Sarah Dessen (28 page)

“He’s totally cute.” Lissa stuffed another fry in her mouth. “God, all the good ones are taken, aren’t they?”

“So does this whining,” Jess asked Lissa, “mean that KaBoom P.J. has a girlfriend?”

“Don’t call him that,” Lissa said sulkily, eating another fry. “And they’ve already broken up once this summer. She hasn’t come to a single event, either.”

“Bitch,” Jess said, and I laughed out loud.

“The point is,” Lissa continued, ignoring us, “that it’s just not fair that I’ve been dumped and now the guy I like is unavailable while Remy gets not only fun band boyfriend but now cute college boyfriend. It’s not right.” She ate another fry. “And, I can’t stop eating. Not that anybody cares, since I’m completely unlovable anyway.”

“Oh, please,” Jess grumbled. “Get out the violin.”

“Fun band boyfriend?” I said.

“Dexter was nice,” she told me, wiping her mouth. “And now you have perfect Paul too. And all I’ve got is an endless supply of KaBoom and the appetite of a truck driver.”

“There’s nothing wrong with a healthy appetite,” Jess told her. “Guys like a few curves.”

“I have curves already,” Lissa replied. “What’s next? Clumps?” Chloe, the thinnest of all of us, snorted at this. “That’s one word for it.”

Lissa sighed, shoving her tray away and wiping her hands on a napkin. “I gotta go. I’m due at the Tri-Country track meet in fifteen minutes. We’re KaBooming the all-state athletes.”

“Well,” Jess said dryly, “be sure to wear protection.”

Lissa made a face. She was over the KaBoom jokes, but they were just too easy.

Back at work, Paul dropped by to see me on his way home from his life-guarding job at the Y. I couldn’t help but notice a couple of bridesmaids waiting for prewedding manicures ogle him a bit as he came in, tanned and smelling like suntan lotion and chlorine.

“Hey,” he said, and I stood up and kissed him, very lightly, because that was about where we were at relationship-wise. It had been a week and a half, and we’d seen each other almost every day: lunches, dinners, a couple of parties. “I know you’re busy tonight, but I just wanted to say hello.”

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello.” He grinned at me. God, he was cute. I kept thinking that if only I’d gone out with him way back when Lola had first tried to set us up, the entire summer would have been different. Totally different.

After all, Paul met just about every criteria on my guy list. He was tall. Good-looking. Had no annoying personal habits. Was older than me but not by more than three years. Was a decent dresser but didn’t shop more than I did. Fell within the acceptable limits in terms of personal hygiene (i.e., aftershave and cologne yes, mousse and fake tan, no). Was smart enough to carry on good conversation but not an eggbert. But the big whammy, the tipping point, was that he was leaving at the end of the summer and we’d already established that we would part as friends and go our separate ways.

Which left me with a nice, cute, courteous guy with his own life and hobbies who liked me, kissed very well, paid for dinner, and had no problem with any of the terms that so many before him had stumbled over. And all this from a blind date. Amazing.

“So I know tonight is girls’ night,” he said as I slid my hands across the counter, over his, “but I wondered what the chances were for getting up with you later?”

“Not good,” I told him. “Only the lamest women bail their girlfriends for a guy. It’s against the code.”

“Ah,” he said, nodding. “Well. It was worth a shot.”

Across the parking lot, I could see the white Truth Squad van pulling up to Flash Camera. Ted parked in the loading zone and hopped out of the driver’s side, slamming the door behind him, then disappeared inside.

“So what are you doing tonight?” I asked Paul. “Boy stuff ?”

“Yep,” he said as I looked across at Flash Camera again, watching as Dexter followed Ted back to the van. They were talking animatedly—arguing?—as they hopped in and drove off, running the stop sign that led past Mayor’s Market, toward the main road.

“. . . some band the guys want to see is playing at that club over by the university.”

“Really,” I said, not exactly listening as the white van pulled out into traffic in front of a station wagon, which let loose with an angry beep.

“Yeah, Trey says they’re really good. . . . Spinnerbait, I think they’re called.”

“Hate Spinnerbait,” I said automatically.

“What?”

I looked at him, realizing I’d been in a complete fog for this entire conversation. “Oh, nothing. I just, um, I heard that band kind of sucked.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Wow. Really? Trey says they’re great.”

“Oh, well,” I said quickly. “I’m sure he knows better than me.”

“I doubt that.” He leaned across the counter and kissed me. “I’ll call you tonight, okay?”

I nodded. “Sure.”

