Vegan Virgin Valentine (11 page)

James leaned over and picked up his mug, taking a careful sip. When he set it back down, I could swear he shifted his body a tiny bit closer to me.

“Is it snowing yet?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“We’re supposed to get twelve to fourteen inches tonight.”

“Really?” I asked. “That many?”

James nodded.

Silence.

My feet were falling asleep, so I stretched out my legs. As I did, I shifted my body a tiny bit closer to him.

“I like your apartment,” I said.

“Thanks. You’ve been here before, right?”

I nodded. “Last spring, when I came with…” I paused. “When I came to get my paycheck.”

“Oh, that’s right. The computer at Common Grounds was broken.”

“Right.”

More silence.

We were talking in these stilted sentences, but it felt like there was meaning behind every inflection. I was hyperaware of James’s legs, his arms, and especially how his hand was currently sliding onto the empty spot on the couch between us.

I lowered my hand so it was about three inches from his.

And then James did it.

He reached over and put his hand on top of mine, interlacing his fingers with my fingers. I turned my hand over, so our palms were touching. Neither of us made a sound. I don’t even think I was breathing.

James leaned toward me. I leaned toward him, closing my eyes, still holding his hand. When our lips met, we held them still for a second. His hair brushed against my cheek. He tasted sweet, like chamomile and mint. As he parted his lips, I parted mine. We pressed the tips of our tongues together and then closed our mouths again.

James stroked the back of my neck, sliding his hands along the slopes of my shoulders. I was about to melt into his arms when this thought jolted me like an alarm clock on a predawn morning.

CLAUDIA! OMIGOD! CLAUDIA! OMIGOD! CLAUDIA!

I pulled back from James and dropped his hand.
I am horrible. I am worse than horrible. I am —

“What’s wrong?” James asked. His eyes were crinkled with concern. I’d never seen his eyes so close up, never realized they had ambery flecks in them.

I shook my head. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”

“We don’t have to. If you’re not comfortable, then—”

“I’ve got to go.” I stood up quickly and raced into the foyer.

“Can you tell me what’s wrong?” James asked, following me.

I double-knotted one boot and then the other.

What’s wrong is that I’m a backstabbing traitor. What’s wrong is that I never should have come here, and now I need to get out before it’s too late. What’s wrong is that every additional second I remain here I become an even more horrible person.

James handed me my coat. “Can I at least give you a ride home?”

“I’m fine walking,” I said.

He filled his cheeks with air and slowly deflated them. “Are you sure?”

I nodded and took off out his door.

I barely remember the walk home. It had started snowing. Heavy, wet flakes. My throat felt scratchy and dry. I was so drained I couldn’t even think, which was probably a good thing … considering.

The one thing I do remember is that as I retraced my steps through all the familiar streets of my life, I now felt completely lost.

When I woke up in the morning, my throat hurt so badly I couldn’t swallow. It took me a few seconds to remember what had happened last night, and when I did, I was overcome with shame.

There was an intense light penetrating the curtains next to my bed. I rolled over and peeked out the window. Snow was everywhere, so white it was almost blue. Mounds and ripples heaped over parked cars, weighing down the shrubs, turning front lawns into glaring mirrors.

I closed the curtain and yanked my blanket over my eyes.

I am a horrible person,
I thought.
Horrible, traitorous, backstabbing. I have been the one encouraging Claudia to go after James all this time. I am a horrible, horrible, horrible person.

I must have fallen back asleep. When I woke again, my throat hurt even worse. The phone was ringing, but someone picked it up. Probably my mom or dad. No, if they’d gotten home from Florida, they would have come in and said hello. I wondered what time it was. I was too tired to look at my clock.

I drifted off and was awoken again by the phone. My sinuses were clogged. My joints and muscles hurt. All I wanted to do was sleep. Sleep and forget about how awful I felt. Sleep and forget about last night.

Someone knocked at my door.

“Come in,” I croaked.

“Are you okay?” V asked. “You sound like you’re sick.”

I squinted at her. Her hair was pulled into a high ponytail. She was wearing plaid pajama bottoms and one of my dad’s old sweatshirts.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at play practice?”

