Page 19 of Into the Deep Blue

Now that May’s looped me into her circle of text friends, I can’t get out. She’s what I imagine a debt collector’s like, and it’s enough to make me never want to go into debt.

She texts me all the time. In the morning, in the afternoon, at midnight, and it’s a little cruel because they constantly get my hopes up, thinking maybe it’s Fiona, but it never is. I could have said something to her at the funeral, but I want her to be the one to reach out, especially after what went down at her house.

A reminder on my calendar pops up for Monterey this weekend. I click it off. We’ll be okay by then. We have to be.

I’m trying to seem functional, so I text May back, but it’s hard to be jazzed about all the stuff she keeps talking about. I mean, she sent me a picture of two kinds of shoes and asked me which ones were cuter. Why? Why would anyone ever ask me this? And worse, I answered her! I replied:

The blue ones

It’s like she’s trying to rein me back into this world of normal, and I don’t even mind. It could be working.

So, when she asks me what I’m doing today, I tell her about my driving test this afternoon to ward off any let’s-hang-out requests. But then she responds with a dozen animated emojis and insists on picking me up. I don’t argue because I’m hoping her incessant chatter will take my mind off my nerves that have been building since last night.

This day has been looming on my calendar for a while now. I purposely arranged for the test to happen before the Monterey trip. I never told Fi because she’d make it a big deal, and I didn’t want the extra pressure. But to May, I’m a blank slate, and there’s something so easy about being around someone who knows nothing about you.

***

The second I spot her black Acura rolling down my driveway, I swipe my hoodie from my desk chair and race down the stairs because I do not want her coming into this house. When I swing open the door, she’s standing in front of it, her fist raised, ready to knock.

“Oh. Hey,”

She steps back, surprised by my timing. She cranes her neck, trying to glimpse inside, but I quickly shut the door behind me.

“Hey. Is it cool if we head out? This is kind of a big deal. I don’t want to be late, you know?”

“Yeah, of course. You can give me the tour some other time!”

She waves it off, and we head back to her car.

Not. Likely.

And just when I think this couldn’t have worked out any better, I spot Dad’s truck turning into the driveway. We’re almost at her car, so in my head, we can make it out of here without any interaction.

Then May sees the truck.

“Is that your . . . gardener?”

It’s a pretty accurate description of Dad.

“Uh . . . no. That’s my dad.”

“Right!”

She swirls a finger in the general direction of our lawn like a wizard’s wand.

“The landscaping thing. I forgot.”

My hand is already on the passenger door handle, but it’s still locked. Dad’s door opens, and I shoot May a pained stare wondering if she’s ever going to unlock these fucking doors, but she just smiles.

“Aren’t you going to say hi?”

No, I wasn’t, but now I guess I have to. The smile I give her is so plastic it hurts. Fiona would call me on it. May seems oblivious.

She comes around the car to my side, beaming in my dad’s direction. Dad walks over and transforms into Mr. Charming.

“Who do we have here?” he asks.

“Dad, this is my friend May. May, Dad.”

May shrugs her shoulders, excited. She slides her yellow clutch under her arm and steps forward, her hand outstretched.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Bennet.”

She tucks a lock of her long black hair behind her ear, revealing a gold hoop earring. Her outfit could be straight out of a magazine with her navy puffy, short-sleeved blouse and jeans that look like they’re spun from gold.

Dad can’t hide his thrilled expression. It’s like he just won the lottery, or I won the lottery. May definitely looks like the kind of expensive prize some people pray for.

“And it’s lovely to meet you.”

He shakes her hand, beaming right back at her.

“This is great. It’s good to see you spending time with new people, .”

May basks in the compliment and doesn’t notice it’s a dig toward Fi.

“May’s Fiona’s best friend, Dad, so . . . ”

Now, it’s his turn to put on a plastic smile.

“How nice,”

he says to May.

“I only meant that it’s nice to see you expanding your circle. Different people can help get you on the right track.”

I hate him so much right now.

May nods in total agreement.

“So true, you’re only as good as the people you’re surrounded by.”

“That’s it exactly!”

Dad points at her like this girl knows her stuff, and May throws her head back, bashful, as if he’s just too much.

And this is some kind of hellish nightmare that needs to end.

“We really need to go,”

I say to May.

“Right! Well, it was so nice meeting you.”

She waves goodbye and finally unlocks the car doors on her way back to the driver’s side.

“Where are you headed?”

Dad calls out.

I glare at May, hoping to signal her so she won’t say anything, but it’s too late.

“’s driving test! Wish him luck,”

she chirps.

My back is to him, but I can feel his eyes searing into me. I open the passenger door, and he moves next to it before I get in.

“Already that time, huh.”

I can’t bring myself to meet his eyes, so I focus on his shoulder instead.

“Five months flies by.”

The truth is, five months was up two months ago, but he didn’t even notice.

