How to Love (17 page)

“Can you stop?” I asked sharply. It was the closest to the edge I ever got with him, but I just—I did not want to be having this conversation. I didn’t need anyone else telling me all the things I didn’t know. “It’s not like that. He’s not just some random—” I broke off, tried to think how to explain it to him. “You
know
Sawyer.”

My father looked at me like he’d never seen me before in his life, like he honestly had no idea what to do with me at all. “Yes, Reena,” he said finally. “I do.”

We stared at each other, like a standoff. For a moment I wished for my mom—someone to take my side in all of this. Eventually I shrugged and raised my chin. “Can I go?”

I was expecting an argument, but my father just sort of sagged. “Go ahead,” he told me finally, and as I pushed through the door into the living room I was almost sure I heard him sigh.

I bite at Sawyer’s bottom lip in his parents’ kitchen; I run my hands up over the fuzz where his hair used to be. “There you are,” he says after a minute, two palms on either side of my face like he wants to make sure I’m not planning to go anywhere. He’s smiling hard and bright against my mouth.

“Hi.” Kissing him feels familiar but also new, a song they haven’t played on the radio in a really long time. “Risotto needs a stir.”

“Who cares?” He’s got his teeth at the place where my neck meets my shoulder and is lifting me up off the counter the tiniest bit. “God, Reena,” he murmurs, nosing close to my ear. “I missed you so freaking much.”

“Shh,” I hush him, concentrating. He tastes like salt and
summer, the same. “No, you didn’t.”

Right away Sawyer gets that look on his face like I’ve slapped him, and he sets me down on the counter with a thud that sings up through my spine.

“Ow! What the hell, Sawyer?” I reach behind me to rub my tailbone. “That hurt.”

“Sorry.” His face softens for a moment. “But I don’t know how much I appreciate you constantly acting like you don’t believe a single word that comes out of my mouth.”

I bark out a brittle little laugh, incredulous. “I
don’t
believe a single word that comes out of your mouth.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re a liar!”

“Well, then why are you here?” he explodes.

I glare at him, embarrassed. This was a mistake. I knew it was a mistake coming in, and I did it anyway.
Slow learner
, I think, hating myself and Sawyer equally.
Stupid girl.

“Look, Reena,” Sawyer says quietly. He gets a little closer again, careful, warm breath at the spot behind my ear. “Sooner or later, I think we’re going to do this.”

I jerk away like he’s radioactive. “The hell we are.”

“We are,” he says, like it’s that simple. I want to jump down off the counter, but he’s standing in my way. “And don’t talk like you don’t want to, either, because if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be showing up at my house at eleven o’clock at night so I could make you a second dinner you don’t even want to eat.” He looks so sure of himself I could
kill him. “But I’m not going to let it happen until you forgive me.”

“Well, then, I guess we won’t be doing it for a hundred thousand years.”

Sawyer snorts. “I guess not.”

“Oh, suddenly you’re into delayed gratification?” I’m striking out in every direction, indiscriminate. I want to hurt him as fast and as badly as I can. On the stove the rice is boiling over, an angry hiss.

“You’re pissed,” he says, eyes narrowing. I can tell that blow landed, but it doesn’t feel as satisfying as it should. “So I’m going to let that one slide.”

“How charitable of you.”

Sawyer shrugs. “If I just wanted sex, I could get sex. Trust me, I’ve done it. But I want you.”

I seriously almost slap him. “God, you are such an
ass.
””

It’s a sickness.”

“Yeah, we should throw you a fund-raiser.”

He grins. “You’re getting feisty in your old age.”

“Well.” I want to mark up this perfect kitchen, pull the pans off the rack and draw on the walls like the baby with a Sharpie. “Getting knocked up and walked out on will do that to a person.”

“I didn’t know you were pregnant!”

“I don’t care!”

Sawyer sighs noisily. “So what are you going to do, storm out on me again? Because—”

“Yes, actually,” I fire back. This time I do hop down onto the tile, shove him roughly out of my way. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do.” I grab my shoulder bag off the table, brush past him. The smell of burning rice sticks to my T-shirt clear across town.

