Rosebush (15 page)

He came down a few minutes later wearing only jeans with his lightning-bolt-patterned boxers poking out the top. They were my favorites because he looked so insanely good in them.

He crossed his arms over his lanky chest, perfectly framing the small patch of freckles right above his toned abs. “So. Talk.”

I had to drag my eyes from his body. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize this would be such a big deal.”

“Not a big deal? We had a plan, babe, and you bagged it at the last minute.”

“But we were just going to hang out in your room.”

“Just? Because hanging out with me isn’t enough for you? It
used
to be. Look, babe, if you’re not committed to this relationship, if your friends are so much more important—”

“It’s not like that. Langley needed me.”

“You know, you’re using Langley an awful lot this way. Like I’m thinking maybe you’re just not that into this anymore.”

“This?”

He shifted his weight and shrugged his freckle-sprinkled shoulders. “Us.” His face was hollow, a mask. A stranger.

I felt desperate and my voice came out high and tight. “No, David, it’s not that. I am. I’m just trying to be a good friend. Besides, how many times have you canceled for band practice?”

He stepped back and put his hands up like I’d punched him. “Whoa. Did I just hear that right? Are you comparing
shopping at the mall
with my
band
?”

My heart sank into my stomach. What was I saying? “No, of course not. I—I’m just sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you and I didn’t think you would care that much and I’m really sorry.”

His gaze was focused on something over my head, like he couldn’t even bear to look at me.

I was crying and when I went to dry my eyes, I realized I was still holding the cupcakes. “Here. I got you these.”

He didn’t move.

“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “Please don’t leave me.”

“Leave you?” He frowned.

I was so upset I didn’t even know what I was saying. “I mean forgive me. Please forgive me.”

Without looking at me he said, “I need some time,” took the cupcakes, and closed the door.

I’d walked home in the middle of the street, not even caring what happened to me. I was numb, frozen from the inside out. When I got home, Annie was doing something weird in the downstairs powder room. She saw me and came running out and stopped and stared. “You look sad,” she said.

“I’m fine,” I muttered.

She evaluated me through her thick glasses. “I’m playing Bride of Slime. Want to play with me? You can even be the bride.”

That was an honor, but not one I could accept right then. “No thanks. I’ve got to do my homework.”

She hugged me. “I’ll be in my office”—she pointed to the powder room—“if you change your mind.”

I watched her go back to playing and for a moment wondered how she could be so oblivious to how other people acted, what they thought, what was normal, and yet be so confident that she was adored.

Later that night David dropped by my house. I was listening to music, so I didn’t hear the doorbell or even his knock on the door of my room. I didn’t realize he was there until he had his hands on my shoulders, looking over the top of my head at what I was writing on the computer screen.

“‘Photography as Social Commentary,’” he read aloud. “What’s that for?”

“AP European History,” I told him, closing the document before he could read more. I turned to face him. “Did you come here to help me with my homework?”

He smiled and sat down on my bed, pulling my rolling desk chair toward him so I was between his knees facing him.

“I spent all afternoon thinking,” he said.

“I spent all afternoon crying.”

“Oh, babe.” He ran his left thumb over my cheek, across my neck, down my arm, following with his gaze. He started to massage my hand. I knew it turned him on to touch me like that and I felt my body respond.

He breathed out and raised his blue eyes back to mine. “We’re so good together, aren’t we?”

He kissed the palm of my hand softly. I swallowed and nodded.

He kissed the inside of my wrist. “We shouldn’t fight, should we?”

I shook my head.

He dropped my hand and leaned toward my mouth. I was desperate to feel his lips on mine. “You know what you did today, canceling like that, was wrong, don’t you?”

I nodded.

“Say it,” he said, his mouth inches from mine, smiling, teasing.

“Yes.”

“Otherwise you wouldn’t have brought me cupcakes.”

“That’s right.”

“But you won’t do it again, will you?”

“No.” My tongue darted out to try to reach his lips. He laughed and pulled me from the chair onto his lap. “Do you want to kiss me?”

“Yes,” I breathed. His mouth came down over mine, hard and fierce and possessive as his hands moved over my back. I loved it when he held me like that, like I was his, like he would never let me go. I could imagine how we looked, me on his lap with my hands on either side of his face, his lips biting mine. Tendrils of desire curled through me.

Maybe it was the stress of almost losing him that did it, but I felt bold, wanton.

I pushed him so he was lying on my bed and was thrilled by the expression of surprise mingled with pleasure on his face.

I’d read in one of Kate’s mother’s
Elle
magazines that you can train your man to do things he doesn’t want to do if you combine telling him about them with pleasurable sensations. I straddled him. “We’re too good together to fight, right?”

“Right,” he answered, gazing up at me, his eyes dancing with amusement.

“But you understand that I have responsibilities to my friends.” I tugged suggestively at the bottom of my T-shirt like I was going to start a striptease. I knew he loved seeing me in my bra, so I stopped just above my belly button. “Right?”

He gulped. “Right.”

I pulled my T-shirt over my head. “Especially Langley, who has no other family and needs her friends. You know that it’s not a question of me picking her over you.” I’d never been so forward before, but judging from the way his breathing got short, he liked it. His reaction spurred me on. I moved the fingers of one of my hands slowly up the thigh of his jeans and leaned my mouth to his ear to whisper, “It’s a question of being a good friend.” My fingers reached his belt. “Right?”

