From the Jump(29)

“There is no reality in which hunting UFOs near Area 51 is considered a romantic weekend away,” Phoebe says.

I laugh in spite of myself.

“And I’m not sure you can claim to have booked anything,” Deiss says to Mac. “Didn’t you just stop at a motel on the side of the road?”

“In Mac’s defense,” Phoebe says, “it did have an ancient microwave. And the smell of stale smoke permeating the room made me grateful to go to sleep at night.”

I take another sip of my tea, and the sweetness of it bursts against my taste buds. It reminds me of Sunday afternoons with my mother. The memory is a strange contrast to the moment—the vastness of the night, the idle chatter and wild, crackling fire, versus the two of us still in our church dresses with a flowered teapot and tiny cups. It’s nice, though, to have a little part of her here on this adventure.

Like me before this week, my mom has never been out of the country. She’s a small-town beauty queen, through and through. Our tea parties were always the height of sophistication to both of us. Often, we’d attempt British accents while nibbling at our low-fat cookies, freed from their single-serve packets and placed reverentially on the mismatched china she’d found at the Goodwill. I’d steal a sugar cube when she wasn’t looking, squirreling it in my cheeks and feeling its slow dissolve. Then its sweetness would hit my bloodstream, and I’d find myself chattering away, giggly and eager to entertain.

Or maybe it wasn’t the sugar that fueled those conversations. Maybe it was just that, for a few hours each week, it was just the two of us, best friends. My mom wasn’t pulling yet another double at the diner, and no men were allowed. We didn’t even talk about them, especially not if they were backing away, or losing interest, or growing colder and curter, or whatever the current strategy was for leaving us behind. I didn’t talk about the bad stuff, either. Not the kids who had made fun of my ill-fitting clothes or the sleepover I hadn’t been invited to that weekend.

Instead, we reveled in the prettiness of the moment. The colors on the teapot and in our dresses. The tilt of our pinkies as we lifted the teacups to our painted lips. We talked about the things that brought us joy, and for a couple of hours, we felt like the kind of people who lived in a world of tea and sweetness. To this day, I always make it back home at least one Sunday each month so the two of us can have tea together.

“What do you miss, Liv?” Simone asks.

“Cat Stevens,” I say without thinking.

“The singer?” Deiss looks over with interest.

“My cat,” I say.

“You don’t have a cat.” Simone’s mouth twists like the word itself insults her.

“I do.”

“She does,” Phoebe agrees. “I’ve met him. He’s not very friendly.”

“He’s not,” I admit. “If I open a window, he jumps up on the sill and spends a significant amount of time debating whether staying with me or leaping to his death is preferable.”

“But so far, he’s opted to stay with you?” Deiss asks.

“I always end up closing the window before he can decide,” I say. “Usually, that decision coincides with him edging close enough that I’m forced to acknowledge I’m coming in second to death.”

“I bet he’d like me,” Mac says. “Cats always do.”

“I’m sure he would,” Deiss says. “Olivia, why have you been depriving Cat Stevens the pleasure of meeting Mac? Do you not want your cat to experience one of the greatest pleasures life has to offer?”

“Is he being sarcastic?” Mac asks Phoebe.

“No,” Phoebe assures him. “He just wants Liv’s cat to be happy.”

“I live all the way across town,” I say. “Nobody wants to go to my house.”

“I want to go to your house,” Mac says.

“I’d make the drive,” Simone says, “but it’s so much easier for you to come to me.”

“What I don’t understand,” Deiss says, drawing out the words, “is how Phoebe and Simone have gotten invites when Mac and I haven’t.”

“Because we can be trusted on a white couch,” Phoebe says.

“I didn’t actually invite Simone because I knew it was too far,” I say. “And Phoebe invited herself.”

I don’t mention that she needed somewhere to go because she was devastated that Mac had posted a picture of himself with another woman on social media. Despite the fact that he and Phoebe had already been broken up for a few years, it was the first time Mac had indicated he might be in a real relationship with someone else.

In the end, it turned out to be nothing. But that night was the first time I realized how much Phoebe had been pretending to be okay with how things had ended up between the two of them. I think it was illuminating for her as well. She never said anything to Mac about it, but she did break things off with the guy she’d been seeing. I guess she figured, if she could still feel like that about her ex, she had no business being with someone new.

“Hey,” Phoebe says, clearly offended. “I assumed the fact that it’s my best friend’s home meant no invitation was required.”

“I thought I was your best friend,” Mac says to her. He leans toward her, doing that strange searching thing again. I’m surprised no one else has mentioned it.