This Is Where I Leave You

at each other and then away. An awkward silence descends between us, which Penny fills by saying, “Awkward silence.”
    “Yeah.”
    “So, you’re sitting shiva.”
    “Yes.”
    “I’ll have to make it over there one of these days.”
    “You’ve got fi ve left.”
    “You’re really doing all seven days? That’s hard-core.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    “Well, I still skate every morning at eleven, if you want to come by.”
    “They’re open that early?”
    “They open at one, but the owner lets me have a key in exchange for sexual favors.”
    “That’s good.”
    “That was a joke, Judd.”
    “I know.”
    “You used to laugh at my jokes.”
    “You used to be funnier.”
    She laughs at that. “They all can’t be gems.” Penny looks at me for a 114long moment, and I wonder what she sees. I was plain-looking back in high school, when we were best friends and the sexual tension was mine alone. I’m still plain-looking, only now I’m older, thicker, and sadder.
    “Listen, Judd,” she says. “I think we’ve reached that point where this conversation runs the risk of devolving into small talk, and I don’t think either of us wants that. So I’m going to give you a kiss and send you on your way.” She leans forward and kisses my cheek, just grazing the corner of my lips. “I did that on purpose,” she says with a grin. “Give you something other than your ex-wife to think about while you sit all day.”
    I smile. “You were always so good at not covering up.”
    Penny’s smile is sad and a little off. “It’s the antidepressants. They’ve obliterated whatever filters I have left.”
    We made the pact when we were twenty. We were on summer break from our respective colleges. Her boyfriend was backpacking through Europe, and my girlfriend was as of yet nonexistent, and miraculously, after years of seeing me as nothing more than a friendly ear and a sympathetic shoulder, Penny finally seemed ready to recognize other parts of my anatomy. I spent my days working in the flagship store and my nights coming up with places to almost but not quite have sex with Penny, who had arrived at a moral rationale concerning her boyfriend that grandfathered me in as long as there was no actual intercourse. One night, as we lay naked and sweaty in the darkness of my basement while my parents slept upstairs, she stopped her moaning and grinding against my erection to press her damp hands against the sides of my face. “You know you’re my best friend,” she said.
    “I do.” It was infinitely less painful to hear it then, with the full length of her hot skin pressed wetly against mine.
    “This could be the last summer we ever spend together. The last time at all that we’re even here.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “Real life, Judd,” she said. “It’s coming for us. Who knows where the hell we’ll end up? So we should make a pact.”
    “What kind of pact?” We were still moving lightly against each other, maintaining our rhythm, like joggers at an intersection.
    “Two-pronged. First: We always speak on our birthdays, no matter where we are, no matter what’s happening. No exceptions.”
    “Okay.”
    “And second: If neither one of us has someone by the time we’re forty, we get married. We don’t date; we don’t have long, annoying talks about it. We just find each other and get married.”
    “That’s a serious pact.”
    “But it makes sense. We love each other, and we’re clearly attracted to each other.” She pressed her damp groin into mine for emphasis. And what I wanted to say right then was, If it makes so much sense, why do we have to wait until we’re forty? Why can’t we be together right now? But there were backpacking boyfriends and separate colleges to consider. This was summer fun, sweet and loving, but if Penny thought I was falling for her, she’d have put an end to it right then and there, and that was unthinkable to me.
    “Come on, Judd,” she said with a grin, running two fingers down the groove of my slick spine. “Will you be my fail-safe?”
    I smiled right back at her, like someone who totally got it. “Of course I will.”
    And then, to seal the pact, she spit onto her fingers and reached down between us, and for a while there was nothing but the soft wet sounds of lubricated skin on skin and thrashing tongues, until I shuddered and came violently across her soft, pale belly. She smiled at me as I finished, kissed my nose, and then grabbed my hand and