May 16, 2008

I shut Emma’s trunk carefully. We have it packed to the brim, and I didn’t want to risk slamming the door down on something. The car is all packed up now, full enough so she won’t be able to see out the back.
Emma stands by the side of the car, looking down at her hands, playing with a ring on her finger. She hasn’t said much since dinner yesterday. I think the reality was setting in on her that we were on the cusp of a summer apart. A lot can happen over the course of a summer—I know that as well as anyone. I’ve tried to reassure her that nothing’s going to change for us.

She clung to me in bed last night. Ordinarily, when we sleep together, we’ll roll apart from each other, tired of each other’s smell, or cramped in one another’s arms. Last night, she coiled her arms around my arm and over my chest, her legs wrapped around mine. I ran my hand over her back, over and over again, until I heard her breathing change, and I knew she was asleep.

I have my car parked right behind Emma’s. The blue bomber is looking pretty filthy, with spring mud coating the tires, bird droppings on the hood. I think I’ll wash it when I get back to Shermantown.

I put my hands on Emma’s hips, looking right down, into her hair, longer than it has been over the last year, but still shorter than the shoulder length it reached when I first got to know her. “Hey,” I say.

She looks up at me, her eyes a little glassy.

“We’re going to be together soon, right?”

She nods.

I’m heading home to stay with my parents for a few weeks, probably help out around Dad’s office when the summer boredom starts to kick in, or when I need the cash. I figure I’ll visit Emma at least once in that time, or maybe have her come to see me. Then I’m off to camp. I’m not sure what my schedule’s going to look like then.

I feel my phone shake in my pocket. Taking it out, I see Matt’s name on the caller ID screen. “Hey.”

“Presto, you home yet?”

I smile. “Na. Gonna hit the road in a minute, though.”

“Well hurry up, man. You, me, Chang and Joey—we’re going out for wings, then hitting up The Palace tonight.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Emma looks down again while I’m on the phone. When I end the call, I take her hand in mine.

“Looks like I’ve gotta get going.”

“Yeah,” Emma says, and she gives my hand a little squeeze. “I should go too. I want to get in before dark.”

There’s no way of saying everything I want to just now. I want to tell her everything she means to me, and how I already can’t wait for next year to start, so we can be together again. I want to tell her I’ll stick with her through anything. I want to tell her that she is the one for me—that I think someday that ring on her finger is going to be one I gave her.

I run my thumb over the ring for a second. There’s no point in saying it all now. Not when I’ll be on the phone with her tonight. And the next day. And I’ll see her before long.

I settle for, “I love you.”

Emma puts her hands over my shoulders, then gets up on her toes to kiss me. I bend to her, wrapping my arms around her waist, hugging her tightly.

“I love you,” she whispers back.

Next thing I know, I’m in the car. Emma drives behind me, through campus. I like being able to look in the rearview mirror, and see her there. She stays in sight until we hit the highway, heading in opposite directions.

I get to thinking that I’ll always be with Emma, whether I’m passing her a note in class, or holding her hand on a walk around campus, or waking with the soft bounce of a mattress, when she wakes up before me.

There’s no point in being sad.

I let my foot sink on the accelerator, shifting lanes on the highway. I leave another year at Taylor behind me.

May 15, 2008

“You sure it’s worth taking that thing apart?” I ask, watching Chang unscrew the second leg of his coffee table.

“Never going to fit it in my trunk if I keep the legs on,” he says, depositing that second leg in his laundry basket.

“Right,” I nod, stuffing some notebooks in my backpack. Brad left last night, and Chang’s heading out tonight, which, of course, means I need to be out too. I’m packing up what little I have, then heading over to stay with Emma until tomorrow. I’ll pick up the rest of my stuff from the band’s house tomorrow, before I leave for the summer.

“I’ve gotta say, lame as it sounds, I liked having you here these last few weeks,” Chang says.

I shrug. “Couldn’t help feeling like I was intruding.”

