The Opposite of Loneliness Essays and Stories(14)

“Sure,” I said, shifting up so Sam’s arm was merely around my shoulder.

“Cool,” he said, and sat down on the opposite couch. This kind of thing never happened at Sam’s because his parents were usually doing work or downstairs. We started episode three and our thoughts turned back to the weird things that glowed in the bottom of the ocean. But my dad fell asleep after ten minutes, snoring loud enough that I would have laughed if I were still in high school. Sam and I shut off the TV and I placed a blanket on my dad, throwing away his bowl of Jell-O when we walked upstairs. There was an awkwardness to the way he’d asked to join us that I couldn’t get out of my head. Some kind of cafeteria-table solitude that made me want to throw up. I thought then about how most things are not really anyone’s fault. I almost shared this with Sam but he was already in my room taking off his shoes. It was nearly two but I could see the glow of Kyle’s monitor as I passed by his door.

Sometimes we’d take a day off and I’d spend time alone or with my family. My mom and I went shopping a few times at the mall in Hammond Bay and I helped her make a cheesecake with lemon and ginger. On a cold Tuesday, my older brothers lumbered home in a carpool from Chicago and we all went out to buy a Christmas tree. Toby and Zach were older and immune to the islands they’d left floating in our house. So they laughed and teased and Kyle and I lurked behind them, refreshingly reduced to our attempts to impress. The holiday came and went like it seemed to every year since I was thirteen. We slept till a depressing 9:30 on Christmas morning, though I suspect my little brother woke up earlier to look at the stockings before creeping back upstairs until the rest of us woke up. Sam bought me a necklace with a tiny silver acorn that my mother held off my neck more than once that afternoon. I gave her a crème br?lée torch and a fleece jacket that felt both perfect and stupid the moment she gasped with gratitude.

My anxiety came back on the twenty-sixth and I started dreading the idea of phone calls every time I saw Sam. The vacation had seemed an eternity, but something about the other side of Christmas made college slip back into my consciousness. Once, when Sam was at school, he’d texted me that he couldn’t talk because his roommates were sleeping. Smiling to myself, I’d called him anyway—speaking one-way for a whole eight minutes. This is what happened today. This is how I’m feeling. This is why I love you.

Toby and Zach went back to the city and my house returned to its hidey-holes. I went to this horrible yoga class a few times with my mom, but we giggled about the instructor’s adjectives afterward, which made us feel like sisters. My dad would accidentally fall asleep on the couch a few times a week and I cringed to think what kind of clichés this spawned in Kyle’s head. Dad and I would talk sometimes after I’d driven home late in my smoky sedan. There wasn’t much to say but we could get at least ten minutes if I asked him to fill me in on the episode that was on. Once when one had ended and we’d finished a bowl of popcorn, he paused for a minute and looked down at our dog.

“So your mother seems to think you and this Sam kid are awfully happy.” She must have brought it up.

“Yeah,” I said. “We are.”

“She said he bought you that necklace.” He gestured loosely at my neck.

“Yeah. For Christmas.”

He nodded, almost got up, but then stayed in his chair. “I thought that wind chime I got for her was good.” He looked up at me expectantly. It’s silver, my mom would have said. He bought her something silver.

“No, it was.” I cleared my throat. “That was a really cool gift.”

“I’m going to hang that up tomorrow.”

I nodded this time. “Yeah, you totally should. That thing’s supposed to be cool.”

“I’ll do that tomorrow,” he repeated, walking over to the sink.

He didn’t. And by the time either of us woke up my mom’s banana bread was cold.

Sam’s uncle had an annual New Year’s party in Canada, and in a gesture of romantic formality Sam suggested we dress up and drive there instead of getting drunk in someone’s basement. He showed me pictures from the previous year while we waited for our instant cookies to bake. Everyone was wearing suits and had champagne and he said that people were maybe going to go skiing the next day. I decided to spend some of my campus job money on a dress and went back to a store I’d seen in the Hammond Bay Galleria. I stood alone in a three-way mirror, unable to choose between a green and two blacks. So I angled the panels and took pictures of each on my phone, sending them one by one in texts to my mom. I had to call her twice to explain how to open them, but she’d said the green made my legs look good so I went with that.

On the day Sam and I were supposed to leave, I found her again folding socks downstairs. I came in wearing the green dress to model it in person.

“What do you think?” I said, spinning around.

“You look beautiful,” she said. “He won’t be able to keep it on you.”

“Mom, come on!” I laughed, turning around. “Can you unzip me?”

She unzipped me and I went back upstairs to pack it away, returning in a pair of jeans and a gray sweater.

“So you’re driving up tonight?”

“This afternoon, yeah.” I reached my hand into the basket and started searching for a sock with two black stripes. “Don’t worry, I’m driving.”