<<Jennifer to Beth>> You know what I mean.

CHAPTER 47

“WHAT ARE YOU grinning about?” Doris asked, digging into her manicotti. She was thrilled when Lincoln told her he’d brought enough for them both.

“I’m not grinning,” Lincoln said. “I’m smiling. Like a normal person.”

“I think this has something to do with a girl.”

Lincoln grinned and took a bite.

“I don’t blame you. That Emilie’s a hot little number. I could tell she liked you.”

“Not Emilie,” Lincoln said with his mouth full.

“It’s not?” Doris asked. “Then who is it?”

“I don’t know,” he said, sort of honestly.

“Well, you could do a lot worse than Emilie. She’s a smart girl. And healthy. She eats a lot of carrot sticks.”

“She’s not my type,” Lincoln said, feeling gleeful. Stupidly gleeful. What did it really mean in the big scheme of things that Beth had seen him, that she’d been jealous …

It meant that the girl he thought about most and liked the best thought about him, too.

“Oh, she’s not?” Doris asked.

“She’s a little short.” Lincoln laughed.

“Well, aren’t we picky. Say, what kind of cheese does your mom put in this?”

“Romano,” Lincoln said.

“Hmm. It smells terrible, but it tastes delicious.”

THE NEXT DAY was Saturday, and Lincoln had the gym to himself. He had his choice of treadmills and men’s fitness magazines. Not that he could read right now, he couldn’t focus on anything. He couldn’t stop thinking about Beth’s message.

Beth.

She liked him.

She didn’t know him, but she liked him. She thought about him in a physical way. She thought about how much space he took up in the world.

And she was jealous. When had a girl ever been jealous over him? Not Sam, he thought, shaking his head at the thought of her, trying to shake the thought away.

Beth didn’t know him. It wasn’t real jealousy. It wasn’t real anything.

But maybe it could be. He liked her so much, and she liked him. Well, she liked the look of him, and that was a good start. There must be a way he could make something happen, arrange to be near her, try to catch her eye or meet her.

He was getting ahead of himself on the treadmill. He turned up the speed to keep from stumbling.

Beth had a boyfriend; that was a problem. But clearly theirs wasn’t a healthy relationship. (Lincoln and Justin spent more weekend nights with her boyfriend than she did.) He could walk by Beth’s desk when he knew she was there …

What if it worked? What if she liked him? Really liked him?

He couldn’t ever tell her about the e-mails. He’d have to keep that a secret. Even if they got married and had kids. Didn’t people keep secrets like that all the time? One of Lincoln’s uncles hadn’t known his wife had been married before until her funeral, when all three of her ex-husbands showed up …

Lincoln would have to tell Beth.

But he couldn’t tell her. This wouldn’t work. This was stupid.

But still …she thought about him. She was jealous.

Lincoln had so much energy left after the treadmill that he walked over to the weight room. There was no one lifting, and the attendant was reading a magazine.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Do I have to make an appointment to learn how to use the free weights?”

She set down her magazine. “Usually,” she said, looking around the empty room. “But not today.”

Her name was Becca, and she was a nutrition major. Lincoln didn’t know you could major in nutrition. She was a little too muscular and a little too tan. But she was extremely patient. And she kept assuring Lincoln that he didn’t look like an idiot.

She helped him set up a lifting program, and she wrote everything down in a special folder. “Once you get the hang of this, you should totally try to add some mass,” Becca said. “You could get really big. You can tell by the size of your elbows.”

“My elbows?”

“There’s no fat on the elbow,” she said, “so it’s a good way to assess bone structure, how big your body can get. I’ve got small-to-medium elbows, so I’m really limited. I’ll never be competitive.”

Lincoln thanked Becca sincerely when they were done, and she told him to track her down if he got bored with his program.

He felt sore all over when he walked to his car. He kept trying to look at his elbows, but it was kind of hopeless without a mirror.

THAT NIGHT, WHEN he got to Dave and Christine’s house, Christine met him at the door. He could hear people arguing in the living room.

“Has the game started already?”

“No, we’re waiting for Teddy to get off work. Dave and Larry are playing Star Wars CCG while we wait. Do you play?”

“No, is it fun?’ “Yeah, if you want to spend your kids’ college money on a collectible card game.”

“Our kids will get scholarships!” Dave shouted from the living room. “Lincoln, come watch. I’m crushing the Rebellion under my heel.”

“No,” Christine said, smiling, “come keep me company. I’m making pizza.”

“Sure,” Lincoln said, following her into the kitchen.

“You can cut the onions,” she said. “I hate cutting onions. They make me cry, and once I’m crying, I start thinking about sad things, and then I can’t stop. Here, give me your jacket.”

The kitchen already smelled like garlic. Christine had the dinner ingredients—and everything else —spread out on the counter. She handed him a sharp knife and an onion. “Just clear a space.”

He pushed aside two sacks of potatoes, a jug of red wine, and an electric yogurt maker. This is the girl my mother wanted me to bring home, he thought as he washed his hands. Or this is the girl she’d want me to bring home if she actually wanted me to bring home a girl. A girl like this, who makes her own yogurt and breast-feeds while she’s telling you about something she read in a medicinal herbs book.

He watched Christine make her toddler a plate of raisins and banana slices. What could his mother find wrong with Christine? he wondered. Something. Eve would say that Christine smiled too much and that she should wear a more supportive bra.

He chopped the onion into clean, regular squares and started on the tomatoes. His arms still felt strange from all the lifting, and his face still felt strange from all the smiling.

“You’re different, Lincoln,” Christine said, clearing more space on the counter to roll out dough.

