All the Beautiful Lies(35)
After giving the paper one last reread, then e-mailing it to his professor, Harry wrapped a scarf around his neck and walked across campus to Kim’s single in Hubbard Hall. It was cold, the sky filled with stars. He checked his watch before knocking on her door—it was just past midnight—but he knew she’d still be up. She opened the door, her eyes bright and nervous. Harry walked into a room entirely plastered in cutout snowflakes—it must have been hundreds—taped on the walls, the ceiling, even scattered on the floor.
“Ta-da,” she said, her voice quavering, and Harry knew instantly that the waiting had been a mistake. He felt it in his stomach, and put a smile on his face that he hoped looked genuine.
Kim threw him onto the bed—also covered in snowflakes—and told him to “make love” to her, and Harry felt all desire leave his body. Whether it was the gimmickry of the moment, or the fact that he’d never had intense feelings for Kim in the first place, he knew it wasn’t going to work. Still, he tried, and by dawn, when it was clear that nothing was going to happen, he pretended to fall asleep, listening to Kim quietly cry into the pillow next to him.
The following semester, Harry and Kim agreed to just be friends. It was awkward for a while, but eventually they went back to the way they’d been before. Harry told himself that their failed consummation had been a product of a mismatch—that they never should have tried—but secretly he worried about it. Was he only sexually attracted to the girls who didn’t want him, or to the women he could never have, like his stepmother?
Toward the end of senior year, Harry and Kim had begun to occasionally fool around again, and one night, Kim, as drunk as he’d ever seen her, told him that he was the only boy she’d ever loved. Harry responded with silence. The following day Kim claimed she’d blacked out the night before, but Harry wasn’t so sure. He told himself he needed to stop misleading her, and he had, for the most part. But now it didn’t matter. She was doing Teach for America for a year in Baton Rouge, and Harry was in Maine.
“Same again?” the bartender asked.
“Uh, sure,” Harry said, checking the time on his watch. It was exactly the time that Grace and he had agreed on. He turned and there she was, walking into the bar, wearing a dark blue dress, the hemline over her knees.
“Fancy,” she said, looking around as she slid onto the stool next to Harry.
The bartender placed his drink in front of him, and asked Grace what she wanted. She glanced toward the small selection of draft beers, and ordered a Shock Top.
“Any luck on the job front?”
“Not yet. I’m not in a rush, though. How’s the bookstore?”
Harry, partly from nerves, found himself telling Grace not just about the work he’d been doing at the store, but also about his anxiety regarding the store’s future. His own future, as well.
“You’re not interested in taking over?” Grace asked.
“No, not really. And if I was, I’d be interested in working at the Ackerson’s in New York, even though it doesn’t belong to my father . . . didn’t belong to him, anymore. I guess I’m not interested in living up here in Maine, with Alice, for the rest of my life.”
“Alice is your . . . stepmom?”
“Yes, sorry. She’s my father’s second wife. My mother died when I was in high school.”
“So what’s Alice like?” Grace had finished her beer, and must have signaled the bartender, because a full one was being placed in front of her, along with a small bowl of Chex Mix.
“She’s . . .” Harry searched for a word, finally coming up with “. . . fine.”
Grace laughed. “Faint praise.”
“Honestly, I just don’t know her that well. She married my father just as I was getting ready to head off to college. It was pretty much all about me, then, and I didn’t really bother to get to know her”—a flash of his father’s young bride in her bikini went through Harry’s mind—“at least not in any significant way. She’s very sincere, and that’s always made me a little bit uncomfortable. My father was always closed off about his emotions, my mother not so much, but she was also sarcastic, and that goes a long way. Alice doesn’t really have a sense of humor. I sometimes think my father fell in love with her because she reminded him of Maine, and he really wanted to return here.”
“Why did she remind him of Maine?”
“I don’t know. She’s straightforward, not complicated, or neurotic. She’s old-fashioned. She took care of him the way his mother took care of him, maybe. This makes him sound terrible.”
“Not really,” she said, licking some foam from her upper lip.
“Tell me about yourself,” Harry said, sipping at his drink, surprised to find it was nothing but ice.
“Do I have to?” Grace said, and laughed.
“You don’t have to do anything. I’m just curious. How old are you?”
“You’re not supposed to ask that, but I don’t mind. I’m twenty-five.”
“Where did you grow up?”
“I grew up in Michigan, then I went to school in New York City, and now I live right here in Kennewick, Maine.”
“And you dream of working in a bookstore?”
“Truth is, like I told you, I know the Ackerson’s in New York City. I used to live on the same block and go in all the time. I like old books. And I knew that there was a second Ackerson’s here, and that’s partly why I picked Kennewick. Not to work at the bookstore, although obviously I would love to do that, but because I wanted to move to the coast of Maine, and when I found out that the bookstore on my block had a sister store in Kennewick, it felt like fate. That’s why I picked here, and that’s why I went to your father’s funeral. You look like you don’t believe me.”