He waves his hand. “Don’t get me wrong—I liked living with Brad this year. But it’s good for us to get some space sometimes, and I feel like having you here kind of did that for us.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that.” I force the zipper of my bag shut. I should probably just throw away some of these old notebooks. I have trouble throwing away that sort of thing, though. “I guess that bodes well for me living in the house next year.”

“Should be a lot of fun,” Chang nods, “just like this summer.”

I am looking forward to the summer, and getting to spend some real time with Chang and Matt. I think it’ll be like high school, when we’d see each other every day. We wouldn’t have separate lives we were telling each other about between games of basketball, or across the poker table, but, instead, one common experience.

Just thinking about it makes me think I was missing out for most of this semester, living alone. I had the staff, and I had my residents, but it wasn’t really the same. Cramped as it was to live with Chang and Brad these last few weeks, I can’t help thinking that this was what college was meant to be.

It reminds me of living with Cameron for the first half of this year—how strange it was at first, but the way I came to know her—the artist, the ping pong player, the girl who loves basketball.

I look to my little plastic basketball hoop, now hanging on the back of this door. It’s traveled with me to every room. I remember last year, when it hung in the common room of our suite. It’s such a silly little thing, and yet I remember shooting with Mike or Chang on a lazy afternoon. I remember shooting with Dave.

Dave was the one who bought the hoop, spring of our freshman year. It was a distraction from our studies, a way to clear our minds. I remember talking about girls, talking about class, talking about music.

I miss Dave a lot.

I take down the hoop, collapsing the basket so it folds over on top of the backboard. Behind me, Chang folds over the flaps of his last box.

“I’m gonna pull the car around,” Chang says. “Figure we can load it up now, all right?”

“Yeah,” I look down at the hoop, setting it on top of my duffel bag, “I guess it’s time.”

May 14, 2008

Emma cracks a smile at the end of The Off Beats’s rendition of “These Are Days.” She said she didn’t want to come to the show at first, but she kept talking about the concert and the group all afternoon, and into dinner. Finally, I proposed that maybe we should go after all. I think she may have needed me to be the one to suggest it—to say, out loud, that I was interested.

Veronica smiles, standing on stage. She sang the last solo and sounded as great as ever. I hadn’t seen her in close to a year. Her hair is shorter now, only reaching as far as her chin. She moves a bit of that hair behind her ear.

Claire takes the microphone and smiles at the crowd. She’s been emceeing the show all night, looking completely at home in that role. “OK, this is our alumni show,” she says. “So at this point, I would like to ask for any Off Beats who haven’t joined us already to come up for our alumni song.”

I put a hand on Emma’s back. She flinches but doesn’t move from her seat. She takes hold of my other hand, on my lap.

Some other girls join them on stage, exchanging hugs, mostly with the other alumni and people like Claire, who have been there for years. Claire looks out into the crowd. I wonder if she’s looking for Emma.

The girls start in. A woman I don’t recognize starts the solo for “On My Side.”


We first grew up when we began
To learn from our mistakes
And letting go and moving on
To find the ones we’d make


Emma loosens her grip. By the time I look, she’s up, and is starting to walk toward the stage. Claire smiles when she sees her.

Veronica takes the solo.


The days and nights go by
And nothing’s been the same
These times are full of changes
By any other name


Veronica’s still beautiful—I can’t deny that. It reminds me of why I fell for her in the first place. I think of our affair, and how exciting it was at the start, to know that there was something between us, and then to have that first kiss. I remember the night Emma caught us. I remember when we didn’t have to sneak around anymore. Then I remember visiting her, and the way she ended it all.

Veronica was right, of course. We were in different places in our lives, and what were the chances of things working out for us in the long term?

I think of Teri, and how that all turned out wrong too. I remember days of hunting for ghosts, and the way she visited me in the hospital every day after I got beaten down. I remember finally getting together on New Year’s Eve. Then I remember fighting all last New Year’s, leading to a break up on Valentine’s Day.

Veronica hands off the mic to Emma.


Things will always change
Life will always keep us guessing
When did we lose our innocence?


I’m not sure why I should think anything will be different with Emma this time around. We’ve both seen the way things can go wrong—we’ve broken one another, and then gone and made the same mistakes with other people.

There’s something different this time. There has to be.

