Since You've Been Gone (40 page)

“We’ll be friends,” he said to me. “But,” he said, and in that word, it was like the old Collins persona came back; his very posture seemed to change. “When I start dating the very lucky lady who’ll be my steady hang, maybe not so much.” He winked at me. “You understand.”

“Do you want to hear the truth?” I asked. I didn’t even think about it, just suddenly wanted to be as direct with him as he’d been with me. “Are our hats still on?” Collins nodded, looking wary, and I said, “You ask out the prom queens because you know they’ll say no.” It had just been a theory, but when he flushed a dull red, I realized that it had been correct. “Why don’t you try asking someone who might actually say yes?”

Collins just shook his head. “I don’t expect you to understand this, Emily,” he said after a pause.  “But who’s going to want to go out with me?” His voice was shaky, and after a summer of bravado and theatrical winks and neon polos, I felt like I was finally seeing him, hat on and guard down. Not the guy who tried the week before to get everyone to call him LL Cool C—Ladies Love Cool Collins—even though it only seemed to stick with Doug from work. This was the real Collins. And the real Collins just looked sad and disappointed. He gave a short laugh and gestured to himself. “I’m not exactly a catch.”

“Of course you are,” I said, surprised and a little mad that
he couldn’t see this. “And you should ask Dawn.” As I said this, I just hoped that I’d understood her offhand comments about him, not to mention how long it had taken her to look away when he was skinny-dipping.

Collins just looked at me for a long moment, then down at the ground. “You think she’d say yes?” he finally asked, sounding more nervous than I’d ever heard him.

I wanted to be able to tell him yes, definitively, but I didn’t really feel sure about anything anymore. “What’s the worst that could happen?” I asked, doing my best to give him a smile. He gave me a tentative one back just as the porch door opened.

“Matthew!” an older woman, half of a couple who had been talking to Frank for most of the night, motioned for him to join them inside. Collins glanced at me, but the woman seemed pretty insistent, making large
Come here
movements with jewel-encrusted hands that caught the light and reflected it onto the walls.

“Sorry,” Collins said to me. “Uh . . .”

“Go,” I said, giving him a smile. “I’ll be fine.” He nodded and made his way back into the house, and I followed a minute later. As I passed the living room, I sensed Frank trying to catch my eye, but I looked away, into my glass. I could hear fragments of conversations as I walked, architectural terms I didn’t understand, but also snatches of discussions that baffled me.

Yes, the house is stunning isn’t it? All the original Harrison furnishings . . . in trust . . . some fight over a will . . . I don’t know, some tenants, I think? Well, not any longer . . .

Every room I stepped into, I saw Sloane. There was the couch where we’d mainlined whole seasons of TV shows; there was the table we’d sat on top of, sharing a pint of ice cream while she told me all about her first kiss with Sam, there was the counter where she’d laid out every eye shadow she owned, trying to get my eyes to turn the same color.

I had just given my empty glass to a bored-looking cater-waiter when I spotted the back stairs at the end of the hallway. There was a ribbon tied across them, clearly indicating that the upstairs rooms were off-limits.

I headed toward the stairs, already coming up with my alibi if I needed one.
I was just looking for the bathroom. I didn’t see the ribbon. I got lost.
I looked quickly over each shoulder, then lifted the ribbon, ducked under it, and hurried upstairs.

Like the downstairs, everything upstairs was still the same. The hall table, the oil paintings, the framed maps. I looked for a long moment at the window at the end of the hall, the one with the beige curtains, the one that I had helped Sloane tumble into on the day we met, the day she told me that she’d been waiting for me—or someone like me.

I looked away from the window and walked on, down the hall to the room that had been Sloane’s. I paused for a moment outside of it, praying that it wouldn’t be locked. But the old glass doorknob turned easily in my hand, and I looked around again once more before slipping inside.

All the furniture was the same—but everything about it was
different. When the room had been Sloane’s, there had been stuff everywhere, makeup and clothing and the British fashion magazines she special-ordered taking up the surface of every dresser and most of the floor. She’d twined twinkle lights around her four-poster bed and had covered the mirror with pictures—me and her, her and Sam, ripped-out pages from magazines. But now, every trace of her was gone. It was just an anonymous room, one that could have belonged to anyone.