*

I get home and head upstairs to check on the baby, anger and exhaustion and that infinite embarrassment still rattling around like loose coins inside my head. The house is cool and silent, the hallway dark save for the glow of Hannah’s nightlight spilling dimly out the half-open door; I get in there and find her wide-awake and waiting, calm as the surface of a cool, placid lake. “Hi, Mama,” she says cheerfully, grinning like possibly she stayed up just to talk to me and is pleased with herself for being so clever. Her eyes are fathoms and fathoms deep.

“Hi, baby.” I drop my purse on the floor and cross the carpet, suddenly a hundred percent sure I’m about to cry. I’m just stupidly relieved to see her, is all, this twenty-pound miracle I thought for sure would make me a prisoner, hands and feet bound zip-tie secure. It does feel like that some days, to be honest, but right now I’m bone-grindingly glad.

I swallow the tears, smile back. “Hi, Hannah,” I say again, lifting her out of the crib and cuddling her against me, rubbing her warm downy head against my cheek. She’s getting heavy lately, more toddler than baby. It makes me
feel weirdly nostalgic and bittersweet. “Whatcha still doing up, huh?”

Hannah doesn’t answer—she’s got words but not so much conversation yet—and instead she just snuggles into my body, surprisingly strong arms coming up around my neck. “Mama,” she murmurs again.

“I am your mama,” I tell her, sinking down into the rocking chair and smoothing patterns with my palm across her tiny baby back. “I’m the only one you’ve got, poor thing.”

God help me, he didn’t call.

Like … ever.

The first couple of days after I slept over weren’t so bad. He was probably just busy, I reasoned, as I made a big show of not looking at my cell phone—of trying not to be that girl. I had homework to finish. I had articles to write. On Monday I worked a party at the restaurant, tucking the extra tips into my pocket at the end of the evening, telling myself it was seed money for whatever awesome adventures were waiting for me after graduation.

It was fine, I promised myself in the ladies’ room mirror. I was fine.

Two days turned into three, though, and then five—and
soon a week had passed. I wanted to crawl out of my skin. I skulked around near the Flea, where his band practiced. I called my own cell on the landline, on the off chance I’d somehow randomly stopped getting service in my house.

“Well,” I muttered out loud, when it rang just right as rain—thinking of my father, thinking of Allie, thinking of all the things I actually didn’t know.
Well.

I didn’t cry. I planned instead. I dug out all my travel books and bought an armful of new ones, retracing my old routes and making notes: Macedonia and Mykonos, Joshua Tree and Big Sky. I priced tours of the Pyramids on Kayak and Expedia. I took virtual tours of hotels in Prague.

That worked okay, on occasion.

Other nights, not so much.

Tired of watching me pace the upstairs hallway like a zoo animal, Soledad sent me out on whatever errands she could think of: milk, Tylenol, bank deposits. I turned up the AC and drove. That didn’t always help, either, though: One night right around Valentine’s Day, I finally cracked and headed south down 95 toward Sawyer’s, my father’s plastic-covered dry cleaning hanging in the backseat. The windows were dark, driveway empty. I cruised by again to make sure.

*

“So, okay,” Shelby said, when I confessed over French fries in the cafeteria the following afternoon, head in my hands over my sad little cup of yogurt. She’d broken up with her soccer-star girlfriend over Christmas, had spent more or less
the entire break sacked out on my bed watching all six seasons of
Lost
on DVD and muttering monosyllabic answers every time I asked if she was okay. It occurred to me that relationships basically sucked no matter where you fell on the Kinsey scale. “That was a low moment.”

I cleaned out my closet. I interviewed the couple playing Sandy and Danny in the winter musical for the paper. I dropped by Ms. Bowen’s office—again—to make sure Northwestern had gotten all my application materials.

“We’re all set, Reena,” she promised, smooth forehead creasing a little as she looked across the desk in my direction. She was wearing her dark hair pulled up into a topknot. Her short nails were painted a deep purplish red. “Nothing to do now but relax and wait.”

“I know,” I said, and even as I tried to tamp it down I could feel the edge creeping into my voice.
Relax and wait
was the story of my life lately; it was hard to take it from her on top of everyone else. “I just—” I shifted my backpack to my other shoulder, fidgeting. All of a sudden I felt weirdly close to tears. “It’s really important that I get in, is all.”

“Reena.” Now she really did look concerned, all her guidance counselor instincts coming online at once. “Are you okay?”