She looked at him like she was doing math in her head. “What is it?”

He laughed. “I don’t know. What is it?”

“You’re different,” she said. “I think you’ve lost weight. Have you lost weight?”

“Probably,” he said. “I’m trying to exercise.”

“Hmmm,” she said, studying him, kneading the dough, “that’s something. But that’s not it …Your eyes are clearer. You’re standing taller. You look like you’re in flower.”

“Isn’t that something you’d say to a sixteen-year-old girl?”

“Does this have something to do with a sixteen-year-old girl?”

“Of course not,” he said, laughing again. “Where would I even meet a sixteen-year-old girl?”

“But it is a girl,” Christine said enthusiastically. “It’s a girl!’ “Who’s a girl?” Dave asked as he walked in. He went to the refrigerator and grabbed two beers. “Is Lincoln pregnant?”

Lincoln shook his head at Christine, which, he could tell, made her even more curious.

“Have you finished crushing the Rebellion?” she asked.

Dave frowned. “No,” he said peevishly, walking back to the living room, “but I shall.”

“It’s a girl!” Christine whispered as soon as Dave had gone. “Our prayers are answered! Tell me all about her.”

“Have you really been praying for me?” Lincoln asked.

“Of course,” she said. “I pray for everyone we care about. Plus, I like to pray for things that seem possible. There are so many things that I pray for that seem almost too big even for God. It’s rewarding to pray for something that might actually happen. It kind of keeps me going. Sometimes, I just pray for a bumper crop of zucchini or for a good night’s sleep.”

“So you think it’s possible that I might meet a girl?” He felt genuinely grateful to think that Christine was praying for him. If he were God, he would listen to Christine’s prayers.

“The girl.” Christine smiled. “More than possible. It’s probable even. Tell me about her.”

He wanted to. He wanted to tell someone. Why not Christine? He couldn’t think of anyone who would be less judgmental.

“If I do,” Lincoln said, “you can’t tell anyone else. Not even Dave.”

Her face fell.

“Why not? Are you in trouble? Is it a bad secret? Oh my God, are you having an affair? Don’t tell me if you’re having an affair. Or breaking the law.”

“I’m not breaking the law … ,” he said. “But I may have employed questionable ethics.”

“You have to tell me now,” she said. “Or it’ll just drive me crazy.”

So he told her everything, from the beginning, trying not to play up the parts of the story that made him sound shady, but trying not to play them down either. By the end, Christine had nervously rolled the first pizza crust thin as tracing paper.

“I don’t know what to say,” she said, scrunching the dough back into a ball. He couldn’t read her face.

“Do you think I’m horrible?” he asked, sure that she did.

“No,” she said. “Oh no, of course not. I don’t know how you could read people’s e-mail without actually reading it, if that’s your job.”

“But I shouldn’t have kept reading hers,” he said. “There’s no getting around that.”

“No.” Christine frowned. Even her frown looked like it wanted to be a smile. “No, that part’s messy.

You’ve really never met her? Do you even know what she looks like?”

“No,” Lincoln said.

“There’s something really romantic about that. Every woman wants a man who’ll fall in love with her soul as well as her body. But what if you meet her, and you don’t think she’s attractive?”

“I don’t think I care what she looks like,” Lincoln said. Not that he hadn’t thought about it. Not that it wasn’t exciting in a weird way, not to know, to imagine.

“Oh, that is romantic,” Christine said.

“Well,” Lincoln said, feeling like he was getting off too easy, “I know that she’s attractive. Her boyfriend is the kind of guy who dates attractive women. And I know that she’s had other boyfriends …”

“It’s still romantic,” Christine said, “falling in love with someone for who she is and what she says and what she believes in. It’s actually much more romantic than her crush on you, which would have to be almost completely physical. You might be nothing like she thinks you are.”

Lincoln had never thought of it like that.

“Oh, not that she would be disappointed,” Christine said reassuringly. “How could she be?”

“It’s felt like enough,” he said, “that she thinks I’m cute.”

“Lincoln,” she said quietly. “Cute has never been your problem.”

Lincoln didn’t know what to say then. Christine smiled and handed him two green peppers. “Your problem,” she said, “at least in the immediate sense, is that you have to stop reading this woman’s e- mail.”

“If I stopped, do you think I could try to meet her?”

“I don’t know,” Christine said, rolling out the dough again, “you’d have to tell her about the e-mail, and she might not be able to get over it.”

“Could you get over something like that?”

“I don’t know …It would seem pretty weird. David stole my dice one summer, before we started dating, so that he would have something of me to keep near him over break. He carried them in his pocket. That seemed kind of romantic, but kind of weird, and this is much weirder than that. You’d have to tell her about how you’ve gone to her boyfriend’s concerts and how you walk by her desk. I don’t know …” Christine started spreading tomato sauce with her fingers in bright red swirls on the dough.

“You’re right,” Lincoln said. It didn’t matter that Christine wasn’t as judgmental as Eve or his mother or anyone else he could have told about Beth. There was no one he could tell, no one he respected, who would tell him that this was going to work. “I guess I ruined it the moment I decided to keep reading her e-mails. The thing is, I never really decided that. It wasn’t like a formal decision.”

“Just think,” Christine said, putting the first crust in the oven, “if you had never read her mail, she would still have a big crush on you. She’d still be gossiping about you to her girlfriend. That should make you feel good.”

It didn’t.

THAT NIGHT, LINCOLN played his character so recklessly, the poor dwarf lost three toes and was cursed with blindness. Lincoln ate too much pizza, drank two big mugs of Dave’s home brew, and slept fitfully on the couch.