Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [12]
“Hellooooo!” I look up to see Megan, Megan!, standing by our booth.
“Meg!” I shout, and dig my elbows into Jack to push him out of the booth. “Meg! Oh my God, it’s good to see you!” I throw my arms around her neck, and out of the corner of my eye, I can see her shoot a perplexed look at Jack, who just replies with an “I have no idea what the hell is wrong with her” shrug.
“Er, Jill, I saw you three days ago,” she says, breaking our embrace, even as I try not to let go. That’s right, we did! God, how I missed my single life, when Jack and I painted the city, out every night, the rush of undiscovered opportunity always beckoning.
“I know, I know,” I say. “But you just look . . . you look glowing.” Her eyebrows dance downward, and my own eyes widen. Have I given anything away? Crap. I usher her into the booth, and plop back down on the other side of Jack.
“So . . .” I rub my hands together. “Let’s order! And then let’s share. What’s going on with you? How have you been? Where’s Tyler? I’ve missed you.” I reach my hands across the table to clutch hers and smile.
“Seriously, Jill, what’s going on? You’re starting to freak me out.”
“How so?” I ask, and take a deep gulp of water: I’m suddenly parched.
“Well, for one, you’re talking very, very fast. For two, you’re acting like we don’t do this every other week. For three . . . ,” her voice drifted. “You look different. Did you self-tan or something?”
“I know!” Jack chimes in. “I said the same thing.”
“I did nothing,” I reply, as my blood rushes to my chest, and I hope that my hives don’t run flush the way they’re prone to during fits of anxiety. “You guys are ridiculous!” But even as I say this, I can hear my pitch is off a decibel and the words come out like race cars.
“It must be the meds talking then,” says Jack, just as Tyler makes his entry, and I bound from my seat to nearly tackle him. After Megan’s death, Tyler spiraled downward into an abyss of steely blankness, as if Megan were the only color in his life, and without it, there was only white, black, and gray. He numbed his pain with booze, and slowly, wrenchingly, pulled away from all of us, isolating himself in an angry cocoon where none of us could reach him and he didn’t want to be reached.
But now, here he was, so vibrant with his ruddy cheeks and his strawberry hair and his paunch that Megan playfully rubbed when she (re)broke the news about her impending pregnancy, and said, “Pretty soon, I’ll actually be bigger than him.”
I try to feign surprise at their announcement. I push glee into my voice and ask the waitress for another round of beers (“None for her,” I kid, as if the poor struggling actress who bused tables for a living was in on the joke), and I imitate the revelry that imbued our lives that night years ago, even though I knew that it would be so short-lived, too short-lived. But why not? I think. Why not savor this moment and drink it in as it’s meant to be swallowed? Let Megan and Tyler taste this happiness because soon enough, in six short days when she’d find blood in her underwear and cramps that haunted her from the inside out, they’d be stripped of all that. And then, four years later, when Meg is asleep at the wheel, they’d be stripped of so much more.
So I drink like there is literally no tomorrow, as if I don’t know what that tomorrow would bring, and I bask in the glow of finding my second chance. I slip my hand under the table, and I weave my fingers into Jack’s, and I try to forget that what happens next might already be fated, that we might all be fated to make the same mistakes over and back and over again, and that my coming back, my second chance might not be a second chance at all.
FIVE HOURS LATER, I stare at the ceiling, long after Jack has passed out beside me, and listen