Katie Cotugno - How to Love

“Seriously?” I gaped, a hot little flare of annoyance inside my chest. “I mean— seriously ?”

Allie blinked, her gray eyes wide and innocent—her I don’t know how that stuff got in my purse expression, normally reserved for her parents and shopping mall security guards. I didn’t like her turning that look on me. “What?”

“You totally blindsided me with those people in there!” I couldn’t get a foothold with her lately. It felt like I was hanging on by my nails. “I came over to watch TV and eat pizza or something, not play flip cup with a bunch of strangers.”

“They’re not strangers ,” she corrected sharply. Heat lightning flickered in the distance, there and gone again. “They’re all from school. And I knew you wouldn’t come if I told you Lauren was going to be here, so—”

“Yeah,” I interrupted. She wasn’t listening to me. “I know. That’s my point.”

“Well, where does that leave me?” Allie asked, huffing a little. “ They’re my friends, too, Reena. I like them. They’re not, like, bad, shady people. They’re nice.”

“I never said they weren’t nice,” I argued. “I never even said they’re the reason you totally dropped off the face of the earth this whole summer, which—”

“I told you I’m sorry!” Her voice rose a little, almost whining. “If you could quit making it so hard for me to include you—”

“Maybe I don’t want to be included in this stuff, Al! I hate this stuff! I just want to do normal stuff, like always—”

“Card games and Bringing Up Baby ?” Allie frowned. The air was swampy out here, oppressive. I wanted to hop on my bike and speed away. “Is that what you want to do, really? Is that still fun to you? Come on, Reena,” she prodded when I didn’t answer. “People like you. They all just think you don’t like them .”

“I mean,” I said. “I don’t like them, generally.”

“You don’t even know them!” she exploded, then, nastily: “You like Sawyer .”

And that —God. That stung.

“Okay.” I stood up then, wiped my clammy palms on the rain-wet backside of my jeans, because nope, nope , we were not going to have that conversation, not now—not when I was already feeling weird and lonely and homesick, embarrassed by everything I wanted and didn’t have. I glanced up at the row of palm trees at the property line, trying to keep it together. Suddenly even the backyard felt sinister, familiar places gone threatening and strange in the dark. “You want to win this fight, Al, you can win this fight, that’s cool. I’ll see you.”

“You’re right,” she said immediately, getting up and following me across the lawn. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be bitchy.”

“Oh, really?” I stopped and stared at her, hands on my hips. I wanted to hit rewind on this night and on this summer, for this bizarre alternate universe to bend over on itself again and for everything to go back to the way it was supposed to be. Ever wish you were eight years old?

“No!” she exclaimed. “I’m trying to have a conversation with you. Jesus! I miss you! I want to talk to you about stuff.”

“Really,” I repeated coldly, and Allie rolled her eyes. “Like what, exactly?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged, almost helpless, skinny hands fluttering in front of her like dragonflies. “You know what I mean. He’s … I don’t know. He’s not what we thought he was.”

“He’s a vampire?” I deadpanned.

That made her mad. “Okay,” Allie said angrily. “ You want to win this fight, Reena? You can win it. You can ice me out. But I’m just trying to be honest with you. I know you think I’m this horrible person, and I know you think I did this horrible thing, like I stole him from you or something—”

“I never said that—”

“But I did you a favor. If you can’t handle coming to my house and playing flip cup with Lauren Werner, you definitely couldn’t handle having sex with Sawyer LeGrande.”

I reeled for a second. I stood there. I thought, very clearly, of the word devastated .

“Look, Reena.” As soon as it was out there Allie knew she’d crossed some boundary, some line of demarcation so clearly marked that once she’d breached it our lives would always be divided into when we were little kids and when we weren’t, neatly bisected into the then and the now. I looked at her for one more moment, and then I turned around. Thunder rumbled over my head, loud and ominous, a storm about to break.

“ Reena ,” Allie called behind me, more forcefully this time, but by then I was already gone.

After

One thing about living in South Florida is that everywhere you go is violently air-conditioned, the tabernacle included. It’s sixty-five degrees inside Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal when we walk into church on Sunday, has been since God invented HVAC. Forever and ever, amen.

We’re church families, the LeGrandes and us: christenings and confirmations, spaghetti dinners and Sunday school. My father and Soledad were married in this building. In middle school I used to stop in to light candles for my mom. Even at my most miserable and lonely and pregnant I sat right behind Sawyer’s parents every weekend in the seventh pew on the right, and though I think that at this point his family and mine love and hate each other with equal intensity, the Profession of Faith is just one more thing we’ve always done together, world without end.

Today I’ve barely gotten Hannah’s sausage-link arms into the sweater Soledad finished just this week when Sawyer sidles in flanked by Roger and Lydia, his hands shoved deep into his dark jeans and sunglasses hanging from the V of his button-down. Everyone, even Sawyer, wears a collared shirt to church.

“Hey, everybody,” he whispers, as they slide into the row in front of us. My father ignores him. My brother only glares. His wife, Stefanie, is gaping a little in a way that makes me want to smack her across her round, curious face: Yes, Stef, he’s good-looking. Yes, Stef, he’s back.

Jesus Christ, everybody. Pull it together.

Soledad is apparently the only member of my family with a modicum of grace, not that this comes as any kind of revelation. “Hi, Sawyer,” she says to him, voice tempered as always by traces of a childhood spent in Cuba. Beside him, his mother is glowing, radiating light, and why shouldn’t she be? Just like the story promised, her prodigal returned. “It’s good to see you.”

He kisses Soledad’s cheek before he turns to look at Hannah, and for nearly a full minute they stare at each other, silent. There is a moment when I do not breathe. Sawyer has always been full of nervous habits, perpetually tapping his fingers or rubbing hard at a muscle at his neck—it’s part of what makes girls fall in love with him—but now he goes still as winter, like the blood has dried up in his veins.

Lydia clears her throat. Hannah fidgets. Sawyer looks at me like I’ve broken his beating heart.

“Nice work,” is all he says, and I laugh.

Back when we were together I used to spend my Sunday mornings in church poking Sawyer in the back, waiting until no one was looking and quietly snapping the elastic on the boxers peeking out the rear of his pants. He’d reach behind and grab my hand, the two of us thumb wrestling until Soledad or Lydia noticed and elbowed one or both of us in the side. “Pay attention,” they’d hiss, and then turn back to the priest and pretty much leave us to our own devices.

We were sweethearts. It’s a thing that happened. It’s over now. It’s fine.