“Yeah,” she whispers. “How do I forget how fantastic this place is?”
“Well, it’s an outdoor kind of fantastic. A wet outdoor fantastic.” I pause. “Um, I need a favor?”
She inclines her head. “Anything.”
I look to see where Jasmine is, and she’s in the other room, dragging around a mouse on a string for Yul Brynner to chase. In a quiet voice, I say, “Ben asked me out. Wants to go up to Poseidon on Friday night.”
“What?” she squeaks. “Phoebe!” Her face lights up. “That’s great.”
“Could Jasmine spend the night? We might be up late.”
“Oh my God, yes. We will have a blast!”
“Who will?” Jasmine asks, ambling into the room.
“Me and you. Want to spend the night with me on Friday?”
Jasmine opens her mouth wide. Her gray eyes are so bright it almost stings. “Here?”
“Where else?”
“Will I have to sleep by myself?” She gives me a side-eye, like I will complain, but what do I care? It’s kind of sweet that she still wants to sleep with an adult.
“No! You can sleep with me if you want.” Suze tilts her head. “I might cuddle you, though.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Cool, then.” She winks at me. “It’s a date.”
“Yay!” Jasmine leaps over to hug Suze. A mean little part of me twinges with jealousy—as with my grandmother, I sometimes want to be the One.
Even I know it’s petty. I should be grateful that she has so much love in her life.
“All right, then.”
“Who wants lunch?” Suze says, picking up her phone. “My treat. Sub sandwiches? Salads? Tacos?”
“Sushi,” Jasmine cries.
“Guess again,” I say. “No sushi around here.”
“There’s a whole ocean right there!” Jasmine gestures to the water.
I shrug. “Still no sushi.” Joel has wandered into the room. “Let’s let Joel choose.”
“Choose?” he echoes. He looks at Suze, and I see that he’s as dazzled by her as he ever was. She swore they were friends, but he was madly in love. I tried so hard not to see it, but it was plain.
“Lunch,” she says, and there’s something in her face, too, when she looks at him. Something lost, something confident, something full of—what? Love, heat, lostness.
Which would be weird, since they were never together. Suze returned to live with Amma after the baby was born, but Joel never came back after his stint in juvie.
But that looks like more than old friends. Maybe, I think, looking from one to the other, I got it wrong. Did Suze lie to me? A whisper of heat licks along my lungs, breathes on the lingering rift between us. Has she been lying to me all this time?
I think of the letter in my drawer, lying unopened for decades. I’m also guilty.
“Subs, tacos, salads?” Suze repeats. Her voice is silky and warm. Calm.
Joel shakes himself ever so slightly, as if he’s been off in another world. “Nah, that’s all right. I want to see if I can dig up some diagrams from this era, and I can do that best from the office.”
“I have a computer,” she says, and points to a room down the hall.
The air fills with a musky blue atmosphere, so thick I could move it around with my hands. “No. Thanks, though. I’ll be back later,” he says.
I look at Suze, who is watching him go. She closes her eyes, steels herself. I realize I’ve seen her do this a thousand times—shake it off, like a dog coming out of a river.
She picks up her phone. “If no one else chooses, I’m going with pizza again. Better pick.”
“Subs!” Jasmine cries. “I want egg salad.”
“Yum.” Something compels me to reach for Suze. I wrap my fingers around her wrist for just a moment, thinking of all the questions I should have asked long before now. She allows it for a minute, then gives me a false little smile and moves away.
I suddenly remember Suze from the summer between tenth and eleventh grade. That terrible, wonderful summer.
In those days, she wore this expression for all kinds of reasons I didn’t understand until later.
THEN
NIGHTS IN WHITE SATIN
SUZE
We were all three freshman in high school. Phoebe and Joel never had any kind of girlfriend-boyfriend connection, or if so, it was only in Phoebe’s mind. It was sometimes annoying how she mooned around about him, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.