Just A Small Town Girl: A New Adult Romantic Comedy Read online

  She blinked. "Yeah. You're late."

  "Oh shit."

  She squeezed my shoulders. "Okay. I'll go to the drugstore. Wait here."

  So I waited. And waited. Time develops strange, elastic properties when you're waiting for your world to be flipped upside down. I composed maybe half a dozen texts to Clayton and sent none of them. For some insane reason all I could think about was what Aunt Cassandra would say, as if I was a snot-nosed teenager who'd got knocked up at prom, rather than an adult with a Bachelor's degree and presumably some kind of idea as to where she was going in her life. Light and air and time and space, baby. Holy shit.

  That whole day, when I looked back, had a kind of cushiony quality to it. It was like the time when I fell down the stairs and fractured a bone in my foot. The doctors gave me some little lilac colored pills for the pain and half an hour after taking them the world was a delightful, fluffy, edgeless place; I was floating around in a lavender cloud of quiet bliss.

  I remember thinking how discreet and pretty the box looked - the pregnancy testing kit, that is. It had the same delicate pastel shades and soft lettering as the first package of sanitary pads I'd ever used. That had been another one of those strange days too - for all I'd been obsessively checking the crotch of my panties for a year or more, I'd still cried because maybe some part of me knew that I would never be a little girl again. Aunt Cassandra had fixed me up and taken me out for ice cream. I remembered the dandelion clocks on the sanitary pad wrapper and came to resent them - here was the delicate flower I'd never be, now that I was smudged and muddled with hair and blood and all the other attendant messes of full-blown womanhood.

  The big moments of a woman's life are so often couched in euphemisms and pastels. Even the stick you had to pee on was pale lilac plastic, with molded curves like a lady's razor. Two pink lines, clear as candy stripes.

  "Holy shit," said Courtney, and burst into tears.

  I laughed because she was crying. "Hey, I'm the one who's pregnant."

  "I know, I know," she said, her voice muffled behind her hand. "Oh my God. Hug me. Hug me more. What are you going to do?"

  I had to take off my glasses and wipe my eyes. "I don't know," I said. And I didn't. For a moment the possibility had been like a coin turning over and over in the air, only now it had landed. Best of three? No. I didn't want to think about that just yet, and it was definitely too late for the morning after pill.

  On the other hand I didn't have the greatest maternal role model in the world, and Aunt Cassandra had all the parental instincts of an eggplant. I was going to have to go back to Vermont - that was one thing I did know. I needed quiet and time to think, and New York was short on both. For some stupid reason I kept looking at the pot of tulips and feeling sorry for Micah - he would never have sent them if he knew what he was really getting into, someone who dragged her tawdry, small-town, soap-opera dramas all the way to a city of eight million people where most of the time nobody gave a shit what your name was or whether you lived or died.

  Courtney was wonderful and ridiculous - she babied me and ordered us a giant Chinese feast and a special cry-your-eyes-out viewing of The Color Purple, a movie we'd seen in freshman English, which felt like a hundred years ago. We were little more than strangers back then but I remember that heart-wrenching moment when Celie and Nettie are separated and they're still trying to do that patty-cake-we-will-never-part game even as they're being bodily torn from each other. And I remember the loud honking sob behind me that set half the class off in giggles - the half that wasn't already crying. I looked behind me and saw a shamefaced blonde whose mascara streaming eyes made her look like a cross between Alice Cooper and a giant raccoon. That was Courtney.

  "Do you remember the freshman class where we met?" I said, picking up another piece of kung-pao chicken, even though I was full.

  "English," she said. "You said Hamlet was an asshole."

  "He was an asshole." To be or not to be. I pictured the coin once more. Was that all it was? That random? And was it even my choice?

  "Shortest piece of literary criticism ever. 'Hamlet was an asshole.'"

  "Why not? He didn't do anything. Gimme Macbeth over Hamlet. At least Macbeth was like 'Is this a dagger I see before me?' and did the dirty deed. Hamlet just spends most of the play with his thumb up his ass planning passive-aggressive amateur dramatics."

