How to Love (15 page)

“I have to go set up,” Sawyer said over the noisy chatter of the crowd, once he’d settled me at the far end of the bar. “Are you going to be okay by yourself? Mike said he’d keep you out of trouble.”

Mike, the giant bartender, nodded gruffly in my general direction and I nodded a little, sweating: It was stifling hot at the Prime Meridian. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. No worries.”

“Good.” He found my hand and squeezed once, fleeting. “Make sure you cheer real loud.”

Sawyer left me and headed for the stage, where a couple of guys were already assembling a drum kit, connecting an amp. I watched them for a while, until the drummer—Animal himself, presumably—caught me and nudged Sawyer. He said something, but I couldn’t make out what.

I tried to get comfortable on the stool, to not stare at anybody, to look like I belonged here. I wished for a notebook. I wished for a pen. Probably a girl writing in a bar was weird, but not as weird as a girl who was just sitting around all by herself and sweating, with nowhere to comfortably look. I wished I’d asked Shelby to come.

“You want something?” Mike wanted to know, leaning over the bar so I could hear him.

I nodded. “Just a Coke. With a lot of ice.”

He raised his eyebrows at me. “That all?”

“That’s all.”

“Good girl.”

I just shrugged. That’s me, I wanted to tell him. Serena Montero, good girl at large. I should have had business cards printed up.

I chewed ice cubes as the bar filled, as another guy climbed onstage and began tuning a guitar. People kept making their way through the door, and I glanced around warily as a group of three or four girls positioned themselves almost directly in front of me. There was definitely a target market in the Prime Meridian that night, a whole lot of American Apparel up in there. “Um,” I said, as Mike passed by. “Can I ask you a question?”

“You just did.” He looked impatient; he was busy.

“Do they play here a lot?”

“Every few weeks or so.”

“Is it always like this? The … crowd, I mean?”

“What, the lady brigade?” Mike smirked, glanced around. “Pretty much.” He looked at me for another moment. “You need something else?”

Yes.
How the hell did I not know this was a popular band?
I wanted to yell, but the lead singer, who wore a green T-shirt with
MY OTHER RIDE IS YOUR MOM
emblazoned across the front, approached the mic. “We’re the Platonic Ideal,” he announced, as the drums started up behind him. “How are you guys doing?”

I looked back at Mike and just shook my head. “No,” I said slowly, which was useless—I couldn’t even hear my own voice. “I think I’m good for now.”

The members of the Platonic Ideal were all variations on a theme, shaggy-haired boys with bad attitudes and Converse sneakers, but it worked for them—didn’t hurt that their melodies were gorgeous, the harmonies right on. The kid on the keyboard had braces, I noted with a smile, and the guitarist, who was wearing aviator sunglasses even though it was muddy dark, and whom I vaguely remembered Sawyer referring to as Iceman, had a lot more John Mayer in him than he probably wanted to admit.

Sawyer, though, my Sawyer LeGrande, was very obviously their token looker—dark jeans slouched low on his narrow hips and a belt buckle the size of a saucer. He wore a plain white T-shirt, the kind you buy at Walmart in packs of three for six dollars, but of course he looked like a million
bucks, all angles and muscles and fierce concentration. I plucked another ice cube from my glass.

He knew how to play the girls, too, in particular a coven of about four or five who were standing right next to the stage, singing along to every song and positively wiggling.
Wiggling.
Jesus. Sawyer played the bass and didn’t say much, just grinned occasionally, tapped one sneaker-clad foot on the stage, and sang his songs. He had a pretty voice, all yearning tenor, velvety and sad.

I shifted in my seat, out of sorts and aching; I couldn’t get over the sneaking suspicion that I was sitting exactly where I didn’t want to sit. I’d gotten this far and still all I could manage to do was watch him from across the room and wish there was a way to capture him, to write him down—the girl in the yard at the party, hiding outside the pool of light.

He talked to those girls between songs, the Wiggles, laughing like he knew them, crouched down at the edge of the stage. “Sawyer, take off your shirt,” called one of them from farther back, loud enough for everyone to hear, and probably she was half kidding, but still I almost choked to death.

“You first,” he shot back.