“You put in all the paperwork and everything?”

“Yup.”

“Okay. I might be out later, but text me and let me know how it goes.”

He taps the car door frame twice.

It sets my blood on fire. He can’t even pretend to want to take me out or wait for me to get back. Fuck you is what I want to say, but when I catch his eye for a fleeting second, I decide he’s not worth my rage. “Will do.”

May starts the car as I duck inside. Dad waves as she guns it out of the driveway.

She didn’t notice the exchange. To her, I’m just a hapless guy who sucks at driving, not a guy who had his license suspended.

So, today is kind of huge for me. I’ve finally paid my dues. It’s scary when someone holds out a ticket for a second chance because all you can think about are the million ways you could blow it.

***

Being in a car with May is like being trapped in a pinball machine. She bounces from one subject to the next so fast, and I’m just trying to keep the ball out of the gutter. She starts by quizzing me over the most basic driver’s ed stuff. Then she cranks the music when Billie Eilish comes on the radio, giving a whole new meaning to car dancing. She grills me about my social media accounts, refusing to believe I have none, and gives me a lecture about why California is the only place I should consider going to school.

When we get to the DMV, my head is throbbing. Before I go in, May grabs the drawstrings on my hoodie and stares deep into my eyes.

“You’ve got this Bennet. Right?”

“Right.”

“Let me hear you say it.”

I say it with zero percent of her enthusiasm.

“I got this.”

“Damn straight!”

She brushes off my sweatshirt as if it’s covered in crumbs or something, even though I’m pretty sure it’s perfectly clean. Then she turns me around and pushes me forward, and it’s all just so wrong.

***

When I come out thirty minutes later, May’s sitting on the curb, furiously texting. She finishes doing whatever she’s doing before jumping to her feet and waiting with wide, expectant eyes. “So?”

I hold up the temporary license they gave me, folded into a tiny square.

“Uh, yeah, I got it.”

May jumps into my chest and wraps her arms around my neck, screaming. Her force sends me backward, and I kind of just pat her on her back because I don’t know what to do. It feels like we’ve leveled up in the video game of friendship, and nobody gave me the memo. She steps away from me and slides her orange bra strap back over her shoulder. I just want to get the hell out of here before someone realizes they made a terrible mistake and tries to take the license back.

“You did it! This is amazing. We need to celebrate. What should we do? Do you want to come to my place, and we can have drinks?”

That feels like exactly the wrong way to celebrate this.

“No, it’s cool. It’s not a big deal.”

“Are you kidding! This is huge. At least let me buy you a triple chocolate frappé at Starbucks.”

She seems hellbent on this idea. I don’t have the heart to tell her I’m not into drinking twelve pounds of liquid sugar, but at this point, the only way out of this funhouse is through.

So, I say, “Sure.”

“You’re driving, though!”

She tosses me the keys, and I instinctively catch them.

“No, really, I’m not insured . . . ”

“I trust you, . You’re not going to wreck my car.”

You shouldn’t trust me, I want to say. I mess up everything. But May’s already headed for the passenger door and rattles it wildly—my cue to unlock them. She beams at me, while I fumble with the key fob because it’s been so long, I barely remember how to unlock the doors.

It’s hard not to feel like Fiona in this equation. It’s like I’m living her life. I mean, are we the same person? May’s enthusiasm isn’t exactly contagious, but it’s nice to hang out with someone who sees nothing but sunshine and rainbows around every corner, someone who lifts the anchor once in a while. Still, she’s no Fiona—she’ll never be. Fiona’s like finding magic in this world.

It’s May standing next to her car, but I see Fiona staring at me through chestnut strands of windswept hair. Fiona, dropping her keys twenty times before she gets the doors open. Fiona, glaring at me for whatever smart-ass comment I lob her way. Fiona, laughing and then freaking out because her tears are burning her eyes, and she thinks she’s dying from eye cancer. So maybe Fiona and I are both anchors, but the bottom of the sea sure is beautiful. It’s fucking Atlantis. And I want to text her right now and say I miss you. I’m sorry. But May shouts.

“Come on, Bennet, let’s go! My feet are killing me!”

It’s the blue shoes.

We go to the Starbucks downtown. The one Roger drove his car into. Fi and I never come out this way. The quaint parts of towns are always the most congested. It doesn’t help that today was the farmers market, and all the organic produce hunters have flooded the coffee shop for their twelve pumps of whatever.

May seems disappointed when I don’t mimic her ridiculous order. Hearing her rhyme it out in all its sugary glory to the cashier was enough to make the words iced espresso leap from my lips.

She calls me boring. We can barely hear each other over the roar of small talk, so we take our drinks outside and walk down the sidewalk, still littered with stray lettuce leaves and stomped-on flower stems.

Her venti chocolate frappé is so massive, she needs to hold it with both hands.