  She laughed. "Oh my God. Why don't you teach? I know you're always saying you'd hate it, but you should try. I would pay so much money to take an English class taught by you."

  "Do I get that option now?" I said. "Now that I've really fucked everything up."

  "Honey, whatever you choose to do, your life should never stand still."

  "I know," I said, leaning back on the couch. I sighed. "In a terrible way I'm kind of beginning to see where Hamlet was coming from. To be or not to be. And how do we define 'be'?"

  "Look, it's your choice..."

  I took a deep breath. I could see myself beginning to hate the word 'choice'. It had always meant so much to me, that a woman should have the right to choose, but now that I was here I was almost annoyed that I had to be the one to choose. After all, I wasn't the only person responsible, was I? "I think," I said, feeling very alone all of a sudden. "I think I'm gonna call Clayton."

  Chapter Eight

  Clayton

  I didn't know where to begin. I went in to get the workshop keys and there she was, like she'd never been away. For a moment I was annoyed - I got one text from her saying "We need to talk," and then it was like radio silence. Gone again.

  "Hi," she said, which was not in itself much of an opening salvo, but when you looked like she did I guess you didn't have to say much for yourself. It was enough just to be.

  It was like she'd turned all russet and photogenic in sympathy with the fall foliage. The freckles on her nose were darker than I remembered, her lips fuller and unpainted, their natural color prettier than anything Maybelline could dream up. The sun beamed through the little window and picked out the gold lights in her thick, curly hair. I wanted to tell her she looked beautiful, that I'd missed her - a dozen romantic things. What came out was, "I'm sorry I called you Princess Fuckpants."

  She pressed her lips together, like she was trying not to laugh. Had her eyelashes always been that long? "De nada," she said, picking up a couple of price cards from the desk.

  "It's not nothing. It was rude. And I'm sorry."

  "Okay," she said. "Thank you."

  I waited for the part where she apologized for treating me like a walking case of herpes and also for her flirting with goddamn motherfucking cartoon-handsome fucking Trey. It didn't happen.

  "Lucida Bright," she said, holding up the cards. "Versus Garamond. Thoughts?"

  I took a step towards her. She held the cards up like shields.

  "They look the same to me," I said.

  "They're not."

  I was close enough to feel her breathing. I couldn't help it - I reached out to touch her hair; it was even softer than I thought.

  "Do you think..." she said, but she stopped and bit her lower lip. She closed her eyes for a moment and leaned into my touch. She swallowed, tried again. "Do you think all lowercase is in itself essentially pretentious?"

  "Lacie, look at me."

  She did. Her eyes seemed to contain an amazing number of shades - from gold to chestnut to deep brown. The word 'byzantine' pinballed around the inside of my head, looking for something to associate with. "I know you didn't text me and fly all the way back here to talk about fonts," I said.

  "No," she said. "You're absolutely right. I didn't."

  "Okay. So do you want to talk here or wherever?"

  "Are you free this evening?"

  "Sure."

  "Good," she said. "Please try to be sober. Don't bring any weed. If you turn up and you're high as fuck I'm going to be pissed."

  "Okay, no. Cool." I backed off. It was on the tip of my tongue to say she was no stranger to the roach cli
p and the bong but I figured after the Princess Fuckpants thing I was on thin ice already.

  "Is your aunt going to be here?" I asked. "Because she hates me."

  She smiled. "I wouldn't take it personally. She hates everyone."

  "What about Trey?" I said, unable to keep myself from picking at sore spots. "Does she hate Trey?"

  Lacie frowned. "Who the fuck is Trey?" she said, with such genuine, gentle confusion that my heart turned into this kind of wincing ball of goo.

  "Mr. Hot Biker. Remember?"

  "Oh, him."

  "You were flirting with him," I said. There. It was out now.

  "No duh. I was trying to offload that fucking roll-top desk that's been sitting in the window since forever. If I have to bat my eyelashes a little to make a sale I'm sure as hell gonna do it. It's that or I spray the entire store with the smell of baking cookies, dewy-eyed puppies and angel farts - or whatever genius sales method Aunt Cassandra is advocating this week."

