Free Ordinary World by Elisa Lorello Page A

know Tone’s got some gigs in Connecticut in the coming weeks. How about next month? I could meet him and then we could drive up together.”
     
                “That works. We could barbeque. That poor grill hasn’t seen any action since Sam—” I stopped myself, “—since last summer.”
     
                Joey ignored the slip. “Let me call Tony and call you back. I gotta ask him about the MIDI files he sent me last week anyway.”
     
                “Okay. Call me back even if you get his voice mail.”
     
                “Okay.”
     
                Twenty minutes later, the phone rang. I was still sitting at the desk.
     
                “It’s all set,” Joey said.
     
                We finalized plans. “Bring the guitars,” I said.
     
                “You got it. This is gonna be fun,” he said after a beat.
     
                “Yeah. I’m looking forward to it.”
     
                “Mom is so gonna kill us when she finds out that we left her out.”
     
    “So don’t tell her. See you soon.”
     
                When I hung up the phone, I glanced at the clock on the desk: 10:14 p.m.
     
                “What the hell,” I said out loud, and picked up the receiver again. I dialed Melody’s office number. When her voice mail picked up, I spoke with a rather superior tone: “I’ll have you know that I just made plans with my brothers for them to come visit me next month. At my house. So there.” I hung up. Then I cleaned until midnight.
     
                For the first time in ten months, I had something to look forward to. And for the first time in just as long, I smiled—albeit alone—in mere anticipation.
     
                 
     
               
     
               
     

    Chapter Eleven
     
    August
     

    T HEY HAD ARRIVED IN MID-AUGUST, GUITARS and duffle bags in tow. I unexpectedly bawled like a baby when I saw them pull into the driveway, and practically knocked them over when I ran out to the car to hug them. But they were cool and let me get it out of my system. Neither of them said a word about my weight gain; then again, they had seen me yo-yo with my weight for most of my young life. In fact, the six years with Sam was the only time I’d maintained a decent weight—I’d looked and felt good. What’s more, when I was with Sam, I didn’t think about my body, didn’t have the obsessive preoccupation that took up so much of my time and energy in the past. I’d accepted it as it was.  Besides, all bodies are beautiful …
     
    Joey and Tony and I spent most of our time in the kitchen or out on the deck, grilling. One evening, they took out their guitars and started playing all the old Beatle songs we used to sing as kids, in three-part harmony. By the fourth or fifth song, several of the neighbors, including the adolescents, had wandered into the yard or peered over the fence to watch the free show. One of them shouted a request: “You know any Dylan?”
     
    Tony scowled, but acquiesced and the two of them did a flawless Bob Dylan impersonation of “Like a Rolling Stone” without the harmonica part. After that, requests came left and right. And after all the applause and invitations to play at future parties, we looked at each other and knew we were done sharing ourselves with them. My brothers said thanks, packed up, and went into the house, much to the crowd’s disappointment. “What a treat,” I heard an older woman, who lived two doors down, say. It wasn’t until well after midnight, when I lay awake in my bed, Sam’s absence ever omniscient, that I’d realized that during the entire jam session, I’d enjoyed myself so much that I’d forgotten to miss him for the first time. The revelation resulted in a mix of accomplishment and guilt.
     
    Best of all was how much I laughed that week. And although there was always