Finally I got up to pee, snaking my way through the crowd and trying to get manhandled as little as possible. When I was finished I pushed out the front door, ignoring the tight knot of people standing around a pickup in the
parking lot, glass bottles sweating in their hands. I stared into the pet store window for a while, at the puppies and kitties sleeping in their tiny crates. I pulled out my phone to call Shelby.

“Domino’s,” she answered cheerfully.

“This place is full of skanks.”

“Of course it is.” She sounded amused. I could hear the TV in the background, the grisly crime shows she liked. “It’s nasty.”

“None of them are old enough to be here, though. I mean, I’m not old enough to be here, either, but at least my skirt’s not up my ass in the middle of January.”

“True,” Shelby agreed. “True, you do wait until the summer months to wear your skirt up your ass.”

“Shut up.” I laughed in spite of myself. “I’m serious. Did you know this was, like, a band that people actually come to see?”

“How would I have known that?” she asked. “You’re the one who’s going to write her doctoral dissertation on the life and times of Sawyer LeGrande.”

“I think I need to leave.”

“’Cause of the skanks?”

“I feel like a groupie, Shelby.” I kicked at some loose concrete, a little kid having a tantrum. “I like him so stupidly much.”

“I know you do.” Shelby blew a raspberry on the other end of the phone. Her patience for Sawyer was limited,
I knew. For a moment I let myself think about Allie, the way we could spend an entire ninth-grade afternoon deconstructing his new haircut or the way he pronounced the letter
L
. It was just one more thing I missed about her, like her weird bony ankles and how much she loved corny knock-knock jokes, the shorthand and secret language of a friendship that went back a decade or more. “You want me to come pick you up?”

I sighed, pulled it together. “No, I’ll be okay. I’m a big girl.”

“You are indeed. Call me if you change your mind.”

“Thanks.” I hung up, tapped the pads of my fingers once against the pet store window, and dragged myself back inside. I’d lost my seat, so I got another Coke from Mike and contented myself with watching the rest of the show smushed against the wall, one arm crossed over my chest like a shield. They’d just announced their last song when I felt a hand on my shoulder, heard a singsong kind of lilt in my ear.

“Se-ree-na. What are you doing here?”

I turned around, flinching at the touch, and there was Lauren Werner. Of course. She was wearing designer jeans and a tank top made to look like it was weathered, a delicate amethyst pendant on a skinny chain around her neck. Already I wanted to die. Or, better yet, for her to die.

“Hey. I, um …”
Pull it together, Reena, Jesus.
I felt caught out, like she’d found me doing something illicit. “Came with Sawyer, actually.”

That surprised her. Her eyes narrowed, cunning and feline. “Really? Are you guys, like …,” she said, an accusation. “Dating?”

“What? No, no,” I said quickly. “We’re just—Our dads own a business together, so …”

So.

“No kidding.” Lauren looked me over. I could smell her perfume, faint and expensive. “He never mentioned that. You have that bewildered, first-time Sawyer LeGrande look, sort of. But I guess you’ve known each other since you were just little grommets?”

I squinted. “Something like that.”

“That’s cute!” she said. “He’s great, isn’t he?” I started to reply, but she just kept right on talking. “And I guess you, you know, had Allie in common and everything.”

Oh,
wow.
I was about half a second away from running for the door again, calling Shelby, hitchhiking if I had to, but Sawyer appeared behind me just then, slipped a hand into my back pocket by way of hello. I turned around; he was warm and damp with sweat. “Hey, Laur,” he said. “You taking good care of this one?”

“Oh, the best,” I answered for her.

“We’re old friends,” she put in.

They chatted a little about some party they’d been to a couple of weekends ago, some people I’d never heard of, before she disappeared back into the crowd, smiling her good-bye in a way that looked, frankly, like a threat. Sawyer didn’t notice.
“So what’d you think?” he asked me, once she was gone.

I took a deep breath, put my game face on. “Freaking awesome, clearly.”

He grinned, and then frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said, blinking. “Just a little tired.”

“You want me to take you home?”

I shook my head. “No. Stay if you want. I can call Shelby to pick me up.”

“No, don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t go. Give me a few minutes and we’ll get out of here.”

“Sawyer—”

“It’s totally fine,” he promised.

It was more than a few minutes. It was three more Cokes and two trips to the sketchy bathroom and meeting about thirty exceedingly good-looking and mostly female friends of Sawyer’s, several of whom actually said, “Oh, she’s so cute!” as if I wasn’t there and also was four years old. It was after midnight by the time we made it out the door.