  There was no getting away from it; this woman was weird. Maybe that's why I hooked up with her in the first place - me and weird women, there's no getting away from it, we're a thing. Figures that I'd walk into a lapdancing club and get a private dance from the chick who asks me to call her Gerald and wants to talk about her mild to moderate OCD. "Angel farts?" I said.

  She shook her head. "Don't worry about it. It's kind of a Proust thing she's got going on with smells."

  "Okay. I won't. Did you sell the stupid French desk thing, by the way?"

  "Nope. I think the lowercase price tag may have actually put him off." She held up the cards again. "Are you sure these look the same to you? - because they're completely different fonts."

  She made me swear I couldn't tell the difference several more times and then I pleaded the excuse that I had to get to work.

  Sometime after lunch Bog called me, asking if I'd seen Steve. "Course not," I said. "I'm working. Why?"

  "No, no reason. He'll probably show up sooner or later."

  "Have you looked down the back of the couch?"

  There was a long silence before he spoke again. "No, man. He's not there."

  "Bog, that was a joke. On a scale of one to ten, exactly how high are you right now?"

  "I'm fine. I just got up."

  "Are you sure? 'Cause you sound toasted. Can you do something for me?"

  "Yeah. Sure."

  "Okay," I said. "Look around the room you're in and tell me how many random things have been recently turned into bongs. Apples, 7-Up bottles, coffee pots - can you do that?"

  There was another long pause. "Yeah," he said. "There's like a turnip with a pipe thing sticking out of it. At least, I think it's a turnip. What's the difference between a turnip and a rutabaga?"

  I sighed. "I don't know, Bog. I don't know. But if you reached the 'hollowing out vegetables' stage last night, then you are still officially walking on sunshine. You know how you lose track of time when you're baked."

  "Yeah but..."

  "But what? Remember the time when you zoned out in the bathtub and you swore you'd only been in there for half an hour, even though it took like three days for your fingers and toes to fully unprune themselves?"

  "No, but..."

  "No but nothing, Bog. The fact that you don't remember is a problem. Have you ever thought that maybe we should stop cooking our short-term memories and start acting like responsible adults?"

  "Yeah, maybe, but Steve is like..."

  "...whatever. Steve is a goddamn criminal lunatic. Always was, always will be. It's his fault I spent like two weeks bouncing off the walls and hyperventilating because I thought Psycho Bob was gonna come around and deprive us of our fucking kneecaps..."

  "...but he's..."

  "...off doing Steve-things. Probably. Look, I gotta go, Bog. I'm at work. Just make yourself a big pot of coffee, throw out the rutabaga..."

  "...actually I think it's a turnip..."

  "...Bog, listen to me. Throw it the fuck out - whatever it is. Drink some coffee, watch some TV, sober your ass up. The time distortion will take care of itself, right?"

  I hung up and felt kind of better. Maybe it was because of what Lacie had said or maybe I was just really tired of spending every evening feeling like I was having some kind of deep insight into the fabric of the universe. Not that deep insights into the fabric of the universe were a bad thing - it's just that it's kind of tedious when you smoke up, have them and can never remember them the next day.

  When six o'clock rolled around, Lacie appeared and asked if I wanted to come over. "Over where?"

  "Up," she said. "Over is kind of the wrong preposition, I guess. Unless it's in the sense of 'the house is over the store'."

  I narrowed my eyes. "Is this going to be something about lowercase again, because I don't..."

  She shook her head. "No. It's not. I'm just thinking out loud. You coming?"

  It was weird to think I'd never even been in her house before, especially since I'd spent nearly two weeks thinking about her and rehearsing conversations with her in my head. I'd only seen the back of the house and a couple of glimpses of the yard, where a poplar tree was shedding its leaves all over a clover covered lawn and a half-finished deck. The closest I'd seen to its inside was the fan-patterned wallpaper in the hallway that led to the shop entrance. Realizing how little we knew about one another made me feel strangely dizzy.

