In the weeks that follow, we have more mornings like this. More nights like this too.
Phil's like a magnet, pulling Renée and I together for all sorts of absurd events like days on the beach and nights at the movies, and mostly his baseball games. He's made a habit of turning up early on days he doesn't have training, to help me make dinner, chopping vegetables and making silly jokes, flagging down Renée when she isn't home and keeping conversation light and flowing when she is. On several occasions, when not even he could pin her down, he stays and we spend those dinners alone.
We've started a simple routine. It seems a little invasive at first, prying, but I quickly grow to relish it. He asks me questions and I ask him some too. At first it's just polite chatter – he asks me how my day went and I tell him about a Trig test or an afternoon at the beach with Becca and Rache – but then it turns into something much more valuable.
Phil's a problem solver, it's just what he does, so when I let slip that the Wrangler's making a weird noise, I wake up the next morning to Renée's keys taped to my door and my jeep missing from the drive, and when I get home that afternoon, it's back in the in garage and the funny noise is gone. And after I bitch about the gas prices that are sapping what little funds I manage to save, the meter never dips below half tank again. And when I tell him about the trouble I'm having with this overly flirty, but otherwise really nice freshman, he gives me well needed advice on how to handle little Seth Clearwater and his unfaltering crush. And the thing I like the most about Phil is that I don't have to beg or chase him around, the way I do with Renée. He's always just there...doing. It takes a while to get used to, but when I do, I realize that I really like it.
He affects Renée too. He makes her more focused, more conscious of the other people around her and how she relates to them, especially me. And while things aren't perfect, they're just better. She's around more and paying a little more attention and there's edible food in the fridge more often and they've even gotten into a tiny little routine with the laundry – he scours the house, popping into every room and collecting all the dirty laundry, they wash together, they fold together, and when it's all done, I come home to a basket of neatly folded, clean clothes at the foot of my bed. And it's just really nice.
But pretty soon Renée tries to ruin it. She's developed this deathly fear of being 'tied down' and suddenly she's seeing all the things Phil does differently. Suddenly his care is controlling, his reminders are chastisements, and all the things he does just reminds her of all the thing she doesn't do. Then she's frustrated and yelling and calling him pushy and a tyrant and all the tings she knows isn't really true but has to say anyway. All the things she felt but never said with Charlie. All the things she regrets not saying when she should've, before things got too suffocating and there was nothing left to say but goodbye and then flee. Then Phil's gone for a week, and then two, and she's missing more than ever and I hate her a little for it, but I love him a little more because even though I don't see him, I can feel that he's around, I know he's there. Every few days I wake up to a full tank of gas and plump tires, and I get a call from a sports shop offering me that after-school job I desperately need.
By the end of the third week, Renée relents and they go away for a long weekend. When they return, there's a ring on her finger and one on his too, and they've got cheesy photobooth pictures of her in a white party dress with too much boobs showing and him in a t-shirt with a picture of a tux on it, and their smiles are so big they nearly eclipse all of the silly and all that love just shines through.
At the end of the night, after a fancy dinner to celebrate, Phil finds me at my desk finishing up an English essay and hoping he doesn't notice the smell that's probably lingering on my clothes and the sheets and just floating in the air. He apologizes for getting hitched without me and for stealing Renée away without my permission or presence. I want to tell him she was never really mine to give away anyway and that I'm not upset because even though things have been better between Renée and I since he came around, it certainly hasn't been anywhere near perfect or even remotely normal. She's my mom and I love her, but we've been living more like sisters or friends or maybe just roommates for such a long time that I can't act like I have any real claim to her.
Instead, I tell him that it's fine, 'Really', and I think that's the first lie I've ever told him. And though those kinds of lies are commonplace between Renée and I, it feels thick and dirty in my mouth when I speak them to Phil. I say I'm happy for them, and really I am, and then I offer to bake them a cake as a late wedding gift. But Phil doesn't buy it, which is a relief, and promises to rope Renée into another ceremony that I can be a part of, and pretty soon after, there's a date for this new re-wedding and I'm helping Renée with handmade invitations that are filled with sand and little pieces of seaglass we collect off the shore.
