Alex, Approximately

I may go back to hating you. It was more fun.”

—Cary Grant, North by Northwest (1959)

Turns out, Davy’s shotgun was stolen. He also had a hella bunch of heroin and other narcotics in his coat. Wanda says since he’s a month from turning eighteen and he’s been arrested before, he might be tried as an adult and serve some time in prison. Right now, he’s being detoxed in a jail cell. Wanda says his attorney will try to persuade the judge to put him a state-run rehab facility for a couple of weeks while he awaits trial. No guarantee that will happen, though.

I get all this information the day after the events in the surf shop, so I relay it by text to Porter and let him know. We haven’t really had any time to talk, what with all the chaos. His family showed up a few minutes after the cops and were understandably freaked. Mr. Roth was so angry at Davy, he had to be restrained until Mrs. Roth could talk him down. Wanda called my dad, who immediately left work and rushed over to the surf shop to make sure I was okay. It was a whole fiasco.

By the time we’d given statements and everyone cleared out, Porter had to go to work at the Cave, so I followed my dad home. It wasn’t until he was ordering us lunch that I realized Porter had, at some point when I wasn’t paying attention, slipped the shark tooth back into my pocket. I got a text from him a few minutes later.

All it said was: We’re not done talking.

The next day after dinner, out of the blue, my dad asks to see my old map of the boardwalk. I’d almost thrown it away in a fit when Alex blew me off weeks ago. I have to dig it out from my desk drawer in my bedroom. Dad spreads it out on the patio table near our redwood tree and studies it, nodding slowly.

“What?” I say.

Dad sits back in his chair and smiles at me. “You know, you’re tenacious and stubborn. You got that from your mom. It’s what makes her a great lawyer. I love tenacious women. That’s what attracted me to Wanda. It’s what makes her a good cop.”

I give him the side eye. Where’s he going with this?

“However, this tenacity thing also has its downside, because it’s all forward movement with blinders on. Like a horse, you know?” He holds his hands up on either side of his eyes. “You plow ahead, and you make a lot of progress that other people wouldn’t make, but you can’t see what’s happening on either side of the road. You have blind spots. You ignore things that are right next to you. Your mom did that all the time.”

“Is that why you got divorced?”

He thinks about this for a long moment. “It was one reason. But this isn’t about your mom and me. I’m talking about you. And your blind spots. Don’t be too tenacious. Sometimes you’ve got to stop and look around.”

“Why don’t you ever just come out and tell me what you’re trying to say, Master Yoda?”

“Because I’m trying to raise you to think for yourself, young Jedi. I can offer advice, but you’ve got to do the work. The whole goal of parenting is for you to become an independent young woman and come up with your own answers. Not for me to provide them for you.”

“It sounds like you read that in a parenting book.”

He holds back a smile. “Maybe I did.”

“What a dork,” I tease. “Okay, what’s your advice, then? Lay it on me.”

“Have you told Porter that you were talking to Alex before you moved out here?”

“Um, no.”

“Maybe you should. People can sense when you’re holding things back from them. I knew your mom was cheating on me with Nate for months before she told me. I had no proof, but I could sense something was wrong.”

I’m so floored by this, I don’t know what to say. Dad has never talked much about Nate—or that he knew Mom was cheating with Nate. It makes me uncomfortable. What’s weird is that he’s so blase. But it’s sort of weirder that we can talk about this together now. And wait just one stinking second—

“I wasn’t cheating on Porter with Alex,” I tell him. “Or cheating on Alex with Porter.”

“What you actually did or didn’t do doesn’t matter,” Dad says. “It’s the secrecy that eats away at you. Just tell Porter. And maybe be honest with Alex while you’re at it. You’ll feel better, I promise.”

“I don’t know about that,” I mutter.

“Like I said, it’s not my job to do the work for you.” He folds up the map in neat squares. “But my advice, dearest daughter, is that you settle up your boy problems in order, one at a time.”

It takes me an entire day to think about everything Dad said, but I think I finally see the logic. Alex was a big part of my daily life for a long time. And, sure, he blew me off. But I should have told him I’d moved across the country. Maybe if I tell him now, he won’t even care anymore, especially now that I’ve broken the ice about Porter in that last heart-to-heart messaging we had. I guess I won’t know until I try.

@mink: Hey. Me again. Are you still out there?

His reply comes two hours later:

@alex: I’m here. What’s up?

@mink: Since we were being all super honest in our last talk, I thought I’d do some more bean spilling. This one is a little bigger. Are you ready?

