“Yeah,” he said, and took back his hand to turn the wheel.
As they pul ed up to the campus, Isabel a felt the same way she had when she’d returned each fal . Her stomach dropped with excitement and her throat tingled. She started looking around as though she was going to see someone she knew. Groups of girls were walking to the dining hal in pajama pants and messy ponytails. They were laughing and screaming, and Isabel a wanted to join them and eat bacon and eggs while they talked about the night before. What happened? Isabel a wanted to know. Who made out? Were there any boys there you liked?
Isabel a and Harrison walked around holding hands, and Isabel a pointed out the dorms she’d lived in and different buildings to Harrison. He was bored, she knew, and she didn’t care.
“Isn’t it pretty here?” she asked. “Isn’t it prettier than Tufts? It’s real y the prettiest campus I’ve ever seen.”
Final y he laughed and put his arm around her shoulders. “You might be a little biased, don’t you think?” he asked. He was talking to her in his aren’t you cute voice, which he used to use a lot more at the beginning of their relationship. He hadn’t used it much recently and Isabel a wasn’t sure if this was normal or not.
Isabel a had realized a couple of weeks ago that this was the longest relationship she had ever had. She was now twenty-nine. She could no longer compare this to crazy Wil from col ege or Ben the Stoner. Now this had turned into her “real relationship,” the one she would have to compare every other relationship to. Or not compare it to, if it was the one that would last.
In col ege, twenty-nine had seemed impossibly old. By now, she’d thought, she’d be married and have kids. But as each year went by, she didn’t feel much different than she had before. Time kept going by and she was just here, the same.
It seemed like it al happened easier for everyone else. Look at Harrison’s friends. They just got married and had kids and didn’t seem to think about it too much. Maybe that was her problem. Maybe she was thinking about it too much. Or maybe the fact that she was thinking about it meant it wasn’t right.
There was one morning recently when they were lounging in bed, which was unusual for Harrison. Sundays were his day to go running, and he was usual y up and out the door before she woke up. But this Sunday he didn’t go anywhere. They ordered breakfast in from the Bagelry and watched Meet the Press with the New York Times spread al over the bed.
It bothered her that he was such a go-getter on the weekend. It made her feel lazy to stay in bed when he was out running. That morning she was ready to pick a fight with him over leaving the apartment. And then, like he knew what she was thinking, he didn’t go anywhere.
“No run today?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Don’t real y feel like it,” he said.
Isabel a had two tiny stuffed pigs that she kept on her night-stand, named Buster and Stinky. Harrison had always thought it was odd, the way she loved stuffed animals, the way she was drawn to little figurines and fuzzy things. “You’re so weird,” he said, laughing, when she made a stuffed frog ribbit at him. And she knew he meant it.
Boyfriends in her past had found this trait cute and charming. They had indulged her with little fuzzy animals as presents. Ben had even gone so far as to give them little voices (usual y when he was stoned) and march them across the bed to make her laugh.
Harrison had largely ignored Buster and Stinky, except once when he had used Buster as a Hacky Sack during a long phone cal . But that morning, Isabel a came back from the bathroom to find the two pigs in the middle of the bed in a compromising pose. She stared at them for a minute before it registered that they were in the 69 position.
She stood at the end of the bed until Harrison final y looked up.
“Good Lord,” he said. “Bunch of dirty pigs around here. They must have learned it from watching you.”
“You know,” she said, “that they are both boys, right?”
“Are you saying that two male pigs can’t be in love? Did you learn nothing from the penguins at the zoo?”
Isabel a laughed and climbed back into bed with him. For the rest of the day, anytime she left the room Harrison arranged the pigs in another dirty pose. Yes, she thought at the end of the day. Okay, I could be with him forever.
She worried that maybe they’d been dating too long to end up together. It was like when you tried to jump off the high dive and if you did it right away, you were fine. But if you stood there looking down, thinking of al the bad things that could happen, you were doomed. You would just climb back down the ladder to the safety of the ground.
Harrison was standing next to a dorm building, checking his BlackBerry. She watched him from behind. How was she supposed to be okay just hating him and then loving him on alternate days? What if that never stopped?
She went up behind him and stood on her toes until her nose was right next to his ear, and then she snorted softly and slowly. He tilted his head like she was tickling him, and he lowered his BlackBerry. She kept snorting until she heard him laugh and then she stopped and kissed the back of his neck.
“Hey, dirty pig,” he said, turning around. “There you are.”
“There you are,” she said. She put her face next to his and snorted again until he smiled and kissed her.
E veryone was talking about babies. It al started when someone suggested that Shannon was getting married because she was pregnant. “She just met the guy six months ago,” their friend Annie said. “And here we are at their wedding. It’s a little suspicious.”
“You think there’s a bun in that oven?” Lauren asked. “I don’t think so.”
“Maybe she just wanted to get married,” Isabel a said. Then, to change the subject, she asked their friend Katie how her pregnancy was going, and Katie launched into a speech about how hard it had been for her to get pregnant the second time. “You just always think it wil be so easy,” she said. “I already had Charles, and I just figured I’d be able to get pregnant whenever I wanted.” Katie paused here to take a sip of her water, and Lauren looked hopeful that the conversation was over, but then Katie continued. “Anyway, I bought a book cal ed Taking Charge of Your Fertility , and it real y changed my life,” she said.
Annie squealed, “I bought that book too! It’s amazing.” The two of them began discussing how they tested their cervical fluid to find out when they were ovulating.
“Cervical fluid?” Lauren whispered to Isabel a.
“Discharge,” Isabel a whispered back. Lauren put down her cake and picked up her drink.
“That’s real y gross,” she said.
“No kidding,” Isabel a answered.
When the two girls started comparing the difference between fluid that was like “egg whites” and fluid that was “fluffy,” Lauren got up to get them new drinks. When she came back, they were talking about placenta. Isabel a grabbed the drink from her and smiled.
“Remember when Michael Jackson said he grabbed the baby with the placenta stil on it?” Lauren asked. Isabel a laughed and shook her head.
“What?” Lauren asked. “That’s real y my only placenta story. I’m just trying to participate.” The two of them snorted with laughter.
Everyone kept bringing up Michael Jackson. He had died earlier in the week, and every time Isabel a turned on the TV, he was looking right back at her. It was impossible to forget about him. Even the band at the wedding was playing a lot of Michael Jackson. Shannon’s wedding was turning into a Michael Jackson memorial concert. It was weird.
“You know what song has been in my head for like a week?” Lauren asked. “ ‘Bil ie Jean.’ It just keeps playing, and I don’t know what to do about it. Do you think it wil make me go insane? It’s just always there in the background of my brain, ‘Bil ie Jean is not my lover …’ ”