How to Love Read online

  I was about to head back toward the floor when Sawyer reached out and grabbed me by the wrist. “Reena.” There was something urgent and unexpected about the way he said it, like he’d almost told me a secret and then changed his mind. “Why don’t I ever see you around anymore?”

  I blinked at him, disbelieving. He was still holding on to my arm. “Maybe I’m better at hiding than you thought.”

  Sawyer took just long enough to answer that I was sure he had no idea what I was talking about: It had been a long time since that night in Allie’s yard, after all, and he’d probably forgotten it immediately. I was about to back-pedal when he smiled. “Maybe,” he said, letting go but not moving away at all. “But I’m serious.”

  “Yeah, well.” I felt my eyebrows arc. “Me, too.”

  “What are you doing tonight?” he asked.

  I cocked my head, glanced around. The band had segued into “It’s All Right.” I could see my father talking to a couple of regulars at the other end of the bar. “Working?” I said.

  Sawyer rolled his eyes at me. “Thank you, princess. I mean after that.”

  “Going home?”

  “Come hang out.”

  “With you?” I blurted, and Sawyer smirked, lazy as the Cheshire cat disappearing from the tree.

  “Yeah, Reena. With me.”

  In all the years I had known him—and I’d known him, more or less, since I was born—Sawyer had never once asked me to go anywhere. It took me a second to recover. Still, I shook my head like an instinct, like something I knew in my gut. I thought of the party at Allie’s, Lauren Werner and the crowds of people I didn’t know how to navigate. “Listen, Sawyer. Allie and I don’t really …” I trailed off, tried again, wondered what she’d told him. “I mean, we’re not so much … hanging out.”

  Sawyer frowned, and there was that expression again, like he’d come here to tell me something specific. “I didn’t mean with Allie,” he said.

  Oh.

  “Oh,” I said. I looked at him for a moment, then back over at my father with his coffee and his grin. “Sawyer—”

  “Come on, Reena,” he said, already slightly impatient. I got the feeling this was all the convincing he was going to try to do. “It’s just me.”

  I thought of Allie and of valuables gone missing: of lip gloss slipped in pockets and crushes filched right out from under your nose. No matter how I tried to justify it, this was a capital crime of friendship. It was treason, even if she’d done it first.

  “Yeah,” I said. Behind me the music was ending, one final chord and the crash of a snare. “Yeah, I can hang out.”

  9

  After

  After church I take Hannah back to the house for lunch and strap her into the high chair, slicing some fruit to keep her busy while I toast some wheat bread. “Hey, lady, can you say banana?” I ask her, and Hannah repeats it back obediently. “Good girl,” I tell her happily, holding my hand up for a high five. Dumb as it sounds, I didn’t totally realize when I was pregnant that Hannah would have an actual personality separate from mine, but sure enough it comes out more and more every day: She likes ice cream and avocados and dancing to Beyoncé in the back of the car, her small body moving with surprising enthusiasm inside the confines of her safety seat. She’s talking more and more now, baby jabber and snatches of conversation repeated back to me. It’s kind of the coolest thing ever.

  Soledad comes in and drops her purse on the counter, swipes a chunk of banana off the cutting board. I snort. “That’s for Hannah.”

  “Sorry. Starving.” She smooths an affectionate hand over the top of Hannah’s head. “So, Lydia talked to me when we were leaving,” she tells me, not bothering to work her way up to it at all. “She wants to take Hannah to the library one day this week to get her a card.”

  “What? Why?” I spread a little bit of peanut butter on the toast and cut it into tiny triangles, then put it on the tray of the high chair. “There you go, baby girl.” I glance at Soledad, wrinkle my nose. “What does she need a card for? She’s fourteen months old. I take out books for her.”

  “I know that. But I guess Lyd wants to spend some time with her.”

  My spine straightens. “Really.”

  Sol stares back. “Really.”

  “How special.”