As V shook her head, her ponytail swung from side to side. “Canceled because of the blizzard.”

“What about my parents? Have you heard from them?”

“They’ve been calling all morning. The Rochester airport is closed, so they’re stuck in New York City. They can’t get a flight out until tomorrow, and they can’t even find an available hotel room.”

“What are they doing?”

“Your mom said they were staying with Mike and Phyllis.”

“Oh … the Shreves.” We see them every few years. My mom and Mike grew up in the same town outside of Boston. Their families were friends and my mom used to baby-sit for Mike when she was a teenager.

“Your mom said that Aimee and I went to the zoo with their daughter, Virginia, when I was little, but I don’t remember.”

I didn’t say anything. My throat hurt so badly, I felt like I’d swallowed shattered glass.

“Can I get you anything?” V asked after a moment. “Juice or water?”

I shook my head.

“I guess I’ll let you get back to sleep.”

V pulled the door closed but didn’t shut it the whole way.

I must have fallen asleep again because the next time V came into my room, I was having a stress dream. I don’t even remember what it was about, but I could tell I’d been grinding my teeth.

“I’m sorry to wake you up,” she said. “I told your parents you were sick, and your dad said you should drink echinacea tea, so I made you a cup of it.” V set a mug on the coaster on my bedside table. “I didn’t put honey in because I wasn’t sure if vegans eat honey.”

“Thanks,” I said. I was surprised she knew about that, how some vegans think eating honey is exploiting bees’ labor. I don’t happen to be one of those vegans, but I appreciated the gesture.

V chewed her thumbnail. “I thought you’d like to know that I fixed the smoke detector. I even tested it with a match and it still works.”

I wasn’t sure what to say. I pulled my blanket up to my shoulders.

V glanced around my room. “Mara?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry for what I said last night … the whole domestic-violence thing. Sometimes I have a big mouth. It was a dumb thing to say.”

“You were just joking. Sometimes I can get too sensitive.” I paused before saying, “I’m sorry I shoved you.”

“I’m sorry I shoved you, too.”

I felt choked up. V had this pinched look on her face, like she was going to cry. She started out of my room. As she reached the doorway, I said, “V?”

She turned around. “Yeah?”

“Thanks again for the tea.”

“No problem.”

I dozed for the rest of the day. A few times I got up to pee or eat applesauce, but all I wanted to do was crawl back into bed.

In the early evening, I was propped up with some pillows reading
High Fidelity
when the phone rang. A moment later, V peeked into my room.

“It’s James from Common Grounds,” she said. “Do you want to pick up?”

My stomach lurched. I’d been trying not to think about what had happened with James, but when V said his name, I wanted to hide under my covers and never come out.

“No,” I said quietly. “Tell him I can’t talk. Tell him I’m sleeping.”

I was sick for most of the week. We had a snow day on Monday, so I didn’t miss school. When my parents got home from the airport that afternoon, they made me drink two cups of echinacea tea and take about a gazillion milligrams of vitamin C. Even so, I felt like hell on Tuesday, so my dad drove V over to the high school. My mom called the main office and asked Rosemary to tell my teachers to send my assignments home with V.

I slept on and off all day, waking only to blow my nose. When V got home, she dropped off a pile of homework on my desk, but I didn’t even look at it. My head was drowning in so much mucus, I could barely think.

By Wednesday, I still felt crappy, but I got up to e-mail the teacher who coordinates tutoring sixth graders and told him I wouldn’t be able to make it. Then I sent an e-mail to my statistics professor at the college and explained why I missed class yesterday and said I would probably miss again tomorrow. I knew I should e-mail Dr. Hendrick. I had now missed three dance classes in a row, not counting the one I had bolted out of, but I just didn’t want to deal with it.

I was about to get up from my desk when an IM from TravisRox188 appeared on my screen.

Haven’t seen u in a few days,
he wrote.
R u sick?

Yep.

Excellent. Now I’ll be able to catch my GPA back up w / yours. Ha-ha-ha-ha.