@alex: Should I be sitting? *is afraid*

@mink: Probably.

@alex: Sitting.

@mink: Okay, so here’s the deal. I’m in town, living with my dad, and have been here for a while. Sorry I didn’t say anything. Long story, but I was worried it might be weird, and I have a tendency to avoid confrontation. But better late than never? I was wondering if you wanted to get together and have lunch. Anyways . . . this is getting awkward, so I’ll shut up. I just wanted you to know that I’m sorry I never said anything about being here, and I thought maybe I could apologize in person, since we’re both in the same town and used to be friends. (And hopefully still are?) What do you say?

I wait and wait and wait for his reply. This is a mistake. I should probably delete my message. If he hasn’t read it yet, I might still be able to . . .

@alex: What about your boyfriend?

@mink: This would be a nonromantic lunch. I’m sorry, nothing’s changed since our last conversation. I’m still not over him.

@alex: Why don’t we go with our original plan? Meet me Sunday night on the beach under the California flag, half an hour before the film festival’s showing of North by Northwest.

Oh, crap. I wasn’t prepared for that! I tear my room apart searching for the film festival guide that Patrick gave me and look up the schedule for the free films they’re showing on the beach. North by Northwest doesn’t start until nine p.m. It will be dark by then. Should I meet a strange boy after dark? That doesn’t seem advisable. Then again, it’s a public place, and when I browse the film guide, there are photos from last year; all the concessions areas appear well lit. Surely the flag is somewhere around there.

Should I do this? The Artful Dodger definitely would not. But am I that person anymore?

@mink: Okay. I’ll meet you there.

That’s one boy problem taken care of. Now for the next. This one seems harder. I shoot off a quick text.

Me: Hey, you busy? I was hoping we could meet somewhere and talk. I’m willing to do the quid pro quo thing now. You win.

Porter: Actually, I’m sort of booked until after Sunday. How about after that?

Me: Okay, it’s a deal. Will text you then.

Actually, I’m relieved. North by Northwest is on Sunday, so that gives me time to meet Alex and mend things with him before I talk to Porter. Who knew two boys could be so much trouble?

In North by Northwest, Cary Grant plays an advertising executive who’s mistaken for a CIA agent named Kaplan. The thing is, Kaplan doesn’t really exist. So throughout the film, Cary Grant is constantly being forced to pretend he’s someone he’s not—a fake of a fake. Nothing is what it seems, which is what makes the story so fun to watch. Alex and I have discussed the film’s merits online, but it’s strange to think about those conversations now. I definitely wish I could be seeing it under happier circumstances.

By the time Sunday night rolls around, I’m strangely calm. Maybe it’s because this has been a long time coming, me meeting Alex. Or maybe it’s because I don’t feel the same way about him as I once did, now that Porter’s in my life. I think back to the beginning of the summer, when I was so worried and nervous about everything Alex could or could not be—tall or short, bald or hairy, shy or chatty—and none of those things matter anymore.

He is who is.

I am who I am.

Exactly who those people are couldn’t really be identified in an online profile or captured correctly in all our written communication, no matter how honest we tried to be. We were only showing one side of ourselves, a side that was carefully trimmed and curated. He didn’t see all my hang-ups and screwy problems, or how long it takes me to pluck my eyebrows every night. He doesn’t know I tried to pick up a gay whale-tour host because I thought it might be him. Or that I can’t tell the difference between a male and a female cat . . . Or about all the dirty GIFs I’ve laughed at with Grace, or the number of churros I can put away in one sitting before it starts to get embarrassing for the churro cart vendor, because he knows I’m really not buying them for “a friend.” (Five.)

God only knows what I haven’t seen of him.

So, you know, whatever. If he’s nice, great. If not, no big deal. In my head, I’m holding my head high and wearing a Grace-inspired T-shirt that says I’M JUST HERE FOR THE CLOSURE in big, bedazzled letters.

I arrive at the beach a little more than half an hour before the film starts. They’re showing it, ironically enough, near one of the first places I remember when I came into town: the surfers’ crosswalk. Only, the whole area is transformed tonight, with one of those huge rotating double spotlights that’s pointed toward the sky, announcing to the world, Hey, movie over here! They’ve also lit up the palm trees along Gold Avenue and hung film festival banners in the parking lot across the street, which is jammed with cars. I manage to squeeze Baby into a space alongside another scooter before following a line of people who are swinging picnic baskets and coolers, heading toward the giant white screen set up in the sand.