  Growing up, I spent more time with Lydia than with any of my aunts or cousins, which is why it doesn’t totally make sense that I’ve never gotten over being afraid of her. When I was ten and eleven she and Soledad and I used to go out to expensive lunches and get pedicures, reading gossip magazines and picking out our favorite dresses on each page. She’s got a successful photography business and trolls flea markets looking for cool antique rugs for her hallways; she bought me an incredible rose-quartz necklace when I turned thirteen. She’s never turned the full force of her dragon-lady tendencies on me, not exactly, but still I’ve always found her totally terrifying, the way I’d be scared of a she-wolf or a teacher I couldn’t impress. I can’t get over the notion that there’s something huge and important about me that she finds totally lacking.

  On top of which, until this morning she’s showed about as much interest in Hannah as one might show for memorizing the finer details of the Terms and Conditions agreement on iTunes. So it’s possible I’m not feeling a whole lot of Catholic charity toward one Lydia LeGrande at this particular juncture.

  “I think we’re busy that day,” I announce grandly, and my stepmother rolls her eyes.

  “I didn’t tell you a day.”

  “Well, Hannah and I have a very busy social calendar.”

  Soledad smirks, just the tiniest bit. “Reena.”

  “Sawyer’s been back for a day and suddenly she’s angling for a Grandmother of the Year Award? Seriously?” I scowl, pouring milk into Hannah’s sippy cup. “When was the last time you even saw her hold this kid? Never is the answer, in case you were wondering. Never.”

  “Never,” Hannah echoes cheerfully, tossing some peanut butter toast onto the floor.

  Soledad raises her eyebrows. “Reena,” she says again, more quietly this time. “Calm down.”

  “You calm down.” God, that makes me mad. “No. I say no. And why was she talking to you, anyway? If she wants to talk to me she can talk to me. I’m right here. I’ve been right here, if you remember, for the last two years.”

  Soledad nods slowly. I can’t tell if she’s disapproving or maybe a little impressed. “Yes, sweetheart,” she says after a moment, and presses a kiss to my temple before she goes. “I remember.”

  *

  My cell rings just as Hannah goes down for her nap, and I dig it out from the bottom of my bag, where it vibrates beneath a bottle of ibuprofen and a board book of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. It’s Aaron. I smile. “Hey, mister,” I say, wedging the phone between my ear and my shoulder as I dash down the stairs. I wave good-bye to Soledad and hurry out the back door. “What’s up?”

  “Corner of Las Olas and Third Ave,” he tells me, a delighted grin evident in his voice. “Suck on that.”

  “What? No way.” There’s this drag queen who looks like Celine Dion that hangs out around town, and if Aaron can prove he’s seen her, I have to buy dinner, that’s the game. Aaron buys dinner more often than not. “Did you get a picture?”

  “What do you think, it’s my first rodeo?” He laughs. “Of course I got a picture. Steaks on you, Chicken Little. You still around tonight?”

  I hesitate. Aaron is Shelby’s twin brother, the one who moved to New Hampshire before I could ever meet him in high school. Now he’s a boat mechanic at a marina on the Intracoastal and probably the best thing to ever happen to me, dating-wise. Still, this day’s not even half over and all I want is to sit, very quietly, in a room all by myself. “How’s tomorrow?” I ask, hedging.

  “Tomorrow works,” he says good-naturedly. “Take a drive downtown in the meantime, see if you can’t catch her yourself. We’ll go Dutch.”

  “How generous,” I tease—they
’re my rules, after all. “Listen, I’m working brunch, so I’ve gotta go, but—”

  “Yeah, yeah. No worries,” he says, and then, hesitating: “You okay, though? You sound … I don’t know. Something.”

  The thing about Aaron is that I could probably tell him, no problem. He’s a reasonable human, more easygoing than I’ve ever hoped to be in all my time on this earth. Odds are he wouldn’t be weird about Sawyer turning up out of nowhere. Odds are he’d be totally cool.

  Still, though. Still.

  “Tired,” I answer, which technically isn’t lying. “I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

  *

  “Where the hell have you been?” is the first thing Shelby says when I get into work ten minutes later, before Hi or How are you? or anything else remotely civil. She’s home for the summer from college in Massachusetts, where she’s learning to be a doctor and also to talk like the characters in Good Will Hunting. Shelby flew back to Broward in the middle of her freshman year to help me deliver Hannah, memorizing all the bones in the human body between my contractions and charming the nurses into helping her with her homework. She was eighteen years old, and she was my labor coach. Not everybody has a friend like that.

