I open the fridge to get the brisket; he reaches around me to get a bottle of grape juice, his arm grazing my shoulder. I smell the cold on him, his aftershave, the residue scent from his leather jacket, which he’s draped across the back of the kitchen chair just like he has for the past ten years. He smells like a man, not the hot, sweaty boy who used to pin me down and tickle me mercilessly when we were kids.
We separate, him to find a glass, me to thunk the foil covered pan onto the counter. I slice brisket as he pours—glug, glug, glug—while Mario boops and beeps from the living room. My grandfather didn’t seem particularly surprised to see Luke, but I’m sure I’ll get the third degree later.
I steal a glance at Luke as I plop three slices of brisket on a plate. He’s wearing a thermal Henley and snug jeans, worn Adidas, muscles I still can’t quite believe are there (he was pathetically scrawny as a kid). He keeps his dark hair short these days, hugging his scalp. I get the impression he thinks it makes him look tougher. Maybe it does, I don’t know. The planes of his face do seem sharper, though. Although the long, black lashes kinda kill the effect.
Intense, dark eyes meet mine; one brow lifts. Heat rising in my face, I duck back into the fridge for leftover peas, noodles, thinking I can’t remember the last time I had a man in my kitchen. Had a man standing in my kitchen. That there was a man standing in my…oh, never mind.
I don’t get out much, can you tell?
Silence blankets the room, more pungent than the aroma of rewarmed brisket. Luke sips his juice, watching me, as I remove my delayed dinner from the microwave, carry it to the table in the pumpkin-orange kitchen I keep threatening to repaint, one of these days. I hear Luke’s glass clunk onto the counter, our unspoken thoughts stretching between us like tightropes neither of us dares to cross.
“You’re uncomfortable,” he says softly.
“A little, maybe.”
“Me, too.”
I carefully cut my meat, fork in a bite, chew, swallow. I’m too hungry to not eat, even though I don’t really want to. This weird, three-way friendship between him and Tina and me is based, if nothing else, on our being able to trust each other implicitly. That confidences are inviolate. We only have one rule—that the only secrets we keep from each other are those that would do more harm than good to reveal.
A rule I find I like less and less as time goes on.
“So you’re really not gonna tell me what she said.”
I get up to get a glass of milk. “I’m really not.”
“Okay, then how’s about I tell you how things look from my perspective, and you can just nod if I’m getting warm.” I return to the table with my milk, which I nearly spill when he says, “She wants out of the marriage, doesn’t she?”
“What? No! Ohmigod, Luke—” I crash into my chair. “Where on earth is this coming from—?”
Leo ambles into the kitchen, gives me a hard look. “You okay? I thought I heard you scream.”
“That was hardly a scream, Leo, sheesh.” But he’s already spotted the Oxford box. “What’s in there?”
“Éclairs. Take one.”
He undoes the box, grinning at me and winking at Luke. “Then make myself scarce, right?”
“That’ll do.”
Chuckling, he gets a plate down from the cupboard, lifts out one of the éclairs. He nods his head in my direction but says to Luke, “You think she looks run-down?”
“Leo, for God’s sake—”
“Yeah,” Luke says, eyeing me. “I do.”
“See…” My grandfather licks his fingers as he looks at me. “He agrees with me, you’re working too hard.”
This would be an opportune moment to point out I probably wouldn’t look so run down if everybody would a) give me a chance to get dinner at dinnertime and b) leave me the hell alone and stop looking to me as their own private Ann Landers or whichever one it is that’s still alive. But I’m too damned tired to go there.
While Pops takes foreeeeever to get a glass of milk, he and Luke talk about his work, local politics, some firehouse that had to be gutted because rats had taken it over, the Knicks. I eat and silently seethe, two things I’m extremely good at. After about five thousand years, my grandfather finally carts éclair and milk back out into the living room and I realize I have no idea how to get the conversation going again. Or even if I want to.
I get up to put my plate in the dishwasher; Luke says, “He’s right, you look beat. And I’m slime for bein’ so caught up in my own crap I didn’t stop and think how tired you might be—”
“Oh, please. When have any of us ever been too tired to help each other?”
He gets a funny look on his face. “You sure?”
“No. And if you expect advice, fuggedaboutit.” I dig an éclair out of the box, not bothering with a plate. “But I can listen. And I really want to know why you think Tina wants out.”
The muscles tense in his face. “Because things have been strange between us for a while now.”
“How long?”
“I dunno. Months. A year, maybe.”
I nearly choke. A year? How did I miss that?
“Yeah,” he says. “I don’t understand it, either, we always got along so good. I mean, you and me, we always fought, got on each other’s nerves, right?” Our gazes bounce off each other before he looks away. “But not Tina and me. I mean, the way she’d look at me…like I was her hero, y’know?”
Yeah. I know. Because he was. Because he was the big strong protector and she’d been the damsel in distress for as long as any of us could remember. But it worked both ways, because Tina’s wide-eyed worship fed Luke’s ego like no other. Nobody had ever needed him the way Tina did, and nobody had ever made her feel as safe as Luke did. In other words, they were the perfect match.
“But now,” he continues, “I dunno, it’s like we don’t even have anything to say to each other anymore. I come home, we eat dinner, we watch TV, we go to bed. We have sex—occasionally—but I’m not sure why we’re bothering, to tell you the truth.” His eyes lift to mine, dark with hurt and confusion. “I’m scared for her, El, that she’s gonna fall apart again, like she did that one time in high school. I’m not stupid, I know something’s bothering her. But why won’t she talk to me?”
In silence, I finish off the éclair, wishing there were about six more. Both because I need something to keep my mouth occupied and because my mood’s just swung dangerously close to self-destructive. I don’t know whether it’s because I’m tired, or my hormones are being punks, or what, but once again, my reaction surprises me.
It’s not that I don’t feel for him, or Tina, because I do. My closest friends are both hurting, for godssake. Who else are they gonna come to if not me? Because that’s the way it’s always been. Except for one time, when I found out I was pregnant with Starr, I’ve always been the one the other two turned to to fix things between them. And up until this moment, I was fine with that, maybe because their needing me made me feel a real part of something. But now…
Now I realize just how long I’ve actually only been on the outside looking in, living vicariously through somebody else’s relationship.
How screwed up is that?
So now, even