When he got out of the car the sky was spitting rain in small and curiously cold droplets. It had been clear when he left the house, but this was October and he had come 15 miles or so. That was a shorter distance here than where he now made his home, a mountainous land where 5 miles took 3 times as many minutes and was far enough thank you very much. Here people drove monstrous vehicles over long distances every day and never thought a whit about it. He did it. An hour to high school during his senior year, to this town where he had come again.
Most of the time they lived closer than that, of course, but in the last year he had moved out of the house. Looking back, that seemed a bit odd. He took it for granted at the time, like so many other things. Like her, for instance. Sure, there had been a time when they were not together and a time when he wanted her and she was not with him. Still, by the time they were together, he figured that’s how things were bound to work out as long as he wanted. Assuming he was figuring on things at all. Mostly he was a conglomeration of appetites at that point in his life. She filled one and beer filled the other, it’s a wonder that he ever gave up either.
Which is what brought him to this Starbucks on a pissy October Saturday. It was more than just a little disconcerting to him that this store resembled in almost every aspect stores he had been in on the other side of the planet. Of course they do that, but this used to be the drug store that he would sneak off to during Sunday School to buy candy in. Years later, hearing the Stevie Wonder song, he had an exact visual. The church was still across the street. It was not the same church. That church had moved to a new building out on the highway. Another church had moved into his old church.
He was embarrassed when he realized that she was standing right in front of him, waving. He had kind of spaced out on the church. She smiled familiarly, which was simultaneously reassuring and unsettling. He was glad to know that she was still smiling, and smiling at him, but it made the idea of dredging all this shit up quite unpalatable. And strictly speaking, he was not sure it was necessary. First of all, they were only 18 then. He was 18. She was a year younger, give or take. That he never knew her birthday was a pretty good indication of all the other things he didn’t know.
Like how to be a good lover, or, what may be equallyas complicated, a good friend. In either case he was not conscious at the time that he should try to do either. Whether or not he sought it, this unconsciousness was what made him a shitty boyfriend. He was certain that, in the history of humanity, he was not the only, or the worst, bad boyfriend. But he was her bad boyfriend. She deserved to know that it wasn’t her fault, and if she already knew that, she deserved to hear it from him.
So he bought her a coffee. It wasn’t time to eat, so he did not get her a scone. His armpits grew wet as he thought about what he was going to say. It wasn’t that he had not done this before, but it had been a long time. Most of these conversations had happened in the first few years after he quit. There was so much time, nearly half his life, births, deaths, and so much other water under the bridge that he had almost forgotten how this was supposed to go. For sure, though, it was time for it to go.
“I’ve thought about you, about us, a lot,” he said. Crap for an opening. She sort of looked at him, wary of where this was going.
“I was really selfish. You needed me to be your friend,” he paused. “Ok, maybe not needed, but you wanted to be my friend. You asked me to be yours back. I couldn’t, or maybe I just didn’t, but I wanted you to know that it wasn’t your fault. I was an asshole, and I drank way too much. So I wanted you to know that I quit. Drinking. And I’m trying not to be an asshole, to not treat people like that. Especially the ones that I close to.”
He had plenty more to say, but that was enough. If she wanted to know more, to say more, she could. She was crying a little bit, which surprised him. He thought she would laugh in his face, tell him he was an idiot for thinking it mattered.
“I wish you would have called,” she whispered. “Just once, that summer, before we left.”
“I should have,” he mumbled.
She looked up, eyes full to overflowing. “I would not have had to wait 20 years.”
“I could not have said this stuff then. I didn’t realize what a dick I had been for probably a couple of years.”
“Then don’t be a dick now. Listen to me,” she blurted a little too loudly. Chances were they knew somebody in here. They had both grown up here.
“Okay, fair enough,” he said, but he did not lean back. Her eyes were more full now, if that were even possible. A second later her cheeks were soaked.
“It was June when I found out,” she started. He did not fight his natural inclination to hold his tongue. “At first I did not think too much about it. You know how I could be late, right? Two weeks might mean nothing. Three weeks was the outside, but after four I had to find out. So I peed on a stick.”
There were only a couple of times in his life that his thoughts had become far enough disconnected from his body that it might be described as an out of body experience. It happened when the simple truth was beyond his will to comprehend. His mind ran even as his feet were planted.
“You can imagine how my parents reacted. Or maybe you can’t, given how little you wanted to hear about what went on in that house.”
He wanted to object, but he was also grateful. The barb brought him back to reality. And if she wanted to rip him to shreds, that’s why he was here.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve talked about this. I’m still pissed at you.”
“It’s ok. I’d be pissed at me too.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t know that we’d be getting into this,” she sighed. “So, anyway, I went to the doctor right after the Fourth of July. Then I went to my aunt’s in Memphis. Then I went to New York, to school.”
“Well. Shit.”
“I just wish you had called. Just once.”
“I should have. I wish I had called.”