It was worse, somehow, being up here than being in any other room of the house. I started to go when I suddenly turned back, remembering something.

The throw rug was still there, and I lifted it up, folding it back and trying to remember where the loose board was. When I found it, it just creaked open a little, and I pressed on it harder, easing it up. When Sloane had been using it, there had usually been a collection of things, rotating as their importance changed. But now, there was only one of her disposable cameras and a thin layer of dust. I pulled up the camera, wiping it off. There was nothing written on it, and it looked like all the pictures had been taken.

I don’t know what I’d been expecting. I put the board back where it was supposed to be, folded down the rug, and left Sloane’s room, not letting myself look back, closing the door behind me and hurrying downstairs, even though the last thing I wanted to do was go back to the party.

I made it back to the living room without being stopped,
and saw that Frank’s parents were now standing even farther apart from each other, fixed smiles on both their faces, and Frank was nowhere to be seen. I tried to fit the camera into my clutch, but it was one of the tiny, useless ones, and was barely big enough to fit my keys and ID, so there was no getting a disposable camera into it. I headed toward the front door, glad for an excuse to get away from the party for a bit, figuring I’d just leave it in my car.

“Hey.” I turned, my hand on the doorknob, and saw Frank. His hair was slightly askew, like he’d been running his hands through it. He was wearing a tux, and the sight of him in it made me feel off-balance. He looked so handsome, I had to look away from him, or I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop staring.

“Hey,” I said, mostly to my shoes. “How’s it going?”

He looked toward the center of the room, where his parents were now standing on opposite sides. “It’s going,” he said grimly. “Were you leaving?”

“Well,” I said, looking down at the camera in my hand. “I was just going to my car—”

“Because if you are,” Frank said, overlapping with me, “I’d love a ride home. I have to get out of here.”

“Oh,” I said. “Um, sure.” I was more than happy to leave, I just didn’t know if Frank was supposed to. But he just nodded and held open the door for me. I stepped through it and heard him draw in a breath.

“That’s really quite a dress,” he said, and I realized he must have just seen the back—or lack thereof.

We walked down the steps together, the steps that I had sat on next to Sloane while we read stacks of magazines and worked on our tans, the steps I’d sat on when I was desperate to find her. “In a good way?” I asked. Frank opened his mouth to answer as thunder rumbled somewhere in the distance. “We’d better go,” I said, picking up my pace. “The roof’s open.”

We walked together across Sloane’s driveway. I’d avoided the valet guys and just parked at the end of the long line of cars on the side of the road, so we had a bit of a hike to the car. “Thanks,” Frank said as we walked.

“Sure,” I said, glancing over at him. His hands were deep in his pockets, and I knew him well enough to see that he was upset about something. “Is it okay for you to leave?”

“It’s fine,” he said shortly. “I really shouldn’t have come in the first place. Sorry to drag you out here.”

“It’s okay—” I started, as thunder rumbled again and we both picked up our pace, hurrying for my car as the wind started to blow, and I realized we were in our usual running spots, just wearing evening clothes, and not T-shirts and shorts. There was something strange between us tonight, some weird tension that hadn’t been there before, and I didn’t think it was just coming from me. I unlocked my car, and we both got in. I didn’t bother with music, just turned around and passed Sloane’s house again on the way up the road. As I did, I saw the house all lit up, and through the windows, the crowd, in their tuxes and gowns. It was how I’d always imagined the house, and tonight, I’d been a part of it. But
it wasn’t how I’d thought it would feel. It just felt sad.

I turned down the road that would take me to Frank’s, and started to drive a little faster than I normally would have, worried about the rain I had a feeling was coming. I couldn’t help thinking about both the tarp and the wooden piece resting, warm and dry, in the garage. When we’d driven nearly halfway to Frank’s without a word, I glanced over at him. His jaw was set as he looked out the window, and I knew something was wrong. “Are you okay?” I finally asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, looking over at me. I suddenly saw this wasn’t just about his parents—he was mad at me. “What happened to you? You disappear from camping without saying good-bye, you won’t answer any of my texts, then you show up tonight in that dress . . .”

