Serendipity

I don't remember when I started to love imperfections. Sometimes I laughed, because it was such a contradictory thing, to love imperfections. I think it all started when I looked in the mirror and decided that I could never be perfect, because in reality, perfection didn't exist. Perfect wasn't real, and I was. In order for me to cease the hatred I had developed for myself, I would have to examine every inch of myself. Ugly scars on my legs were interpreted as memories from the childhood that I longed to relive. The knobbiness of my knees was a reminder that I was never as big as I had previously convinced myself. I told myself that my broad shoulders and lightly freckled skin were somebody's idea of beautiful, and I think doing all of this is what made it so easy to love all of your imperfections. It never bothered me that your teeth weren't entirely straight. I didn't care that your eyes were so dull. I never asked about the faded scar underneath your chin. With one look, I noticed everything that you hated about yourself. With that same look, I knew. I didn't even have to think about. I knew from the start that you were my kind of perfect.



Sagamore was just short of a half an hour drive away from the beach house, and the entire ride over, Kate told me things about Danny Ginsberg. He lived on the outskirts of Glasgow in Scotland, but came to Barnstable every year and considered it his second home. He was an aspiring geologist, though his true passion could be found in folk music. He had a German Shepherd Dog named Cegan who was a retired police dog. While Kate swooned over him like he put the stars in the sky, I couldn't help but think that he was just an average, boring man. I didn't even have time to think about what Jack would be like because I was too busy pondering about whether or not Danny Ginsberg would order something generic to eat.

As we stepped out of the car, I almost snorted at how generic Danny looked. Despite the fact that it was a double date at a small diner on an eighty-two degree day, he still chose to bust out that classic navy blue blazer and hold a small bouquet of red roses for Kate in his hands. She said she loved them, but all I could think about was how they were probably going to die in the car before the date was even over. Noticing the passenger door of Danny's car had just swung open, I moved my eyes in that direction.

And that was when I saw Jack.

My first impression of him was that he was good looking, and knowing that there were so many attractive guys in Cape Cod during this period in time made me want to come down more often. Though the two boys in front of me were related, Jack and Danny didn't look that much alike. Jack's hair was dark brown, but darker than Danny's, almost black. His eyes were dark, too. They resembled some shade of navy blue, which I thought was weird since it was something I had never seen before. He was taller than Danny, but he wasn't as tan. In fact, he was a little more on the pale side of the skin tone spectrum. I also appreciated the fact that he had dressed pretty casual, much like myself. Though, it wasn't expected of him to dress any way but casual. Even though we were technically on a date, Jack and I both knew that we weren't and we were just tag alongs for people who were too shy to be alone together the first time.

"Nice to see you again, India," Danny said, and I was surprised he had remembered my name. The only interaction we had was when he asked me for the time and I went to pull out my cell phone, which caused me to spill beer down his shirt. So, maybe I wasn't surprised that he remembered my name after all. "This is my cousin, Jack."

"Hey," he smiled, trying his best to be polite. He seemed very reluctant to be here today, and while I didn't really mind having to do this, there are a lot of other things I'd rather be doing instead.

"Hi," I muttered in response, carelessly lifting my hand in a motionless wave.

Those were the only two words we said to each other during the first twenty minutes of this excuse of a double date. Kate and Danny were getting on just fine, almost failing to realize that Jack and I were even there, sitting right next to them in the same exact booth. I mainly eavesdropped on their conversation, debating in my head whether or not Danny would be a good guy for Kate. He seemed okay so far. He was less generic in my eyes now that I knew him a little better, plus he ordered a belgian waffle at three thirty in the afternoon. I respected him for that, considering I was a breakfast food fanatic myself. Jack, on the other hand, spent most of his time glancing out the window. When he wasn't doing that, he was locking eyes with the Holly the waitress.

Music had been faintly playing the entire time, but I hadn't picked up on it until I heard the song Losing My Religion by R.E.M. Being the big nineties music fan that I was, I absentmindedly began to hum along as I picked the bacon off of my turkey club and ate it separately.

"You know this song?"

Jack's voice, having not heard it in a half an hour, startled me and caused me to drop my sandwich. Kate and Danny must have been a little surprised to hear him speak too, because they stopped their conversation for a few moments before jumping right back into it.

"Do you think I've been living under a rock?" I replied, cocking an eyebrow at him with a slight smile, "Yeah, I know this song. It's one of my favorites."

He bit his bottom lip, eyeing me as I bit into my sandwich. "I just didn't think you were the type of girl who liked this kind of music."

"What type of girl do you think I am?"

He nodded in Kate's direction, signaling he was under the impression that I was just like her. I almost got angry, taking his head nod as an insult towards my best friend. But rather than saying something about it, a snuck a glance at her and almost threw up at her actions. Kate did this thing where she never acted like herself on first dates. She twirled her hair with her index finger, laughed at almost everything the guy said; her voice even sounded a little different than it normally did. I focused my attention back on Jack and shook my head slowly, mouthing the word No.

I saw Jack smile, and I realized the reason for his silence was because he thought I was a ditz. Not wanting to intrude on Kate and Danny's in depth conversation about Scottish folk music, Jack and I excused ourselves and went out to the dock on the river located behind the diner. We talked there for a while. He told me a lot about himself, like how he lived year-round in Hyannis which was just south of Barnstable and how he lived there with his friend Henry, who was, and I quote, "a reckless idiot with a big heart." In return, I told him a few things about myself, like how I was a student at Amherst College studying clinical psychology, but was secretly an aspiring pop star. Jack laughed at that. We laughed a lot, actually, which must have passed a lot of time because before I knew it, I heard Danny and Kate laughing as they walked out of the doors of the diner.

