It didn’t stop me from smiling at the memory of a little girl with a long black braid, playing the piano. She p
layed more dangerous games now. T
he warm memory
fades
into something considerably
more pulse-pounding as
I look
again at her.
“
Sophia Pearce.” I extend my hand to her
, carefully sidestepping Claire. “It’s been a long time.”
She takes
it
and slid
es
her body close to mine as we squeeze through
the kitchen to the livi
ng room
.
If anything, the
two
years since I had seen her
last
had made her even more beautiful
.
Black hair fell smoothly down her back, thick and straight and dark.
Her eyes were the color of onyx and
flashed whenever she was mad or angry or laughing. They were unreadable. You never knew what she was thinking unless she expressly wanted to tell you. Or show you.
But h
air and eyes and
skin
didn’t
mean shit
when it came to
Sophia
. I
t was something about the way she moved, the confidence and “of course you fucking want me” attitude and clothing that left little to the imagination.
“Christopher.
”
She crosses
the room in a few c
arefully designed steps that make her hips sway. “You…” She runs
her tongue over her lips. “Look. Incredible.”
“You’ve used that line before.”
She had.
We
’d been at a
party in Brooklyn in the summer before
junior year, when I had
discovered how much more fun parties could be when girls found you
attractive
. She was
coy at first
, teasing
me with a kiss here, a slow dance there
.
She left the party with someone else, of
course.
So, I did the next best thing
. I grabbed
the nearest girl who had shown me the least bit of interest and I
pretended
that she was
Sophia
.
It was immature and stupid. I had hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but
I
finally realized that it was time to play her game, knowing that we weren’t fighting on the same field. It worked eventually, because more than anything else, Sophia hates to lose.
That October
, Sam had one of his infamous parties, which always ended up with at least five or six people locked on
the roof in some kind of orgy.
I’d known that I was her next conquest from the moment she’d stepped in the door and I didn’t even care. Two weeks later, after little more than heavy petting, she dropped me flat. She had been
my
obsession ever since.
“I heard that you were shooting a movi
e.
”
She’s
running
her eyes over ever
y part of me
.
Damn. I had been right about the movie thing. I knew I
would be
. I was hoping to find something in her that wasn’t there before, something that said, I remember how much I must have hurt you and I’m sorry and I was foolish. Even, I want you, Chris. Screw the rest of it.
But none of that was there, just an unadulterated look of pure desire for my new “movie star” status. And not me.
“I finished a couple of weeks ago. I have some press for the last movie I shot to do in town, and then it’s back to reading scripts and stuff.”
“
So you’ll be in town for a
while?” Despite
her
question, she starts
looking around the room
, clearly telegraphing her boredom.
It was a calculated move.
This was her game. She would entice, seduce, make you fall in love with her a little, maybe, and then find something else to do. A girl playing a man’s game. It had always worked on me, and on every red-blooded male in the room. She was just so…casual about it, as if it meant nothing
. As if I meant nothing to her.
And I did. Mean nothing to her, that is.
So, why was I still standing there? I could have almost anyone I wanted in the room. Almost anyone. And that’s why I was still there.
Because I couldn’t have her. Or
what I wanted from her.
“
A few weeks
,” I s
ay
back, a second too lat
e. She’s
caught me thinki
ng
and her black eyes flash
with amusement.
She laughs
. “Ohhhh.
The famous movie star deigns to visit his peons
.”
“I’m not famous.
”
“But you will be.”
Ok. That was it. I was officially done with this conversation. Perhaps not officially done with her. But done for now.
I
start
flipping through my phone
,
pretending that
someone had texted me
.
Sophia
’s
eyes
say
that she knows that
there
are
no incoming texts.
“Listen.” S
he
inches closer to me
. “I have this friend in town, and I told her I would show her the sights. You know, Chinatown and Times Square and all of that.”
I look
up.
Sophia
hat
ed all of the tourist bullshit. Every time I figured I was going to get over her, that I would never have to think about her again because she was such a selfish, man
-
eating bitch, a flash of the
Sophia
that had given away all of her lunch in elementary school
appears
.
“Oh.”
“Do you maybe want to come and hang out with us?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll call you.”
I had heard that one before. Jesus, I sounded like a girl.
“Sure. Do that.” My voice i
s
as
cold as I
can manage
.
