Maybe One Day (18 page)

“Hey, Jake,” I said, “Do you think I’m
sour
?”

Behind Jake, Emma got up and walked out of the room.

“It’s good, right?” Jake clearly hadn’t heard me, but I didn’t care. I took another swig from the bottle.

“Did you know I’m Olivia’s donor?” he asked. “If she needs a transplant.”

I pulled the bottle away from my lips, wiping a tiny dribble of liquid off my chin. “You
are
?” Jake wasn’t even eighteen yet. Then I remembered the woman at the bone marrow donor registration table asking me if I was a sibling.

He nodded and took the bottle from me, then drank deeply before handing it back. “There’s a twenty-five-percent chance a sibling will be a match. We all got tested.” He shook his head. “I’m so glad it’s me and not Luke or Tommy.”

“Jesus.” I shook my head, trying to imagine one of Zoe’s little brothers having the procedure I’d read about earlier in the pamphlet. “But it’s not like she’s even going to need one anyway,” I pointed out after taking another drink. “Dr. Maxwell said she’s not going to need one.” I’d been at the hospital a few times when Dr. Maxwell had come to see Olivia, and I was close to positive that one of the times when we’d talked about bone marrow transplants, she’d said Olivia was responding too well to the chemo to need one.

Jake took the bottle from me. After he drank, I took it back and drank some more. My body was getting warmer with each sip. I wondered if this was what it felt like to have a blood transfusion, and I giggled. “I’m having a vodka transfusion.”

He reached for the bottle. “Gimme,” he said. “I need a transfusion.” We passed the bottle back and forth between us for a few minutes, watching the cars on the screen speed along urban streets before exploding into balls of flame. Then Emma appeared, placing herself between Jake and the screen, her hands on her hips.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” She was quivering with rage.

“Uh-oh,” Jake sang, “I think I’m in trouble.” He stood up.

“Oh no you don’t.” I grabbed the bottle from him. He made a pass at retrieving it, but then Emma took his hand and pulled him away.

I got to my feet and wandered outside toward the back deck. No sooner had I stepped onto it than I saw Lashanna, Mia, and Bethany talking to a bunch of girls from the soccer team.

“
He-ey
, guys!” I called. I had the urge to throw my arms around them the way Stacy and Emma always greeted me. “You know,” I said, walking over to them, “I think I understand the cheerleaders a lot more now. It’s like they’re on a constant infusion of cherry-infused vodka.”

The girls looked at me, then burst out laughing. “Oh my God, you are
wasted
,” Mia observed. “What have you been drinking?”

I held up the nearly empty bottle I’d stolen from Jake. “
This!
” I announced dramatically.

Bethany tasted it. “Holy shit!” she cried. “That is deadly.”

I grabbed the bottle from her and hugged it protectively against my chest. “It’s not.” I stroked the bottle lovingly, as if it were a small animal. “Don’t insult my cherry-infused vodka.”

From a distant room I could hear music start to play, something loud and techno-y. Lashanna took me and Mia by the hand. “Come on. Let’s dance.” I grabbed Bethany’s hand as Lashanna pulled a line of us along the deck, then down a flight of steps, onto the lawn, and through a set of sliding glass doors.
First we’re outside
, I sang in my head.
Then we’re inside
.

It was lovely to let Lashanna lead me around. This house was so
big
! It was the hugest house I’d ever been in, almost like a hotel. Lashanna pushed open another door, and we were inside a crowded, dimly lit room with an actual disco ball and insanely loud music pounding away.

Mia shouted something, but I shook my head. I couldn’t hear a word. She leaned toward me and cupped her hand around my ear. “It’s like an orgy in here.”

I looked around. It was too dark to identify anyone who wasn’t within a few inches of your face, but you didn’t have to recognize faces to see that people everywhere were grinding away to the throbbing music.

“Wow,” I said to no one in particular.

We started dancing. At first it felt good to move my body to music again, but it didn’t take long for me to discover that techno and cherry-infused vodka were an
extremely
bad
combination. The pounding bass line was starting to feel like a spike being driven directly into my brain.

I tapped Mia on the shoulder. “I’ve gotta get some air,” I yelled.