Emma hands off the mic to Claire.

I swat at a fly, buzzing by my ear. It’s only in turning my head at that moment that I see there’s a man standing behind me, in the aisle. We’re far back enough where the girls couldn’t see him in the dark of the auditorium. From where I sit, there’s no mistaking it.

It’s Jones.

His eyes shift from the stage, down to me. He raises a finger to his lips, before looking back at Claire. I turn back around.


The things we used to know
On this road that we all ride
When I look back will I remember
Time being on my side?


Claire sings those final words alone, as the girls collapse on her. The group is all smiles and hugs as the crowd cheers.

When I look back Jones is gone.

I turn back to the stage just in time to see Emma take a bow.

May 13, 2008

I glance at my watch, and spot that I’m a couple minutes late for my meeting with Professor Benjamin. I have to admit that timeliness hasn’t been my strong suit at the end of this year, between the election, and losing my job, and everything with Emma, and the trip to New York.

Along the way, I pass Jones’s old office. The space is still empty, no name on the door, no sign of his old posters.

I knock on the door at Benjamin’s, peeking my head inside. “Hey there, Professor Benjamin,” I say.

“Preston,” he says, looking up of from a stack of papers on his desk, “come on in.”

I glance at his bookcase as I head in. It’s kind of a neat collection—not just a bunch of literary criticism and anthologies, but everything from Agatha Christie to Cormac McCarthy to Stephen King.

“Thanks for coming,” Benjamin says, pushing back from his desk so he can stand and reach out his hand.

“Yeah, no problem at all,” I say, shaking hands, before I take a seat on the leather chair on my side of the desk, as Benjamin walks around. “But I was wondering why you wanted to see me. I mean, was that last assignment—”

“The last assignment was interesting.” Benjamin takes a seat in the chair next to me. “You didn’t really follow the instructions—it was just supposed to be a revision.”

“Yeah,” I run a hand through my hair, remembering everything I wrote about Emma, “I guess my mind just got caught elsewhere.”

“Every good writer’s been there,” Benjamin nods, “and your piece was good. Not polished, but I think you got at something you were reaching for all semester. There was a real honesty there.”

I shift in my chair. “Well, thanks.”

“That piece confirmed what I’ve been thinking,” he says. “You’ve got some real talent, Preston. I’m teaching another section of this non-fiction course in the fall. I wanted to know if you would be interested in being my teaching assistant.”
“Your TA?”

“It can be as involved as you want. Some TAs just run photocopies and make up the workshop schedule. I think you could lead some discussions, though. Maybe we’ll even split the class in half and just let you run with part of the class if you want.” He shrugs. “You can make what you want of it. Could be a good experience, though. Give you some more experience with workshopping, for the good of your own writing, and get you some facilitation to prep you for grad school or teaching.”

“Well, I’m flattered.” I feel my heart start racing. It’s sort of like the feeling I had when Res Life offered me the RA job this winter. It’s a feeling of possibility, my mind racing ahead of itself, into what this could mean.

“You don’t need to give me an answer now,” Benjamin says. “You can think about it, and I don’t need to know until midway through the summer.”

I think about what I wrote in my piece about Emma—about making the wrong decisions, and waiting too long to correct them. About finding my self hesitating again, when I already knew what I really wanted.

“Na, I don’t think I need time,” I say. “I’ll take the job.”

May 12, 2008

“You all right?” I ask, eyeing Emma over my tuna melt.

Emma rubs at her eye with one hand, setting her salad fork down with the other, as she sits, slumped in her seat at The Lighthouse. “Yeah. I’m just exhausted after this weekend.”

I scratch my head. “Taking it’s toll on me too. I was nodding off in class before.”

“It was fun, though,” Emma says, recovering the fork, and stabbing it through a tomato slice. “I’m glad we did it.”

“Me too.” I try not to smile too widely. I’ve had trouble with that lately.

“Hey guys.” She’s only a few feet from us, but I don’t think either of us noticed Claire until she was right upon us.

“Claire, how’s it going?” I ask.

“I’m good,” she says. “Not as good as you guys, though, I bet. That game was insane—I can’t believe you got to go.”

