Just You (16 page)

The three of us started down the hall
together through the swelling crowd. Suddenly, Erin let out a loud
yelp, scaring the hell out of Ashley and me. We all spun around in
time to see Mitchell withdrawing his hand from her rear end. He was
walking behind us with his friends, including Brian, and they all
had big stupid grins on their immature faces.

“How about you keep your sweaty paws off my
ass,” Erin snapped, but a flickering of a smile softened her anger.
She and Mitchell had recently broken up for the millionth time.

“Where would you like me to put them then?”
Mitch asked, leering.

His sidekicks thought this was hilarious.
Erin flicked her hair at him and Ashley rolled her eyes skyward. I
turned forward again, but not before glancing at Brian. He wasn’t
looking at me. Ashley had told me earlier that she thought Brian
had heard about the picture in my locker. Like I gave a crap what
Brian thought about who I dated. He and Kara were practically
engaged by now, so he had no room to judge.

“Will they ever grow up?” Erin said a few
minutes later as we took our seats in English class. “Guys our age
are so infantile. Grab my ass in the hall in front of dozens of
people? Oh baby, that turns me on.”

I snickered. “Are you getting back together
with him or what?”

“I guess so…that is, if your man really and
truly doesn’t have a twin brother.”

I patted her shoulder. “Sorry.”

“Not as sorry as I am.”

I giggled as the image of Mitchell’s
inappropriate ass grab and the funny way she’d screamed replayed in
my head. Erin looked at me like she knew exactly what I was
thinking, and then she started giggling too. By the time our
teacher came in, we were hysterical. Mrs. Conner looked at us and
shook her head tiredly, like she knew—as we all did—that it was
going to be a long, long winter.

****

After getting my learner’s license and
completing driver’s ed, I was finally allowed to practice my
driving skills. On weekends, when the roads were clear, Dad took me
out in the Camry. Stella wasn’t road-ready yet, and I didn’t feel
comfortable driving Lynn’s big minivan. But even the sedan proved
to be too much for me to handle sometimes. I tended to take turns a
little too fast, always leaving my father terrified and
white-knuckled as the car swerved. He may have had a successful
career as a teacher, but his skills seemed to be contained within a
classroom setting only. Encase him in three thousand pounds of
steel and glass, with me at the wheel, and suddenly he turned into
a raving basket case. Eventually he came to recognize his
limitations and let Lynn take over. She’d taught Leanne to drive,
so she knew the ropes. And
she
never accused me of trying to
kill her.

“She has a lead foot,” my father said one
Saturday evening at dinner. My stepmom and I had just returned from
a driving lesson, and I was pumped. After many failed attempts, I
had finally gotten the hang of backing into a parking space,
perfectly and symmetrically.

“I do not,” I said, helping myself to some
pot roast.

Lynn smiled in my direction. “She’s really
progressing, Steve. You should see her now.”

“No, thanks.”

“Come on, Dad. I haven’t run anyone down in
weeks.”

Jamie looked at me, wide-eyed. “You ran
someone down?”

“She’s kidding, J,” Leanne assured her
brother, and then turned to her mom. “Remember when you were
teaching me how to drive and I smashed into that Corvette?”

Lynn laughed. “How could I forget that?”

“Did
you
ever run over any people?”
Emma asked Leanne, dead serious.

“So far, no.”

“I ran over a raccoon once,” Dad said.

“Ewww!” Emma dropped her fork. “Did you just
leave it on the road?”

He winked at her. “No, I brought it home.
That wasn’t chicken you ate last weekend.”

When Emma rolled her eyes, she reminded me
of myself.

“Road kill stew,” Leanne said, and Dad sent
her a surprised smile. Leanne engaging in any kind of banter,
especially with my father, was a rare occurrence in this house.
Whenever she would let down her guard like that, even a little, my
father would get this quiet, pleased look on his face, as if he
were treasuring the moment.

“Well,” Lynn said as she got up to get
dessert. “
I
think Taylor is going to be a wonderful driver.
Better than some
other
Brogans I know.”