Alex was right all those months ago when he first told me about this: It looks really fun. The sun’s setting over the water. Families and couples are chilling on blankets, and closer to the road, a row of tents and food trucks are selling burgers and fish tacos and film festival merchandise. I head for those, looking for flagpoles. All the palms are lit up, so I figure a flagpole must be spotlighted too, right? But when I’ve walked the entire row of vendors, I can’t find it. No flags near the movie screen either. It’s a pretty big screen, so I check around back, just to make sure. Nope. Nada.

This is weird. I mean, Alex lives here, so he knows the place. He wouldn’t just tell me to meet him somewhere so specific if it wasn’t there. I check my film messages to make sure there isn’t anything new from him, and when I don’t see anything I head back the way I came, all the way back down to the end of the concession row to the back of the seating area. That’s when I spot it.

The flagpole is all the way up a set of steps, on a wide natural stone platform—a lookout over the ocean, where the surfer’s crosswalk ends.

Right in front of the memorial statue of Pennywise Roth.

I sigh, and then snort at myself, because really, no matter what I do, I can’t escape him. And if Alex is the nice guy I’m hoping he is, we can both have a laugh about it later.

Weaving around blankets, I make my way to the lookout and climb the stone steps. I’m getting a little nervous now. Not much, but this is surreal. The lookout is fairly spacious. It’s banded in a wood railing with some built-in benches around the ocean side, where one older couple is gazing out at the sunset. Not him, for sure. I gaze up at the Pennywise statue. I’ve seen the photo of this online, of course, and driven past it, but it’s weird to see it up close in person. Someone’s put a Hawaiian lei around his neck; I wonder if it was Mrs. Roth.

Someone’s sitting on a bench behind the statue. I blow out a long breath, straighten my shoulders, and lumber around ol’ Pennywise. Time to face the music.

“Hello, Mink.”

My brain sees who’s in front of me, hears the words, but doesn’t believe. It recalculates and recalculates, over and over, but I’m still stuck. And then it all comes rolling back to me, out of order.

The video store.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Him caring about the Maltese falcon being stolen.

Roman Holiday.

White cat at the surf shop.

Churro cart.

Is it wrong to hate someone who used to be your best friend?

Cheating girlfriend.

The Big Lebowski.

Watching movies at work.

My coworker, the human blunt.

The Philadelphia Story.

Mr. Roth . . . Xander Roth.

Alexander.

Alex.

My knees buckle. I’m falling. Porter leaps up from the bench and grabs me around the waist before I hit the ground. I kick at the stone below my feet, like I’m swimming in place, trying to get traction. Trying to get control of my legs. I finally manage it. When I do, I go a little crazy. It’s that stupid coconut scent of his. I shove him away from me, beat him—hard—landing blows on his arms until he lets me go in order to shield his face. And then I just fall to pieces.

I sob.

And sob.

I curl up into a ball on the bench and sob some more.

I don’t even know why I’m crying so hard. I just feel so stupid. And shocked. And overwhelmed. Sort of betrayed, too, but that’s ridiculous, because how could that be? Then I stop crying and gasp a little, because I realize that’s exactly how Porter must have felt when he found out.

He sits down on the bench and lifts my head onto his lap, sighing heavily. “Where are you at in the screwed-up-ness of it all? Because there are all kinds of layers.”

“We basically cheated on each other with each other,” I say.

“Yeah,” he says. “That’s pretty messed up. When I told my mom, she said we pulled a reverse ‘Piña Colada,’ which is some cheesy 1970s song about this couple who write personal ads looking for hookups, and end up meeting each other.”

“Oh, God,” I groan. “You told your mom?”

“Hey, this is some crazy shit. I had to tell someone,” he argues. “But look at it this way. We ended up liking the real us better than the online us. That’s something, right?”

“I guess.”

I think about it some more. Ugh. My dad knew. He was trying to tell me with all that talk about blinders and horses. Another wave of YOU ARE THE WORLD’S BIGGEST IDIOT hits me, and this time, I let the wave wash over me, not fighting it. The older couple that was hanging around on the lookout has left—guess a bawling teenage girl was ruining their peaceful sunset view—so we have the area to ourselves for the moment, and for that, I’m grateful. Below the lookout, hundreds of people throng the beach, but it’s far enough away that I don’t mind.

“You didn’t know until game night at my house, right?” I ask.

“No.”