Emma nods, her head slumping far enough where I think she might fall asleep right on the spot. “It was pretty great.”

“Well, hey, I don’t want interrupt your lunch here,” Claire goes on, turning more squarely to Emma. “But I did want to let you know that we’re having our last Off Beats show Wednesday night.”

“That’s cool,” Emma says, turning to her bottle of water.

“I know that you left the group behind and all,” Claire continues, “but I wanted to let you know because we decided to make a big deal out of this show, and we’re inviting back all of the alumni we can get a hold of, so it should be really fun. And I think the girls would really like it if you could come.”

I raise my eyebrows. “That sounds like it’d be pretty neat.”

Emma looks down, stabbing into her lettuce. “I’ll think about it.”

May 11, 2008

When I close my eyes, I see champagne.

I see the arc of the stuff falling down, as men a foot taller than me dump it over one another. I see it bubbling over the brims of glasses. I see Matt drinking some straight from the bottle he somehow got his hands on, then pouring some over Julie’s chest, acting like it was an accident.

I open my eyes as our plane hits some turbulence. The night before was like a dream—partying in the nicest hotel suite with Mike and a few of his teammates, as they celebrated their NBA title. Of course, Mike disappeared after an hour or so, off to be alone with Pepper, I have no doubt.

Emma snores softly, her head against my shoulder.

I remember kissing her outside, on the hotel balcony last night. There was an amazing view of Manhattan to our side, but it wasn’t long before all I saw was her, letting the champagne run through us, pouring ourselves over one another.

Chang’s flipping through a magazine to the other side of me. His left forearm is coated in smeared ink. In a bubbly haze, I remember him getting various Knights to autograph his arm last night.

Some of Cameron’s hair hangs over her seat in front of me. She may have gotten more out of last night than anyone, settling in a quieter corner of the suite with the two of the team’s assistant coaches when he stopped by, and talking for better part of an hour.

Emma shifts a little, nudging and nestling her head into me, as if I’m a pillow she can’t get to crease just right.

I close my eyes again.

May 10, 2008

“Hey, Alicia?” I say, stopping at my seat in the lower level of Madison Square Garden.

Alicia looks up. I think it takes her a second to recognize me, and you can sort of tell when her smile goes from put on to sincere. “Hey—it’s Preston, right?”

“That’s right,” I say. “Glad to see you here.”

“Well, I think might got the seats for his cheering section altogether.” She pauses, looking to her side. This is Chris, Karen and Ray—they’re friends from home.”

I reach out a hand to shake their hands. Ray—an old guy, I take to be an uncle or something, keeps his eyes fixed on the court, not acknowledging me. “Nice to meet you. I’m Preston—Mike’s friend from college.” I take a look down at my ticket, to be sure I’m sitting in the right place—one seat removed from Alicia and her friends. “Somebody else coming?”

She looks down. “He sent a ticket to Pepper.” She looks back up, smiling weakly. “I don’t think she’s going to come.”

“Right,” I nod slowly.

A horn sounds, and players from both teams jog out onto the court to shoot around.

*

Nearing the end of the first quarter, the game is tied at 23. One of the Knicks gets fouled, and I spy Shawn Vetter whispering something into his ear as he walks to the line.

Looking to Mike, I see his eyes fixed on the two of them as well.

The shooter drains his first free throw. The players stretch out arms, eyes already on the basket as prepares for his second shot. The ball bounces hard off he backboard, heading right for Shawn Vetter’s waiting hands.

Vetter’s in the air to meet the ball, but Mike cuts in between, slapping the ball away. He recovers the ball, and while he’s falling out of bounds, sends it sailing toward half court. Kevin Hardaway catches the ball off of an awkward bounce and throws up a long distance three point shot as the buzzer sounds. The shot rattles home to give The Knights an early lead.

Emma and Cameron rise to their feet, clapping in the face of the crowd’s boos. Emma has taken to antagonizing the Knicks fans sitting around us.

