But I Love Him (18 page)

I swallow and nod my head, wondering if I’m ready for this, wondering if I can handle him being in love with me.

But I’m also wondering if I’m already in love with him. Because these things I feel, they’re so strong, so overwhelming, and there’s times I can’t stand to be away from him. Times I have to leave because it’s 10:50 and I’m about to miss curfew, and yet I don’t want to leave, and my goody-goody side wars with my absolute desire to throw every last rule away and just stay and hope my mom doesn’t even notice.

He kisses me again and we lean back against his bed, our fingers intertwined. I see our reflection in the mirror across from us, and I wonder: is it too soon to be thinking forever ?

September 20

Three Weeks

Abby and I are lounging on her bed, staring at the ceiling through the gauze of her canopy bed. A bag of Doritos and a tub of gourmet chocolates sit between us, and empty cans of Diet Coke adorn the nightstands. We’re supposed to be working on our new, year-long English project, but neither of us can muster the motivation.

“I don’t see why we have to choose a classic,” she says. “We should be able to pick any book, really. What’s so great about Shakespeare and Chaucer and Salinger?”

I chew on my lip. “I don’t know. I’d rather read The Vampire Diaries.”

“I’d rather watch The Vampire Diaries,” Abby says.

I snort. “I doubt listing the reasons a vampire makes a good boyfriend will get us anywhere.”

Abby sighs. “Let’s just go with Shakespeare. We have to read and contrast at least three works, right? And at least there are CliffsNotes and movie versions.”

I twist a purple knit scarf around my hand as I consider this. “I guess.”

“Good. Now we can go do something else,” she says, and then reaches into the Doritos bag.

“I’ve been dying to get to the craft store in town. I have this idea of something to do for Connor.”

We finally sit up, something we haven’t done for nearly an hour. The sugar rushes to my head and I have to sit still for a moment until it clears.

“That’s totally sweet. When do I get to meet him, anyway?” She’s already pulling on her shoes, which I take to mean she’s down with the craft store trip.

I slide my arms into a zip-up hoodie. “Soon. Maybe next weekend or something. He hasn’t met my mom or anything either. It’s kind of new still.”

“Oh, please, you’re head over heels,” she says as she switches off her bedroom light and we walk toward the front entry.

“Well, sort of,” I say, suddenly feeling shy about the whole topic. I’ve never done the boyfriend thing before.

I follow Abby to her car and slide into one of the leather bucket seats.

“Well, you guys have kissed, right?”

I grin sheepishly.

“Oh, my God, you have. Why didn’t you tell me? I totally would have told you!”

I shrug.

“It’s a long ride to the store. Spill. Now.”

“Where do I start?”

Twenty minutes later, we’re strolling the aisles at the craft store looking for some special glue required for glass. Abby decides she needs her own craft so that we can work on them together, and she’s currently grabbing stickers for a scrapbook.

“What about this?” I say, showing her some sheets of beach balls and pails and little sand castles.

“Sure. Sounds good!”

I nod and toss a few sheets into the basket. It is filling up quickly, as if Abby intends to document every day of her life.

“I think we probably have enough. Let’s go to the beach and find some sea glass. Then we can both get started.”

Abby nods and reluctantly leaves the spinning display of stickers behind as we head to the cashiers.

I link my elbow with hers. “What page are you doing first?”

She smiles. “Well, I have this really annoying friend, see. So I was thinking I’d put together a few pages and draw little horns all over her and black out her eyes.”

I snicker.

Sixty-two dollars later, we leave the store, our hands filled with bags of supplies.

I wonder what Connor will think when I hand him my heart.

September 19

Two Weeks, six days

I’m sitting on a stool at our kitchen counter, swinging my legs and slurping at the milk at the bottom of my cereal bowl. There are cartoons on in the background, even though I’m too old for them. I don’t really watch them anymore, but it wouldn’t be Saturday if they weren’t on.

My mom is up. I can hear the water running. Sometimes her showers last forty-five minutes, and I have no idea what she does during that time, but when she emerges she never looks fresh and relaxed; her eyes are puffy and she looks like the walking dead.

I don’t really know what she does at any time, really. We’re strangers in the same house. I want it to be different. I want to hug her and say I love you. But I don’t think she’ll magically hug me and smile and say I love you too, and that’s what she does in my mind when I say it to her, and I’d rather have that than reality.

My dad would be so disappointed if he knew what had happened to “his girls.” He tried to so hard to be the glue for so many years, so many rounds of chemo, so many everything. Even as my mom took on that haunted look toward the end and even as I cried myself to sleep those last couple months, he couldn’t change the facts, and then one day it was done and he was gone.

I try to remember my mom before he died. Those days before she died with him. I try to remember the times she’d declare it was girls’ day and no dads were allowed, and I’d grin at him when she said it, and we’d get our nails done and go shopping and eat six-dollar fruit smoothies.

She was a good mom. She was everything I ever needed or wanted. And cruel reality stole her from me, and she became something else, and I became no one to her, because she can’t see through her own tears long enough to realize how much it hurts me.

I know if it had been reversed, Dad wouldn’t do this. Even when he was really dying he stayed strong and was there for me. Even when he was sick he would sit in a lawn chair, all wrapped up in a blanket, shivering against the cold just so he could hang out at the park with me. And my mom was next to him, every single time. We were a real family then.

I wish one day I would look up and she would be standing there at the finish line of a race, beaming at me. I wish she would stop wallowing long enough to be proud of me, long enough to see that I’m growing and becoming someone, something. But she never will.

She doesn’t really even have friends anymore. They just drifted away like sand on the wind, and it became just us. And now it is just her.