As he left, the two bridesmaids eyed me appreciatively, as if I was due respect simply because such a guy was with me. But for some reason I was distracted, ringing up Mrs. Jameson’s hair streaking as a bikini wax and then charging her fifty bucks instead of five for some cuticle cream. At least it was almost time to go home.

I was getting into my car when I heard someone tap on the passenger window. I looked up: it was Lucas. “Hey Remy,” he said, when I rolled down the window. “Can you give me a ride home? Dex already left with the van and otherwise I have to hoof it.”

“Sure,” I said, even though I was already running late. I was supposed to pick up Lissa, and the yellow house was entirely in the other direction. But it wasn’t like I could just leave him there.

He climbed in, then immediately began to fiddle with the radio as I backed out of my parking spot. This, at one point, would have been grounds for instant ejection, but I let it slide because I was in a decent mood. “What CDs you got?” he asked, flipping past my main preset to the lower end of the dial and cranking up some experimental-sounding, shrieking-ish noise on the college radio station.

“They’re in the glove box,” I said, pointing. He opened it up and shuffled through them—they had been arranged alphabetically, but only because I’d had some extra time when stuck in a traffic jam a few days earlier. He kept making clucking noises, low sighs, and mumbles. Apparently my collection, like my presets, wasn’t up to his standards. But I had no need to impress Lucas. Thanks to Dexter I knew not only that his given name was Archibald, but also that in high school he’d had long hair and played in a metal band called Residew. Apparently there was only one picture existing of Lucas wailing on his keyboard in full-hair-sprayed mode, and Dexter had it.

“So,” I said, feeling the need to mess with him a bit anyway, “I hear Spinnerbait’s playing tonight.”

He jerked his head around and looked at me. “Where?”

“Murray’s,” I told him as we cruised through a yellow light.

“Where’s that?”

“Across town, by the university. It’s a pretty big place.” I could see him in my peripheral vision; he was gnawing on the cuff of his shirt, looking irritated.

“Hate Spinnerbait,” he grumbled. “Bunch of poser rock assholes. Totally manufactured sound, and their fans are a bunch of pretty-boy, frat-a-tat blondies with good hair driving Daddy’s car with no taste
whatsoever.
”

“Ouch,” I said, unable to help but notice this description, while harsh, did somewhat describe Trey, Paul’s best friend, as well as Paul himself, if you didn’t know him better. Which, of course, I did.

“Well, this is big news,” Lucas said as I turned onto their street. “But not as big as what else is going on.”

“What’s that?” I said, immediately flashing back to the van speeding out of Mayor’s Village earlier.

He glanced over at me, and I could tell by his face he was weighing whether it was even my business. “High-level band stuff,” he said cryptically. “We’re on the brink. Basically.”

“Really,” I said. “The brink of what?”

He shrugged as I slowed down, the yellow house coming up in sight. I could see Ted and Scary Mary in the front yard, sitting in lawn chairs: she had her feet in his lap, and they were sharing a box of Twinkies. “Rubber Records wants to meet with us. We’re going up to D.C. next week, to you know, talk to them.”

“Wow,” I said, navigating my way into the driveway, where the van was parked at an angle. Ted looked over at us, mildly interested, and Mary waved as Lucas popped open his door and got out. “That’s great.”

“Get this,” he yelled at Ted. “Spinnerbait’s playing tonight.”

“Hate Spinnerbait!” Mary said.

“Where at?” Ted asked as Lucas shut my door and walked around the front of the car.

“Thanks for the ride,” he said, knocking his hand on my half-open window. “I appreciate it.”

“Man, what is that all about?” Ted yelled. “They’re invading our territory!”

“It’s a turf war!” Lucas said back, and they both laughed.

He started to walk away, but I beeped the horn, and he turned around. “Hey, Lucas.”

“Yeah?” He took a couple of steps back toward me.

“Good luck with everything,” I said, then felt somewhat awkward, seeing that I hardly knew him. Still, for some reason I needed to say something. “I mean, good luck to you guys.”

“Yeah,” he said, shrugging. “We’ll see how it goes.”

As I pulled out, he was dragging up a milk crate to join Mary and Ted’s outdoor picnic as Ted tossed him a Twinkie. I glanced back one last time at the house, where I could see Monkey sitting in the doorway, panting. I wondered where Dexter was, then reminded myself that it wasn’t my concern any longer. But if he’d been home, he probably would have come out and said hello to me. Just because we
were
friends.

