The Truth Is a Theory Read online

  “Tess?” Zoe said. “You’re in love with Tess?”

  Gavin reached across the table and took her hand. For the first time in his life, he wanted to handle this honestly, to do the right thing, for himself and for Tess, but also for Zoe. He wanted to make sure she was okay, although he had convinced himself that once she understood the situation, she would be okay with it, possibly even happy for him. And happy for Tess of course. “Zo, I’m so sorry. I never meant this to happen.”

  She jerked her hand away. “How did it then?”

  Gavin sighed. “I don’t know. We kind of ran into each other about a month ago, over spring break. When you were in St. Bart’s. I didn’t even recognize her at first. I mean, I didn’t know her very well at school.”

  Zoe sat motionless, her long legs crossed and her manicured hand around her wine glass. Her eyes were fixed on his face.

  “She was in New York on an interview for a summer job. We literally bumped into each other in a bar afterwards. She was with some friends, no one I knew, and I was with some people from work. Like I said, I didn’t really recognize her. She recognized me though… ”

  Based on Zoe’s shudder, that was the wrong thing to say. Now he had made it sound as if Tess had come onto him; as if it was Tess’s fault.

  “But as soon as she introduced herself, I realized she was your friend, and I felt like an ass for not recognizing one of your friends. So I invited her over to our table for a drink.” Too much detail, he tried to wrap it up. “And, I don’t know. It just kind of happened from there.” Another mistake. “Not that night, I mean.” God, he was an idiot. No wonder he usually just kept his mouth shut during breakups. A thin line of sweat trickled down his spine.

  Zoe was not going to let him sum it up so fast. “So… what? You guys made plans? You asked her out on a date?”

  “It wasn’t a date. Just dinner. She was going to be in town for a few days…” What could he tell her? That he had fallen in love with her that night? Love at first… conversation? He had seen Tess around Erikson before of course; she was one of Zoe’s friends. But besides Allie, he didn’t really know her friends—they’d always hung out at his frat. Zoe had never complained, and he got the sense that she didn’t really care anyway. He couldn’t picture her sitting around in flannel pajamas pouring her heart out to a bunch of girls over milk and cookies. Zoe kept herself so closed off. That restraint fired him up—every single time—but he didn’t know her very well with her clothes on.

  Tess was different. The funny thing was that he would never have looked twice at her; he had never looked twice at her. It wasn’t that she was unattractive, she just blended in.

  He had invited her to the table in the Hawaiian-shirt way he invited everyone everywhere; his sweeping invitation wasn’t meant to be poignant, not at all. He assumed after a drink she would fade away into the crowded bar. But then Tess had fixed her big, brown eyes on him and hooked him somehow, made him ignore her aggressive blue eyeliner and look at her once, twice.

  The wide-eyed way she gawked at him wasn’t new. Most girls, most guys for that matter, looked at him that way. He had practically been crowned prom king in kindergarten, hoisted on the shoulders of his peers (and some teachers) as he rode through the halls of adolescence. But this applause, this insta-power made him feel phony. Not all the time—and he certainly wasn’t knocking it—but the idea that he was a con man often nibbled at his edges, just out of bounds, making him peek around the cafeteria to see if anyone noticed that he wasn’t as shiny as they all believed.

  But that night there was something besides adoration in Tess’s eyes, a raw vulnerability mixed into the awe, and her open, agenda-less gaze grounded him, made him feel real, solid.

  Tess had stammered, said a little too loudly, “So, Gavin Keller, I’ve always wondered, what’s the worst part about being you?” She blushed a deep red, but held his gaze.

  He remembered that, he remembered being taken aback by the question, and interested in it. He knew the answer—and there wasn’t just one—but he had never said any of them out loud before. He wasn’t about to give voice to them then, but he was intrigued. He looked at her a third time and pulled a chair over.

  Zoe snapped him back to their conversation in Carmichaels. “Come on Gavin, say it. You asked one of my closest friends on a date.”

  Gavin wanted to dispute the “closest friend” comment, but he bit his tongue. “It sounds terrible, it is terrible. Zoe, you know I care for you. I’m so sorry.”

