“Neither have I.” I sipped my malt.
“Right. But for me it isn’t about girls.”
He paused and stared at me, his eyes widened as if holding his breath.
“Has it ever been?”
He started to grin. “I think . . . you know what I’m getting at?”
“Oh, Oliver.” I put my hand on his and squeezed tight. “You’re my best friend. This isn’t news to me. Nor does it have anything to do with just how weird I think you are.”
He burst out laughing, throwing his head back and flashing his usual grin at me.
His relief soothed us both in that moment. Yet the idea that he doubted my reaction even a little made my heart ache.
We arrived back at the house to find Marlow packing for another trip, this time to Los Angeles.
Her life had become a whirlwind, a tornado of change and triumph. The agent who signed her from the gallery photo was evidently a big name in the modeling world.
Oliver had the same unbridled enthusiasm for this news as I had for Henley fries. “He’s huge, Isla. Like he’s made some of the household names. Cindy Crawford. Linda Evangelista. Kate Moss . . . Gisele!”
Two months after signing, Marlow was flown to New York City for a photo shoot with Seventeen magazine. Her pictures were so impressive, the editor decided to use one of them for the June cover. It was bizarre seeing her face, an apple-pie teenage smile plastered across her mouth, staring back at me from the newsstand near the checkout aisle when I went with Moni to get the carrots Mom forgot.
Dad had bought ten copies and brought them home, tucked under his arm, and then fanned them on the kitchen counter. Mom flipped the chicken breasts on the stove and said nothing. Her eyes avoided the covers, as if she’d be looking directly in the sun if she did.
Marlow plucked up one of the magazines and held it, jumping up and down with delight. She stopped to run her fingers over the glossy cover and gazed at her image, as though she were looking at her own face for the first time, in awe, foreign to every facet of it. Was this really her? Did she really look like this?
She stood in front of her closet, legs spread out and hands on her hips, posing before pulling out a high stack of camisoles, all various shades of beige.
“How many camisoles do you really need?” I asked, running my hands along the sides of them.
“At the go-sees, the clients like models looking minimal.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Go-sees?”
“You know, when you go see a potential job, an audition? They want hair pulled back, little to no makeup.”
Oliver peered at her face. “Are you even wearing makeup right now? I can never tell.”
She playfully pushed his cheek away. “Ugh. I can smell the diner on you.”
“How many weeks of school are you missing?”
“So far only one. We’re trying to keep things on the weekends.” She began to place some of her other clothing stacks in the suitcase. She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “Sawyer home for fall break?”
His name made the corners of my heart ping.
I shrugged. “I doubt it. It’s a long way just for a weekend.”
“So you’ve talked to him?”
I nodded slowly. “Here and there.”
We’d had merely two conversations over chat. They had been brief, transactional. A cordial fulfillment in making sure the other one was “okay” at college.
“Go get ’em, kiddo,” Oliver said, holding his arms out to Marlow. She folded him in, towering over his small frame. She looked like the older sister coddling a younger brother.
“I’ll try.”
I could see her eyes shift to me. Waiting for me to make the same move, but I sat next to her suitcase and pulled the zipper up and down.
“I’ll miss you, Isla,” she said quietly over Oliver’s shoulder. Her lips looked so round and pillowy. When she said the word you, they puffed out like the top of an apricot.
She left with Dad in the morning for the airport, an ungodly early flight. The house was quiet when I came down in my T-shirt and robe, the coffeepot still on from Dad hurriedly making a cup before they left. I poured myself one and sat in the living room and looked up to see Sawyer’s window. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw the light on, like a single pane of fire. High school was not that long ago, but moving away had pushed it into another lifetime.
I heard the slow, searing sound of tires and thought maybe Dad was already back. But instead, a car pulled in Ada’s driveway. I didn’t recognize it and then realized it was a white taxi.
He quickly climbed out and paid the driver through the window. I opened my mouth, as though if I said something he could hear me. My robe fell to my sides, and I reached down to pull it back tight over my body. When I looked back up, he had gone inside. The lights turned on, Ada likely greeting him.
I turned away from the window and went to the kitchen. I didn’t like feeling like a voyeur to his life. Not with him. Dad returned and got ready to head to campus for a Saturday class. Moni came downstairs and shared a cinnamon roll with me before going out for her morning walk.
“Do you want me to go with you?”
I put my hand on her forearm. She looked especially small since I had gone away to college. I never realized how delicate she was until then.
“You think Moni is old lady?” She grinned and waved me off.
I folded my arms across my chest, watching her shuffle down to the sidewalk, her hands behind her back, a slight hunch.