I started down the street, easing to a slow stop at the stop sign. In my rearview, I could see Ted, Mary, and Lucas still sitting there, talking, but now Dexter was with them, crouching down next to the makeshift table, unwrapping a Twinkie while Monkey circled them, tail wagging. They were all talking, and for a split second I felt a pang, as if I was missing out on something. Weird. Then, the car behind me beeped, impatient, and I jerked myself back to reality, shaking off this fog and moving forward again.

When I got home, the house was quiet. My mother was out of town, at a writers’ conference she attended every August, where she taught workshops to aspiring romance novelists, soaking up buckets of admiration for three days and two nights in the Florida Keys. As for Chris, he was basically living and sleeping at Jennifer Anne’s, where the bread wasn’t all butts and he could eat his breakfast staring at prints of cheerful flower gardens instead of fifteen-pound neoclassic breasts. Normally I liked having the house to myself, but things were still awkward with me and Don, so I’d taken Lissa up on her offer of sleeping at her house for the weekend, informing Don of my decision with a formal note I wedged under the growing pyramid of empty Ensure cans on the kitchen table.

Now I went into my mother’s office, pushing the curtain aside. On the shelf next to her desk, there was a stack of papers: the new novel, or what there was of it so far. I pulled it into my lap and tucked my legs up underneath me, flipping the pages. When I’d last left Melanie, she’d been facing a cold marital bed with a distant husband, realizing her marriage had been a mistake. That had been about page 200, and by 250, she had left Paris and was back in New York, working in fashion design for a nasty woman with villain written all over her. Apparently, coincidence of coincidences, Brock Dobbin was also back in New York, having been injured during some kind of third world riot while working in his prizewinning career as a photojournalist. At the fall shows, they’d caught each other’s eye from across the runaway, and a romance was reborn.

I skipped to page 300, where things had obviously gone bad: Melanie was in a mental hospital, doped up on painkillers, while her former boss took credit for her entire fall line. Her estranged husband, Luc, was also back in the picture, involved in some kind of elaborate financial scheme. Brock Dobbin seemed to have disappeared entirely, but I found him on page 374, in a Mexican prison, where he was facing dubious charges of trafficking drugs and falling for the charms of a local beggar girl named Carmelita. This, I figured, had to be where my mother was losing her train of thought, but by 400 she seemed to have her steam back, and everyone was in Milan preparing for the fall shows. Luc was trying to reconcile with Melanie, but his intentions weren’t good, while Brock was back on the job, chasing a story about the dirty underside of fashion with his trusty Nikon and a sense of justice that no injury, not even a rock to the head in Guatemala, could quell.

The last sheet in my lap was numbered 405, and in it Melanie and Brock were drinking espresso at a café in Milan.

“And you love him?” Brock asked her. His green eyes, so deep and probing, were watching her intently.

Melanie was shocked at his bluntness. But it seemed the time in prison had given him an urgency, a need for answers. He stared at her, waiting. “He is my husband,” she said.

“ That is not what I asked.” Brock reached over and took her hand, folding it within his. His fingers were calloused and thick, rough against her pale skin. “Do you love him?”

Melanie bit her lip, forcing down the sob she feared would escape if she was pressed to tell the truth about Luc and his cold, cold heart. Brock had left her all those months ago with no other choice. She’d given him up for dead, their love as well. He had been like a ghost walking up to her as she sat at the café, crossing over from that world to her own.

“I do not believe in love,” she said.

Brock squeezed her hand. “How can you say that, after what we had? What we still have?”

“We have nothing,” she said, and took her hand back. “I am married. I will make my marriage work because . . .”

“Melanie.”

“Because this man loves me,” she finished.

“ This man,” Brock said, his voice grave, “loves you.”

“You are too late.” Melanie stood. She had put Brock Dobbin from her mind again and again, telling herself that she could make a life with Luc. Luc, so suave and debonair, so steady and strong. Brock was always coming in and out of her life, making promises, the love they shared so passionate, and then just gone, leaving her behind in a cloud of memories and train smoke as he disappeared, heading across the world, chasing the story that would never be theirs. Maybe Luc wasn’t ever going to love her the way Brock had, filling her body and mind with a joy that made the world fall away. But that joy never lasted, and she wanted to believe in a forever. Even one that sometimes left her wanting at night, dreaming of better things.

“Melanie,” Brock called after her as she started down the cobblestone street, wrapping her scarf around her. “Come back.”

They were words she knew well. She had said them herself, at the station in Prague. Outside the Plaza, as he’d climbed into a cab. On the deck of the yacht, as his boat sped away, riding the waves. He always did the leaving. But not this time. She kept walking, and did not look back.