Her arms were up over her head and her eyes were closed. “What?” she yelled back, opening them.

I pointed at the ceiling. “Air!”

She nodded. “Do you want me to come with?”

I shook my head and made my way out of the room, heading out a different door from the one we’d come through. It was much, much quieter as soon as I shut the door, and I followed a long hallway up a floating staircase. I tripped a little when I got to the top step, and a guy I didn’t know who was sitting on the floor said, “Careful,” but I kept walking. Finally, I found what I was looking for, and I slipped into a bathroom and closed the door.

It was bright enough outside for me to see without turning on the light, and I went over to the window and looked out at the lawn, which glittered with moonlight. Then I looked up at the sky, which was cloudy. Lawn: moonlight. Sky: no moon. Finally I realized that the Wilsons had lights on their property that
looked
like moonlight.

Weird.

I placed the bottle carefully on a shelf, then sat down on the edge of the tub, the porcelain cool through my skirt. The party seemed to be happening far, far away, the sounds
I was hearing coming from a gathering on a distant planet.
Everything
felt far away, even my own body. The cold of the tub could have been chilling someone else’s thighs. I put my elbows on my knees and sort of flopped my face into my hands. I was floating, saying good-bye to the kids at Wamasset, to the bathroom I was sitting in, to my body. I was just thoughts, just air. There was nothingness all around me.

Was this what it was like to be dead? When you died, did you still sense everything going on around you, only it was happening so far away that you didn’t care about it? You were floating through space and time, and nothing that happened to you mattered because nothing
could
really happen to you because you didn’t exist?

I stood up, swaying unsteadily, and crossed to the sink. I splashed some water on my face, then stared at my reflection in the dim light. “You are not dead,” I said out loud. “You are not dead. No one is dead.” What I’d just said didn’t even make any sense. My reflection and I stared at each other for a little while longer; then I headed out of the bathroom, leaving the bottle behind.

I thought I might have trouble finding my way back to Lashanna and Mia, but all I had to do was follow the music, which now seemed to be rocking the house to its foundation. When I opened the door to the room where the dancing was, a blast of sound hit me, and I was immediately sucked into the underwater world of Mack Wilson’s homemade dance club.

It was even more crowded than it had been when I left, and it was impossible to spot Mia or Lashanna or Bethany among the writhing bodies. As I moved through the room, half looking for them, half just moving to the music, I bumped into someone, and when I checked to see who it was, I found myself looking at Calvin.

He was dancing with one of the Bailor twins, who was draped over him like a toga. He and I made eye contact in the dim light, and as we stared at each other, I saw him slip the girl’s arms from around his neck and shift his body so he was facing me. Without exchanging a word, we started dancing together.

Calvin was wearing a tight dark T-shirt, maybe blue or black; it was impossible to tell. He had on a pair of jeans, and his hair was damp with sweat. I was surprised by what a good dancer he was, how he moved his body so comfortably and easily to the music. He wasn’t grinding his hips in a gross way; he flowed, liquid, into the beat. I liked it. It made me want to be a part of his movement, and I put my hands on his hips, slipping my index fingers through his beltless belt loops.

If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. He moved a little closer to me and put his hands on my hips, and now we were definitely dancing together, not touching except for our hands on each other’s bodies, but moving in sync, as if my hands were guiding his legs and his hands were guiding mine. I gave myself over to it, and soon every few steps our legs were brushing
against one another, and then it was like the music was inside me and it was inside Calvin and it was winding us together, pulling us into each other with every step. There was nothing in the world, just me and Calvin and the music. I slid closer to him until our bodies were moving together, and then I ran my hands up his back, and then all I wanted was for everyone around us to disappear so we could be alone.

As if he’d read my mind, Calvin took his hands off my hips, and without saying a word, he pulled me by the hand and toward yet another door. For a second I felt the cool air of outside on my face, and then he was opening
another
door and we were back inside and then, without either of us saying a word, we were making out.

Making out with Calvin Taylor was like one of those car ads: zero to ninety in sixty seconds. I wanted everything, his skin, his lips, his body. Still not having spoken a word, I pulled his shirt out of his jeans and yanked it off over his head. He groaned softly, in the back of his throat, and he dug his hands into my hair. It all felt so good. I’d never experienced anything that felt this good.