U r a merciless jerk,
I wrote back to him.

Thanx 4 the compliment. Get better … but not 2 soon. ;)

I didn’t even write back. Instead, I blew my nose and sipped some water and flipped through the assignments that V had brought home for me. If Travis thinks he’ll catch up with me that easily, he’s got another thing coming. I stayed at my desk for two hours and even read a chapter ahead in my government textbook, until finally I collapsed in an exhausted heap on my bed.

On Thursday morning, I finished
High Fidelity
and wanted to call James to tell him how much I loved it. But I couldn’t. I still hadn’t talked to him since Saturday night. I’d been scheduled to work a few shifts throughout the week, but on Monday I’d left a message on the voice mail at Common Grounds saying I’d be out sick indefinitely. I left it early in the morning, when I knew no one would be there. Not James. Definitely not Claudia.

James had left two messages on my cell phone. I had seen both of them come in on caller ID, so I didn’t pick up. Of course, I listened to the messages as soon as he left them. They were brief, just asking if I was feeling better and saying to please call him at home if I wanted to talk.

No, I did not want to talk. Could not talk. Didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t even sure I could ever
see
him again. The temptation might be too strong. And the guilt would definitely be too overwhelming.

I wouldn’t allow myself to think any good thoughts about James. Whenever he came into my mind, which was a lot, I’d tell myself that James is Hands-off. Private Property. No Trespassing. I’d remind myself that James is twenty-two. That he was a café owner when I was in ninth grade. I’d think about how James didn’t even go to college. How James lived in Brockport. How all I wanted to do right now was fast-forward out of this town, not make new connections here.

But when I fell asleep, the good thoughts wended their way in. I’d dream about James’s laugh and the feel of his lips. I’d dream about his shoulders and the shape of his fingernails and the way his butt fit into his worn jeans. One time, I even dreamed about touching my finger inside that hole in his jeans.

I woke up from that dream with my heart racing so fast I couldn’t fall back asleep for over an hour.

In my dreams, I’d also expanded my cheese repertoire. On a nightly basis, I was dreaming about the mozzarella sticks they serve at Friendly’s. I was dreaming about greasily delicious Pizza Hut pizzas with green peppers and olives on top. I was dreaming about quesadillas smothered in guacamole.

In the morning, I would tell myself I couldn’t go on this way, that something had to give. I would tell myself that I’d made choices in my life, good choices, and now I had to live with them. I told myself these things so many times throughout the day, I almost believed it.

But then, every night, the dreams came back.

Sometime before dawn on Friday, I reached over to my bedside table for a tissue and got that weightless yank that comes with the last one. I’d been so congested all week, I’d gone through an entire box. I blew my nose, but as I dropped the tissue in the trash basket next to my bed, I sneezed again. So I pushed back my covers and headed to the laundry room to get a new box.

As I was walking back to bed, I paused in front of the dining-room window. The grayish light was just burning through the night sky. The snowdrifts that had been plowed to either side of our driveway were still shadowy and dark. The birds hadn’t yet arrived at our feeder for their morning seedfest. But looking out the window, there was this sense that everything was about to happen.

A random thought drifted into my mind. So maybe I
am
repressed. Maybe I hold the reins too tightly and don’t know how to let loose. But I can’t imagine it’s a terminal condition. With the right person, maybe I could learn to give up some control.

There’s no way it could have happened with Travis, who prodded and coaxed me until being with him was more of a battle of the wills than anything intimate or romantic. And it’s not going to happen in Dr. Hendrick’s dance class, where he badgers me to let loose, forces me to be someone I’m not. Because the bottom line is that I don’t want to be a gazelle or an apple dangling off a tree or whatever other idiotic things he thinks will bring out my inner free spirit.

I sneezed three times in a row and headed back to my room, where I slept until my alarm went off forty-five minutes later.

Despite my water-faucet nose, I felt better enough to go back to school that day. I made it through all my classes with a mini-pack of Kleenex on my desk. After fourth period, I headed to my locker to retrieve my coat and bag. But rather than going straight to my car, I paid a quick visit to my guidance counselor.