The Rules of Love & Grammar Read Free

at the ice cream container as though she might try to confiscate it.
    I grab the container and pull it to my side of the table. “That’s ridiculous. I wouldn’t even know what to say. Too much water under the bridge. That was a long time ago.” I pick up the spoon.
    “Oh, come on,” she says. “Time has no meaning when it comes to love.” She puts her hand over her heart.
    “Where did you get that? From one of your Louise Hay books?”
    “No, you always used to say it. Back in high school. Remember?”
    I point my spoon at her. “Well, you shouldn’t listen to everything I say. Besides, I don’t think it would be a good idea to see Peter. It might be uncomfortable. You know, because of the way things ended.”
    Cluny is about to protest, but I cut her off. “Look, my apartment won’t be fixed for three weeks. So while I’m stuck here, my plan is to sleep, eat junk food, read trashy novels, go to my dad’s party, and try to forget for just a little while that right now my life is a total mess.”
    “Grace, come on, this is Peter we’re talking about. We used to bribe Renny to drive us around town looking for him. That’s how crazy you were about him, remember?”
    I remember. Of course I remember.
    “By the way,” she adds, “today that would be considered stalking. And we’d probably be arrested.”
    “Yeah, they’ve ruined everything fun.”
    I gaze out the kitchen window, onto the swath of grass that pushes the land toward the sound. A small sailboat whizzes by in a puff of wind. I look at the wooden table, at the scratches and cracks that have collected over the years. They look like the lines a fortune-teller might read to predict the future. I wonder what they would say about mine.
    Cluny leans closer. “And this will be a good distraction. Something to help take your mind off Scott and your job and your apartment. Plus, I’d love to see Peter again. Get the details on what he’s been doing all this time. It’s so exciting that he’s back in town.” I can feel her staring at me. “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about him.” She sounds a bit smug.
    She’s smug because she’s right. Of course I’ve thought about Peter. Long before I began to see his name appear in magazines and entertainment blogs, there were things that reminded me of him, things that made me wonder where he was and what he was doing. Twister would come on TV, and I’d think about the night we went to the Dorset Playhouse and watched it from our favorite seats in the balcony. Or I’d be in a luncheonette and hear someone order a coffee milk shake, and I’d remember the afternoon at the Sugar Bowl when we drank so many coffee milk shakes we were both awake all night, jittery, talking to each other on the phone. Or I’d hear “Claire de Lune” on the radio, and I’d think about the day I heard Peter playing it on the piano in the empty high school auditorium.
    Cluny looks at me. “Yeah. I thought so.”
    I shake my head. “No, it’s not like that. Of course I’ve thought about him, Cluny. But I got over him a long time ago. I had to. You know that.”
    “We should go see him,” she says. “We’ll find out where he’s staying. It’ll be like solving a mystery. Just like when we were kids.”
    “Are you going to dig out your detective handbag?”
    She sighs. “I wish I still had it. Remember all the great stuff we put in those things? Tweezers? Handkerchiefs?”
    “Those big magnifying glasses we got at the stationery store?”
    “From that salesman who always had the horrible dandruff.”
    “Remember how we bought those little black notebooks?” I say. “For jotting down clues?”
    “God, everything was a clue. What about that time in fifth grade when you thought the man and woman who lived at the end of your street were bank robbers hiding from the police?”
    “Well, they looked suspicious,” I say, feeling the need even now to defend myself. “Come on, the wife, with all those weird