Eventually her shower turns off and after several long moments of silence, I hear her walking across the ceiling, down the hall, and down the steps. Her footsteps are soft and quiet, like a mouse.

I finish the last drop of Fruity Pebbles–flavored milk and turn to see her.

Her blond hair is still damp and tangled, but her mask of makeup is on and she’s wearing a cute button-up blouse with khaki pants. Even on weekends she looks like a lawyer. I think that’s all she wants to be. Just a thing and not a person.

She sits down next to me and grabs the cereal box, and I twist around and watch the cartoons from my seat at the counter, and for a long time we just sit there and I listen to her eat and try to concentrate on the cartoon dog on the screen.

“Sleep okay?” she asks.

I don’t know why that’s her favorite question. Maybe because I think she doesn’t sleep at all. Maybe it’s her veiled way of asking if I’m okay.

“Yep. You?”

“Uh-huh.”

I want to tell her it’s a lie, that she would look rested if she slept at all, but I don’t.

And I decide I can’t do this same song and dance today. So I just blurt out, “Do you want to … I don’t know, do something today?”

She stops chewing even though her mouth is full and looks over at me. “I have a lot of new cases to review. Some other time?”

Some other time. It’s always some other time. I want to know when that other time is, but maybe if I knew, I’d never ask again.

“Yeah. Sure.”

And then I slide off my stool and go upstairs to change into jeans and a tank top, and I will leave and be gone all day, because that is what I do.

And today will just be another day in a long chain of disappointments, but that is how it is now.

That’s just how it works.

September 14

Two weeks, one day

Cross country starts today. It is my fall sport. It signals that school has begun, that the leaves will soon drop, and that my schedule will be full again.

Blake and I will be captains this year, him of the boys, me of the girls. He’s better than I am, but I’m the only senior girl on the team this year, so I win by default.

We jog side by side through the outdoor halls and courtyards of the school, toward the woods and trails behind the football field. There are twenty-seven runners behind us, their footfalls sounding out a rhythm that pushes me forward with each beat. We keep an easy pace, talking all the while. Those who fall back will be cut. If Blake and I can talk and they can’t even run, they are not cut out for this.

It doesn’t take long for us to hit our stride. We have been on this team for three years together. We have worn down these paths with our own feet, first as gangly, slow freshmen, and now as the veterans who hold the team together. Today, the sun is shining in its full glory, a last day of summer weather before fall defeats it.

“I got Bellnik for history,” Blake says as we enter the woods and the shade of trees.

“Ouch.” My feet are making pleasant little crunching noises now as they fall upon the first leaves of autumn. I know I should hate that an entire school year stretches out before me, but on days like this, I just revel in it. In the promise of a new year and new sports and crisp weather and winter holidays.

“I know. And I got Miss Valentine for pre-cal.”

“Double-ouch,” I say. My breathing is steady. My muscles are warm. I’m happy and comfortable and ready for a long run.

Blake glances back at the runners behind us. Some of them are already thinning out, and we’ve only gone two miles. “There will definitely be some cuts next week.”

I nod and look over at him. His cheeks are flushed with the blood pumping through him and his dark hair has lost its perfectly gelled look. It’s a mess, thanks to the wind and the branches we duck under.

Sometime over the summer, he grew up. He doesn’t look like the kid from junior year, arms and legs too long and scrawny for his body. Now he looks fit, and healthy, and good.

And as he looks back at me I can’t help but wonder what he’s thinking. Have I changed?

“You keeping up okay?” he says.

I grin. “Absolutely. I could sprint the next two miles.”

“Is that a challenge?” he asks, returning my smile. His Adidas track pants are swish-swish-swishing with each stride.

I glance back at the rest of the team, wondering if they can handle picking up the pace.

Half of them can. And that’s enough. “Yes.”

And then I take off. I crank it up a notch and my legs are flying now, leaping over twisted tree roots and splashing through puddles, and I can hear Blake’s thundering steps behind me, and it pushes me harder, faster, until the forest streams by in a blur of brown and green. Everything disappears, and all I can hear is my breathing and my heartbeat in my ears, and it is just me and the run.

When the trail forks, I take the left path, the longer one, knowing it’s not part of the plans but unwilling to turn back toward school. I can still hear him behind me. He’s keeping pace.

But he’s not passing me.

We run on and on, until we are miles into the woods and I know we have to stop. My throat is turning sore with the cool air and my legs are beginning to feel the push.

And when we stop, and I finally see him, his face is reddened with exertion and his T-shirt is damp, but he’s grinning a smile as wide as my own. “We lost them all. I’m betting they took the right turn. The turn we’d planned on. Rick probably took them that way after we lost them.”

I grin sheepishly. “Can’t say I blame ’em. We must be three miles from school if we cut through the trees. Four if we follow the path.”

I lean against a tree, one foot propped up on it as I regain my breath. My chest is rising and falling, expanding as large as it will go as I rake in more oxygen.

“I say we follow the path. How long are we going to have weather like this? We can walk back. It won’t take more than an hour or so.”

I look up at the sky through the canopy. It’s a vibrant blue. It must be barely four thirty. Plenty of time for a long walk, and it might end up being the last one of the season.

When I look down again, he’s closer. Standing in front of me, inches away. He’s still breathing a little hard. His eyes are looking straight at me, intense.

“What are you—”

And then he kisses me. It’s salty, the taste of his mouth mingling with his sweat, and he still breathes heavily through his nose. I’m so stunned I don’t move. For just a second, I actually want this, until finally I come back to focus and turn my head away, and our lips part.