A Little Hope(38)

Damon finishes his Scotch and looks over at his friend, who is also deep in thought, a trail of smoke coming from his cigar. What question could Suzette ask, or Ahmed ask that would unknot him? Does he have one? Is it strange he never told Suzette about the breakup with Amanda? Is it strange that he’s kept that inside him, that he still doesn’t know how he got over that sadness? Once in a while he catches himself thinking about her leaving that night, dragging her garbage bag behind her, and he still feels wronged, still feels like if he were back in that apartment those years ago and she knocked, he would open the door for her. He would shake his head and pull her into his arms.

What is he doing in this nice house, in his mid-thirties, thinking about Amanda, who was nothing in the long run? He will have kids with Suzette, most likely, and she will be the one he sees every night. They will grow old together, and that’s all that matters. Thank God you left me. He should call Amanda and tell her that. Thank God you did me that favor. Look what I have because of that. Look.

Why did he never tell Suzette though? Why hasn’t he told her about what a failure he felt like that year? His other secrets are smaller. He cheated on a Latin test once in ninth grade because his friend found the same test in an old folder of his brother’s and they memorized every question. When he was fifteen he was picked up at the mall for stealing a CD at the record store because Jason, the quarterback in school, told him he didn’t have the balls to do it. He almost threw up when he sat in the mall security office. They didn’t call his parents, only the cops, and the cop who came took him in her car to the station. He imagined his parents coming to get him there. He could feel the color leave him. As he sat answering a few questions, his hands shook, and the officer must have felt bad for him, because she got him a Dr Pepper from the vending machine, cold and syrupy as he drank it, and she sighed and touched his shoulder. She said, “Don’t be stupid anymore,” and told him the store wouldn’t press charges. She didn’t call his parents. She just drove him back to the mall and waved to him from the brown cop car as he walked away.

Why hasn’t he said anything about any of this? Why hasn’t anyone asked?

Ahmed finishes his Scotch and holds his cigar in his mouth. He zips up his coat. “Well, Romes, ready to hit the open farm?”

“Yeah.” He looks down at the drink in his lap. He tastes the cigar, the liquor. He wants a mint.

“What’s got you?”

Damon looks up. “Nothing.”

Ahmed lifts his eyebrows. “Don’t play.”

“I’m not.”

“Shit, I can feel it. What’s eating you?”

He drops the cigar. He stomps the tip of it with his boot. He doesn’t care if it leaves a mark. “I’m lonely, man.” He clears his throat. “Nah, not lonely. That’s the wrong word. I just feel fucking out of it.”

He expects Ahmed to laugh. To punch him in the arm. He expects him to say something like Time to change your tampon, but Ahmed nods. “I feel you,” he says. “I was putting myself in your shoes this whole time and thinking this must be awesome but weird, too.”

How odd that Ahmed sees all sides—the good, the troubling. No, not troubling. That is not the right word. He assumed Ahmed envied his life, but he saw through the facade. “You could feel that?”

“Of course.” He knows things are serious when Ahmed doesn’t joke, but this is when Damon feels the best about their friendship, that they have this authentic thing, too.

Damon thinks of Suzette then. How on one of their first dates five years ago, she looked at him over her glass of beer and told him about moving to Finland. How she couldn’t stay. How she wept for her sister who died, and left some of her stuff there and got back on the plane after a few days. How she never taught at the school where she had been hired. “It could have been such a blessing, a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and there I was, chain smoking and dragging my suitcase through that quiet airport.” He remembers how he reached over and touched her hand, how she felt so warm, so full of life, and he thought God, please don’t let this go wrong. Please let this all be real, because that’s how it felt with her. Real and wonderful. Her vulnerability in confessing this touched him. She was such a full person, made up of perfections and flaws and kindness and sadness.

And after all that time of being sick over Amanda, he didn’t care about her anymore. He didn’t even think about her because there was this lovely blonde who laughed as she dipped her nacho into the sour cream. She was so open to tell him this. Maybe he thought then that she would make him more open, too.

He thinks now he fell in love with her the second he met her. But why has he been so guarded? Why couldn’t he confess his stuff to her that night, or even months later? He trusts her. He does. If he doesn’t tell her everything he is, isn’t he no better than Amanda, who kept all that inside, who stayed when she didn’t want to, until he asked her that question? He needs to tell Suzette: he has his own Finland. She will listen. She will touch his face. He doesn’t want her to feel sorry for him though. He has been afraid of that part of himself, the part that couldn’t get over what Amanda did. That part that walked and walked. He wants Suzette to know this was worth it. She was worth the difficult wait. “I’m just whiny, right?” he says as they slip on their hats and gloves and clomp over the frozen grass to Red and Blue.