Page 42 of It’s All in How You Fall
Good God. “Oh come on, you only forced down those vegetables to look good to a certain soon-to-be college sophomore.”
Olga catches my drift faster than Nat can deflect it. “Artemis came with you girls today?”
“Not only did she come with us, but she and Nat hung out the whole time,” I inform them. Dad and Olga exchange a glance that makes me so satisfied, I dig in further. Sorry/not sorry, big bro. “Even shared a canoe instead of doing stand-up paddleboarding with the rest of us because they wanted to beclose.”
My brother blushes. “Not like that.” Mmm-hmmm. “It’s not like we’d hang out with the three of you, that’d be weird.”
I gesture to the table. “Yes, because spending time with family is so unusual.”
As Nat scoffs, Olga touches my wrist. “How is your back, Caroline? Stand-up paddleboarding can be… strenuous.”
Oh.Nat sinks his teeth into another poor bird limb while I’ve got the full weight of both Olga’s and Dad’s attention on me.
“It was fine.” And it was. “Didn’t even really think about it.”
Olga takes a sip of her wine. “Have you been doing anything else?”
This is the perfect opportunity to tell them about my time with Alex—what we’ve tried so far, what we still have yet to test out, what I think I’m good at. Instead I go vague, that strange feeling about sharing my time with Alex still thick and slimy in my chest. He didn’t respond when I sent him Sunny’s number at lunch, and that makes me squirm with another layer of unease for some reason. “Running, yoga, stretching. Might start lifting weights, if that’s cool with you, Dad?” The weight bench and squat rack in the garage are technically Dad’s even though Nat’s the one who set them up and uses them the most.
“Oh yeah, sure,” Dad says.
Nat drops another wing bone to his plate and it immediately tumbles down the side and stains the white tablecloth that was a bad choice but very Martha Stewart of Dad. “Tried to get Caro to go out for cheerleading but she’s too good for us.”
I expect Olga to shoot that idea down for me—she’s had more than one girl come to the gym to rehab after being dropped by a meathead like Nat—but instead she reaches across the table and covers my hand with hers. “When the time is right, you’ll figure out how you want to use all that talent of yours.”
Suddenly there’s a little something in my throat and I just blink at her and nod.
Someone has strung tiny white Christmas lights up the trunks of all the trees of the park, giving our everyday recreation pocket a fairy-tale feel. I have no idea who to thank for this magic, but I love the new addition.
I spread out the quilt Nat and I hauled over here to watch the city fireworks display. Like most everyone in the neighborhood, we come here every year. The park isn’t huge—still there’s probably a hundred people or so, blanketing the grass as it slopes down toward the lake and away from the basketball and four-square courts.
Dad and Olga are settled in on a quilt next to ours—which Nat is hogging, by the way, his phone screen two inches from his face as he thumb-types at a rapid speed… I suppose his charm switch is currently in the off position. At least physically. Anyway, both Dad and Olga are perked up, squinting through the still-milling bodies to find Elena and her boyfriend, Chad, who said they’d meet us here.
I pop to my feet. “Which way were they coming from?” I ask, knowing that they’d planned to walk over after dinner with Chad’s parents. Wherever that may have been. “I’ll go see if I can find them.”
“Would you, Caroline?” Olga smiles and her teeth are bright white in the near dark. “They should be coming from over there.”
She gestures in a general northeasterly direction—up the hill, across the basketball courts, toward the rosebushes and the street that I’ve walked or run on almost every day this week. There are plenty of people in that direction, clumped in groups, and it’s just dark enough that it’s tough to truly make out anyone with absolute certainty from our current vantage point.
“No problem.”
I start walking that way with a laser focus on each couple because I know if I look hard enough I’ll find Elena—probably along with someone else I know—and, accordingly, I don’t even make it to the basketball courts before I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn around, half expecting Elena finding me first,orNat, ready to chide me for showing him up in the helpful child department.
Instead I get Alex.
“The fireworks are this way, Caro.” He’s got a smile on his face bright enough to make me question the light. It’s possible he looks perfect at all times of day.
I sock him on the shoulder. “I know that! I’m trying to find somebody.” Alex’s brows scrunch together in the low light and suddenly I realize he thinks I’m being purposefully vague. Like I’m looking for a guy or something. I wave my hand and rush out an explanation before that train in Alex’s head can leave the station. “Olga’s daughter, Elena, and her boyfriend, Chad.”
“Chad Chianti?”
“I, uh…” I haven’t met Chad. I sweep a hand in the general direction I was walking, searching faces and shadows for Elena. “His parents live this way. I assume he’s older than us because Elena’s in college…”
Wow, I sound ill-prepared.
“Well, if it is Chad Chianti, he and his girlfriend are over there.” He points over his shoulder toward a section of lawn where someone has set up a volleyball net. That is indeed Elena talking to a dude who most definitely could be Chad. Alex reads the confirmation on my face before I can say it, adding, “His parents’ house backs up to ours.”
A light bulb goes on over my head, because that sort of relationship totally makes sense given the direction I was walking, and Alex laughs. I turn around, ready to go their way, when I see Elena whip out her phone, screen bright in the night. She grabs Chad and begins angling toward our blankets. I suppose Olga got to her before I did, and I didn’t even find her—Alex did.