  “Care for me?” Zoe was no longer sitting still. Her legs were uncrossed now, and both feet were planted on the floor underneath the table, as if at any minute she was going to leap up and knock it over. He braced himself for the crash. “You care for me? You’ve cared for me for two and a half years? Oh, you’re cold, Gavin.”

  Now Gavin was incredulous. Was she in love with him? It wasn’t possible. She had never shown signs of it, and he knew the signs.

  She leaned across the table; her thoughts had snagged on something. Her light blue eyes drilled into his, and she spoke slowly, enunciating each word. “Wait a minute. You said a month ago. You said that this all started a month ago.” She bit her lip, then her words fell over each other and her hands gripped the table, her dark red nail polish bloodlike against the white-knuckled grip of her fingers. “What’s been going on since then? You’ve been dating her behind my back? You’ve been cheating on me?”

  “No, I haven’t been cheating on you. We haven’t been together at all. Not at all.” He wanted that part clear; they had only kissed. It was killing him, but that’s how Tess had insisted it be until he had talked to Zoe. “She went back to school. We’ve talked a few times on the phone.” A few hundred. “Neither of us wanted to do that to you. I mean, you’re important to both of us, and I didn’t want to say anything over the phone, I wanted to talk to you in person. This was the first time you could get to New York.”

  Her features folded in on themselves as she struggled to absorb the “we,” the “us” that no longer included her.

  Gavin wanted to hug her, to comfort her in a way he had never had occasion to before. He was about to get up and try when suddenly, as if she had flicked a switch, Zoe was serenely composed again. The anger and upset were gone; her affect was again unreadable. Gavin knew that he had witnessed something rare: Zoe’s inner feelings. Her anger, briefly on the table like a paper napkin crumpled in a fit of rage, was now in check, smoothed out again in the shame of exhibition. She sat back in her chair; her voice was butterscotch, her face placid.

  “You expect me to believe that you fell in love with her after one or two nights? That you guys haven’t fooled around?” She sneered. “Gavin, I know your track record. You forget, I was the one you cheated with not too long ago.” She lifted her glass. “Tess? Come on Gavin, you’ll be bored in five minutes.”

  She slugged down half of her wine and stood up, reaching for her leather overnight bag. “You just threw away the best sex you’ll ever have.” She put her sunglasses on. “Enjoy Cindy Lou Who. I’m betting you’ll be back.”

  She spun on her heel and maneuvered through the tables of insignificant New Yorkers with the liquid grace of a swan—spine straight, head high, gaze focused down the street.

  She didn’t lift her hand to wipe her tears until she had rounded the corner and was out of sight.

  ————

  Back at school, Tess, who had been worrying about the scene in New York all day, was holding court with Allie and Megan, finally spilling her halcyon, Gavin-loves-me secret as if a levee had broken. With her cheeks blushing pink, Tess detailed the whole story, starting with how she had wanted to crawl through the floor when he had no clue who she was. She had to introduce herself—“I’m Tess… Zoe’s friend?”—and with a blustering apology, Gavin had ushered her over to his table for a beer. She followed his broad back through the bar, berating herself for no
t having the courage to just say no to what was obviously a pity drink, knowing that she would be ignored once they exchanged a few “So how’s life?” pleasantries.

  Gavin, already peripherally involved in three different conversations, summoned the waitress with a wave. Over the roar of the crowded bar, someone across the table shouted for his attention. As he turned away, Tess—dreading irrelevance—ransacked her mind for something, anything memorable. Out spurted an inane question; she wanted to smack herself the minute it hung in the air. But he looked at her with a little tilt of his head, and then noisily slid a wooden chair over.

