Late to the Party - Kelly Quindlen Page 0,24
but a bigger part knew to hold it inside for myself. For one thing, Ricky had asked me not to tell anyone about him and Tucker, and I didn’t know how I could explain meeting him without bringing that up. But there was a deeper reason that I wasn’t really letting myself think about. There was something about hanging out with Ricky that made me feel like a newer, better version of myself, and I wasn’t ready to share that version with anyone else, not even—maybe especially not—my two best friends.
On the first Thursday of June, after Maritza and I got off work, we picked up JaKory and went to a park on the Chattahoochee, several miles down from the coffee shop. It was brilliantly sunny, the sky pure blue and cloudless.
We meandered around the people on the park trail, Maritza plucking JaKory away from the speedy runners trying to slip past him. After we’d walked a good distance and the trail had become denser with trees, Maritza found a narrow dirt path that opened onto the river. There was a craggy boulder jutting into the water where we could all sit comfortably, so we plopped down and hung our legs off the sides and watched the kayakers going past.
“We should learn how to kayak,” Maritza said, squinting ahead. “It looks like one of those things you do to ‘feel alive.’”
“Absolutely not,” JaKory said, stretching his gangly legs in front of him. “It creeps me out, how you have to hide half your body in that little boat.”
“You’re a weirdo.”
“I have anxiety.”
“About weird things.”
It was a gentle day with a breeze coming off the water. I leaned back onto my hands and felt the warm stone beneath my skin. JaKory looked just as content as me, his chin tilted toward the sky, the sunlight gleaming off his new fade. Maritza, however, seemed restless and agitated. She kept tapping a stick against her knee.
“I’m thinking about girls,” she announced.
“Gross,” JaKory said, with his eyes still closed.
“Are you not thinking about guys?”
“No, I was thinking about kayaking accidents.”
“You’re fucked up,” Maritza said breezily. She pivoted to face us better, shielding her eyes with her hand. “So what’s gonna be our next move to meet people? I say we go scouting around this park.”
I snorted without meaning to.
“What?” she asked.
“You want to meet someone here? It’s two o’clock on a Thursday. Everyone here is either retired or parents with preschoolers.”
“No, I’ve seen a bunch of hot girls.”
“Okay, well, they’re probably all in college.”
“So? I could date someone college-age.”
“No, no, hell no,” JaKory said, shaking his head. “I can’t date up that far. Too nerve-racking.”
“JaKory, of course you could,” Maritza said. “You’re handsome and smart and—well, sometimes you’re funny—”
“Shut up.”
“We can’t force something that’s supposed to be organic,” I said. “It’s creepy to just go up to someone in the park.”
“We wouldn’t be creepy about it,” Maritza said, though she looked doubtful. “We’d just try to make friends first. How are we supposed to meet someone if we’re not trying?”
JaKory and I huffed and whined, but, as usual, Maritza had her way. We walked the park for half an hour, shooting awkward glances at every person we came across. I’d been mostly right: Nearly everyone we passed looked like they were either in retirement or their early child-rearing years. There was one guy who looked like he could be near our age, but JaKory refused to go up to him, much to Maritza’s annoyance.
“Sweet salvation,” JaKory said as we came upon a taco truck. He turned to Maritza. “Let’s accept that this particular experiment failed and it’s time to eat our feelings.”
“Fine,” Maritza sighed. “I should have known this was a stupid idea. There must be something I’m doing wrong…”
She trailed off, lost in her thoughts, and I patted her back and steered her toward the taco truck. We got in line behind a gaggle of people who were craning their necks to read the menu board. JaKory grabbed my shoulders and started chanting Sriracha under his breath. Maritza, however, was suddenly distracted by something else.
“Dude, look, she’s hot,” she whispered, nudging me to check out the girl inside the taco truck.
She was a cute girl, it was true: somewhere around our age, with long dark hair beneath a hunter-green baseball cap. Maritza grinned at her like an idiot.
“Let’s talk to her,” she whispered again.
My stomach jumped with a tiny thrill, but the rational part of me knew how this would turn out. “You