Still Friends

I had one claw in my hand when Diane Mercer decided my breakup was over. "I knew you two wouldn't stay apart," she said, smiling across the dining table. Eli's fingers paused over the next claw. The bowl of meat sat between us, heaped with pale pieces of crab and orange-gold roe. Outside the kitchen windows, the last of the evening light caught on the gray water of Saltmere Harbor. Inside, the old radiator clicked beneath the window, and a pot of potatoes steamed beside Diane's elbow. I looked at the bowl, then at Eli. "We didn't get back together." The sentence sounded sharper than I'd intended. Maybe I'd been holding it in since I arrived. Diane's smile faded. She glanced at her son, waiting for him to confirm what I'd said. Eli set down the claw. "Mom." That was all. One syllable, and not even a correction. I put my own crab claw on the edge of my plate. "I'm glad you invited me. I am. But I don't want you thinking this dinner means anything has changed." Diane folded her napkin once, neatly. "I'm sorry, Nora. I thought..." She stopped and looked at the bowl again. "He always does that for you." "I know." Eli used to peel crab for me on the back steps of this house when we were fourteen, getting more meat on his jeans than in the bowls. He still remembered which claws I hated wrestling with and how I preferred the roe separated. It was a small, kind habit. It was also the sort of habit that made everyone around us imagine a future we hadn't agreed to. I'd spent years letting that happen. I was trying not to anymore. Diane passed me the potatoes. "You're right. I shouldn't have assumed." "Thank you." The table went quiet for a moment. Eli didn't reach for the crab again. He sat with one hand around his water glass, his thumb rubbing the same place on the rim. I'd known him since I was seven. I knew the rhythm of his silences. This one meant he was waiting for me to make it easier. I didn't. Diane asked about my work instead. I told her I was finishing a condition report for the old Saltmere Lifeboat House. I mentioned, without looking at Eli, that I'd been offered a restoration job in Alderport. The Harbor House project would take at least a year, maybe longer. "Oh," Diane said. "That's wonderful." "It is," I said. "I haven't signed yet, but I'm going to." Eli finally looked up. "You said the deadline was Friday." "It is." "Have you decided?" "I just did." I heard the little edge in my own voice. The decision had been made days ago. I'd accepted the job in my head the moment I saw the plans: a derelict, salt-eaten hotel at the end of Alderport's pier, with a roof that could still be saved and windows facing open water. But the contract needed my signature, and some part of me had been waiting to tell Eli first. He took a drink. "That's a long way." "It's four hours by car." "I know how far it is." Diane had gone very still. She looked at me, then at her son, then lowered her gaze to the table. I swallowed a bite of potato. "I'm not asking you to be happy about the distance. I'm telling you because I don't want to keep acting like I might change my mind." "I didn't ask you to change it," Eli said. "No. You usually don't ask." The words landed harder than the bowl had. Diane's fingers tightened around her fork. Eli's mouth opened, then closed. I was sorry for the awkwardness, but not sorry I'd said it. I'd ended our engagement six months earlier, after Eli told me he'd signed us up to renovate the Mercer family's restaurant. He'd assumed I would turn down a fellowship and spend the next two years redesigning the place. He had called it a plan. I had called it my life, already handed over without my permission. We'd managed to turn the breakup into something we could carry around town without making anyone choose sides. We were still friends, as long as neither of us asked what that meant. After dinner, Eli walked me to my car. The night smelled of wet cedar and harbor mud. He stopped beneath the porch light, his hands in his coat pockets. "I'm sorry about Mom," he said. "She wants you to be happy." "I know." "I don't want to be the easiest way to make her feel better." His gaze dropped to the gravel between us. "You're not." "Then why didn't you tell her we were over?" "I have." "You let her think we were trying again tonight." "I didn't know she thought that." "That's not the same as correcting her." He looked at me then. He had the same careful expression he'd worn when we were teenagers and he was waiting to see whether a joke had gone too far. "I miss having you around," he said. "I miss you too." "Maybe we don't have to turn that into something else." "Maybe we don't." I reached for my car door. "But we have to be honest about what it is." He nodded, though I couldn't tell what he understood. I drove home with the taste of crab still on my tongue and the feeling of Eli's old kindness sitting beside me like a passenger I hadn't invited.