Speech Team by Tim Murphy

Author:Tim Murphy [Murphy, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-07-25T00:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

By the time Nat and I sat at the terminal gate at Logan Airport, the bright and cold Thursday afternoon before Presidents’ Day weekend, I was a little bit amazed that it was all actually happening, because it nearly hadn’t. I held my coffee with one hand, scrolled my phone with the thumb of my other hand, excited and nervous. I glanced at her, reading her book on massage therapy for animals, for which she was pursuing certification now that she and Aaron had decided to give up farming for a living in order to save for Olivia and Otis’s college educations. Her eyebrows were scrunched, her mouth in an inadvertent frown as she read, one leg crossed over the other, the suspended foot bobbing in its sneaker. I felt a rush of tenderness for her, my longest-time friend in the world, wiggled my shoulder against hers.

She glanced my way.

“Hiiiieeee,” I said.

She laughed. “Hiiiieeee.”

“Are you excited now that it’s finally happening?”

“I still feel a little guilty.”

“You shouldn’t. It’s just for a few days.”

She was the first to have gotten cold feet, shortly after we booked everything with Anthony’s assistant. She texted me: Been thinking about it. I just don’t feel right about going. We are struggling so much. Otis is struggling in school.

Mild panic struck me. The truth was, more than I’d admit to anyone, I’d become absolutely obsessed with the trip, with the idea that if we pulled it off and did what we were flirting with doing, then something very pivotal in our lives—okay, I admit it, my life—was going to change, some massive boulder in the road was going to give way. And I absolutely could not go without Nat, it just wouldn’t be the same. In fact, I needed her there if we were going to do this. I nearly texted back but called instead. To my surprise, she picked up instantly.

“But it’s all paid for by Anthony, and it’s just for a few days over a weekend,” I said. “Otis won’t even be in school.”

She sighed. “It just seems a little weird when you think about it, doesn’t it? Are we really going down there to ambush Gold?”

It was clear she was less invested in the idea than I was, which I chalked up to her not having ever been confronted by Gold, as Jennifer, Anthony, and I had. Gold was a benign and neutral memory to her.

“We just want to talk to him,” I said. And then, disingenuously: “The plan’s not etched in stone, anyway. We can talk about it once we’re there and proceed accordingly. And you wouldn’t have to come, either.”

“Do we even know we’re going to find him?”

“Well, we have his address. I guess we just go to his house.”

“We don’t call ahead?”

“We don’t have his number. And I couldn’t find him on Facebook.”

She sighed again.

“Look, just forget about the Gold part right now and think of this as a cute little reunion, fully paid for, and a break from the cold.

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