  I passed a photograph in the hall - a family group. Lacie looked to be about eight years old, judging by the gaps in her grin. Her smile was almost sarcastic, exaggerated, like she was baring her teeth. Her mother's smile was watery, anxious and didn't quite reach her eyes, and it was obvious why. Lacie's brother sat on her left, a pale little skeleton trying to smile. There was one of those tubes on his face - the two pronged ones that go up into the nose.

  I think she guessed I was hanging back, because when we reached the kitchen she said, "I remember when that picture was taken. They put Byron in long sleeves and a button up shirt so all the marks wouldn't show."

  "I'm sorry."

  She sighed. "What are you gonna do?" she said, sounding uncannily like her old man.

  "You could have talked to me, you know," I said, feeling as though I was about to start walking through a landmine. "If you wanted to."

  She leaned back against the kitchen sideboard. "I could," she said. "But it gets tiring after a while. Everyone tells you you're a saint and that you're so brave to keep smiling - for him, you know." Her eyes slid to the side and she blinked rapidly for a moment, like she was trying to hold back tears. "And all the bullshit and fucking nonsense about how positive mental attitude matters. Maybe it's my fault he's dead - God knows there were enough times I wished he'd just die."

  I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "That sounds worse than it is, but cancer has a way of making you want it to be over. For them, for you, for everyone. By the time he died he wasn't my brother anymore. He was more cancer than Byron. The fucking thing eats you down to the soul."

  "God, I'm so sorry," I said, approaching her.

  When I put my hand on her wrist she held up her hands and shook her head. "Please don't," she said. "I don't want either of us to regret anything. Do you want some coffee?"

  "Coffee would be good. Thanks."

  She gestured me to the Shaker style kitchen table. I took a seat, wondering why she was so brittle when this morning she'd been almost sweet to me. "Is everything okay?" I asked.

  "No," she said, with a nervous laugh. "Everything is pretty much fucked, but thanks for asking."

  "Do you want to talk about it?"

  She handed me a mug of coffee. Cream and sugar. At least she knew that much about me. "I'm getting to that," she said.

  "Okay."

  Lacie pulled out a chair and sat down. "Okay," she said. "First off I just want to tell you that I over-reacted to the Heather thing. I don't know what I expected of you. And I'm sorry that I behaved like it was all your fault -
takes two to bareback tango, right?"

  "Tango?" I said. "I thought it was a line dance?"

  She smiled at that. Good. "Please," she said. "I may be white, but I'm not that white."

  My phone rang. I tried to ignore it but it was like it was burning a hole in my pocket.

  "You gonna get that?" she said.

  "No."

  "I think you should."

  "Why?"

  "It might be important."

  "It might," I said. "Or it might be Bog telling me that he's figured out whether the thing he was trying to make a bong out of last night was a rutabaga or a turnip."

  "Well, now you've got me curious," she said. "Don't keep a girl in suspense."

  I answered the phone. As it turned out, root vegetables were the last things Bog had on his mind. "I worked it out," he said. "It's been five days. Steve's been gone for five days."

  "Gone from where?" I said.

  "Fucking everywhere, dude. I called his Mom - she doesn't know either. He’s not answering his phone."

  My blood turned to ice. Holy shit. Psycho Bob. Psycho Bob must have found out Steve was cutting the shit with catnip. I hung up and dialed Steve. It rang for an age before going to voicemail. "Okay," I said, hanging up. "Um...kind of a situation here."

  "What's wrong?" asked Lacie.

  "Steve. This friend of mine from high school - turns out he's been missing for five days."

  She frowned. "And you're only just now hearing about this?"

  "Like I say - I'm hearing it from Bog. His time perception is about as good as his short-term memory, and I gotta tell you, his short term memory sucks."

  "Turnip bongs will do that to a person," she said. "Didn't this Steve's family call you to ask if you knew where he was?"

  "I guess not," I said. "Is it really that obvious that I don't especially have my life in any kind of order right now?"

  She squinted.

  "Yeah, don't answer that," I said. I took a deep breath. "Listen, I am so fucking sorry..."

  Lacie arched an eyebrow. "You're leaving, aren't you?"

  "I kind of have to. If he's missing..."

  She sighed. "No, you know what - go. It doesn't matter."