  They were talking! Or rather, he was talking and she was focused on what she was going to say next. She threw out a comment and he chuckled; Tess wasn’t sure whether it was because of the content or the manic delivery, but it didn’t matter because he focused both green eyes on her, and suddenly she was ablaze, sizzling with her own out-of-nowhere vivaciousness and his obvious amusement. She launched into a story about her blundered interview that morning, about how she had tripped through the office door and into the arms of a young account executive—her interviewer—and as he was trying to extricate himself from her tangle of elbows and apologies, and she was trying to hold onto her papers and find her footing, her hand had grazed his penis. She had been “mortified—all caps,” and scrambling around on her knees picking up the contents of her purse—ten thousand pens, lipsticks, and tampons—hadn’t made the situation better. Tess smiled at Gavin and shook her head, and said that maybe the guy would give her the job to avoid a sexual harassment scandal. Gavin laughed and said that maybe he’d give it to her in hopes of igniting one.

  One drink turned into many.

  He was gorgeous. She was staring at the sun; she knew she should look away, but couldn’t. He was focused on her, and at a table filled with his buddies, his gaze carved a quiet circle around the two of them and made her feel uniquely golden. A giggle lodged in her throat, threatening to erupt and never stop.

  She knew that when the clock struck 12 she would revert back into Zoe’s shadow and Gavin would fade away. End of story. But as he walked her to Grand Central and asked her to dinner the next night, that script seemed a little less solid. Her stomach flipped when he kissed her on the cheek goodbye.

  She skipped to her train.

  She spent hours getting ready for dinner; is-this-a-date-or-not outfits littered her bedroom, different-colored lipsticks stained tissues in the garbage. Her mother’s raised eyebrows and heavy sigh as she left did nothing to assuage her uncertainty.

  But at the restaurant, Gavin stood when she walked in, he pulled out her chair for her to sit. A glass of white wine was waiting at her seat, shimmering like liquid gold in the candlelight. “You look nice.” He held her eyes and she felt her knees go weak.

  They talked about work—Gavin was a trader, he had slid into it for the money, but he wanted to be doing something else; school—Tess was taking a public speaking course, “not my forte, I’m panicking the entire time I’m talking”; and family. Tess was worried about her younger brother; he’d always been quiet, too quiet, and with her not home… she shook her head.

  “It’s hard to be away from family when stuff’s going on,” Gavin said. He massaged his chin. “My brother Henry has Down’s Syndrome. He’s awesome, but it can be a lot for my parents.” He paused. “Luckily I’m easy. They can ignore me.”

  She thought she saw a flash of sadness in his eyes, and she felt sad for a moment too, but then he smiled and his twinkle returned, and if the feeling had been there at all, it had been erased. She smiled. “I wish my mother would ignore me a little more,” she said.

  When Gavin asked her out for her third and final night in town, she threw her arms around him and kissed him in the middle of Grand Central.

  She rushed through her morning interview, eager to hit Bloomingdale’s—black heels, red sweater—and get a manicure. At home, as the unwanted perfume of her mother’s spaghetti and meatballs infiltrated the bathroom, she showered, shaved, ripped the tags off her new clothes, and presented herself to the mirror for the final polish. Her brown eyes and freckles stared back at her as she began her routine, foundation, mascara, blush… she felt Gavin’s breath, which just last night had stroked her cheek. She could feel his finger caress her eyelid, gently touching her eye makeup, his voice whispering in her ear, “You don’t need all this.”

  A shiver rushed up her spine. She put the eyeshadow wand back in its case and snapped it shut.

  Her mother’s eyes followed her out of the house, but no eyebrows were raised, no dramatic sighing or grumbling floated after her.

  ————

  Gavin was waiting in front of the restaurant, a boulder in the middle of a whitewater of people, his blond hair ruffling in the human tailwind. For a few moments he didn’t see her, and then a gap opened up within the mash of New Yorkers between them and they locked eyes. Gavin grinned and put his hand over his heart.

  She knew she was walking because her heels made a clacking sound on the cement, but she was unaware of commanding her body forward. Then she was in front of him with a shy smile and Gavin kissed her, a behind-closed-doors kiss, one that she could feel all through her body, in her groin, down to her toes.

  Tess didn’t want to think about tomorrow, didn’t want to think about the fact that she would have to endure watching Gavin and Zoe together forever more.