That makes me feel somewhat better, I suppose. At least we were both stupid about this until he heard my nickname. Oh, God. He watched The Philadelphia Story with me on purpose. He knew then, and he didn’t tell me. My humiliation cannot be measured. “Why?” I ask in a small voice. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was bewildered. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t believe you’d been living out here the entire time. Couldn’t believe you . . . were her—Mink. At first, I thought you’d been screwing with me, but the more I thought about it, I knew that didn’t fit. I just freaked for a while. And then . . . I guess I wanted to hold on to it. And I wanted you to discover it on your own. I thought you would. If I dropped enough hints, I thought you would, Bailey—I swear. But then I started thinking about why you didn’t tell me—Alex—you moved out here, and how it felt as though you’d been lying to me . . . and I wanted you to come clean.”

“Quid pro quo.” I close my eyes, fully aware of the irony now.

“I didn’t mean for things to go sideways,” he insists. “When you got fired . . . Grace told me what happened in the Hotbox. For the record, she also made some threats to my manhood that gave me a few nightmares.”

I groan. “I don’t blame you for what I did in the Hotbox. I was upset at the time, but I’ve moved past it.”

“I just want you to know that what Scott and Kenny were saying that day . . . I didn’t think it was funny. I’m not even sure why I laughed. I think it was just a nervous reaction. I felt awful afterward. I tried to text you and tell you, but you weren’t speaking to me. And then Davy happened . . .”

I sigh shakily, completely overwhelmed. “God, what a mess.”

After a second, he says, “You know, what I haven’t been able to figure out is why you lied about where you lived before you moved out here.”

“I didn’t. My mom and her husband moved from New Jersey to DC a few months before. I just never told Alex. You. Alex You. Ugh. That’s not a random screenname, is it?”

“Alex is my middle name.”

“Alexander. Like your father?”

“Yeah. It was my grandfather’s, too.” He pushes a curled lock of hair behind my ear. “You do realize this whole mishegas could have been avoided if Mink You would have just told me from the beginning that you were moving out here . . . right?”

I use his hand to cover my face. And then I uncover it and sit up, facing him, wiping away tears. “You know what? Maybe not. Let’s say I’d arranged to meet up with Alex You at the Pancake Shack when I first moved here, and that I hadn’t gotten that job at the Cave. Would we have hit it off? I don’t know. You don’t know that either. Maybe it was just the situation we were in at the Cave.”

Porter shakes his head and winds his fingers through mine. “Nope. I don’t believe that, and I don’t think you do either. Two people who lived in two different places and found each other, not once but twice? You could stick one of us in Haiti and the other in a rocket headed to the moon and we’d still eventually be doing this right now.”

I sniffle. “You really think so?”

“You know how I said you were tricky like the fog, and that I was afraid of you running back to your mom at the end of the summer? I’m not afraid anymore.”

“You’re not?”

He looks toward the ocean, dark purple with the last rays of light. “My mom says we’re all connected—people and plants and animals. We all know one another on the inside. It’s what’s on the outside that distracts. Our clothes, our words, our actions. Shark attacks. Gunshots. We spend our lives trying to find other people. Sometimes we get confused and turned around by the distractions.” He smiles at me. “But we didn’t.”

I smile back, eyes shining with happy tears. “No, we didn’t.”

“I love you, Bailey ‘Mink’ Rydell.”

I choke out a single sobbed laugh. “I love you too, Porter ‘Alex’ Roth.”

We reach for each other and meet in the middle, half kissing, half murmuring how much we’ve missed each other. It’s sloppy and wonderful, and I’ve never been hugged so tightly. I kiss him all over his neck beneath his wild curls, and he cups my head in both hands and kisses me all over my face, then wipes away my cried-out makeup drips with the edge of his T-shirt.

Applause and cheers startle both of us. I’d nearly forgotten all about the movie. Porter pulls me up with him, and we lean over the railing together to peer into the dark. Flickering light fills the beach, and the old MGM logo appears with the roaring lion. The music starts. The opening titles dart over the screen. CARY GRANT. EVA MARIE SAINT. Chills zip up and down my back.

And then I realize: I get to share all of this with Porter. All of me. All of us.

I glance up at him, and he’s emotional too.

“Hi,” he says, forehead pressed to mine.

“Hi.”

“Should we head down to the beach?” he asks, slinging an arm over my shoulder.

“I seem to remember hating the beach at some point or another.”

“That’s because you’d never been to a real one. East Coast beaches are trash beaches.”

I laugh, my heart singing with joy. “Oh yeah, that’s right. Show me a real beach, why don’t you, surfer boy. Let’s go watch a movie.”