The Sea of Tranquility(44)
Author: Katja Millay

***

It’s not a coffee cake Nastya’s carrying when she walks into my garage just after eight o’clock. Though if it was, I’m sure it would have been homemade, covered with cinnamon and unbelievably awesome. She is carrying two plastic grocery bags. She walks past me without a word and reaches up with one hand to awkwardly open the door to the inside of the house without letting go of the bag.

“Sunshine?” She doesn’t respond, so I follow her in and find her opening the freezer and shoving no fewer than four half-gallon containers of ice cream into it. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?” she snaps.

“You get knocked up?”

She whirls around on me. “What?” Guess not. I hold my hands up, palms out in surrender. She’s obviously not in the mood.

“Sorry, just,” I motion toward the open freezer, her hand still inside on one of the containers, “a lot of ice cream.”

“Right, because I’d have to be pregnant to want ice cream. Next thing you’ll be saying that I must have my period because that’s the only reason girls have for getting pissed, but of course since you’re a guy, you won’t actually say period, but something prickish like on the rag.” She slams the freezer door shut. Now might be the moment to swear profusely that I had no intention of bringing up her period in any manner, much less one containing the word rag, but I feel safer keeping my mouth shut right about now and letting her play this out.

With any other girl I could probably pull out the classic guy fail-safe of walking over and wrapping my arms around her and letting her put her head on my shoulder. It’s cheap, but it works. Drew swears by it. But I’m afraid that in this particular instance it would result in one of two things: a string of innovative new expletives or her knee in my balls. My money’s on the knee.

“I like ice cream. You never have any. Bad things happen when I go too long without ice cream,” she says, sounding slightly calmer.

“Are you sure you got enough?”

“Fuck off.”

“Maybe you should open one of those now,” I suggest.

So that’s what we do. Except that we don’t open one, we open all four of them and eat straight out of the containers at the crap coffee table in front of my couch. I keep this one in front of the couch because it’s shit and I don’t care what happens to it. I don’t have to worry about coasters or Drew putting his shoes on it. I figure I’ll keep it here until he leaves for college, or some girl finally kills him.

Nastya doesn’t eat from the middle of the container like a normal person. A normal person who doesn’t eat ice cream out of a bowl, that is. She waits until it starts melting and scrapes away the melted part from around the edge of the container. According to her, half-melted ice cream tastes better than fully-frozen ice cream. I can’t tell if she’s right because she makes me eat the more frozen stuff from the center and threatens me if I try to eat from the edges. We put a pretty big dent in every one of those containers and she’s definitely more Sunshine and less Nasty afterward. I make a mental note for the next time she gets pissy that, in lieu of mood stabilizers, ice cream will do the trick.

***

We’re both on a sugar high after all the ice cream and we end up back in the garage because I have a list of projects to finish. I figure she’s going to go running because that’s usually her M.O. when she’s carb-loaded, but she doesn’t leave.

“Give me something to do,” she says, with just the barest hint of wariness.

“What do you want to do?” I ask, assessing her.

“Nothing with power tools or anything like that. Something I can do with my right hand.”

“You want to sand?” I offer. “It sucks, but‌—‌”

“I’ll sand. Just show me what to do.”

I grab a sheet of sandpaper and demonstrate how to attach it to the sanding block.

“We have to sand with the grain on this.” I pick up her hands to show her how much pressure to use and they’re so soft that I hate to put sandpaper anywhere near them.

“How do I know when it’s done,” she asks, starting to work.

“My dad’s rule was always that when you think you’re done, you’re probably halfway there.”

She tilts her head and looks at me like I’m useless. “So, how do I know when it’s done?”

I smile. “Just show it to me when you think it’s ready. You’ll start to know after you’ve done it a few times.”

She keeps her eyes on me for just a second longer than she needs to before turning back to the wood. I know the questions are there. I saw them in her eyes as soon as I mentioned my father. How? When? What happened? But she doesn’t ask. She just keeps sanding and I won’t stop her. I despise sanding.

It’s after midnight by the time we call it quits. I don’t know how her hands even held up this long. She sanded the hell out of everything I gave her. I never did ask her what was wrong earlier.

CHAPTER 24

Nastya

When I get to his house at 7:40, Josh is in his driveway, leaning against the side of his truck. As soon as he sees me, he unlocks the doors and comes around to open mine.

“About time, Sunshine,” he says. “I was about to give up on you.”

“I didn’t know you had a field trip planned,” I reply once I’ve settled into the truck and shut the door.

“I have to get to Home Depot before they close.”

“You didn’t have to wait for me.” He really didn’t. It’s not like I was going to be sad to miss the weekly hardware store stock-up.

“No. But I knew you’d be showing up sooner or later and my garage would be closed and you’d feel abandoned and then I’d feel guilty and I hate feeling guilty. So it was just easier to wait.” One side of his mouth turns up.

“Your life is so hard,” I say dryly.

“You are the only person who would even think to say something like that to me.” He sounds weirdly pleased.

“Force field hasn’t kept me out yet.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I give him a pointed look because I’m sure he can figure it out. He keeps staring at me, so finally I shrug and then throw in a sigh so he knows that I’m exasperated at having to explain this to him.

“At school, no one comes near you. When I first saw you on the bench in the courtyard, I wondered if you were surrounded by some sort of force field. I kind of wanted to get one for myself. You can hide in plain sight. It’s pretty awesome.”