Strikeout on that front. There had to be an easier way.
Nobody spoke as plates were filled and everyone sat around the kitchen table. Rachel seemed to be taking extra time ladling out her precise portion of tikka masala. “I haven’t been to Bushwick since we played PS 480 the first weekend in February. You weren’t there.” Her voice seemed clenched. Had Rachel asked me to come see her play basketball, and I hadn’t? And early February landed smack in the black hole of memory.
“What about a dance space near Myrtle Avenue?”
“If you went clubbing in Bushwick, it wasn’t with me.” Yep. Clenched.
Holden saved it. Yes, there was definitely a new elegance to him, as he deftly switched topics and began telling a story about his NYU dorm’s resident advisor, Raphael, who slept every night rolled up naked in his oversized raccoon coat. Which was fine till the night of the fire drill.
The story even got Mom laughing.
I sensed the whole table breathing easier. Holden had brought some star power, for sure. He’d really changed. Usually more of a listener and question-asker, Holden worked the room smoothly tonight, flirting just enough with Mom and jousting over politics with Dad—but then backing off, whew, before Dad got what Mom called “stentorian.” It had been so long since I’d seen Holden and Rachel together, and I loved watching their old cousin routines, especially how Holden stood up to her in all the right ways, teasing her about her “Executive Decisions” and her general bossiness, but never taking it too far—the way Claude often did, so that she got sensitive and masked it by being prickly.
And when it came to me, Holden was careful. He made a point of not discussing our reconnection while I was at Addington. Nobody had a clue that we’d been in such close touch. When Holden answered Smarty’s tossed-off question “So, Hold, are ya seeing anyone?” with an equally casual and joking “Do Canadians count?”—a direct reference to Cassandra Atwater that only I got—I attempted to strike a mood between curious and relaxed.
Inwardly, though, I crimped up with resentment. Why had Holden even acknowledged Cassandra? Why did he want to prove to everyone that he’d left me behind? Why did I care? Did I care? I was so confused. Kai’s golden-brown eyes were like lanterns, beaming me back to earlier this evening.
“You should bring Cassandra by for the next Friday Folly,” I said instead, trying to sound like the chilled-out ex-girlfriend I wasn’t sure that I was, as I stood up to pick through the near-empty container of korma. “And this time I won’t space out. This time, amazingly, I will actually be here.”
“Mmm,” said Holden. “Could be fun.” But I couldn’t tell if he really thought so.
It wasn’t until after my parents had gone up to bed and Rachel had slipped away to the kitchen to polish off the saffron rice pudding and not-so-secretly check the Facebook status of her brand-new-big-fat-crush-who-she’d-actually-known-since-sixth-grade, Jake Weinstock, that I let myself drop the cool-ex mask a little. Downstairs and tucked into the sectional while Holden scrolled the On Demand menu, I caught the wave of a hundred other Friday nights, back when we were a couple.
“So where is Cassandra hiding out tonight? Did you ask her to Oktoberfest already?”
Holden kept his eyes on the television screen as he reached back, grabbed my knee, and squeezed—a horse bite, my gramps used to call those.
“Cut it out! It was a friendly question!” I gasped.
“Not yet. I’ll ask her when I’m ready.”
“Does she know you’re at my house?”
“So what if she does? Or doesn’t? It’s not like something’s going on with you and me. Right?” As Holden looked at me, I felt chastened, like a puppy in need of a tap on the nose.
“So you’re saying it’s serious with Cassandra?”
“Enough—you’re worse than Rachel. There’s nothing holding it back, I guess.” He paused. “Now watch me change topics—what made you go all the way to Bushwick this afternoon?”
“I missed my stop. But I’d been there last year for some dance thing or party that I didn’t remember. And so I got out, thinking I’d catch some kind of déjà vu.” But instead I’d met Kai. Which was more private, even, than my quest for the past—and a lot more difficult to explain.
“Listen, I don’t want to sound obnoxious. But just for the next coupla months, I think your folks’ll be two cats in the washer every time they can’t find you. You know they were at the theater when your car went over the bridge? Their cell phones off. By the time the play ended, you were already in the OR.”
“Right, I know.” But I hadn’t known. Or I’d forgotten.
“It sucked, Ember. To see them going through all that anxiety tonight of wondering where you were—especially when you had no real reason to be out late. I just feel like I had to say something to you.”
“You’re right.” Except it had started with a reason—I’d wanted to chase down Anthony Travolo. The ghost of Anthony Travolo. But obviously I didn’t want to confess that part of it. Not to Holden, anyway. I took a breath. “I’m glad you said something. I am.” I grabbed the remote. “Also, you never change channels when it’s The Notebook. This is no joke the best movie ever.”
“You’re such a girl.” Holden made a face, but then sat back, regarding me as if I were an odd and interesting puzzle to solve. Which maybe I was for him now. He was scratching at his beard scruff as if attempting to get it off. “I can see your folks are different now,” he said. “I don’t think parents ever totally recover from conversations about who should receive their daughter’s eyes and kidneys.”
“No. That job went to another set of parents.”
Holden looked a little startled. I could feel my face getting warm. Did I sound too detached, or “emotionally miscalibrated”—the way Dr. Pipini had said I might, when dealing with personal issues? But I made myself keep talking. “I’ve decided to start pointing to the elephant in the room. I re-remembered what happened. Anthony Travolo.”
“Yeah. I found that out from your doctor, back when I visited you at Addington. That you’d sort of…lost…that information.” Holden spoke carefully. “How do you feel about it now?”
“Outside of crushed by guilt? I don’t know. It goes back to that same thing, trying to remember who I was then. Or who he was.” I knew I had to say it, though it pained me. “Holden, what if I’d been doing drugs that night or something else that I can’t remember? Messing around, driving too fast, or talking on my phone? What if the whole tragic thing was just completely because of me being stupid or reckless?”