Check, Please?

Chapter 10

For the next two days, Harry and I were beyond bipolar.  Neither one of us wanted to go out, not even to get food.  I sat on the floor and took pictures of everything in the apartment trying to snap a shot that was filled with some sort of emotion; I took a picture of the hole that Harry punched into the wall, I took a million pictures of Harry, no matter what he was doing, pictures of our rooms, our clothes, our furniture, and I took a million pictures of the open refrigerator.  I don’t know why.  Something inside of me just wanted to take pictures of the chilled bottles and the icy but empty freezer.  Maybe it was my inner ice cream lover telling me that I subconsciously wanted a large bowl of mint chocolate chip.

We argued over whether or not we would go to the reunion that Thursday.  It didn’t occur to me that Anna would still be on her honeymoon until Harry pointed that out.  I thought that we would still be a trio, all going together.  I was upset with Anna, but I secretly envied her for not having to go.  She swore that she was upset about it too and got too caught up in the wedding to think about it herself, but I knew she was lying.  Whenever Harry said he wanted to go, I would convince him otherwise, and whenever I changed my mind and said I wanted to go, Harry would talk me out of it. 

“It’s not like we’re going to miss out on anything,” Harry had said while I was in the shower. I could see him through the curtain, looking at himself in the fogged-up mirror and flexing his muscles.  I giggled, but not hearing me, he continued, “We’re making it seem like a bigger deal than it is.  They just stand around and talk I think.  I hate just standing around and talking.”

A few hours later, I was talking him into it. “But it’s our first reunion.  They’ll think we skipped because we’re failing at life or something.”

“But we’re not,” Harry replied like it should be obvious to everyone.

“But not everyone knows that.  We should go to show them how well we’ve done.”

Not even a full hour later, I found myself dreading convincing Harry to go. “I mean, it’s just the FIRST reunion.  There will be more.  We can always go to those.”

Harry nodded. “We can just skip this one.”

But the next morning he was talking me back into it. “Don’t you want to see what your old classmates are doing with their lives?  Come on, you know their lives are a thousand times worse than ours.  We can go and laugh at them.”  He stuffed his mouth with a large spoonful of Lucky Charms cereal.

I frowned. “That’s not very nice.”

Harry grinned at me as he chewed. “You know you want to.”

I groaned. “I hate those people though.  I thought we would be done with them after we left high school.”

Harry swallowed and offered me a spoonful of cereal, which I gladly accepted. “We’re stressing ourselves out.  We should go.  If it sucks, we’ll leave.  We live like 20 minutes from where it’s happening,” he reasoned.

I chewed on one of my nails as I studied Harry.  He actually sounded like he wanted to go at this point, but I was hoping in an hour he would change his mind again and we would decide not to go.  I sighed. “You know what, you’re right.  This shouldn’t be this stressful.  We’re all way more mature now.  It’s been 5 years.  There shouldn’t be any stupid drama like in high school.”

My phone buzzed with an email on the island.  I picked it up and read the delivery notice. “Oh, we got the maroon backdrop in.  Wanna help me put it up?”

Harry lifted his cereal bowl to his lips and sucked down the last of the milk and lucky charms marshmallows.  He studied the empty bowl and said, “You know, I’m actually allergic to marshmallows.”