Page 20 of No One But Us

She doesn’t even know I fucking left. I wonder if my father does either, though, and he’s actually been in DC this whole time. It’s hard to say who I blame more. “I’m at the beach now, so it’s fine,” I tell her, though we both know she wasn’t really asking me to leave; she was informing that I needed to.

I hang up and sit there, stupefied, looking at the phone in my hand.

“What was that about?” Ginny asks. “Is your mom on tour?”

“Yeah,” I say, grimacing. “With Thunder Jungle. Apparently she’s dating the lead singer, and now all of his friends are coming to the townhouse, so I can’t be there.”

“No shit?” exclaims Max. “Oh my God! They were my favorite band as a kid!” He then proceeds to jump on the couch and sing their biggest hit—“Night of the Dragon,” a song that largely involves screeching only those four words, again and again, with a sporadic refrain of “You won’t know what hit ya!”

“Didn’t your mom date him, back in the day?” Ginny asks.

“Hey,” says Max, “was that your mom in the video for ‘White Hot Love’?”

He runs to get his laptop and is back 20 seconds later, trying to pull up the video on YouTube, with Ginny and James behind him, waiting.

“Found it,” says Max, watching me turn away. “Don’t you want to see it?”

“Are you kidding me?” I ask. “No, I don’t want to see my mother dancing like a skank all over a dude wearing a leather vest and no shirt.”

But both Ginny and James have crossed the room to watch over his shoulder.

“God, your mom is hot,” whispers Max, no longer joking. “She could be your fucking twin.” At which point James shuts the laptop.

“What?” asks Max, bewildered.

“You want to be pervy about her mom, be my guest,” says James. “But don’t bring her into it.” And he storms out of the room.

The three of us look at each other, and only Max seems to find the whole thing amusing. Once again, it’s nice that James wants to defend my honor. I’m just not sure why he seems so pissed off about doing it.

* * *

That night they’re all on the deck when I get home. I grab a chair, content just to have James near. He’s less stressed, less hostile toward me at night. I listen to him tease Ginny, and as the laughter bubbles in my chest, I realize that, no matter how he’s treating me, these are my favorite moments—these evenings spent in the darkness and the swampy heat, waiting for tendrils of a breeze to graze us. They’re not just my favorite of the day, but of the summer, of the year, of many years. There’s something whole and content in me. Max has suggested that I never live in the moment, that I spend most of my day wishing my life was different, and at times like this—times when I want absolutely nothing—I realize he is right.

Ironically, it is Max who does not share my contentment. No sooner does he arrive than he receives a text and jumps to his feet. “I’m out of here,” he says.

“Where are you going?” asks Ginny. “It’s 1 AM.”

“If you’d ever acted like a normal college student, rather than a 40-year-old soccer mom, you wouldn’t need to ask me that.”

He leaves, and she grips the arms of her chair with her eyes blazing. “You know, what Alex and I have is what everyone wants,” she says, voice clipped. “All these people flirting and hooking up right and left, acting like it’s so much fun and telling me I’m missing out. All they want is to be where I already am.”

“Settle down,” says James. “No one means anything by it.”

“Don’t you tell me to settle down!” she shouts, jumping to her feet. “You’re listening to him too. I know you are. He’s probably the reason you keep breaking up with Allison, and if she hadn’t talked you back to your senses, you’d be doing the same thing he is.”

She storms inside while I sit there, my entire circulatory system screeching to a halt. They broke up?

He lets out a tired exhale. “I don’t know what her deal is this summer,” he says. “She’s so volatile.”

I struggle for a moment to focus on what he’s saying. It’s difficult with my brain gleefully probing the fact that he wanted to break up with Allison.

“She won’t admit it,” I finally say, “but I think she’s starting to sense that she’s missing out, being with Alex.”

“She’ll get over it,” he says. “They’re so well-suited for each other. They believe in all the same shit. Politics and all that.”

“You should write romance novels,” I tease. My voice goes low and breathy. “‘Oh, Fabio, I love the way you share my political views.’”

He laughs, but shakes his head. “When it all comes down to it, after all the infatuation shit goes away, that’s probably more than most people have. You’re better off that way anyhow. Love makes people stupid.”