Shuffle, Repeat(37)

“Table tennis?”

“The mere fact that you call it table tennis instead of Ping-Pong kinda makes me think that you would clobber me.”

“I’ll play left-handed,” says Oliver, and I groan. “Okay, what, then?”

I honestly don’t know. This is new territory—this being alone outside a car—even for the already new territory that is my friendship with Oliver. I’m not sure how to navigate this version of us.

Not that we’re an “us.”

We’re definitely not.

Oliver waits and there’s an awkward silence that is reminiscent of our very first carpool mornings. I don’t know what to do when I’m hanging out with a guy who isn’t Itch or Shaun. Or maybe just when I’m hanging out with a guy who is Oliver Flagg.

“I got it,” says Oliver. “Jump up.”

“Pardon?”

“Off.” He gestures to the high-backed barstool I’m perched on. I give him a perplexed look but do as he asks. He lifts the stool and turns it around so the back is against the bar, then does the same with the one next to it. He hops onto my stool and pats the other, to his right. “Here.”

“You prefer the view of the Ping-Pong table?”

“Trust me,” he says, and—because, oddly enough, I do—I clamber onto the stool beside him. “Now what?”

“Hold on.” He pulls out his cell phone and stabs at the screen. Before I can figure out what he’s doing, some old-school Iggy Pop starts playing. My old-school Iggy.

Oliver sets the phone on the bar behind us and settles back on his stool, staring straight ahead. “Look.” He points straight in front of us.

“At the Ping-Pong table?”

“At the road.”

Oliver stretches out his hands to grip an imaginary steering wheel, and I get it. He’s pretending we’re in his car, listening to our playlist, driving to school. He understands what I’m feeling, that we’re in uncharted friendship territory. Maybe he’s even feeling the same way. He’s trying to make me comfortable. It’s really nice and also really…

“Cute,” I say.

“I try.”

We “drive” in silence, and I know I should be the one to start the conversation, since he came up with the idea and all. I go with what I think is a safe topic. “Did you apply early decision anywhere?”

“A couple places,” Oliver says. “State. Central.”

“Not U of M?” The second it’s out of my mouth, I regret the question. University of Michigan is competitive. Even for me, it’s not a definite slam dunk. Oliver mumbles something under his breath, and I tilt my head toward him. “What?”

“Yeah, U of M, too,” he says. “I just got the early acceptance letter.”

Again, he manages to surprise me.

“I only applied because it’s Dad’s alma mater and all,” he continues. “I didn’t think they’d actually let me in, and I’m definitely not going there.”

“Why?” It seems like a no-brainer. Prestige plus football. If you’re Oliver, what’s not to love? “It’s a great school.”

“All that pressure about being part of a legacy.” Oliver shakes his head. “I don’t even know what I want to do yet. Starting somewhere close by makes so much more sense. I could try things out. Experiment. But my dad—” He sighs. “He says if I don’t go to Michigan, I should expand my horizons. He’s got this list—Carnegie Mellon, USC, Chapel Hill—and I guess I should do what he says, because of his whole self-made-man thing. If anyone knows how to win at life, it’s him. But going far away when I don’t have it figured out yet…” I must have made a sound because Oliver glances at me. “What?”

“All I want is to go far away.”

“Where?”

“New York. Maybe NYU or Columbia. I’m applying local in the next round, but only because Mom is making me.” I watch Oliver slide his hands to the left, steering our mimed car. “Where are we?”

“Just turned onto Plymouth. I had to wait at the corner for a phalanx of Harley riders.”

Once again, I am impressed and surprised by Oliver’s vocabulary. “Hey, your dad was talking about the uncle at the bank?”

“Yeah, Uncle Alex. You may have seen his name in the main lobby’s trophy case.” I shake my head and Oliver laughs. “Let me guess. You’ve never looked at those trophies, have you?”

“Not even once.”

“Star quarterback twenty years ago.” Oliver’s smile vanishes. “Now he’s a branch manager in Ypsilanti. Drinks a lot of beer. Two kids and a wife. I think he loves them, but he never looks happy. You can read it all over him, how he thinks he settled. I don’t want that. I don’t want to settle and I don’t want to make someone feel like I settled for her. Dad’s all over me about the bank internship. He wants me to wear a maroon tie during the interview because it’s a ‘power color.’ He’s got it all figured out for me and he’s probably right, because he’s right about everything, but…” His voice trails off. “Sorry, that was weird.”

I don’t think it was weird. I think it was brave.