Forever Now (Forever - Book 1) (11 page)

“Yes, I hear Japan is cold in the winter,” I said.

“I hate the cold.”

“Me, too. At least I think I do.” I had never been outside of San Diego, and the city wasn’t known for cold winters.

I finished my homework and closed my books. The movie on TV caught my attention. It was an old comedy with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant.

“You’re like that,” Cruz said.

“What did you say?” I turned to see him studying me, like I was a puzzle. He didn’t blink; His eyes were deep and fathomless and drew me in.

“You’re like Katherine Hepburn. Classy. Smart.”

I was slightly stunned, but I was woken out of my stupor by the doorbell. We both assumed it would be for Cruz. Who else would it be for?

He hopped off the couch, answered the door, and came back into the living room.

“It’s for you,” he told me. “Your friend.”

“My what?”

“Your friend! Your best friend!” Dahlia announced, skipping into the room. She danced around Cruz and plopped onto the couch next to me. She was wearing a man’s pinstripe suit, and her hair was French braided and twisted into a bun. She carried a large clear, plastic purse, and I could see a box of Pop Tarts among her makeup, papers, wallet, and other stuff. She kicked off her sandals and crossed her legs on the couch.

I had felt awkward near Dahlia since the incident at school with the cheerleaders and football players. I couldn’t forget what they said about Dahlia not really wanting to hang out with me. I didn’t know if it was true or not, but I thought I should try to give her some space. So, I had been avoiding her at lunchtime, making excuses that I had to go to the library or study hall. I didn’t want to lose such a good friend, but I didn’t want her talking about how annoying I was, either.

“Oh, I love this movie!” Dahlia announced. “It’s one of my favorites.”

On TV, Katherine Hepburn had ripped the back of her dress and was walking around a restaurant with the back of her underwear showing. I could totally see Dahlia doing the same thing, and I started to giggle.

Dahlia laughed, too. “Oh, I’m so glad to see you!” she said. “It’s been so long. You’ve been way too busy so I figured if the mountain won’t go to Dahlia, well you know.”

She had gotten the saying a little mixed up, but it didn’t matter. I was happy. She obviously wanted to see me, and those cheerleading finks were big fat liars. Or skinny little liars.

They were bitches.

“You’ll never guess what I brought,” she said.

“Pop Tarts.”

“Wow! How did you guess?”

I didn’t point out that her purse was see-through. She opened the box and handed me a foiled package. I ripped it open and took a bite.

“And who are you?” she asked Cruz, who sat down on the other side of me. “No, let me guess. You’re Chino.”

She smiled, and I blushed. Dahlia offered Cruz some Pop Tarts, but he refused since he had to stay a certain size for modeling.

I didn’t need to stay a certain size. I purposefully wore clothes that were a size too big so I could go up and down depending on my craving for carbs and the time of the month. Right then, I was PMSing pretty bad, and if a doctor was around, I was sure he would prescribe a big dose of Pop Tarts. Besides, they were s'mores flavored. My favorite.

“I’m not going to ask what’s going on here,” Dahlia said, pointing from me to Cruz. “I believe that would be a karmic violation, and I’m not willing to do that while I’m waiting to hear back from Smith College. My father wants me to go to Brown, but Sylvia Plath went to Smith. You know?”

I didn’t know if it was all that prudent to follow in Sylvia Plath’s footsteps. Besides, Dahlia wanted to be a math major.

“I’m Cruz,” he said shaking her hand.

“I’m Dahlia. Tess’s biggest admirer. Or am I? Maybe I’m her second biggest admirer?” She arched her eyebrow and cocked her head at Cruz. My face got hot, but Cruz’s face looked like it was the Hindenburg landing. On fire. He was a red, ripe tomato.

Dahlia didn’t seem to notice. She bit into a Pop Tart and slapped my knee. “I have big news for you. Big!”

She was wearing inch long fake eyelashes, which were purple and glittery—I think to match her new car—and her hair was tied in a top knot, which looked like a blond toilet paper roll was glued to the top of her head. I was slightly afraid of her ‘big news.’

She opened her purse and rifled through it. “I know it’s here somewhere.” She pulled out a couple dirty Kleenex, a curling iron, and finally an envelope, which she held up with an air of victory. “Voila! And notice I said that in French.” She winked at me, and her purple eyelashes stuck together.