*

Kevin Hardaway has to sit out most of the third quarter, because he’s in foul trouble. Mike makes a valiant effort to keep the Knights in the game, but the rest of the team can’t seem to do much. By mid-way through the fourth quarter, the Knights are down ten. They call a time out.

The Knights huddle is right beneath us. Most of the guys look tired, but the coach looks animated, pointing at his clipboard and barking out commands.
“It’s not looking good, huh?” Emma asks.

“There’s still a lot of time on the clock,” Cameron says. “When Hardaway’s back in, they can make a run.”

Hardaway is back in after the time out, and, as if on cue, scores off of a give and go play on the Knights’ first possession. He picks the ball off in the post on the other end, and brings it up himself, racing ahead of the pack, before he dishes it off to Mike for the lay-in, to cut the lead to six.

The crowd is growing raucous, yelling for the Knicks on offense, chanting for them on defense. The Knicks score off of a lay up. Mike converts a three point play. The Knights get a defensive rebound, and Hardaway nails a three pointer at the other end, to narrow the gap to two. The Knicks call time, with fifteen seconds on the clock.

To my right, I see Matt and Julie stand up, to let someone past. The person in the aisle doesn’t budge, though, looking right down at the court.

Her hairs a little longer, and even so, she’s got her head hidden under a beret. After a few minutes, though, I recognize Pepper.

I try to make eye contact with Mike, to let him know Pepper’s here. He’s focused on the coach.

Half the Garden stands alongside Julie, Matt and Pepper, as a horn sounds, and we enter the final moments of play.

The Knicks inbound at half court. They pass the ball around, trying to kill time, but the Knights get their foul. Cameron buries her head in her hands. It’s only then that I realize it was Hardaway who had to take the foul. Down two, with nine seconds left in the game, the Hardaway has fouled out.

The Knicks player makes one of two free throws. To my surprise, the Knights don’t call time out, rushing the ball up court, and scoring a quick lay-up, as the clock winds down to five seconds. The New York crowd falls into a stunned semi-quiet.

The Knicks have trouble inbounding the ball, and matters get worse for them as Mike steals it before they get past the half court line. He dribbles toward the hoop at a furious speed, and goes up for a lay up.

Just as the ball is leaving his hand, one of the Knicks clobbers Mike, sending him to the ground. The balls drops in off of the glass, and Mike is headed to the line. He has one shot, with two seconds left on the clock. The game is tied.

The Knights coach calls a time out.

“Check it out,” I hear Chang say. He’s pointing toward one of the big screens by the scoreboard. A camera has settled on us. Chang, Matt and Julie ham it up. Pepper stands, her eyes on the court.

Looking back to the court, I see Mike look at the screen, then up toward us.

The coach barks at Mike in the huddle. Mike gives him the occasional look, but each time, he’s pulling himself away from Pepper. She doesn’t move an inch.

Mike keeps stealing looks at Pepper, even as he heads back out onto the court. The ref passes him the ball. He bounces it twice, his head turned ninety degrees still looking at her. Pepper’s eyes are fixed on him.

She cracks a smile, and then she nods.

It’s the most movement I’ve seen from her today. Mike nods in return, though, bouncing the ball once as he squares up to the basket. He takes his shot, and it hits nothing but net going in.

The New York crowd falls flat as Emma and Cameron scream to one side of me, Alicia and Chris to the other.

The Knicks are out of time out. They inbound the ball, but a full court press is on. They fire a shot from just past half court, but it’s an air ball, meaning Mike and The Knights have one.

Mike shoves past a sportscaster and camera man, heading into the stand. I think it’s a wonder the New York fans aren’t pummeling him the way they’ve jeered him all game, and I imagine he’s insane to go out amongst them.

The camera broadcasting to the big screen follows Mike as he gets a running start, heading toward us. He leaps in the air, jumping higher than I’ve ever seen him go, to grab the bars dividing our section of the arena from the floor. He pulls himself up until he’s at eye level with all of us.

Mike can only get half over the barrier before Pepper’s there to greet him. Beads of swear pour from Mike’s face, but Pepper collapses her hands into his hair, pulling him in for a kiss.

Just one row among thousands, we stand up to give them a standing ovation.