Along for the Ride(14)

Too much information, I thought, sucking down the rest of my coffee. Why did she always have to make everything so complicated?

‘Honey, I’m not really at a good stopping point,’ my dad said. ‘Can it wait twenty minutes?’

Thisbe howled in response, pretty much answering this question. ‘Um,’ Heidi said, looking down at her, ‘I don’t know –’

‘Fine,’ my dad said, and instantly I recognized his tone, put upon and petulant. Fine, he’d said to my mom, you just support us with your job. Fine, I guess you do know more about what the publishing industry wants. Fine, I’ll just give up my writing altogether, it’s not like I was ever nominated for a National Book Award. ‘Just give me a minute, and I’ll –’

‘I’ll take it down there,’ I said, pushing my chair back. Heidi glanced over at me, surprised, but not nearly as much as I was myself. I thought I’d given up this kind of co-dependent behavior years ago. ‘I want to go up to the beach anyway.’

‘Are you sure?’ Heidi asked. ‘Because you were such a help last night, I don’t want to ask you to –’

‘She’s offering, Heidi,’ my dad said. I still couldn’t see him, only hear his voice, booming down from sights unseen, like God. ‘Don’t be a martyr.’

Which was good advice, I was thinking ten minutes later, as I walked down the boardwalk, the checkbook – and some muffins for the girls! – in hand. Twenty-four hours in Colby and already I didn’t recognize myself. My mother would be disgusted, I thought. I knew I was.

When I walked into Clementine’s, the first thing I saw was the dark-haired girl from the night before standing by the counter talking to a UPS guy. ‘The thing is,’ she was saying, ‘I know it’s stupid that I’m still crying over him. But we went out for, like, two years. It wasn’t just a fling. We were serious, as serious as things like that can be. So some days, like today… it’s just hard.’

The UPS man, who looked decidedly uncomfortable, brightened at the sight of me. ‘Looks like your checkbook’s here,’ he said.

‘Oh!’ She turned to face me, then blinked, confused. ‘Is Heidi… are you… ?’

‘Her stepdaughter,’ I explained.

‘Really? That’s great. Are you here to help with the baby?’

‘Not –’

‘I can’t wait to meet her,’ she said before I could finish. ‘And I love her name! It’s so unusual. Although I thought Heidi was naming her Isabel or Caroline? But maybe I was wrong…’

I handed over the checkbook, then the bag. When she glanced at it, quizzical, I added, ‘Muffins.’

‘Really?’ she said excitedly, opening the bag. ‘Oh, these smell delicious. Here, Ramon, you want one?’ She offered the bag to the UPS guy, who reached in and took one, then to me. I shook my head, and she helped herself. ‘Thanks so much. Here, I’ll just write the check quick and send it back with you, because I think Heidi needed it for some bill stuff, and I wouldn’t want you to have to make another trip. Although it is handy to have it here, but at the same time…’

I nodded – too much information, again – then walked over to a display of jeans, leaving her to chatter on. Behind the jeans, tucked away against a back wall, were some bathing suits on sale, so I started picking through them. I was checking out a red, boy-short bikini that wasn’t entirely hideous when I heard the front door chime.

‘I brought caffeine,’ a girl’s voice called out. ‘Double mocha, extra whip. Your favorite.’

‘And I,’ another chimed in, ‘have the very latest issue of Hollyworld. They just got dropped at the newsstand, like, ten minutes ago.’

‘You guys!’ Maggie squealed. I glanced over, but because of the rack of suits, my view was blocked: she was all I could see now, as Ramon had clearly left the building, lucky guy. ‘What’s the occasion?’

No one spoke for a moment, and I went back to my browsing. Then one of the girls said, ‘Well… the truth is, we have something we have to tell you.’

‘Tell me?’ Maggie said.

‘Yes,’ the other girl told her. There was a pause. Then, ‘Now, before we do, I want to stress that this is for your own good. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ Maggie said slowly. ‘But I don’t like the sound of –’

‘Jake hooked up with another girl last night,’ the first girl blurted out. ‘At the Tip.’

Oh, shit, I thought.

‘What?’ Maggie gasped.

‘Leah!’ one girl said. ‘Jesus. I thought we agreed we were going to break it to her gently.’

‘You wanted to break it to her gently,’ Leah replied. ‘I said we should just do it fast and all at once, like an eyebrow wax.’

‘Are you guys serious?’ Maggie’s voice was tight, high, and I shrank farther into the bathing suits, wondering if there was a back exit. ‘How do you know? Who was it? I mean, how…’

‘We were there,’ Leah said flatly. ‘We saw her show up and we saw them talking and then walk off to the dunes together.’

‘And you didn’t stop him?’ Maggie shrieked.

‘Hey,’ the other girl said. ‘Calm down, okay?’