I helped her upstairs to my bathroom, and she washed the eyelashes off. “I was half-hoping it wouldn’t unstick, and I could have an eye patch,” she said with her face in the sink. “I have a great scarf to tie around my head, and it would be fabulous to pull off a whole pirate look.”

Dahlia dried off, and I quickly hung up all of Cruz’s wet towels. She took the envelope, and I showed her my bedroom. She went right for the floppy hat on my dresser.

“Love this.
Love
this!” she cried, trying it on. “Do I look like Scarlett O’Hara?”

She looked nothing like Scarlett O’Hara. First of all, her giant top knot prevented the hat from sitting on her head. It just bobbed there, as if Dahlia had become a walking hat stand.

She looked around my room, taking a moment over my stacks of notebooks. Then she sat on my bed, and patted the place next to her. “Come and open it, already,” she said.

I sat down, and she gave me the envelope. I couldn’t imagine what it was. I opened it, careful not to rip the fancy linen paper.

“You’re invited to my family’s Christmas party,” she announced before I could read the invitation. “It’s on the eighteenth. So not strictly Christmas, but you get the picture. There will be lots of green and red, and food. Food, Tess! Mushroom caps and lobster puffs, and oodles of good things. Please say you’ll come. Please! And you can sleep over. I’m so excited you’re coming. It will be so much more fun with you there. Normally it’s only family and their stuffy friends, but my father said I could invite you. We’re going to have the best time!”

“What’s a lobster puff?” I asked.

I had never been to a Christmas party, let alone one with lobster puffs. I had no idea what a lobster puff was, but I bet it was fancy. Christmas party dress fancy. What on earth would I wear? What would I say to everyone? They would talk about international affairs, the stock market, and opera. What could I contribute to that conversation? I could talk about surviving on peanut butter sandwiches and hoping the water wasn’t shut off in the house.

Or I could talk about my mother abandoning me.

No. Probably not a topic for a lobster puff party.

“Well—“ I started. I didn’t want to let her down. She really did want me to go, but she didn’t know what she was asking. I would be out of place at her fancy party that required linen paper invitations. I wasn’t that kind of person. She would see that I was an outsider, and never want to be my friend again. I mean, I didn’t even know what a lobster puff was. Wasn’t that a red flag for her?

“Good!” Dahlia hugged me, and I flinched. I had so seldom been hugged in my life, it felt weird. But good. “Don’t forget your surprise,” she whispered in my ear. “It’s coming soon.”

I couldn’t imagine what my surprise would be. I thought finding out what lobster puffs were would be surprise enough.

After ten that night, Dahlia decided to go home. Cruz offered to walk her out to her car, and I watched them from my bedroom window, making out their shadows in the moonlight. They were talking and laughing. Dahlia pulled keys from her purse and leaned back against the side of her car. She was very pretty, and she was self-confident without being a conceited egomaniac like other girls. Her face was just like a doll’s or a Disney princess. She could obviously have any boy she wanted, and I was struck with a pang of jealousy.

I was about to step away from the window and get ready for bed when I saw Cruz step closer to her. She stopped smiling. I could imagine the tension between them, being so close to each other.

And then his mouth touched the side of her face.

I grew cold, as if an arctic wind had hit me. I squinted and looked again to make sure I hadn’t hallucinated. But by then it was too late. Cruz had hopped back on the curb, and Dahlia was sitting in her car, starting it up. I heard the front door slam when Cruz walked inside the house. Dahlia’s headlights turned on, and she raced down the street with the soft sound of her car’s Katy Perry music reaching me.

I tried to swallow, but a large lump in my throat prevented me. Tears burned the back of my eyes, and my nose ran, dripping two drops on the carpet. I had seen Cruz kiss lots of pretty girls, lots of beautiful women, but seeing him with my only friend broke my heart into pieces like a cracker at the bottom of a box.

Dust.

It was a writing moment, a time to write my guts out in one of my notebooks. The urge to write out every detail of my pain and those that inflicted that pain gnawed at me, but my body had grown heavy. I had a hard time moving at all.

With my last bit of energy, I changed into my nightgown and got into bed. I turned on my side, away from the light of the hallway and tried to close my eyes. As tired as I was, however, my eyes wouldn’t shut, and I couldn’t fall asleep.

