Page 34 of Anywhere with You
“Poor Melissa.”
“She never liked me back. She dated a baseball player all through high school. I lost track of her after that.”
“She’s not on Facebook?” I asked.
“No, and I hate how weird I find that,” Cara said, grinning. “How can you be our age and not at least have a profile with a picture that’s ten years out of date?”
“That is mysterious,” I agreed.
“What about you, Honey?”
“I am not mysterious. I post crap constantly. If there’s a video out there of someone throwing cheese slices on a baby’s head, I’ve reposted it.”
Cara just stared at me.
I sighed. “I’m afraid I was a late bloomer. I was nineteen, and it was a woman I worked with at Subway.”
“No one at all before that?”
“Passing infatuations, mostly with celebrities and book characters. But then there was Tamara.”
“Pretty name.”
“Beautiful woman. I mean, the kind that could stop traffic, except…”
“Except?” Cara prompted.
“She liked to drink vodka and blue Kool-Aid.”
“So what?” Cara asked, amused.
“I mean, that’s all she drank. All day. She kept a thermos with her at the register and refilled it during her lunch break. She’d already had her license suspended, so she rode home with whoever could take her.”
Cara listened, wide-eyed.
“So, one night, that was me, and she was completely hammered by closing. She passed out in the passenger seat of my car, and I couldn’t get her to wake up long enough to tell me her address.”
“Dear goodness. What did you do?”
“What could I do?” I shook my head, pushing the last of the rice onto my spoon. “I took her home, to my house, to my parents’ house, I mean.”
Cara stared for a second, then laughed out loud. “What did your parents do?”
“My dad threw Tamara over his shoulder and carried her like a firefighter. My mom got her water and aspirin and got her tucked into bed. In my head, I was like, this is the beginning for us. She’s going to wake up, be so grateful that I took care of her, and love me forever.”
“Don’t tell me. It didn’t happen that way.”
“She snuck out in the middle of the night, and I never saw her again.”
“Wow,” Cara said.
“Her tongue was always blue,” I said a little wistfully.
“What’s Tamara doing now? Do you know?”
“Oh, she’s in prison.”
“You’re kidding,” Cara said, in a tone that said she hoped I wasn’t.
