“I thought you’d like Clara’s.”
“I do like Clara’s. It’s just that I would have been okay, you know, going somewhere in Amos.” And then she stares off toward the bus.
I say, “Listen, I may be keeping the face blindness a secret for now, but that doesn’t mean I want everything in my life to be a secret. It doesn’t mean I want to keep you a secret. I would never hide you away, if that’s what you’re thinking.” As I say it, I ask myself, Is that what I’m doing?
She starts blinking at the table, at the menu, anywhere else but at me.
“Holy shit. That’s what you were thinking. That I brought you out here so we wouldn’t run into anyone.”
“No.”
“Good, because that would be crazy.”
So why did you bring her here, asshole?
“I mean yes.”
“Uh, because that wouldn’t be crazy at all.” Now her eyes find mine. “Okay,” I say. “I get it. I’m king douchelord and you trust me but you don’t. You don’t know me well enough to know how deep the douchery goes.”
The whole while I’m asking myself, How deep does the douchery go? What if it goes deeper than you think?
She says, “Maybe not.” And I hate the careful, closed-off tone because it’s like a fence between us.
“Listen. I brought you here because you’re better than some shitty Amos chain restaurant. I brought you here because when I was six, I fell off the roof of our house, and my dad smuggled a Clara’s pizza into the hospital, and those kinds of memories are pretty rare for me right now—the ones where my dad is this really great guy. I brought you here because this is the first place I wanted to go after I got out of the hospital and was well enough to sit up straight. I brought you here because it’s one of the few places in a sixty-mile radius, if not the entire state of Indiana, that isn’t boring or typical. Because you’re not boring or typical.”
And I realize every word is true.
I reach over the fence and take her hand. I kiss the knuckles, one by one. As I do I’m thinking, How does this girl mean so much to me?
“Libby Strout, you deserve to be seen.”
“People can’t help but see me.” She says this to the tablecloth.
“That’s not what I mean.”
We sit there swinging, and now I’m kicking myself for bringing her here. I should have just gone to Red Lobster where we could have been stared at by everyone at school, including maybe Caroline, and where my idiot friends could have come over and hijacked our date with their stupidity.
I say, “Wait here,” and then I’m up and out of the swing, down the stairs, and over to the jukebox, which hugs the wall behind the bus. This is the same jukebox my parents used to play when they were coming here on dates about sixty years ago. As I’m flipping through the musical choices, I’m thinking about how Libby Strout makes me want to drive thirty miles to the closest place that is almost good enough for her and run through crowded restaurants to find her the perfect song.
And then I see it. The Jackson 5. I choose the song I was looking for and also a couple of others—Sly and the Family Stone, Earth, Wind & Fire—so we can have a whole block of them. Then I go back to the table, which is the table in the upper northwest corner, the one with the girl in the purple dress.
She says, “You didn’t have to do that. You don’t have to do anything. I’m being dumb.”
“You could never be dumb.”
“I can be dumb.”
She takes a bite of pizza. I take a bite of pizza. We eat in this weird silence.
And then suddenly the song is playing, as in the song. I wipe my mouth with the napkin and toss it aside. I’m on my feet, hand out.
Libby blinks up at me. “What?”
“Come on.”
“Where?”
“Just come on.”
And I lead her down the stairs to the center of Clara’s, right to the one open spot, at the front of the restaurant, near the entrance to the dining room. Then I spin her into my arms, and we’re dancing. Oh so slowly. “I’ll Be There” is the obvious choice, but the one I chose is “Ben.” If ever a song was written for Libby and me, it’s this one. Two broken, lonely people who maybe aren’t so broken or lonely anymore.
At first I’m aware of every eye in the room on us, but then all the faces fade away, and it’s just Libby and me, my hands on her waist, all that woman in my arms. We’re in perfect sync, moving together, making it up as we go.
I can feel the tears burning against the backs of my eyes. Every line is me, Libby Strout. It’s us, but mostly me. And also Jack. God.
I could cry in the arms of Jack Masselin as an entire restaurant of strangers watches, or I could push the tears back and down until they’re buried. I push them. And push them. I won’t let them out. At some point, he leans in and, just like that, without a word, kisses my face, first one cheek and then the other. He kisses me where the tears would be if I’d let them fall, and it’s the single loveliest thing anyone has ever done who wasn’t my mom. Suddenly I’m filled with this safe, warm feeling that I haven’t felt in a really long time. It’s the feeling of everything is going to be okay. You are going to be okay. You may already be okay. Let’s us be okay together, just you and me.
I suck in my breath and don’t breathe again until the song is over. The jukebox goes jumping right into the next track, which is a fast one, thank goodness, and that’s when Jack breaks out the moves.