Prologue
Last summer
“You humiliated me.”
When he didn’t respond, I said it again, rephrasing a little to make sure the point was clear. “You embarrassed me in front of all of them.” I shook my head, like I could shake off the memory. “How am I ever going to face those people again?” And I would have to face them, because they were constantly in our lives.
He didn’t answer. Had he even heard? He’d turned up the music as soon as we’d gotten into the car, like he was anticipating this argument and he was going to drown me out.
Not today. “That’s not the way you treat someone you love. You’re supposed to love me,” I reminded him. After all, we’d been together for five years. What had held us together if it wasn’t that bond?
He didn’t look in my direction, but at least I now knew that he’d heard me. The muscle clenched in his cheek where his upper and lower jaws met, right below the sideburn that he had carefully shaped this morning. It locked so hard that the skin over it turned white even with the tan he’d gotten last weekend, when he and his friends had gone to the baseball game together.
“Well?” I prompted. “Aren’t you going to answer? Don’t you have anything to say to me?”
“What do you want to hear, Emerson?” he asked. He didn’t unclench his jaw to speak and he hardly moved his lips. “What do you think should happen now?”
“I had hoped that—” I started to reply, but then broke off. What was the answer to that question? I’d been going back and forth for months now about how I could fix whatever was wrong between us. We flew past other cars, raced under overpasses, and whipped past exits as I tried to figure out what to say.
“I know that we have our issues but I’m your girlfriend,” I finally told him. “I’m the person who paid your parking ticket from last weekend. I’m the person who folded the t-shirt that you’re wearing right now. Don’t I deserve some respect? You shouldn’t have treated me that way.”
Grant sighed deeply. “I was kidding, but you just can’t take a joke. You never have been able to, not since the day we met.”
I turned to look at the traffic speeding along with us on the Lodge Freeway heading toward Detroit, but my mind went backwards five years into our past. I had been in college and was on my way to making a satisfactory life for myself. I’d spent mytime getting good grades, making money, and dreaming about a stable future away from the small town where I’d grown up in northern Michigan.
And then I’d made the mistake of going out with my roommates when I should have stayed in our apartment to study for the evolutionary bio test that I had in two days. “That’s stupid. Study tomorrow!” they’d told me, and I’d wavered…and then grabbed my wallet. I hadn’t been friends with any of those girls but I had wanted to be, and this was my chance. We went to a bar that got rowdier as the hours passed and it had felt exciting, like I was part of the crowd.
I’d been standing in front of the band when a cup of beer had sailed through the air. I hadn’t seen it coming, but I felt it land and I’d turned around, drenched, to find a bunch of guys who were hysterical with laughter. They were part of a large male group that I’d never engaged with and had tried to avoid. They had haircuts that were purposely styled to be scruffy and wore t-shirts that came from their ski vacations or the islands they’d visited. They played sports and joined frats that threw parties I’d never attended.
In a clump like that, they were very intimidating. I’d seen them there, laughing as the beer rolled down my neck, and I’d wanted to melt into another of the puddles on the dirty barroom floor.
“I still don’t think that was funny,” I told him now.
“I told you it was a mistake.”
Yes, he had. “Oh, shit. I was trying to hit the guitarist,” Grant had announced when he’d walked over, and I hadn’t thought toquestion why he would have thrown a full cup of beer on anyone. He could have ruined that guy’s instrument, or the speakers or their other equipment. But his drink had hit me on the back of the head instead, soaking my hair. Beer dripped down between my shoulder blades.
“You asshole!” I’d said. I was wet and smelly and then later, very sticky.
But he’d laughed more, and so had his friends. “Feisty,” he called back to them. “I always like a blonde.”
They’d said that they knew it, and I’d self-consciously felt my wet, white-blonde ponytail. Then he had told me that he needed to practice his aim, and he’d mimicked the motion of a throw. “I also need another drink,” he’d said. “What’s your name?”
“Emerson.”
“I’m Grant. Come on, I’ll get you one, too.” So I’d gone with him and let him buy me a beer, and that was how we’d met. I remembered almost every word we’d said, but only because the day had been so unusual. It wasn’t until later in our relationship that I’d realized I needed to write everything down and as soon as we got home today, I would type up what had just happened at Lance and Vivienne’s house. Lance had been one of the guys at the bar who had watched me get hit with the plastic cup. That had been five years ago. Five years!
We spent a lot of our summer weekends with him and their other friends, and they still enjoyed many of the same activities that they had liked in college: bragging, throwing various balls, and drinking. They’d done all of those things today and now, justlike always, Grant was speeding on our way home to Detroit, where he would complain about our neighbor with his smelly truck, the size of our kitchen, the street noise, and everything else that made it not like Lance’s house at all.
Today, we’d eaten the same food and worn the same clothes—there were little differences, like that Vivienne, Lance’s wife, had on new sandals that I had loved. She’d also gotten a haircut that Grant had frowned over, saying he thought it was better long. They were remodeling their guest bathroom so we’d had to use the one off their bedroom instead, and his friend Lance had made sarcastic comments about hiding all their sex toys before we showed up for the party. It was pretty much the same, though, five years of the same.
Except Lance had made another remark that was also supposed to be funny and Grant had followed it up with what he was now calling a “joke.” The day had been ruined.
“You know, you embarrassed yourself,” he told me, and then swore as he jerked into the middle lane to avoid another car. “If you’re humiliated, it’s because you acted like a bitch. Everyone there was staring at us.”
They had been. I remembered the women’s wide eyes and some smothered snorts, too, and his friends had all turned their heads to hide their grins. They’d definitely found it amusing, but me?
“How did you expect me to react when you said that?” I asked him. “Didn’t you guess that I’d be upset?”