As I walked back to my car, Danny pulled me aside for a few minutes.

"Do you think Kate likes me?"

"I think she likes you a lot," I assured him, sneaking a glance at Jack, who blushed as he had been caught looking my way.

"Really?"

"I wouldn't lie about something like that."

"Good. Kate's a pretty nice girl, and someday I'm going to make her mine."

I smiled, partially because of his determination, and partially because I knew Kate would say yes to being his in a heartbeat. All he had to do was ask. But I wanted to have a little fun with him, so I decided to keep that information to myself and let him sweat out the anticipation. With a simple head nod, I walked towards my car and got into the drivers seat, watching as Danny kissed Kate on the cheek. My eyes once again wandered over to Jack, who wasn't looking at me this time. Rather, he was looking down into his lap, and I assumed he was playing some stupid game on his cell phone.

Jack and Danny left in their car before I even started mine, and Kate took the opportunity to actually shout out in pure happiness. I smacked her in the ribs, wearily smiling at the people walking into the diner. "You need to chill out."

"I can't!" She protested, squirming in the passenger seat. Kate may have been causing a scene, but I couldn't remember the last time I saw her this happy, so I said nothing about it. "He's just so...so..."

"Beautiful? Charming? Perfect?" I offered as I adjusted my mirror.

"Yeah," she laughed, throwing her hands behind her head. "Something like that."

Five minutes of silence went by. Kate was probably still reminiscing about her date, but I was absorbed into the song on the radio. It was Don't Speak by No Doubt, yet another nineties song. A quick image of Jack smiling at me when he discovered I liked R.E.M. flashed in my mind for a split second, and then it was gone.

"What'd you think of Jack?" Kate broke the silence, suddenly very intrigued. She leaned on the divider, resting her chin on her palm as she patiently awaited my answer.

I knew what she meant, and to be honest, I wasn't really sure how I felt about him. Jack was funny and witty and passionate and so many other things all wrapped up into a beautiful body, but I would be lying if I said I didn't think about George a few times while talking with Jack. I was really starting to hate myself for it, too. What Colton said the previous night about George only wanting to break me and haunt me was on a continuous loop in my mind and I couldn't shake the thought that he was right. Even though that should have been enough to give me some weird type of closure, it did the exact opposite and made my heart hurt even more than it did prior to that conversation.

"He seems great," I said finally, hoping it would be enough for Kate to not bug me about it.

It must have worked, because she didn't ask any other questions concerning how I felt about this new boy in my life. "He's hot," She noted instead.

"Yeah, he is," I agreed.

"You should jump his bones."

"Kate!" I laughed and jerked the steering wheel sharply, laughing even harder when she smashed the side of her face off of the corner of the passenger seat. "Serves you right, you dirty little pervert."



When Kate and I arrived back at the beach house, it was almost six and we spent the rest of the night inside watching movies on her Netflix account. The first movie we chose was Pearl Harbor and we spent an entire hour sobbing over Rocky Road ice cream once it had ended. The romance aspect isn't what got to me. I didn't shed a tear until the part where the planes went down and Raef ran over to Danny and did the whole "You can't die, Danny! You're gonna be a father! A father!" speech, and then I absolutely lost it. There were so many tears streaming from my eyes that certain spoonfuls of ice cream tasted a little salty.

The second movie we put on was The Breakfast Club, but since we had watched it so many times during the years of our friendship, it mainly played the role of background noise. Kate really wasn't into old eighties films or musicals or music, but I was. I loved all that old shit more than I loved anything that was popular over the past few years. Since she wasn't a huge fan, Kate disappeared into her bedroom halfway through the movie and got into bed, though I heard her talking on the phone. Judging by her constant laughter, I assumed it was Danny.

It was the part in the movie where the kids decided to get high in detention when there was a knock at the door. I was a bit hesitant to answer, considering it was almost eleven thirty and pitch black outside. The person at the door knocked again, and I got up to answer it with a quickening heartbeat. I flicked the switch that turned the outside light on, and the light illuminated the person's face enough for me to notice that it was Jack.

"How'd you know where I live?" I asked, internally slapping myself for having that be my initial response to his arrival. Not even a simple hello spilled from my lips, just the beginning of an interrogation.

He laughed at my defensiveness. "Danny was here yesterday, I just asked him where it was."

"Oh."

A few moments of awkward silence passed before I realized it was eleven thirty and there was an incredibly cute boy on my doorstep and I probably should have invited him inside. "Do you want to come in?"

"Nah," he started, digging around for something in his pocket. "I was actually hoping you wanted to come out." His fingers stopped roaming his pockets and he pulled out two things: a cigarette and a lighter. I grimaced slightly. The number of deaths in my family due to lung cancer was particularly high, so being around smokers always made me a little uneasy.

I blinked at him, watching as he placed the light cigarette between his teeth. "It's almost midnight."

Jack ignored my statement. "Do you want to go on a walk with me or not?"

I weighed my options. I could go on a midnight walk with Jack, or I could sit inside on the couch and continue watching old movies on Netflix while Kate chatted with Danny on the phone until the both of them drifted off into dreamland.

"Let me get my sweatshirt."