She laid her hand on Dad’s cheek as she
passed him. Dad reached out to swat her behind and she giggled,
backing up to plant a kiss on his bald spot. I averted my eyes,
like I always did when they got all touchy-feely in front of us. It
didn’t bother me, exactly…I’d just never gotten used to seeing
adults act that way, my father especially. Never, even in my most
distant childhood memories, had I ever seen my parents show
affection toward each other. They fought, a lot, and when they
weren’t fighting, they were either acting coldly polite or not
speaking at all. I thought this was normal until I started paying
attention to how my friends’ parents interacted. My parents had
always seemed happy enough to me, but I knew from the time I was
six that they weren’t
in love
like Cliff and Clair Huxtable
on
The Cosby Show
reruns I sometimes watched after
school.

But Lynn and my father, they were constantly
all over each other. Dad ogled her as if she were a twenty-year-old
lingerie model instead of an average-looking woman in her forties.
They were so disgustingly happy together, so much in love, that
sometimes I could almost understand why he chose her. Almost.

After dinner I loaded the dishwasher,
listening to Lynn and Leanne’s college discussion as they wrapped
the leftovers. Leanne was going to Kinsley in September and
majoring in sociology. She wanted to be a social worker or a
counselor for troubled teens. I thought this was interesting, as
Lynn and Dad still considered
her
a “troubled teen”. Her
attitude had improved a lot over the past few months, but she still
had her moments of hostility during which she’d scream at her mom
and storm out the door. But these outbursts were becoming fewer and
farther between. And there was the noticeable thawing-out toward my
father. Still, it surprised me that she didn’t want to go away to
college. I thought when the time came, I’d probably want to go away
and leave my boring little town and this congested city behind for
something bigger and more exciting.

That evening when Michael picked me up,
college was still foremost on my mind.

“So,” I said as we drove down the slushy
streets to his house. We’d agreed to hang out with Michael’s
sisters while his parents went to some sort of fundraising event.
“Where do you think you’re going?”

“To my house?” he said, confused.

“I mean…” I shook my head, irritated with
myself for thinking he could read my mind. “To college. Where do
you think you’ll go?”

He hesitated before answering. “I don’t
know. There’s no point in deciding now. Acceptance letters don’t
come out for another couple of months.”

“Your dad wants you to go to Avery, right?”
Avery was considered the best school in the east. About four times
the size of Kinsley, it was harder to get into and also six hours
away by car. His dad had been pushing it pretty hard.

“Yep,” was all he said to that. College was
like a taboo subject with him. Whenever I brought it up he either
clammed up or tried to change the subject altogether. Like now, for
instance. “Hey, how was driving practice today?”

I let it drop for the time being. “Fine. I
am an expert parker.”

“Even parallel?”

“Well, no. I haven’t gotten to that
yet.”

We pulled into his driveway. “I can teach
you, if you want. Tomorrow?”

“Sure.”

Spending an evening with the twins wasn’t
exactly a hard job. They were good kids and Michael was great with
them, kind and patient. Still, they liked to test him in the same
way Emma liked to test me. Little sisters must have a manual
they’re all required to follow.

We ended up watching a movie downstairs in
the family room. When it was over, both girls went up to bed and
Michael and I stretched out on the couch in front of the TV, which
now showed some gory action movie. Not that we were watching.
Michael kissed along my collarbone, his hand searching out the
clasp on my bra as I lay against him, torn between going with it
and straining my ears for any movement upstairs.

“You’d better go check,” I whispered, too
distracted to surrender myself.

He sprinted upstairs to make sure everything
was sound and then returned to my side, assuring me that yes, his
sisters were definitely asleep and no, his parents weren’t pulling
into the driveway anytime soon. We picked up where we left off and
this time, I let myself relax.

During the past month, whenever the
opportunity presented itself, Michael and I had been edging closer
and closer to the inevitable. Still, we’d always stop before the
point of no return, which usually happened around the time his hand
ventured lower, past the waistband of my pants. I knew if we
progressed past that point, everything else would predictably
follow. And I wasn’t quite ready for everything else. At the very
least, I had to make a trip to the doctor first.