I would call Christine. My planned hook
-
up would happen and I would forget all about this conversation, in which
Sophia
had made it perfectly clear that she wanted me and didn’t want me all at the same time. I would get
out of there as soon as I could
.
“See you
.” I smile at her,
moving towards the door that led to the elevator
. One point for Chris.
As I glance over my shoulder, I catch
a glimpse of
Sophia
walking back
towards the kitchen. She turns
to kiss the cheek of the
guy who had handed her
a
d
rink. Then, she laughs
, carelessly set
s
the drink on the table, and
grabs
his
arm
.
“Hello,” she yells
, to the party. “This music sucks. I want to dance. Now.”
Transfixed, I
continue to stare as she kicks off her shoes and starts
an impromptu dance floor in front of the grand piano in the living room. Flashing her bes
t come-hither smile, she crooks
her index finge
r in
the guy’s
direction
and he moves
like a bullet to her side.
S
miling triumphantly, she glances in my direction and winks
, mouthing, “Call me.”
I take that back. Point to
Sophia
.
Chapter 3
HALLIE
I glance at my phone as it beeps.
Ben
. Of course
.
We need to talk. Call me the moment you get this. I need to hear your voice to make sure that you haven’t run away to Australia. You won’t be able to find the coconuts.
The dropping of any pretense of text language was not a good sign
. Both
Ben’s mom and mine
were English teachers at
our former high school in
Ohio
. They “
decried the mockery that newfangled technologies were making of the English language
.”
D
ir
ect quote
. We were practically conditione
d to use semi-colons from birth.
I think my mom actually went through my messages to make sure that every piece of punctuation was in place. While some moms were more concerned with the fact that their children were sending naked pictures of themselves to their boyfriends, I actually think mine would be happier with that then with the use of any number in place of a word.
So, I was the only nineteen-year-old
on the planet
who spelled out whole words.
Ben
was more rebellious; his concession to regular texting language was the word “u.” It actually took him more time to type that way. He would go back and replace the “you” with “u.”
“
You are so insane,
”
I told him once.
“
The Grammar N
azi will never win
,
”
he had proclaimed.
The fact that he had left the
“
yous
” in the
message told me that he was
angry
.
But it was t
he reference to Australia
that
nearly made me weep. It’s a good thing that my tear ducts had
been basically glued shut since I cried
the time that
Jimmy Fleet told me Santa wasn’t real in first grade.
Ben
had been my best friend since m
y freshman year of high school. H
e was a year older
than me, and even though
we had played together while we were in diapers, his family had moved away and they returned just before high school started. I couldn’t even recall a time that we had spoken before the night during the first month of
school.
W
e had gotten trapped in the locker room
after swim practice. The boys’ and girls’ locker rooms were connected in the lobby area, and we had both been in the showers long after we were supposed to
get out. It was
another thing we had in common—the love of freakishly long showers. The Environmental Club, of which I was president
during my senior year
, wou
ld certainly have kicked me out
.
W
e had emerged to find that
the custodian had put the chain on the doors from the outside.
Unfortunately,
the cinderblock walls from 1968 prevented any cell phone signals from getting through. We were stuck there all night.
Now, I generally agree with the “guys and girls can’t actually ever be friends thing,” but given our crash course in discovering totally embarrassing secrets (twelve hours without food on a very hard and very uncomfortable floor will do it), it’s all that we had ever been and all that we ever would be.
The friend zone had encompassed us in a warm and fuzzy bubble in the space of twelve hours.
No matter what I hoped for. No matter that the knowledge of it was slowly turning my brain to mush. No matter that I had
wanted
him to kiss me for five years.
Ce
la vie.
Running away to Australia had always been our code for a desperate situation. It had started that first night, just before the
custodian
released us. I was whining about my stomach, telling him that I was going to die before anyone found us.
“When we escape the locker room of doom, let’s run away to Australia,” he said. “We’ll get some hammocks and sleep on the beach. We won’t even have a house, just buy some land, get some hammocks, and eat some coconuts.”
I had laughed until my eyes were swollen with tears. “
Ben
,” I said, “You do realize that Australia isn’t really known for its coconuts?”
“It’s an island,
Hallie
. Everyone knows that.”
“Well, you go and find those coconuts then, and I’ll be right with you.”