Hope and Other Punch Lines(29)

“Noah doesn’t want me to be happy because then he’ll be left all alone in his lonesome lonerdom of loneliness,” Jack says.

“He’s right,” Noah says, deadpan. “Not about me being lonely, but about me not wanting him to be happy.”

“So what do you think?” Jack asks me.

“I’m not going to lie and tell you that the mermaid tattoo doesn’t concern me,” I say with a smile.

“Okay,” he says.

“If he doesn’t want to make out with you by the frozen fish, there are lots of other guys who will. You’re a catch of epic proportions,” I say, not caring that I sound a little too earnest.

“No pun intended,” Noah says, but we ignore him.

Jack leans back against the couch and turns to me. “Wow. That’s so, I don’t know, sweet of you. I feel tingly all over now.”

“I’m good at pep talks. It’s one of my fortes,” I say.

“Seriously,” Jack says, and it occurs to me that if you are going to judge someone by their choice of best friend, a way better metric than someone’s outsides, Jack reflects well on Noah.

“Do I invite him to the party?” Jack asks.

“Maybe in a casual way? Not in an I’m hoping we’re going to make out sort of way,” I declare with the authority of someone who knows stuff like this, even though I do not know stuff like this. I’m surprised by how civilized things are in this basement of boyness. There is truffle in the cheese. I imagined that we’d play loud video games, that I’d be inundated by the smell of socks, that there would be some awkwardness alleviated by staring at our respective phones. If we were at Cat’s—the old Cat’s—we’d be eating microwave popcorn straight from the bag and scrolling through Instagram.

“Asking for a friend here,” Noah says. “What specifically would be the way to ask that would say I’m hoping we’re going to make out?”

“I think it’s all in the subtext. A certain look,” I say. “Also, I’d stay away from the bad puns.”

“Never. Puns are the tiny hill I’m willing to die on. So subtext like this?” Noah asks, and he stares at me with comically puppy dog pleading eyes and bats his long eyelashes. I crack up. “How’d I do, Abs?”

“Did you just call me Abs?”

“I did. Are we not there yet? To the Abs stage?” Noah asks, his face restored to normalcy. He holds up a piece of cheese and examines it from all angles before popping it in his mouth.

“There is no Abs stage,” I say. “No one calls me Abs.”

“Asking for a friend here,” Jack says, “but what specifically would be the way to get to the Abs stage if hypothetically there were one?”

“You guys, I’m telling you there’s no Abs stage,” I say. “Not even hypothetically.”

“I think there’s an Abs stage,” Jack says. “Definitely.”

“We’ll see,” Noah says. “I’m optimistic.”

“Do you normally put out fancy platters like this when you guys hang out?” I ask.

“I told you we went overboard with the cheese,” Noah says to Jack.

“No, you didn’t. You said we should get olives too,” Jack says.

“He’s right. I totally said that,” Noah says, without a single trace of sarcasm. And then he smiles—a big goofy smile—right at me.



* * *



—

When I get home, my mom is drinking a glass of white wine on our front porch. She sits on the swinging bench, which until this moment I always assumed was purely for decorative purposes.

“What’s up?” I ask, and point to the bottle, which rests next to her.

“Just enjoying the summer night. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” My mom’s voice has that weird dreamy quality again, like she’s just gotten back from a meditation retreat. I find myself missing the chipper version of her even though her cheerfulness sometimes rings false and grates on my nerves. This Zen impersonator feels foreign. Did someone take away my mother’s coffee and replace it with Xanax? Is she high? As far as I know, my parents don’t get high. Not their style. They prefer endorphins from jogging or a caffeinated kick. If they were to dabble in drugs, it would be of the high-performance variety.

“I guess,” I say, and sit down next to her on the bench. I ease down slowly, afraid the thing will collapse. The street is empty, and except for the faint buzzing of cicadas, it’s quiet. The sky expands above us, an endless, deep thick purple.

“Want to hear something awful? Grandma told me that I’ve made her proud as a daughter. It sounded like she had things she needed to say. And you know what I did? I changed the subject to the weather.” My mom takes another sip of wine and closes her eyes for a second.

“Mom, it’s okay. She knows….”

“I actually did that. I changed the subject to the weather. What a hot summer we’re having. Like I couldn’t be bothered to hear her out.”

“You’re allowed to be human occasionally,” I say, and my lungs catch and stutter as if waterlogged.

“We aren’t even having a hot summer! Sorry. This is harder than I thought it would be,” my mom says, and I slip my hands into hers. She grips my fingers.