“Fin-nah,” Jack sings. He snaps his fingers in front of my face. “Hello!”
“Sorry, I—”
“Zoned out the way she does? You have been so, so… Like last week!” Jack asks, “How could you have missed that game?”
“Autumn and I were at the mall.”
“You never miss it when the Strikers are on TV,” Jack says.
And it’s true; I was annoyed with myself when I remembered that the game was on. St. Louis barely has a league, and I’m on a mission to support it. But Autumn was talking about how the mall was like a neglected garden with some patches dying more quickly than others. According to Autumn, the area around the movie theater is a sunny spot with good rainfall. We walked around and decided that kiosks were weeds, and the department stores were neglected topiaries.
My shrug has not satisfied Jack. He waits for me to explain myself.
“I’m going to break up with Sylvie when she gets home tomorrow.”
“I figured,” Jack says. Simple words, but his tone has the recrimination I deserve. “Then what?”
“Oh God!” Autumn moans as she dashes out of her cave.
“Autumn,” I say involuntarily as she heads to the half bath near the kitchen, the one recently vacated by Jack. I warned her she would be miserable if she had that fourth drink. It was her choice, but I still feel responsible. Plus, Jack made it, so unlike the previous three that I’d made her, it probably contained more alcohol. I am about to comment on Jack’s bartending skills when I see the look on his face and remember that I do not have the high ground. “I’m going to check on her,” I say.
“I figured,” Jack says again. “Then what?”
“Then we’ll hang out?” I try to make it sound flippant, as if I think he’s only asking about today, but I don’t fool either of us. We both know I’m avoiding the real question: How am I going to live the rest of my life in love with Autumn Davis with no hope of reciprocation?
two
“Go away,” Autumn says when I knock. She sounds like she’s dying.
“You okay?” I know what she’s going to say.
“Yes. Go away.”
Autumn hates being vulnerable. She inherited that from her mother, despite all her complaining about Aunt Claire’s veneer of suburban perfection.
“Okay.” I have the urge to wait outside the door, even though I know she wants privacy. I turn and ignore the sounds on the other side of the door. When I was lusting after her a few minutes ago, what I should have been doing was worrying about her hangover.
Sometimes it feels like Autumn brings out the worst in me. She makes me feel like the kind of guys I hate, the jocks who say things in the locker room that stun me. I tried, especially after I was an upperclassman, to intervene in those conversations, but often I was so floored by what I’d heard that I missed my chance to interrupt. A few times over the years though, when something was said specifically, vulgarly, about Autumn, my mouth spoke before the rest of me knew what was happening.
I was able to speak up those times, berate them for their disgusting observations, because I agreed with them. I wanted what they wanted or had seen the sight they recalled. Their words were a grotesque reflection of my own feelings.
Then, after the very last track meet of senior year, a freshman came up to me and said, “You’ve let Rick say worse stuff about other girls,” laying bare my hypocrisy.
I sneered at that poor kid. “Then I should have had higher standards before today. I’ll be gone soon. You can take over as chivalrous knight next year.” I slung my bag over my shoulder and stomped off. I can’t remember the guy’s name, but he’s probably going to remember Finn the asshole for a while.
In high school, Autumn only had eyes for Jamie. She didn’t want those jock jerks thinking about her, and she doesn’t want me thinking about her like that, then or now. She made that clear years ago. I get why she needed to make it clear. It’s for the best that she did. But someday if we talk about it, I will tell her that she could have at least told me that she didn’t feel the same way. She didn’t have to leave me the way that she did.
That’s probably what my mother meant yesterday. Aunt Claire is celebrating her divorce from Autumn’s dad, Tom, with a wine-themed weekend. She and Mom left Autumn and I cash and surprisingly few instructions for while they were away. When Mom hugged me goodbye yesterday, she whispered, “For fuck’s sake, kiddo. Talk to her.”