“Psst. Tess, you asleep?” I turned over. Cruz was standing in the doorway, his body outlined in the light from the hall. “Do you mind if I stay with you a little while?”

You wouldn’t think having a beautiful boy ask if he could stay with you for a little while would make a girl cry, but that’s what happened. Luckily, it was a quiet cry. No sobbing. No choking or gasping for breath. Just a few tears streaming down my face.

I didn’t want him to know I was crying, and I didn’t trust my voice. So, I patted the place on the bed next to me instead of saying anything. He kicked off his shoes and hopped on. He wore shorts and a t-shirt, and he smelled like apples and sunlight.

“I can’t go to sleep, yet,” he said, softly. “I hope you don’t mind. I always feel calmer when I’m with you.”

I never felt calm when I was with Cruz. I always felt like my blood was racing through my veins. Now with him lying next to me, our bodies almost touching, my blood was doing a pretty decent NASCAR impression.

“Tell me a story,” he urged. “You’re the story writer. Tell me one to help me sleep.”

“One of mine?” I asked. I had never read my stories to a soul.

Cruz and I lay on our sides, our faces only about an inch apart. I could smell his breath—sweet and warm, and I could just make out his big brown eyes staring back at me.

“You scared?” he asked.

“Scared?” Damn right I was scared. I was scared I was going to jump all over him and make a fool of myself. Or worse.

“Yeah, you know, scared of reading one of your stories,” he said. “Okay, how about a different story, maybe from one of your favorite writers.”

“Well, my favorite writer is Emily Dickinson, but she was a poet.”

“A poet,” he repeated. I inhaled his words, his breath invading my body, mingling with my own. “Tell me one of her poems. Do you know one by heart?”

I knew a lot of her poems by heart. She was my constant companion.

I nodded. “But you don’t want to hear it,” I said.

Cruz caressed my cheek with the tip of his finger. “Tell me,” he said, softly. My skin sprouted goose bumps, and I shivered.

“Okay, but I warned you. It’s not Stephen King.”

“THE WAY I read a letter’s this:

’T is first I lock the door,

And push it with my fingers next,

For transport it be sure.

And then I go the furthest off

To counteract a knock;

Then draw my little letter forth

And softly pick its lock.

Then, glancing narrow at the wall,

And narrow at the floor,

For firm conviction of a mouse

Not exorcised before,

Peruse how infinite I am

To—no one that you know!

And sigh for lack of heaven,—but not 

The heaven the creeds bestow.’”

I finished reciting the poem. Silence. Not a peep out of the hunky, dreamy eyed, perfect boy on my bed. It was the kind of silence a brain makes when it’s trying to figure out something nice to say.

Obviously, Cruz couldn’t figure out something nice to say.

“I told you it wasn’t Stephen King,” I said. I was sweating embarrassment out of my pores. I knew I shouldn’t recite an Emily Dickinson poem. What was I thinking? No boy is going to like Emily Dickinson. And now I would be even less cool, even less of one of his beautiful models, even more of a dork.

“You have a beautiful voice,” he said finally.

“I do?”

“So full of passion when you were talking. I didn’t know what it meant, but it was beautiful.”

I pinched myself. Yep, I was awake.

“It was,” I croaked. “about letters. Receiving letters, I mean. Back in those days they wrote lots of letters.”

“I’ve never written anybody an actual letter,” said Cruz. “Not with a pen on paper and mailing it in a mailbox.”

“Me either. And I’ve never gotten one.”

Cruz sighed, deeply, and I inhaled his breath, again.

“It must be nice, though, taking the time to write it out slowly by hand. Then, mailing it and waiting a long time for an answer. It’s more thoughtful than a text or email. It’s sort of romantic. You probably think I’m a dork,” he said.

“What? No!”

“Probably your boyfriends don’t talk about writing letters.”

My boyfriends.

My boyfriends?

Was Cruz on crack? What was he talking about? The closest I had ever gotten to having a boyfriend was right that second, lying in bed with him. And for sure, Cruz wasn’t my boyfriend. He was too busy kissing models and my best friend to be my boyfriend.

“I would love to get a letter,” I said, sidestepping the whole boyfriend conversation.

“Maybe when I’m in Japan and you’re in France, we could write back and forth. You know, the old fashioned way.”