Here So Far Away(13)

“I changed my mind. I’m not staying,” I said, pulling over. “Bill’s driving. He can take you home.”

“Is he bringing Tracy?”

“I think so.”

Nat made a noise that was somewhere between a retch and a squawk.

“Then go with these guys.”

“You can’t avoid Joshua forever. You’ll never get to be around Lisa.”

“He’ll get over it eventually,” I said. “Right now, I can’t take him losing it again.”

“Couldn’t you . . .” She sighed and tugged on her denim miniskirt. It was a warm night, but Nat was always cold and I hadn’t been able to talk her into a jacket or tights. Now her thighs—or as Bill called them, her skin-dipped femurs—were covered in purple blotches. “If I were you and Joshua was all over me, I’d pretend to like him. At least I’d have a date for the prom.”

It’s not like that hadn’t occurred to me—faking it. Please. I once convinced Bill for a whole day that I wore glasses (an old pair I borrowed from Dad’s dresser) and always had, just because. But I didn’t know how you were supposed to fake feelings, and anyway, once someone has told you to go to hell, it’s probably too late.

“Here.” I shrugged off my blazer and passed it to her, then reached into the glove compartment, took out a set of keys on a hot-pink feather chain, and handed them over too. “Go have fun. If you want to try your luck with the Tongue, you have my blessing. And give Lisa her keys for me?”

She’d left them behind in Modern World Problems. I was forever rescuing Lisa’s keys.

“Yeah, alright. Thanks for the jacket.”

“Are you okay?” I asked as she got out of the car.

Nat pulled the blazer over her thin sweater and leaned in. Her lemon-scented hair lay against the green tweed like finely sheered white ribbons. “I’m okay,” she said. “I just wish someone would look at me the way Joshua looks at you.”

Eleanor Roosevelt said that you should do something every day that scares you. You say she wasn’t talking about sneaking into a bar. I say you can’t prove she wasn’t.

Long Fellows could pass for a small hockey arena from the outside, with its aluminum siding and tiny windows. Even after I ditched Nat, I hadn’t meant to land there, idling in the orange lights of the parking lot. But that word, cold-blooded, had taken occupation of my head again with the slamming of her door. It followed me through town, back onto the old highway, into the next town and the next. I couldn’t outdrive it like I couldn’t outrun it.

I wasn’t cold-blooded. I had kissed a stranger at the lighthouse. I wanted to do it again. And then what? I thought, not-so-gently rapping my forehead on the steering wheel, will you date this grown man? Bring him home and introduce him to the Sergeant? Do you think he’s sitting at the bar dreaming of pinning a corsage on you before the prom? Lisa was wrong: I wanted to be a member of a club that wouldn’t have me as a member.

Maybe, maybe if I saw him one more time, I could get him out of my system.

I cataloged the risks as I tugged open the door to the bar and crossed a dark, crowded, smoky room with black walls, a sticky floor, and “Sweet Home Alabama” thumping on the sound system. I could get booted for underage drinking. I could spend hours listening to “Sweet Home Alabama” on repeat and he might never show up. He could show up, take one look at me, and head for the hills again. But whatever came, it would evaporate into the night. I was more than twenty miles from home at a honky-tonk bar off the highway that no respectable person—in my parents’ eyes, anyway—would go to. I probably wouldn’t see any of these people again. As long as the bartender didn’t call the cops on me, no one had to find out.

“Pint of Morgan’s, please.”

“You got ID?” the bartender asked.

“Not on me.” I leaned into the bar. It was as sticky as the floor. “Come on, I’ve been here a million times.”

“No, you haven’t.”

“Sure I have.” I mouthed a little Whassup? to an imaginary acquaintance in the corner. “Remember, we had that whole conversation about—about draft beer.”

“No . . . Hang on. Are you the one who always pays more for two half-pints because they stay colder than one full pint?”

“That’s me. Half-Pint. That’s what my boyfriend calls me. I call him Home Brew.”

Nice touch, I thought.

“So why did you order a full pint?”

“Because you won that argument.”

He considered this, then brightened. “Drink faster.”

“Drink faster. Classic.”

He poured me a Morgan’s. “I’m cutting you off at two, and don’t show up without your ID again.”

“Does a whole pint count as one or two?”

“One,” said a voice behind me. I thought, briefly, it was the stranger, but when I turned around all I could see was a wall of hair. It separated into a group of long-haired dudes pushing through the crowd toward a small stage. Great. Would they be doing heavy metal covers or new country covers?

Another beer appeared at my elbow.

“From the gentleman at the end there,” the bartender said. “That’s two of two.”