  “I had to put the baby down,” I tell her, glancing around the empty restaurant. We don’t start seating until noon on Sundays, and it’s only a quarter of.

  Shelby makes a face. “Uh-huh.” She looks at me pointedly as the phone on the podium rings, like she knows exactly what—exactly who—I’m searching for, and doesn’t know why I’m wasting her time trying to be slick about it. “Good morning. Antonia’s,” she says, all syrup, but she’s staring at me like my hair is on fire as she scribbles in the reservation book, and I stand there and wait for what’s next.

  “First of all,” she tells me once she hangs up, sex-kitten purr gone and replaced by her hybrid half-accent—Shelby’s lived all over the country, and you can hear it in her voice. “Super-Sperm Sawyer is in the kitchen with Finch at this very moment. So probably you should start there.”

  “Shh,” I hiss, eyes darting toward the back of the house. I open my mouth to explain, although in the end all I can come up with is “He was at church, too.”

  “Yeah,” Shelby says all attitude. “I bet.”

  I stare at her. “What does that even mean?”

  Shelby shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t like his hair. It makes him look like a cancer patient.” Shelby has never been one to reserve judgment. “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I didn’t know it was going to hit local news outlets so fast,” I say, sinking into an empty chair. I’ve had a headache for the last twenty-four hours and think longingly of the ibuprofen in my purse, though at this particular moment even finding a glass of water feels like an Olympic endeavor.

  “Oh, don’t even joke.” She stops, looks at me. “Did you tell my brother?”

  I roll my eyes. “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “Bullshit. Reena,” she begins, voice going soft and urgent. If she’s nice to me I’m going to burst into tears. I start to shake my head but here he comes though the swinging doors from the kitchen, and even after all this time the room seems to orbit around him, like he’s got a perpetual spotlight on him everywhere he goes. I think, suddenly: Risen from the dead.

  “Ladies,” Sawyer says gallantly. He’s got another Slurpee in his hand, enormous, pink and bright through the clear plastic cup.

  “Ladies?” Shelby snarls. Shelby has never been afraid of Sawyer. Shelby has never been afraid of much of anything, so far as I can tell. “Seriously? Two years later and the best you can do is ladies?”

  “I was going for casual,” he tells her, wrinkling his nose and smiling, half bashful. His mouth is faintly red with the dye. “Did I overplay? I overplayed.”

  “A little bit.” Shelby rolls her eyes. “I’m going to need a drink.”

  “Really?” Cade looks up from across the dining room and frowns, but doesn’t actually make any move to stop her. Cade’s always been a little gobsmacked by Shelby. “We’re not even open yet.”

  “Bloody Marys!” she says cheerily, heading for the bar. “I’ll make you one, too, Kincade.” She flips up the partition, nudges my brother out of her way. “What about you, Sawyer? Can I offer you a strong alcoholic beverage to help take the edge off being yourself?”

  Sawyer and I snort at the same time; he looks over at me, smirking, and holds up his Slurpee like a toast in my direction. “I’m good,” he says, eyes on my face.

  “Really.” Shelby’s eyebrows hitch as she reaches for the tomato juice. “What are you, off the sauce?”

  “As it were.”

  “A bartender who doesn’t drink anymore? How romantic.”

  “Yeah, well.” Sawyer nods and slides onto a barstool. “I’m a romantic kind of guy.”

  Oh, come on. Cade looks like he’s about to projectile vomit all over the restaurant and, frankly, I don’t blame him. I’m feeling a little queasy myself. I get up and head back to the office to punch my time card, then set about completing as many menial tasks as I can find: folding napkins and stacking glassware, refilling ketchup bottles, which grosses me out to no end. I keep my hands busy. I work. We’re slammed for brunch every Sunday, the wait skyrocketing to an hour or more, and once Shelby opens the doors it’s bread and smiles until midafternoon. When I finally have a minute to glance over at the bar, Sawyer’s disappeared into the teeming crush of bodies, like maybe he was never there at all.

