“Is it?” he says blandly. “Strange.”
“So you haven’t moved on to the anger phase yet,” I say.
He shrugs. “I don’t know if I have that phase in me.”
“Really?” I say, surprised. “I’ve been camped out in mine for weeks . . .”
“Getting mad never fixes anything,” he says.
“Neither does moping.”
“I’m not moping. I just like sad music.”
Looking at him, I have to believe it. Minus a few rough days and one tense phone call I overheard through his bedroom door, Miles has seemed more or less totally fine, even cheery since the breakup. Whereas I’ve been living in a low-grade state of constant misery.
He turns off the road, toward the fluorescent glow of a drive-in burger joint.
On either side of the squat building, a row of parking slots nose up against menus mounted to speakers. Between the two rows, a handful of blue metal picnic tables are arranged in the cement courtyard. The place is hopping with suntanned, beach-waved teenagers, sitting atop tables and queuing at the optional walk-up window.
None of the food runners carrying the red plastic trays looks a day older than seventeen. I wonder if Peter and Scott and Petra hung out here in high school. The place has a distinctly fifties look, everything faded to suggest it’s always been here, the meeting point for the hungry, drunk, and horny since time immemorial.
Miles cranks his window down. “What do you want?”
“I’m a tourist here,” I say. “What do you recommend?”
“Chocolate-cherry milkshake and Petoskey fries,” he says.
I nod approval, and when the very crackly voice comes over the speaker, he orders the same thing for each of us.
“So what happened with the drunk guy at the bar,” I ask him.
He studies me for a few seconds. “Oh. Him,” he says when it clicks. “He was just trying to order another flight, despite no longer being able to stand. Happens all the time. Just needed to defuse it.”
“And how did you do that?” I ask.
“Told him if he got into the cab we’d called for him, we’d comp his last two drinks, and not ban him from the premises.”
“Wooow,” I say.
“Wow what?”
“You laid down the law,” I say, “without your smile ever cracking.”
“Things go smoother if you don’t let people get a rise out of you,” he says. “If you give them control over how you feel, they’ll always use it.”
“Finally, I see your cynical side,” I say.
He smiles, but his jaw is tight, and the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “It’s not cynical. If you don’t give other people responsibility for your feelings, you can have a decent relationship with most of them.”
Honestly, that’s not far off from thoughts I’ve had. Only for me, it’s never been about controlling the feelings themselves. I wouldn’t know where to begin with that. It’s more, controlling the expectations you have for certain people.
If a person lets you down, it’s time to reconsider what you’re asking of them.
In the dining courtyard, the rowdy teenagers start gathering their things, shaking their trays into the trash before piling too many people into a couple of junkers parked side by side. A minute later, a girl in denim cutoffs and an EAT AT BIG LOUIE’S shirt comes out of the burger shack with a paper bag and two paper cups, little teal outlines of Michigan printed in a patterned row around them.
Miles watches my reaction to the first sip. After the initial hit of brain freeze, the taste registers and I let out a little moan. Only then does Miles take his own sip and stuff his milkshake into the cupholder. “You know what we should do?”
“I don’t want to sob to Bridget Jones together,” I say.
“At most, it was a slow trickle of tears,” he objects. “And that’s not what I was going to say, but if you’re going to just shut me down like that—”
“No, no!” I grab his elbow. “I’m sorry. Let’s hear it. What should we do?”
“We should go to the beach,” he says.
“Isn’t the beach closed after dark?” I say.
He squints. “Which beaches have you been going to?”
I shrug. “The one across from the library? With the food trucks and the ice cream pavilion and the sand volleyball courts.”
“That tiny little beach all the fudgies go to?” he says. “With the teal Adirondack chairs? That sand’s probably not even local. Bet it’s trucked in from Florida.”
“What’s a fudgie?” I ask.
“Daphne,” he tuts. “Daphne, Daphne, Daphne.”
“Let me guess: I’m a clueless fool,” I say.
