Over dinner, Andy told her how, on his last visit home, there’d been another little boy trailing behind his friend, holding Mr. Sills’s toolbox and handing him the nails.
“Were you jealous?” Rachel asked.
Andy shook his head, smiling. “Maybe a little. Mostly I was glad another little boy got what he gave me.”
Rachel said she understood, and could remember feeling the same way going back to see Dr. Karen, her pediatric cardiologist, after she’d aged out of her practice and finding a line of other little boys and girls in the waiting room. “I guess I wanted to think I was her star patient, her one and only . . . but there are always more kids.”
“That’s very mature,” he told her.
“I’ve grown up a lot,” she said, and attempted to look mature, folding her neck down and furrowing her forehead. Maturity lasted for about three minutes, and then she told him the story of how she’d been at a playground, picking up one of her clients’ kids because the client was stuck in a meeting with her parole officer, and how the little girl had come racing across the yard, clutching a plastic bag and shouting, “Miss Rachel! Miss Rachel! Guess what I have in my bag?”
“I thought it was, you know, an art project or cookies or something, and she says, ‘No, it is my UNDERPANTS, because I accidentally got some POOP ON THEM!’ ”
Andy told her about Mitch, who could be counted on to miss almost every flight he was booked on. “Even if he’s at the airport, in the waiting area, he’ll be in the men’s room when they do the final boarding call.” She asked him about a meet in Jamaica (hot) and the half-marathon in New Mexico (also hot) and the marathon he’d run in Rome (hot, humid, and the hands-down worst course he’d ever run, with miles of cobblestones that made his knees ache just remembering them). The conversation slowed, the silences stretching, until they were just staring at each other. Vaguely, Andy realized that the restaurant was emptying out, that there were servers clustered around the host’s stand, that the candle in the center of their table had almost burned down to nothing.
“Any dessert or coffee?” the waiter asked, his pen hovering.
“Nothing for me,” Andy said automatically.
“He will be enjoying the apple pie,” said Rachel, smiling sweetly. She’d piled her curls on top of her head, and he could see the pale curve of her neck, glimmering in the dim candlelight. “And I will have a fork and a glass of port.”
“Port?” asked Andy, when the waiter was gone.
“Yeah, I know, it sounds like I’m the Grey Poupon guy, but I had a . . .” She looked down. She’d changed her clothes during the afternoon and was wearing a black skirt and a fancy white shirt with lace around the collar. “I knew this guy. He liked port. At first I was like, do you drink it before or after you polish your monocle? But it’s really good, especially with walnuts.”
Boyfriend, Andy thought. That was what she’d been about to say—I had a boyfriend who liked port. He felt his heart speed up and made himself breathe deeply, thinking, Be realistic, it’s been years, you know she hasn’t just been sitting around waiting for you, right? He realized that a part of him had hoped just that. When the port came, she lifted the glass and raised her eyebrows, but he refused to taste it, not wanting anything to do with Rachel’s other guys.
“So,” she said. They’d abandoned the pie—he’d had a single bite, and she’d pushed it away after a few of her own, saying, “Not hungry, I guess.” The waiters were gone; the hostess in her black dress was yawning at her podium. “We should get going before they kick us out.”
He wanted to ask her about the port-sipping boyfriend, about anyone else she’d dated, about Kyle Davenport, back at Beaumont. But was that fair? Hadn’t he dated other girls? The female runner, in her thin red-and-white shorts; the sweet-faced girl from his Gender and Globalization class senior year; one of his neighbors, a woman in her forties with a deeply tanned face and a tight, almost boyish body, who’d done her laundry the same night that he did and had invited him to stop by if he wanted a beer? If he and Rachel were meant to be together, it would happen. Meanwhile, he’d told himself, it was only sensible that they explore. Date other people. Be free. He’d told himself all of this, and he believed it, and then he pictured Kyle with his arms around Rachel’s waist, Kyle with his muscley tongue in her mouth, Kyle, naked and neckless, in bed with Rachel, his Rachel, and he’d punched his wall hard enough to pound a hole through it, the first thing he’d hit since Kyle’s face.