  10

  Before

  “Who with?” was the first thing my father wanted to know when I told him I was going out for a bit after work—a fair enough question, seeing as how I’d spent the last eight months hanging out with no one so much as the pizza delivery guy from Papa Gino’s. He’d been chatting with the drummer in the band and he smelled like coffee and cologne, familiar; it was a smell I thought I’d miss when I left home.

  “Allie,” I blurted, not knowing I was going to lie until I did it. “With Allie.”

  I don’t know why I didn’t tell him. There was no reason to think he’d say I couldn’t go: Sawyer was his godson, after all, heir to his musical talent in practice if not by blood. Still, he’d have wanted to know the wheres and whys and the what are you doings, and a thousand other things I could only begin to guess. For now it just seemed neater not to say.

  “Allie,” he said slowly, slipping one bearlike arm around my shoulders. “There’s a name I haven’t heard in a while.”

  “Um,” I said. “Yeah.”

  My father shrugged, nodding at one of the waiters to comp a round of drinks. He trusted me. He’d never had a reason not to. “Have a good time,” he said, lips against my forehead in a distracted good-bye kiss. “Home by curfew.”

  “Yeah,” I said again. “Of course.”

  I found Sawyer in the back hallway, leaning against the door to the office and scrolling through his phone, vaguely bored. “Did you just lie to your dad about me?” he asked, smirking a little.

  “Yes,” I said.

  The smirk bloomed into a grin. “Well, okay then,” he told me, perversely delighted. “Long as I know where I stand. You ready?”

  “Sure,” I said, hoping against hope that he couldn’t tell what a big deal this was for me—that just the thought of being alone with him had my stomach doing the kind of gymnastic tumble that would have made Béla Károlyi proud.

  Sawyer held the back door open and I followed him across the parking lot to his ancient Jeep. He didn’t talk. I had no idea where we were going, and at this point it felt a little late to ask: I opened my mouth, hesitated, shut it again. Sawyer didn’t seem bothered at all.

  I glanced around the Jeep as surreptitiously as I could manage, beginning a list in my head as he hit the gas. Floor of Sawyer LeGrande’s car, a complete inventory: empty Snapple bottle, peach iced tea, check. Duke Ellington Live at Newport 1956, check. Dashboard: sunglasses, check. Tree-shaped air freshener still in the package, check. Mix
CD with Allie Ballard’s handwriting on the label, check.

  I closed my eyes for a second. Allie used to make me mixes all the time, songs for my birthday and Christmas and springtime and Tuesdays. My favorite was called “The Bad Behavior Mix”: sixty minutes of ridiculous hip-hop capped with Phil Collins’s “A Groovy Kind of Love,” presented to me on the occasion of our first high school dance. We ended up back at my house by nine thirty that night, making brownies with Soledad and shouting along with Kanye, doubled over in hysterical giggles.

  I didn’t mean to sigh, never even heard myself do it, but I must have, because Sawyer glanced over at me as he turned onto A1A, sharp features lit reddish by the neon lights on the dash. “Long day?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, letting him think that it was the monotony of service work getting me down and not the absolute hopelessness of being in this Jeep with him, his eyes glittering a hundred thousand adjectives beyond green. “Kind of.”

  Sawyer nodded. “You want ice cream?”

  I blinked. “Ice cream?” I repeated. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but it … wasn’t that.

  “Yeah, princess, ice cream.” Sawyer laughed as he pulled into a parking spot, not bothering to wait for my answer. “What did you think I was gonna offer you, like, some glue to sniff?”

  “No!” I said, although to be honest, he was probably closer to the truth than not. I unbuckled my seat belt and climbed out of the car. “No.”

  “You think I’m so sketchy.” He bumped my shoulder with his as we crossed the parking lot, so lightly I thought it was probably an accident. “Like, way tougher than I actually am.”

  I shook my head and looked away. “I really don’t,” I promised.

  “Okay,” he said, in a voice like he thought I was full of shit but didn’t particularly mind. “Whatever you say.”

  We ordered at the counter and I dug in my purse for my wallet, pulling out a set of house keys and my Lonely Planet to get to the bottom of the bag. Sawyer pushed my hand away. “I got it,” he told me, handing over a wrinkled ten to the cashier. He nodded at my book. “Planning a trip?”