you dropped ten pounds.”
“Get dressed and come downstairs,” Mom says. “I’ll put the water on for the macaronis.”
***
When I was a kid and used to get sick, Mom would make me pastina with a spoonful of homemade sauce and a pat of butter. Most people get a cold and crave chicken soup, but I crave pasta. I don’t even realize how starving I am until I sit at the table with Mom and Cole, Joey, Sonia, and Jeff, and she puts a plate of penne in front of me, steam rising, and it smells so good I moan a little. Mom laughs and tells me not to wait for her to sit down, to dig in before I drift away in the breeze I’m so skinny. We all eat and Cole is talking about his sister coming to Rutgers in the fall and Joey is talking about working in his father’s warehouse for the summer and Sonia tells me she’s going to hook me up with a job waiting tables at Neubies because they need another server, but nobody, and I mean nobody, is talking about Travis. It’s like picnicking among the remains of a freshly burned-down house and talking about the sunny day.
I don’t want to talk about him, though. I have nothing to say, as I haven’t spoken to him since he quit. He finally stopped calling me sometime last week. He wrote me a letter, mailed it and everything, but it sits in my desk drawer, unread. I don’t know why I’m saving it because I doubt I’ll ever be able to read it. And what could he have to say that I don’t already know? How much of a fucking jerk I am? That being around me when I’m such a temperamental ass isn’t worth it? That he’s sorry, he’s tried but he can’t put up with my shit? I think that’s already obvious. He quit, didn’t he? He even showed up at the house last week, but I hid in the bathroom and made Sonia tell him to leave. Sonia called me an ass (lovingly), and maybe I am one, but nobody seems to understand what he’s done to me.
“Yeah, well what if you’re doing it to yourself?” Sonia said.
“You just don’t get it,” I said. “He quit, Sunny. How am I supposed to ever trust him again?”
“Maybe talk to him?” she said. “For starters?”
But it’s too late now, because Cole said Travis was heading back home to Nebraska. I don’t know what he’s going to do about grad school because I can’t bring myself to ask. Not sure if he’s coming back here or if he’s decided to go to California instead and maybe I’ll never see him again, but I don’t dwell on that because the thought of it makes me want to vomit.
“Have you guys been playing?” Mom asks us. “Your grandmother keeps asking. I think she’s your new biggest fan.”
Cole looks up at me expectantly. Joey raises his eyebrows.
“No,” I say. “I don’t even have a guitar right now, remember?”
“Well, actually . . .” Joey says and busts a huge smile. Cole gets up and goes into the living room and comes back with my guitar case and places it on the floor next to my chair.
“We emptied the Soft till and took it to Mickey’s luthier in New Hope,” Cole says. “He did a great job on her, Em.”
I’m stunned because I had no idea they even had my guitar, let alone took it in to get repaired. What’s really weird is that I normally play my guitar every day, so the fact that I haven’t even noticed it wasn’t here is crazy. Now I guess I know why everyone was so worried.
I just sit with the case at my feet, unable to find the right words. I look back up at Cole and he puts his hand on my shoulder and gives it a light squeeze. “She’s as pretty as she ever was, you’ll see.”
“Thanks, guys,” I say, my voice all quiet because I’m feeling pretty darn emotional right now.
“Aren’t you going to open it?” Joey asks.
“Maybe in a little while.”
I feel bad about the disappointment I see on Joey’s face, and Sonia’s, too. But Cole nods his head and says, “Yeah, good idea. Check her out when you can really give her your full attention. Make sure she’s all that. If not, we’ll take her right back.”
This is why we keep Cole around. He just gets it.
“You know,