“Would it be crazy to turn this day into a dinner thing?”

she asks as if the idea just came to her.

“I think my dad might want to do something. Just, you know, family.”

“Oh, true. Well, what about this weekend? You can come over for dinner. Meet my parents.”

Meet my parents? I don’t know what she thinks this is turning into, but it needs to end like now.

“Actually, I’m going to Monterey this weekend.”

She stops in her tracks.

“Monterey?”

“With Fi.”

She steps away from me as if some giant puzzle is coming together in her head.

“Fi said she canceled Monterey.”

This is news to me, and it blows to be hearing it from May. Then I wonder what other things she’s told May, but I’m not about to get in a contest over who knows what about Fiona. And it doesn’t even matter. She can cancel all she wants. It doesn’t mean it’s not happening. It doesn’t mean a damn thing.

“Well, it’s happening.”

I say, tossing my empty cup into a recycling bin.

She gets this funny look on her face like she’s figured out the secret to the universe.

“Wow. You’re in love with her.”

If it’s possible to feel slapped by a string of words, it just happened. And I don’t know what to say, so I just stand there with a surprised look on my face, which seems to be all the confirmation she needs. She dumps her drink in the trash, still half full, as if it soured.

“Why the hell are you out here with me, then?”

she asks, throwing her arms open wide.

It doesn’t seem like the right time to remind her that she’s the one who’s been texting me and who insisted on picking me up today. And this is just perfect—yet another person who wants to kill me. They can’t all be wrong. I must be some kind of giant asshole.

“You spent the entire night at the party flirting with me!” she says.

“I wasn’t flirting with you!”

I fire back.

I mean, so what? I followed her around the yard, we had a few laughs in the living room. She touched me a few times. I may have gotten her a drink.

And it hits me like a ton of bricks.

Finally, I see it through Fi’s eyes, through May’s eyes, and it doesn’t look good. At all. But what can I say? I used to go out—a lot. I talked to everybody. At parties, my hands have slid across endless chains of shoulders and waists. None of it ever meant anything. Old habits took over so quickly, and I didn’t think.

I didn’t think.

“Are you going to tell her?”

May snaps me from my daze. There’s something mildly threatening in her tone.

Arguing with May is not a road I want to go down, so I shove my hands deep into my hoodie pocket and say.

“Can you please keep your assumption to yourself?”

“Assumption? That’s how you’re going to play this? You can’t bullshit a bullshitter. I’m not going to keep this a secret. She’s my best friend.”

“Is she? Because I don’t think you’ve been ‘best friends’ for a long time.”

That really pisses her off. Her mouth drops open, and she’s got that enraged girl fire behind her eyes like she’s about to shred my asshole into a million pieces. She doesn’t yell, though. She gives me that condescending superiority shit instead.

“We’ve been best friends since sixth grade. So what? You’ve had a few heart-to-hearts with her, and you think you know her better than I do?”

She’s talking to me like I’m the world’s biggest idiot.

“Yeah. I do. She’s not the same person you used to know. People change.”

“People don’t change. Not really. That’s why you’re so scared, isn’t it? That you’re still the same guy you always were. You know, she lost her students because of you.”

She’s baiting me. And as much as I try to resist, she’s got me hook, line, and sinker. “What?”

My obvious descent into insecurity refuels her.

“Fi thinks it’s because of the counseling, but it’s a small locker room.”

Her intensity rises with each step she takes closer.

“I heard the parents gossiping. It’s you. One of their stupid kids went to some house party you had and got really messed up. They dumped her because she hangs out with you.”

So. Many. Parties.

“But you’re out with me right now!”

“They can’t fire me! I’m a state champion. So, now you’re going to what, ? Morph into some romantic hero? Show up on your white horse and marry her?”

This is more than anger. She’s ready to bury me right here on the sidewalk, and for some stupid reason, I keep answering her.

“Yeah, maybe I will.”

Obviously, I’m just serving her words straight back to her, but it’s such a misfire. She’s the worst person to be saying this completely insane shit to.

May lets out a guttural guffaw.

“You’re going to marry her? You haven’t even—You can’t even—”

She raises her hands in front of her, stopping herself.

“Okayyy. You’re delusional, dude. I’m outta here. Good luck with that.”

She storms off toward the parking lot, and I can’t help but wonder how many visits to the farmers market end this way.

Thankfully I don’t have a car because I would Roger the shit out of it right now.

And damnit, May is wrong.

She’s wrong about Fiona, and she’s wrong about me. I know Fi more than she ever will, and I know who May is, too. She won’t tell Fi a single word about this conversation because it’s embarrassing. There’s no glory in it for her. She’s banking on me keeping my mouth shut, hoping I’ll just disappear, so they can slide back into their shitty hierarchy of friendship. Which means she doesn’t know me at all.

Because Monterey is happening. People do change. May is wrong about all of it.

She has to be.