God, for a second I almost told her everything: Sawyer and Allie and how lonely I felt lately, how badly I needed to get out of this place. The way she was looking at me, her face open and intelligent—something about her made
me think she’d listen. Something about her made me think she’d be able to help. Still, spilling my guts to my
guidance counselor
of all people? That was pathetic. That was
absurd.

“Yeah,” I told her, smiling as hard and as brightly as I could manage. I probably looked deranged. “I’m great.”

I got A’s on all my midterms. I went into Lauderdale to go shopping with Shelby. I started working my way through Sylvia Plath’s
Collected Poems
, but that made Soledad really nervous, so I switched to Jane Austen so she could sleep without worrying I was going to put my head in the oven or something.

Which I wasn’t.

Probably.

I felt so incredibly, unforgivably
stupid
, was the worst part—the lamest kind of stereotype, the dumbest kind of fool. I remembered that night outside the party at Allie’s house, the pitying look on her sharp, familiar face:
You definitely couldn’t handle having sex with Sawyer LeGrande.
I’d had sex with Sawyer, all right—I’d given him something I couldn’t get back—and now he was done, game over, thanks for playing. It was gross. It was
predictable.

It hurt like nothing else in my life.

Weeks passed. Life hummed on. At night I sighed and mapped out my future, staring at the moon outside my window and wondering where on earth I might go.

There’s a farmers’ market on Las Olas where I like to take the baby on weekends, buying heavy bagfuls of cheap yellow lemons and watching the spry retirees. I get Hannah a chocolate chip cookie from the organic bake sale and she lounges happily in the stroller while I shop: rosemary for Soledad, avocados for my father. I buy eleven kumquats, because I like the way they look.

Aaron’s been coming with us lately—he’s a sucker for this Nutella bread that’s basically just cake, chocolate, and hazelnut with an orange-sugar glaze—and this morning he meets us by the fountain just like always, trendy sneakers and the sturdy expanse of his body, one hand in my back
pocket as we walk. Aaron is the only person in my life who makes me feel legitimately small.

He’s quiet today, though, sort of broody. His forehead is furrowed underneath his cap. “What’s up?” I ask finally, reaching for a sip of his limeade, nudging his solid shoulder with mine. He smells clean and citrusy, like the soap in the bathroom at his place; there’s a tiny cleft in his chin where my thumb fits almost exactly. “You’re being weird.”

Aaron shrugs, noncommittal. I’m expecting a
no, I’m not
or a
don’t worry about it
, the kind of
guess what’s in my head
I’m used to when it comes to the men in my life, but instead he sits down on a bench near the soaps and beeswax candles and scrubs a hand through his sandy hair. “Can I ask you a question without you freaking out?” he starts.

Right away my whole body goes cautious, perking up like a ferret—but how could he possibly know? “Yeah, definitely,” I reply. I think of Cade and me as kids, playing dumb like that. I pull the stroller closer, so I can see the baby’s face. “Of course.”

“Did you go to Sawyer’s after you left my place the other night?”

Um.

“Did you
follow
me?” is the first thing I come up with, from zero to completely wigged in 2.5 seconds. The sun is beating down on my neck. There are, like, six different emotions happening here right now, no question—guilt and this weird indignation, anger at Sawyer and myself. Most
of all I’m scared I’ve blown this. Aaron looks at me like I’m insane.

“No,” he says immediately. “Jesus. I saw Lorraine at work, and she mentioned she saw you over there. I don’t know. I’m just asking—”

“
Lorraine
followed me?”

“Reena, nobody was following you!” Aaron looks a little annoyed. “Calm down for a second. She lives over there. Near the LeGrandes, I guess. She knows them, so she mentioned it to me.”

I—oh. “That’s it?” I ask.

Aaron frowns. “Is there something else?”

“No,” I say quickly. “No, definitely not.” He doesn’t know. I’m being crazy. “I’m being crazy,” I tell him, staring hard at the pavement between my feet. “I’m sorry.” I rub at the base of my ponytail for a second, trying to figure out how to play this. I know I can be secretive. It’s not a quality I particularly like in myself, but there’s no way I can tell him the whole truth. What happened with Sawyer was a stupid mistake, some bizarre one-time muscle-memory thing. It’s never going to happen again. “I’m sorry. Yes, I saw Sawyer the other night.”