Lost in Us (11 page)

"You had enough time this morning but chose to waste it by questioning me about James," I say.

She scoffs. "You were gone with him the entire weekend, and then shut yourself in the library for three days working on your damn assignments. What did you expect?"

In truth, I expected just that. It was the reason, aside from my monstrous amount of work and Aidan’s promise to help me prepare for (hopefully) upcoming interviews, for which I locked myself in the library with Aidan after classes, coming home late at night when Jess was asleep and leaving long before she'd get up. Aidan took me by complete surprise when we started role-playing interviews. He played the interviewee first. My jaw dropped. The timid boy who can’t get through a conversation with a girl without turning bright red at least once, transformed into a perfectly confident interviewee under my eyes in a matter of seconds. No wonder he has two job offers lined up already. I turned into a tongue-twisted, brain-frozen idiot when my turn came. How I ever got my internship last year I will never know.

The crowd starts moving inside slowly, and Jess jiggles her foot impatiently.

"Let me finish this," I say, sipping the last remains of the smoothie.

"Oh, I'm sure if you tell James how much you like kiwi smoothies he'll take you to a kiwi plantation or something."

And here we go again. Somehow, after painfully detailed questioning of my weekend, Jess decided that James is the perfect boyfriend. She blatantly ignored me when I pointed out that he made it crystal clear he isn't my boyfriend.

"Cut it, Jess."

"How can this guy be real? He introduced you to his friends, took you out to a candlelight dinner, and finds your movie obsession cute."

"He's a movie freak too."

"I’ve lied to myself my whole life that guys like him don't exist," Jess says, as if she hasn't heard me, "so I wouldn't fall into a depression about all the assholes I've gone out with, who can't introduce me to their friends after six months of dating." She grits her teeth, snatching the smoothie from my hand and sipping the very last bit.

I know exactly who she means: Ethan, the guy she proclaimed was the love of her life until three months ago, when she abruptly dumped him. But she all but forbade me to ever talk about him, so I switch back to James.

"Those things don't mean anything to him, Jess. Besides, he’d slept with half of those friends and probably more than a dozen others and has no plans to quit doing so. For all I know, he spent the last two nights with Natalie." My heart stings violently at the thought. "I'd say that trumps candles and movies."

"I don't think he has," she winks. “You said he called you every day."

He did. My stomach jolts every time his name appears on my screen and frightens me like nothing else. I spent the last weekend desperately wishing I'd had the strong will to disappear from his apartment. But I didn't. Not when he asked me on Saturday morning whether I want to spend the day with him. Or when day morphed into night and then another day. Every ounce of sanity dictated me to leave, to run, because every second I spent at his side fed my illusion that everything was real: his arms around me and his lips on mine, his comforting words when I talked about Kate and the absence of even one nightmare, our endless discussions about which Superman movie was the worst, and his unbelievable patience in listening to me talk about my job application woes.

It was so perfectly fake it felt real.

"Let's go inside," I murmur. "Oh shoot—turn around," I command and swirl around, grabbing Jess by the shoulder.

"Ouch. What was that for?" she complains.

"Abby just passed by. I told her I missed the last two Saturday volleyball games because I had chickenpox."

Jess bursts out laughing. "You're an awful liar."

"She is." I raise my gaze and find James standing a few feet away from us, in front of the fountain. He's dressed in a suit, something he told me more than once he despises. And whether the weekend was real or not, there's nothing fake in the sudden lightning-fast beats of my heart and the racing pulse in my throat. I curse my wardrobe choice—an above-the-knee gray cotton dress with short sleeves. I thought it made me look like a smart, would-be professional when I chose it. I feel like a desperate schoolgirl now.

Jess steps forward. "I'm Jessica Haydn," she says, almost out of breath.

"James. Nice to finally meet you." He kisses Jess on both cheeks then turns his attention to me. "You look perfect for someone who was supposed to be down with chickenpox for two weeks," he muses.

"I had to come up with something," I mumble, staring at my feet.

"Are you joining us in the auditorium, James? Getting bored to death by lousy speeches is much less painful when in good company," Jess says.

"I'm actually here to deliver a speech." He smirks at her.

"I'll make sure not to fall asleep during yours, then." She winks. “I’ll be eternally grateful if you crack a joke or two. You’re twenty-eight, which makes you a good fifteen years younger than all the other speakers, so I’m putting all my trust in you.” Jess will never cease to amaze me. Is there anything that could ever throw her off, or shake that fantastic confidence of hers even a bit?

"You were not on the speaker list," I say to James. "I checked it twice."

"I promised Dean Kramer that I'd show up spontaneously if I had time."

"I'll wait for you inside, Serena. Nice meeting you, James," Jess dismisses herself, and I wonder if it's finally a sign of embarrassment or she just wants to give us some space.

"Let's go somewhere in the shade," he says, undoing the top button of his shirt. 

We stop under the valley oak next to the auditorium and I lean against the rough bark.

"We should go inside. The first speech will start in a few minutes," I say.

"I didn't come for the speech," James says, his lip curling into a delicious smile. He leans so close I can feel his warm, sweet breath on me. "I wanted to see you."

My heart skips a beat. How can I not melt at such words?

He leans in even closer, and I expect him to kiss me, but he stops just one inch short of my lips. It takes me a second to realize he's asking for my permission. I close the distance with a soft kiss, then pull back quickly.

He looks at me questioningly.

"Someone can see us," I murmur.

"You weren't that concerned when we landed on Friday."

"That was different."

For a few seconds neither of us says anything, then he lifts my chin with his right hand. "Is everything all right?"