I settled carefully into the passenger side of the Jeep, pressed against the door, as far away from him as that night on the patio at the restaurant months and months ago. He must have been thinking the same thing, because he rolled his eyes at me.

“Oh, stop,” he said, reaching over and picking up my hand. His calluses scraped my palm as he pulled me across the seat, until I was almost sitting in his lap. “I’m sorry we stayed so long. I didn’t realize how late it was.”

I shook my head. “No, it’s not that.”

Sawyer smiled. “You had a shitty time, Reena. You can say it.”

“I wouldn’t call it shitty,” I said.

“Then what
would
you call it?” He was picking at the seam on my jeans, fingers moving absently up and down my thigh.

I shrugged helplessly. “I really did like your band.”

“Good, but that’s not what I asked.”

“Sawyer …” I sighed. “I’m not your type.”

He raised his eyebrows. “What’s my type?”

Allie. Lauren. The Wiggles. “Not me.”

“What does that even mean?”

“I’m not good at this stuff. I don’t like …” Bars. Girls telling you to get naked. Feeling like a fan. “… big groups of people. I’m not, like, super social. I’m not your type.”

“Who cares? I hate my type. I want you.” He twisted the end of my ponytail between two of his fingers. “Why are you upset?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged.
I want you
, he’d said. “I hate Lauren.” To start with.

His face cracked open into a grin. “No shit.”

“How long have you guys been friends?” I asked, as he put the Jeep in drive and pulled out of the lot.

“Since freshman year?” he said, checking behind him. “I don’t know. She dated Iceman for a while.”

“Did you ever …?” I trailed off, regretting even before
the words had gotten out.

But he was smiling. “Did we ever
what
, Reena?”

I looked down, away. “Forget it.”

“Would that bother you?”

“Maybe.”

“No.”

“Good.”

He glanced at the clock on the dash. We were headed for the highway at this point. If Sawyer made a left we’d end up at my house, and his parents’; a right would take us south, toward the street where Sawyer lived now. He stopped the Jeep at a red light. “Do you need to call your dad?” he asked.

I shook my head. Our parents had spent the evening together, at a retirement dinner for one of the restaurant’s longtime regulars. I pictured them in the banquet room, weirdly comforted by the idea of them all in one place. I hadn’t been lying when I told Sawyer I’d miss them when I left home. “I didn’t know how long it would go, the show, so I told him I’d probably just stay at Shelby’s.”

Sawyer nodded, didn’t say anything for a long time. The stereo hummed. “Do you want to come over for a little while?” he asked me, and there was a moment before I answered in which I didn’t breathe at all. My face felt warm. The light turned green.

“Reena?” he asked again.

“Yeah.” I nodded. “I can come over.”

It’s after ten thirty but the humidity is still bearing down by the time I get to Sawyer’s parents’ house, and the weight of the air feels physical, something I’d like to throw off. It rained a couple of hours ago—it rains every single day, world without end—and the grass is slick under my feet.

I ring twice and worry he won’t even be there—or worse, that his parents will be—but when he finally opens the door, the house behind him is quiet save for the low hum of a radio somewhere. A pair of dark-rimmed glasses is perched on his nose. “When did you go blind?” I ask.

“Always have been.” Sawyer shrugs like he’s not even surprised to see me. “Couldn’t admit it.”

“Oh.” I nod once, curtly. “Do you still want to make me dinner?”

That makes him smile. “Yeah,” he says, and steps back to let me through. “Yeah, absolutely. Come in.”

I follow him through the living room, past the multitude of black-and-white family portraits on the dining room walls—Lydia’s work is all up and down the hallways. When I was a little girl she used to let me take pictures with her heavy 35mm, showed me how to develop them in the darkroom she’d set up in the downstairs bathroom. I remember feeling so nervous to screw up around her even then that my hands would shake as I tried to hold the camera, a whole roll full of blurry, focusless shots.

I know the LeGrandes’ house almost as well as I know my own: I’ve sat through a dozen Super Bowls on the leather couch in the den here, eaten king cake on the sun-porch every Fat Tuesday for years and years. I know where they keep the spoons and recycling and extra toilet paper, all the secrets and all the smells.