  ————

  “So this is tricky,” Gavin said after dinner as they were walking hand-in-hand down Third Avenue.

  She forced herself to focus on his green eyes. “It’s okay, I understand. I won’t say anything to anyone.”

  Gavin nodded. “You shouldn’t. I should be the one to tell Zoe.”

  A flock of startled, winged questions flapped loudly through her head. One all-white dove circled. And circled. “Tell Zoe?”

  “Well, we can’t keep sneaking around.”

  The street was a blur of color; traffic buzzed in her ears.

  “Tess? Right?” Gavin said.

  “Um, what exactly are you going to tell Zoe?”

  “That it’s over. With Zoe. That I think I’m falling for you.”

  She stepped backward, wobbling in her new heels.

  Gavin reached out to grab her. “Whoa. Are you okay?”

  “Oh, yeah.” She smiled up at him. “I’m okay.”

  ————

  The following few weeks back at school had been awful and wonderful, the secret both fuel and poison. Every time the phone rang, her heart thumped and her second thought, after thinking happily Gavin!, was that he was calling to say this was all a big mistake, some kind of elaborate gag. But that never happened. Instead, each night she curled up onto the hard plastic chair under the hall phone and twirled the black phone cord around her fingers while they talked. When other girls banged on the glass door, she put her palms together and mouthed, please?

  They let her be.

  ————

  Megan listened to Tess tell her story and didn’t know whether to cheer for her or cry for Zoe.

  “So he’s telling her today?” Allie said.

  Megan glanced at Allie. Iceberg, straight ahead.

  “Yeah, I mean, that’s the plan.” Tess looked at her friends. Her bright smile faded. “I’m sorry, you guys.”

  “No, hey, it’s complicated. Relationships are complicated,” Allie said.

  “And you and Gavin are trying to do the right thing.” Megan shot another glance at Allie. She mouthed, sorry.

  Allie shrugged.

  Megan tried to ignore the queasy tension in her stomach, a hangover from a rare fight she and Allie had just last night about “the right thing,” about Allie’s cheating on Dana.

  Megan had stayed in to study for a physics test as the rest of campus was out partying with an I’m-failing-anyway attitude. She had sli
pped on comfortable pajama pants, tucked her typo-free English essay—1,500 words exactly—into her notebook so she wouldn’t forget it in the morning, and opened her fat physics book. The phone rang down the hall. Being the only one around, she ran to get it.

  “Hey little sis.”

  “Brad!” She grinned.

  “How’s it going? Mom told me you have a huge physics test tomorrow.”

  Of course. Her life was always fodder for the grapevine.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Brad said, “the math gene runs in the family. My strategy was always to take tests hungover, let instinct sit for the exam. Too much thinking gets in the way.”

  Right, for you and Charlie. And Ben and George. She picked at her cuticle. “Thanks for the advice. Actually, I’m just on my way out.”

  “Really? Good for you. Mom was worried you were committing hari-kari or something.”

  She fought the urge to slam down the phone and instead, injected sugar into her voice. “No, all fine here. But I’ve got to run. Talk to you soon.” Then she marched back to her room and threw her book at the wall. Damn it! It was so unfair! It all came so easily to them, and she always had to work so hard for everything.

  Her anger shifted quickly to embarrassment as she stood in the middle of the room, alone. She un-clenched her fists and scurried over to pick up her book, worried that the binding might have ripped. She tried to settle back into equations.

  The phone rang again. She hurried down the hall.

  “Hi Meg, it’s Dana.”

  “Hey. Allie’s out.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “You okay?”

  “It’s just the whole world is out and I’m chained to my desk. It sucks.”

  “If it’s any consolation, I’m studying too.”

  “It’s not.” She sighed. “Sorry. I’ll tell her you called.”

  As she walked back to her room, her anger at Brad turned on Allie. What the hell? Why does she need someone else when she’s with Dana? He’s such a good guy, isn’t that enough? And how is it that she can just look at someone and five minutes later be lip-locked with them? She flopped on her bed and screamed into her pillow. “Ugh! What’s the matter with me? Why is it all so damn easy for everyone else!”