"Sure. I just… would feel weird if anyone saw us. You being a speaker and all." What I meant to say is
You not being my boyfriend and all,
but he wouldn't take that too well. The idea of having to explain to anyone, Abby or whoever knew Michael and me as a couple, what's between James and me panics me almost as much as telling Mum about it. Abby spent the better half of the week after the breakup calling Michael every profanity in the book (and inventing some of her own) for leaving a decent girl like me and hooking up with a ho. I'm not sure how she'd assign those labels now. And I don't plan to find out soon.

He lets go of my chin, and takes a step back, looking at me. "You look hot in this dress."

"Don't mock me."

"I'm serious. Makes me even sorrier that I have to go in for that speech. What are you doing tonight?"

"I'm busy," I stutter.

"Sending another batch of CVs?" he muses. “I thought you said you almost exhausted your list of banks.” 

“I actually added a few dozen more to the list last night.”

He grins. “Because 112 applications are not enough?”

“I'm doing something else tonight," I say, avoiding his gaze.

"What?" He's suddenly inches away from me, clutching my arms in his hands.

"It's nothing, just… a thing I do sometimes." Sometimes meaning every Wednesday.

"Which is?" His grip on my arms tightens. I raise my eyebrows and he removes his hands.

"Are you seeing someone?" he asks in a strained voice. There's a glint in his eyes I never saw before. Sharp. Dark. It makes the hair at the nape of my neck stand on end.

"I never took you for the jealous type,” I challenge.

He flinches visibly, his eyes widening.

"No, of course I‘m not," he says, but his body has that same strange rigidity it had at the airport, when the lark brought up boarding school. "You're free to date whoever you want."

"For the record, I'm not seeing anyone but you." 

To my intense misery, he looks even unhappier than before. But the glint is gone.

I take a deep breath. "I'm dressing up as a clown for a few hours in a show at the local hospital for kids with leukemia."

His glower melts into a surprised smile. "That's very admirable of you," he says and kisses my forehead.

"I started doing this after… you know."

After Kate's last whim, the one that sent her to the hospital, never to get out of it alive again. When the wait next to her bed became unbearable, I started wandering around. That's how I stumbled on the ward where leukemia kids were housed. I don't know why but I started returning every week, whether to read stories to them, watch movies, or dress up as a clown, like today. After I moved to the U.S., I continued to volunteer at a local hospital.

He frowns. "It helps you?"

"Sort of. It helps them a lot which… helps me."

A loud beep makes us both jump. It comes from inside—the sign that the first speech has begun.

He kisses my forehead again and murmurs, "Call me after you finish." Then his lips move to my ear and he says playfully, "I missed your coffee."

I give a nervous giggle. I woke up with the firm determination we both needed a strong dose of caffeine on Sunday morning, after only having had about four hours of sleep the whole weekend. So I left a sleeping James and went to the nearest Starbucks, but instead of buying two cups of steaming hot liquid, I returned with a bag of ground coffee. What followed reminded me why I never do things spontaneously. Especially things I suck at. James woke up to the disgusting smell of burnt coffee and a filthy-beyond-imagination stove. Yet for all the warning signs, he still insisted on tasting my coffee. I never saw anyone spit anything with such desperation.

"One kiss before we go in?" he whispers, trailing his lips from my ear down the base of my neck.

"
P
lease let me do this," Jess pleads for the fifth time.

"No, I want to do it," I say, keeping my eyes on the kettle, awaiting the whistle announcing the water is boiling. I didn't call James after I finished last night, because I stayed at the hospital much longer than I intended. After the show was over, Maya, one of the girls in the leukemia ward asked me to read her favorite bedtime story so she could fall asleep. How could I say no to a teary-eyed six-year-old?

"Are you sure he's even up at this hour?" Jess asks, hovering around like a drunken bee. She's normally asleep at this hour, but today she woke up early to prepare for her phone interview at nine. She froze in place when she spotted me in front of the stove.

"He said he’s always up by six on weekdays and leaves for his office at seven."

"And you decided to wish him good morning by poisoning him?"

"No, I decided to do something nice for him for a change."

Twenty minutes later, I park Jess's Prius in front of James's luxurious building, and grab the two plastic cups with trembling hands. They're still warm. And I know the coffee in them is decent enough because Jess gave me her full approval after testing it. She even poured a cup for herself.

I greet Daniel while I practically jog to the elevators, armed with the two coffee cups and a strange sense of bliss. I'm not sure exactly what brings it. Perhaps the fact that I'm wearing my favorite light blue dress or that I had my first culinary success. Oh, who am I kidding? Nothing except the thought of James's kisses can make my entire body tingle this way.

I press the bell with my elbow and wait patiently, afraid my heart will literally burst out of my chest when the door opens. But when it does open, it's not James who looks back at me. It's Parker. A
very
messed-up Parker. I do my best not to recoil at the sight of his bloodshot eyes.

"Serena," he says, looking even more stunned than when he saw me at the airport. "Hi, how—oh, you brought coffee?"

"I didn't know you'd be here, or I would have brought more," I say, trying to withhold a laugh. "You know what, take mine. You look like you need it more than me. Is James's hangover as bad as yours?" He doesn't take the cup.

"James, no… He didn't drink that much… I mean…" he stutters, and I think I've never seen a person this incoherent, unless they are truly drunk.

"Can we continue the conversation inside?" I ask and push him from the doorway. I was expecting the living room to look as disheveled as Parker, but except for a wrecked blanket on the couch, indicating where he spent the night, everything looks as neat as it did when I was last here.

"James's in his room?"