He moaned. “Jesus.”

My hand hovered over his guitar-shaped belt buckle. “Say it.”

“Yes. Right.”

I shimmied him out of his jeans. There was a streak of frosting on his upper thigh, just under his boxers. It must have fallen there when he was eating the cupcakes, I thought, glad to have the chance to lick some frosting off him after all.

Later we lay with our legs tangled together, in our underwear, looking up at the ceiling. I could picture us, me in my boy-cut white-and-black-polka-dot panties and white kneesocks, him in his lightning-bolt boxers, my head on his shoulder, the fingers of my hand tracing the strong drummer muscles of his forearm.

“That was amazing,” I said.

“Mmm-hmm,” he agreed sleepily.

“You know I love you, David,” I said.

“Yeah, I know, lover lips.”

I went on one elbow. “I do.”

He tucked my long dark hair behind my ear. “Yeah. It’s just that I don’t want to be made a fool of, you know. I trusted you with everything. You’re not playing me, are you? Doing other guys behind my back?”

That’s what all his possessiveness was about. My heart nearly broke for him as I understood it wasn’t anything I did, it was because of what had happened with Nicky. That’s why he was so sensitive. “Of course not,” I said. “I’d never hurt you.”

That night he had rubbed his nose against mine and said, “Maybe you can have another chance.”

Now, in my hospital room, sitting stiffly beside me, he said, “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that.”

I felt panic rising in my throat. “Why did you say that? Why shouldn’t you have given me another chance?”

“You want to know what happened the night of the party so badly? Fine, here’s what happened: I was sitting there waiting for you and your ‘surprise’ like some kind of well-trained puppy, while you were supposed to be off saving the world or your friends or whatever. I trusted you. I believed you. I believed in us. And then Elsa came to have a little talk with me.”

Chapter 14

Elsa. Elsa Blanchard.
When I’d first come to Livingston, I thought of her as Elsa the Rich Girl because she drove a Porsche, had at least two diamond tennis bracelets, and always wore Chanel from the limited edition sunglasses perched on her head to the custom-made ring on her pinkie toe. Even the ankle socks she’d been wearing the time the school custodian found her passed out on the roof of the gym before her “extended relaxation vacation” had been Chanel.

My mind went back to the party.

“I bet you can guess what she said.” David’s jaw was set, his posture as straight as the IV pole next to my bed. Machines clicked and whirred, making white noise to fill the silent void between us.

He was right, I could guess what she’d said. Although it was hard to believe she’d do it. It never occurred to me that Elsa had the power to tell David something that would destroy all my plans. Destroy us.

That same day two weeks earlier when David and I had been fighting, Mr. Jergens the art teacher had called me and Elsa into his room.

“I have good news and I have bad news,” he’d said. “Which do you want first?”

Elsa and I had been distant acquaintances since I’d gotten to Livingston, but she was the editor of the school paper and we’d become friends at photography camp the previous summer. Before that, I’d always gotten this vibe from her that she didn’t like me and I assumed it was because she’d been the third Mustketeer with Langley and Kate until I came, and I sort of took her place.

She laughed when I got up the courage to ask her about that one night last summer when she and Scott and I were talking around a crackling campfire.

“I was only friends with them because my stepmother insisted,” she said. Elsa’s stepmother, Mary-Ellen, was twenty-seven years younger than her father, a collector of dolls, and a notorious social climber. Elsa put on a staccato voice to mimic her saying, “Knowing the Right People now will ensure you move in the Right Circles later, sweetie pie.” Elsa shook her head. “She’d usually get to that line around the third glass of Chablis—pronounced ‘cha-bliss’ by her, by the way,” Elsa explained, taking a swig of vitaminwater. “But really she wanted to use me to open social doors that were otherwise shut and triple bolted from her. She didn’t quite understand how having been a beauty queen in Idaho wasn’t enough to get her into the fold of Livingston’s upper crust. So I tried, for her, because she’s actually very sweet, but I couldn’t do it. You have no idea how glad I was when you showed up and I could make a safe exit.”

I was shocked but tried to keep my voice neutral. “What do you mean?”

“It takes a neurotic to know a neurotic. Like Langley. The sad orphan. She needs acolytes, people to think she’s important.”

“What’s wrong with wanting to be important to people?” I asked, a little harshly.

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be important. What’s wrong is using other people to make yourself feel important.”

“That’s not what Langley does.” The conversation was making me uncomfortable in a way that went beyond having to defend my friends.

Elsa thought about it. “Maybe it’s not to you. But that’s how it felt to me. And Kate. Always happy, that’s how she wants everyone to see her, but actually she’s deeply miserable. She’s always acting, always fooling everyone. It’s a power trip. Like the way she needs everyone to think she’s carefree. Really she’s just careless—or at least she could care less about anyone but herself.”

“That’s not true,” I burst out. “She’s totally not self-centered. And she’s one of the most generous people I know.”

In the flickering light of the fire I saw Elsa give a rueful grin. “Given who you hang out with, that’s likely.”

“Ouch,” Scott said.

Elsa put up her hands in mock surrender. “Just kidding? Anyway, when you came along, it was more like you were their newest victim than my replacement.”