“I’m sorry,” I said about an hour later,
after yet another cease and desist. My fingers, still clutching his
wrist, trembled a little.

“Why are you always apologizing?” He freed
his hand and linked it with mine.

“It’s just…it’s frustrating. I feel so
stupid when I stop you like that.”

“It’s no big deal,” he said, and then let
out a breath. “It
is
hard to stop sometimes, but I can take
it. Really. It’s not like I’m going to explode if we stop.”

“I want to…I mean, I want you to…” My face
burned, and I gave up trying to spit out the words. “It’s hard for
me to stop too, but I’m…I don’t know. Scared, I guess.”

“Of course,” he said, as if any other
possibility had never occurred to him. “Like I told you before, I’m
not going to pressure you into anything. And there are other ways
to—.”

“I’m a virgin,” I blurted out. I had never
spoken those words aloud to him before. To his credit, he didn’t
laugh. He just smiled slightly and kissed my forehead.

“I kind of figured that out on my own
already.”

“And you’re not.” I stated this like I knew,
though he’d never told me one way or the other. But it was so
obvious to me that he wasn’t. He was hot. Girls liked him. And the
fact that I had to continually force myself to stop him was a good
indicator that he knew his way around certain areas.

He looked at me, and through his eyes I
could almost see his brain working, trying to forecast my reaction
to what he was about to say. “No,” he confirmed. “I’m not.”

I turned away, toward the TV. A bald man in
a white tuxedo was getting shot up by the Mafia. I watched as
splotches of red soaked through the white, ruining the suit beyond
repair. The shooter didn’t seem the least bit remorseful; he walked
by the bald guy and sunk his boot into his stomach for good
measure.

Michael held my chin, turned me back toward
him. “Does that bother you?”

Of course it bothered me. It bothered me
that he had done all this with someone else. It bothered me that he
knew precisely what he was missing each time I slammed on the
brakes. “Maybe a little,” I said.

“It shouldn’t. It’s ancient history.”

“Was it Christina?”

He nodded and then glanced away. He never
talked about his ex-girlfriend. The only reason I knew her name was
because Robin had told me about her. She went to one of the high
schools downtown, not Redwood Hills High, and she was—according to
Robin—“gorgeous but mean”.

“Just her?” I asked.

“Just her.”

I felt a certain sense of relief. There
hadn’t been a harem before me, at least. “Were you in love with
her?” I asked. Shots rang out on the screen, signaling another
blood bath.

“For a while,” Michael said. “But it wasn’t
like this. Like you and me.”

“How are we different?”

He absently ran his fingers over my necklace
as he thought about my question. “You’re real,” he said, and then
shook his head. “I guess that doesn’t make much sense.”

“She wasn’t real?”

“It’s hard to explain. The whole time I was
with her, I could never see it lasting. She was so insecure, being
with her exhausted me sometimes. And when it ended, it was almost a
relief. I didn’t love her anymore.”

This jibed with what Robin had told me a
while ago about Christina supposedly being a “controlling bitch”
who liked to keep Michael on a short leash. But I didn’t mention
that to Michael. I just vowed to myself that I would never be
anything like her, no matter how jealous or insecure I felt
inside.

“But with you…” he went on. “It’s different.
You’re so…I don’t know…normal.”

We both laughed at this description.
“Thanks,” I said.

“And you’re perfect.”

“Are you kidding? I’m a disaster half the
time.”

He kissed me again, sweet and gentle.
“That’s what
makes
you perfect. For me. I could use some
more chaos and clutter in my life.”

“Want me to go mess up your room?” I asked,
trying to be helpful.

We laughed again, and then, realizing how
late it had gotten, we sat up and began to make ourselves
presentable. Michael glanced over at me and said, “We’ll stop doing
this, if you want.” By “this” he meant our current half-dressed
state and compromising positions.

“I don’t want to go backward,” I told him.
“But I don’t think I’m ready to go forward. Yet.”

He slipped his shirt back on. We were
sitting side-by-side on the couch now, all innocent and back to
normal. “Okay,” he said. “I can wait.”