“Zoe,” he whispered quietly, kissing my jaw right where it met my ear. I shivered. “Zoe.”

“Shhh,” I whispered. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to think. I just wanted to keep doing this. I ran my hands up his chest. With our lips pressed together, we stumbled across the room, and then the back of my legs hit something and we
were falling and then we landed and I realized we were lying on a bed.

A bed! This was so what I wanted, to be lying on a bed with Calvin Taylor.

We rolled over so Calvin was underneath me. My whole body was on fire. I pressed myself hard against him, and he pressed himself against me. I could imagine how good this would feel without my shirt and his jeans and my skirt in the way. I sat up, straddling him, and he reached for me.

“I just have too much clothes on,” I explained. “I mean, too much clothing. I have too much clothing on.” I started to unbutton my shirt, realizing after I’d undone two buttons that what I was doing didn’t make any sense. “They’re decorative,” I explained. I lowered my voice, as if I were letting him in on a major secret. “I have to take it off over my head.” It was really hard. As I tried to remove it, the sheer fabric seemed to grow tentacles that grabbed at me. And every second I spent struggling with it was time I
wasn’t
touching and kissing Calvin.

I gave up and lay back down on top of him. It felt so good. Fuck the shirt. I’d take his jeans off instead.

I reached between our bodies and started to unbutton his jeans. Before I’d gotten the first button open, Calvin took my hand. “Zoe?”

Oh my God, this was fucking
impossible
. Why did people wear clothes?

“Take off your pants,” I said. Then I giggled. “I order you to take off your pants.”

I sat up, arching my back and running my free hand through my hair. Everything just felt so good. Looking around me, I saw that we were in some kind of mini house—on the other side of the room was a shiny-looking kitchen. There were two walls of French doors leading outside. Through one set of doors I could see the synthetic moonlight shimmering on the covered pool.

“That’s not real moonlight, you know?” I announced. I looked down at Calvin, who was still holding my right hand. “Oh my God, you are so
hot
.” I slipped my hand out of his and ran it across his shoulders, then leaned forward and started kissing his neck.

His body strained up to meet mine, and then we were kissing and it was just so fucking hot that when he pulled away from me I knew he was going to unbutton his own jeans, and I reached behind me to unzip my skirt, but instead he said, “Zoe, are you drunk?”

“A little,” I admitted. Then I bent forward and kissed my way down his chest, down, down, down until I was level with his jeans.

“Oh God.” He breathed in deeply, his stomach retreating slightly from my lips.

I reached for the top button. Now that I could see what I was doing, I could totally get his pants unbuttoned. But before
I even started, Calvin put his hand between us. “Wait.” He was breathing heavily, almost panting.

“What?” I asked. I was breathing heavily too. His stopping me from doing what we both wanted me to do was seriously annoying.

“Listen.” He pulled me by the hand until I was lying beside him. I started kissing him again, and at first he kissed me back, but right in the middle of our hottest, most delicious kiss, he carefully pulled away. “No. Wait. Zoe. Listen.” He put his weight on one elbow and laid one hand on my face so gently it was beautiful.

“What?” I whispered.

“I really want to be here with you. But I feel like you’re pretty drunk. Are you?”

“As a matter of fact . . .” I started to giggle. “I am. I’m pretty drunk.”

“Oh.” He let go of my face and dropped back onto the bed. “How drunk are you?” His voice was flat.

“God, I don’t even know.” I rolled toward him and put my hand on his stomach. “Not too drunk to fuck, that’s for sure.” Then I couldn’t stop myself. I started giggling again. I’d barely even been to first base on that one date with Jackson, but I was about to hit a home run. I knew Calvin liked sports, but before I could share my brilliant baseball metaphor with him, he’d moved my hand away and sat up. “Jesus, Zoe, how much did you have to drink?”

“A
lot
!” I said, pointing my finger at him. “I had
a lot
to drink.” I put my arms around his neck and leaned toward him. “And let me tell you that
plenty
of guys would be
extremely
psyched to fool around with a very drunk girl. So I don’t know what
your
problem is.” I kissed the side of his face once. Twice. Three times.