say hi to your mom and Mary Jane, and happy birthday to your niece.” She starts to walk away.

“Um, do your parents still have Thunder?” He has no idea why he asks this. It’s been ten years, and ten years is an eternity for any pet. But in his head their border collie is still the puppy that used to love that red whistle ball Luke would throw. The happy dog that used to let out a certain bark when Luke’s car would pull up, and Ginger would say, “We knew it was you. Thunder told us.”

“They do. He’s still kicking. He rides with my dad to the post office every day.”

“That’s awesome.”

“You should come see him,” she says. “He’d remember you.”

“I should,” Luke says, and waves to her as she heads toward the back of the store. She turns sideways past a little girl winding the handle to a jack-in-the-box, and she smiles and helps a young boy who dropped puzzle pieces on the floor.

“There you go,” she says to the boy, and she glides behind the next rack, her shoulder bumping a set of chimes before she’s finally gone.