The wedding's small and intimate and kind of silly since they're already married but it's beautiful just the same. Charlie's invited but he doesn't show. James isn't, and he does. The wedding's on a Saturday, on a fairly secluded portion of the beach, and he spends the ceremony circling the outskirts, dressed in dark slacks and a cream linen shirt, his long blond hippie hair pulled back into a ponytail that sits at the base of his skull. I try not to pay too much attention to his lingering form and resolve to tactfully avoid him for the entire evening, but later there's a bonfire that gets pretty casual pretty fast and before I know it, he's next to me with his arm over my shoulders and his voice in my ear, and I don't want to cause a scene so I don't do anything to stop him.
Phil and Renée are mostly in their own little bubble until they make a toast, raising their glasses of champagne in my direction, and Phil quirks an eyebrow at me – curious about the stranger sitting next to me. Renée doesn't even recognize James, she's seen so little of him in the time we were together, and Phil's never met him, so it's not until Rachel and Becca's dad Billy whispers his name to Phil that things get crazy. Before I even know anything's up, Phil's on top of James and it takes Billy's son Jacob and a couple of Phil's baseball buddies to pull the two apart. By then James is spitting fire and cursing at me, yelling that I'm a fucking bitch and saying I'm so much more trouble than I'm worth, and then Phil's going for him again and cursing the way you'd expect a ball player to.
Once James is finally really gone, Rache and Becca flank me and tell me not to listen to a word he says 'cause he's a little chicken shit but it's kind of too late. I've already heard him.
Phil calms down eventually and the party resumes but it doesn't take long for him to find me and ask if I'm okay. This time when I say I'm fine, 'Really', he believes me and I let him 'cause it's their day, not mine. And when the party's over and we head home, I'm more than a little dizzy from all the glasses of champagne Becca and I drank while no one was looking and Rachel was busy flirting with that huge biker Paul.
Once Phil and Renée find their way to their room, Renée giggling like a schoolgirl when Phil calls it 'our room', I close my bedroom door and sneak out to find Becca.
I get to the Black's place and it's already dark 'cause Billy expects all his kids to be home at midnight – and they are – so he turns off all the outside lights. I climb through Becca's window at the side of the house, like I always do, and soon we're stuffing a wet rag under her door and I let her take the lead as I pull potent comfort into my lungs.
We stay hidden in her room, quietly puffing in smoke and sipping the hot whiskey she keeps hidden in her closet, and I think of how different she is from her siblings. I wonder why their mom's death affected them all so differently and how she gets away with as much as she does without getting caught, and if she blames her mom being gone and her dad being half a man on that boy Sam who crashed his old Buick into their minivan that day how many summers ago. And with that airy ease clouding my head, I just ask her.
She's not even offended. She just laughs and snarks that Ms. Clearwater thinks her dad's all man, and that he's too busy keeping Rache from flunking out of her senior year and Jacob from having his ass handed to him by some girl's boyfriend to go looking for shit to fuck with in her life. And then I'm so out of it I say Jacob's seen more pussy than a gynecologist, and she says not to talk about her little brother like I'm already tasting his cock.
It's such a weird thing to say 'cause I'm not even thinking about Jacob like that at all. It's so far off that I just stare at her for a moment, completely confused, and then she smiles that pretty lazy smile that slides across her face like melted butter and I know she's just kidding...kind of...probably. But probably she wants me to know her brother is off limits, so I say 'Fuck you,' and climb back out of her window, half-baked and all sorts of pissed off and hurt.
As I round the corner, I see Jake leaned against the house with a cigarette between his lips, and then he's in my face talking 'bout how the Chief's daughter smells like pot and how my daddy wouldn't like it, so I say 'Fuck you,' and then press my lips to his lips and slide my tongue against his tongue to spite them all.
I spend the next twenty minutes with my back pressed against the side of the Black's house with Jacob pressed against my front and his fingers in my hair and on my neck and on my waist and eventually in my underwear.
When I finally leave, I walk along the beach until dusk, humming to myself and wishing I had Becca's whiskey or brother to keep me company as I let the salty air replace the smokey smell just in case Phil and Renée picks today to raid my room for dirty laundry.
I get home just before dawn and fall asleep soaking in the bathroom. I wake up just in time to see the sun rise. The water's cold and my fingers look like prunes and this time when I drain the tub, I don't feel any better.