“What’s wrong with the dress?” I asked, adjusting the neckline, suddenly feeling self-conscious.

“Nothing,” Frank said, letting out a breath and shaking his head. “I was just worried, that’s all.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was just . . . thinking about some things.”

He looked over at me for a moment. “Me too.” I nodded, but was suddenly afraid to ask him what they were. What if Collins was right, and what he’d been thinking about was that we couldn’t be friends anymore? “Emily,” he said, but just then, rain started to hit my windshield—and come in through my sunroof.

“Oh my god,” I said, speeding up. “I’m so sorry.  Just . . . um . . .” The rain was coming down harder, and I turned up my wipers. I was starting to get wet as the rain poured in through the roof. Even though I wasn’t directly under it, it was hitting the console and splashing me, and coming in sideways when the wind blew. I reached into the side of the door where I’d put Sloane’s disposable and held it out to Frank. “Would you put that in the glove compartment?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard over the wind that had started to pick up.

He took it from me, glancing over with a question in his eyes. But I looked straight ahead, just concentrating on getting him home before he got too wet or either one of us said something we shouldn’t.

I pulled into his driveway and put the car in park, expecting him to get out and run for it while he was at least partly dry. But he just looked at me across the car, through the rain that was pouring down into my cupholders.

“What were you thinking about?” he asked, his expression serious and searching. “You haven’t been talking to me this whole week. What was it?”

“Nothing,” I said, looking away from him. “I told you, I’m sorry.  You should go inside, you’re getting soaked—”

“I don’t care,” he said, leaning forward. “Tell me what it was.”

“Nothing,” I said again, trying to brush this off, trying to go back to something that felt more like solid ground. I reached for
the game we’d been playing all summer, the phrase I knew by heart. “You know, in an well-ordered universe . . .” But I looked at him, at the rain running down his face, his white tuxedo shirt getting soaked, and realized I couldn’t finish it this time.

Or maybe I could, because I leaned forward, into the rain, and kissed him.

He kissed me back. It lasted just a moment, but he kissed me back, right away, without hesitation, as though we’d always been doing it.

But then he pulled away and looked at me. We were both leaning forward, which was ridiculous, since that meant we were directly underneath where the water was coming into the car.

I looked back at him through the rain that was pouring down between us and took a breath to try and say something, when he leaned forward, cupping my cheek with his hand, and kissed me again.

And it was a kiss that felt like it could stop time. The rain was falling on us, but I didn’t even feel or notice or care about it. We were kissing like it was a long-forgotten language that we’d once been fluent in and were finding again, kissing like it was the only thing either of us had wanted to do for a long, long time, kissing with the urgency of the rain that was pounding down all around us and onto the hood of the car. His hands were tangled in my hair, then touching my bare back, and I was shivering in a way that didn’t have anything to do with the cold. His face was wet as I ran my hands under his jaw and over his
cheeks, as I pulled him closer to me, feeling my heart beating against his, feeling that despite the rain, despite everything, I could have happily stayed like that forever.

Until, abruptly, Frank stopped.

He broke away and dropped his hands from my hair. He sat back heavily against the side of the car. “Oh my god,” he said quietly.

I sat back as well, trying to catch my breath, which was coming shallowly. “Frank . . . ,” I started, even though I didn’t have anything to follow this.

“Don’t,” he said quickly. He looked over at me, and I could see how unhappy he suddenly looked—because of me. I had done this. Reality came crashing down on me in a horrible wave. He had a
girlfriend
. He had a very serious girlfriend and I knew it and I had gone ahead and kissed him anyway. I suddenly felt sick, and looked down at my hands, which were shaking.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, hearing how scratchy my voice sounded. “I shouldn’t have—”

“I have to go,” he said. “I—” He looked over at me, but nothing followed this. After a moment, he opened the door and got out, closing it hard behind him and walking up the steps to his house, not running, his shoulders hunched, just letting the rain beat down over him. I waited until I saw that he had gone inside. And then I waited a moment more, to make sure he wasn’t going to come back out and somehow make things okay again.