Alex, Approximately
Page 69

He is who is.
I am who I am.
Exactly who those people are couldn’t really be identified in an online profile or captured correctly in all our written communication, no matter how honest we tried to be. We were only showing one side of ourselves, a side that was carefully trimmed and curated. He didn’t see all my hang-ups and screwy problems, or how long it takes me to pluck my eyebrows every night. He doesn’t know I tried to pick up a gay whale-tour host because I thought it might be him. Or that I can’t tell the difference between a male and a female cat . . . Or about all the dirty GIFs I’ve laughed at with Grace, or the number of churros I can put away in one sitting before it starts to get embarrassing for the churro cart vendor, because he knows I’m really not buying them for “a friend.” (Five.)
God only knows what I haven’t seen of him.
So, you know, whatever. If he’s nice, great. If not, no big deal. In my head, I’m holding my head high and wearing a Grace-inspired T-shirt that says I’M JUST HERE FOR THE CLOSURE in big, bedazzled letters.
I arrive at the beach a little more than half an hour before the film starts. They’re showing it, ironically enough, near one of the first places I remember when I came into town: the surfers’ crosswalk. Only, the whole area is transformed tonight, with one of those huge rotating double spotlights that’s pointed toward the sky, announcing to the world, Hey, movie over here! They’ve also lit up the palm trees along Gold Avenue and hung film festival banners in the parking lot across the street, which is jammed with cars. I manage to squeeze Baby into a space alongside another scooter before following a line of people who are swinging picnic baskets and coolers, heading toward the giant white screen set up in the sand.
Alex was right all those months ago when he first told me about this: It looks really fun. The sun’s setting over the water. Families and couples are chilling on blankets, and closer to the road, a row of tents and food trucks are selling burgers and fish tacos and film festival merchandise. I head for those, looking for flagpoles. All the palms are lit up, so I figure a flagpole must be spotlighted too, right? But when I’ve walked the entire row of vendors, I can’t find it. No flags near the movie screen either. It’s a pretty big screen, so I check around back, just to make sure. Nope. Nada.
This is weird. I mean, Alex lives here, so he knows the place. He wouldn’t just tell me to meet him somewhere so specific if it wasn’t there. I check my film messages to make sure there isn’t anything new from him, and when I don’t see anything I head back the way I came, all the way back down to the end of the concession row to the back of the seating area. That’s when I spot it.
The flagpole is all the way up a set of steps, on a wide natural stone platform—a lookout over the ocean, where the surfer’s crosswalk ends.
Right in front of the memorial statue of Pennywise Roth.
I sigh, and then snort at myself, because really, no matter what I do, I can’t escape him. And if Alex is the nice guy I’m hoping he is, we can both have a laugh about it later.
Weaving around blankets, I make my way to the lookout and climb the stone steps. I’m getting a little nervous now. Not much, but this is surreal. The lookout is fairly spacious. It’s banded in a wood railing with some built-in benches around the ocean side, where one older couple is gazing out at the sunset. Not him, for sure. I gaze up at the Pennywise statue. I’ve seen the photo of this online, of course, and driven past it, but it’s weird to see it up close in person. Someone’s put a Hawaiian lei around his neck; I wonder if it was Mrs. Roth.
Someone’s sitting on a bench behind the statue. I blow out a long breath, straighten my shoulders, and lumber around ol’ Pennywise. Time to face the music.
“Hello, Mink.”
My brain sees who’s in front of me, hears the words, but doesn’t believe. It recalculates and recalculates, over and over, but I’m still stuck. And then it all comes rolling back to me, out of order.
The video store.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Him caring about the Maltese falcon being stolen.
Roman Holiday.
White cat at the surf shop.
Churro cart.
Is it wrong to hate someone who used to be your best friend?
Cheating girlfriend.
The Big Lebowski.
Watching movies at work.
My coworker, the human blunt.
The Philadelphia Story.
Mr. Roth . . . Xander Roth.
Alexander.
Alex.
My knees buckle. I’m falling. Porter leaps up from the bench and grabs me around the waist before I hit the ground. I kick at the stone below my feet, like I’m swimming in place, trying to get traction. Trying to get control of my legs. I finally manage it. When I do, I go a little crazy. It’s that stupid coconut scent of his. I shove him away from me, beat him—hard—landing blows on his arms until he lets me go in order to shield his face. And then I just fall to pieces.
I sob.
And sob.
I curl up into a ball on the bench and sob some more.
I don’t even know why I’m crying so hard. I just feel so stupid. And shocked. And overwhelmed. Sort of betrayed, too, but that’s ridiculous, because how could that be? Then I stop crying and gasp a little, because I realize that’s exactly how Porter must have felt when he found out.
He sits down on the bench and lifts my head onto his lap, sighing heavily. “Where are you at in the screwed-up-ness of it all? Because there are all kinds of layers.”
“We basically cheated on each other with each other,” I say.
“Yeah,” he says. “That’s pretty messed up. When I told my mom, she said we pulled a reverse ‘Piña Colada,’ which is some cheesy 1970s song about this couple who write personal ads looking for hookups, and end up meeting each other.”
“Oh, God,” I groan. “You told your mom?”
“Hey, this is some crazy shit. I had to tell someone,” he argues. “But look at it this way. We ended up liking the real us better than the online us. That’s something, right?”
“I guess.”
I think about it some more. Ugh. My dad knew. He was trying to tell me with all that talk about blinders and horses. Another wave of YOU ARE THE WORLD’S BIGGEST IDIOT hits me, and this time, I let the wave wash over me, not fighting it. The older couple that was hanging around on the lookout has left—guess a bawling teenage girl was ruining their peaceful sunset view—so we have the area to ourselves for the moment, and for that, I’m grateful. Below the lookout, hundreds of people throng the beach, but it’s far enough away that I don’t mind.
“You didn’t know until game night at my house, right?” I ask.
“No.”
That makes me feel somewhat better, I suppose. At least we were both stupid about this until he heard my nickname. Oh, God. He watched The Philadelphia Story with me on purpose. He knew then, and he didn’t tell me. My humiliation cannot be measured. “Why?” I ask in a small voice. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was bewildered. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t believe you’d been living out here the entire time. Couldn’t believe you . . . were her—Mink. At first, I thought you’d been screwing with me, but the more I thought about it, I knew that didn’t fit. I just freaked for a while. And then . . . I guess I wanted to hold on to it. And I wanted you to discover it on your own. I thought you would. If I dropped enough hints, I thought you would, Bailey—I swear. But then I started thinking about why you didn’t tell me—Alex—you moved out here, and how it felt as though you’d been lying to me . . . and I wanted you to come clean.”