I'll Be Here (11 page)

And then he placed a lemon on the side of my soda glass because he knew that’s the way that I liked it and I was sure.

It was as simple as that.

At midnight we tossed our paper wishes into the fire and although I’d told mom that the whole thing was silly, I’ll admit that it was exciting to see our dreams hover in the heavy-clinging grayish smoke and then waft upward like a hot breath.

Laney leaned into me and whispered low, sparing a glance in Alex’s direction.  “Willow, I think your wish is going to come true.”  Just then his eyes swung towards mine and his face transformed into a rare full-watt grin. 

When most of the guests had gone and Laney was in my room texting her then-boyfriend, I stood outside in the night by myself, trying to squeeze bravery out of every pore in my body.  I would speak with him.  I would tell him how I felt.  If only I could make my brain work properly.

I shuffled my feet.

I wrung my hands.

And then Alex was there, his face lined by the glow from the outdoor lighting.  “Are you cold?”  He asked the question because I was shivering. 

I couldn’t explain that the tremble in my body was not from the cold. 

“A little,” I said.

“Here.”  He slouched out of his corduroy jacket and passed it over my shoulders.  It was still warm from his body heat and it smelled of him.  I entertained a wave of crazy thoughts. 
I will never take this jacket off.  I will sleep with it tucked under my pillow.  I will cut it up into a hundred smaller pieces and always keep one in my pocket.

“Thanks.”  I said.  Alex’s smile was like a slow wink and his fingertips grazed the edges of the jacket sleeve close to the skin of my wrist.  So close. 

We talked at the same time, each of us saying the other’s name. 

“Alex—”

“Willow—”

I laughed first and he followed.

 “Jinx.”  Alex was facing me head-on and he was beautiful in his tangled kind of way.  I noticed a dark freckle peeking out from just above his collar. 

When he reached up to swat at a flying insect that lazily circled our heads, the front hem of his shirt lifted and I caught a slice of bare skin.  I wondered what it would feel like to run my fingertips over that smooth skin.   

I knew that I was blushing and was glad for the muted light.

Alex said something about the moon and I guess that I must have answered but I can’t remember what I said and it doesn’t really matter.  What matters is the way that my head was humming and the magic of my body tingling and the grinding of my heart against my ribs. 

There was this current between us—electrical…  magnetic.  It felt like I was connected to Alex by a string and I imagined that I could feel the slightest movement of every one of his limbs.  As he talked, his tongue sometimes came out and licked his lips and I was overwhelmed by that.  By him.  By those lips.  And those blinking blue eyes.

I wanted him. 

I was so full of wanting I thought I would explode.

I wanted to lean in. 

I wanted to reach forward and graze his face with my tongue. 

I wanted to bury my hands in his dark hair and kiss the slight indentation in the middle of his chin. 

I wanted to nestle into the curved hollow space between his neck and his jaw. 

I wanted to breathe him in and hold my breath. 

I wanted Alex more than anything that I’d ever wanted in my whole life and I was hanging onto a thread of hope that he wanted me too. 

But, how was I supposed to cross the distance? 

I could just come out and say: “Alex, I want you.”

That sounded creepy—like it should be the line of a pathetic and lonely character in a romance novel read by bored and overfed housewives.

I could go with a more classic approach.  I could tilt my head to the side and bat my eyelashes coyly and say, “I wouldn’t stop you if you kissed me.”

But, what if he said didn’t even want to kiss me?

How incredibly embarrassing would that be?

Maybe the best method would be full-on action.  I could just go for it.  That’s what a girl in a movie would do.  She would reach out and grab the leading man by the collar and pull him down towards her mouth and they would have a sweeping, grand kiss and the camera would pan up to the night sky full of pulsing stars and soft, romantic music would flare up in the background. 

Yes, that could work. 

He blinked down at me, thick, dark lashes touching his cheeks.

I swallowed my doubt and stepped in slipping my hands to his neck to pull him towards me. 

It was just like the movie!  And the music started to roar in my brain.  Stars twinkled!  But just before our lips touched he put his hands on my shoulder and pushed me back gently but firmly.

Oh. My. God.

I’d been dissed.

Majorly.

Because I was an ugly, disgusting ogre.  Snot was probably pouring from my nostrils onto the ground.   

“Whoa.”  Alex’s voice was soft, breathy. 

His hand fell to my arm.  He squeezed.  I watched his face change and the outer edges of his mouth turn down.  It was the worst kind of look and my stomach plummeted ten thousand feet.  

I stepped back, feeling hot all over, wanting to die right there on my porch.  “I—I’m sorry.  I don’t know what I was thinking.  I—”

“It’s okay, Willow.  These things happen.” 

These things happen?
  Like I’d dropped and broken a piece of everyday china.  Like I’d put too much salt in the cookie batter. 

I nodded like I understood, but I couldn’t look at him and I decided that I would never look at him again.  My face was red and only getting redder as I stood there and ate my mortification with a spoon. 

I wanted to turn away but I was trapped in that spot—in that moment—by those moon eyes.  Because even though I couldn’t see them, I could
feel
them looking at me and they burned me so bad that my legs didn’t work. 

It was him touching me that freed me from my frozen stupor. 

Alex’s hand came forward and I jerked back so violently that he rocked on his feet.  He made a sound that might have been words but I didn’t catch them and I didn’t ask him to repeat himself. 

Somehow, I found my voice.  “I should go.  Laney’s probably wondering where I am.” 

He made a grab for my hand but I sidestepped him.  

“Willow, wait!  I think you misunderstood.  We should talk about this.” 

He was following me.  He tried to put a hand on my shoulder.  He asked me to walk down to the cave with him.  He said other things but I couldn’t even make sense of the words.  It might as well have been in another language. 

I moved quickly, my shoes slapping against the stones.  I didn’t want to talk to him.  I didn’t want to hear Alex explain to me in slow, painful detail the reasons that he didn’t think of me
that
way.  I didn’t want to hear him say the words that I knew were coming.  That I was a just a little girl to him.  A family friend. 
Like a sister
. 

“
Please,”
he pleaded again.

“I don’t want to talk about it Alex.”

“Willow, you have to let me explain.”  Alex’s voice was taking on a note of panic.  He was trying to place himself between me and the house.  He walked backwards, his shoes crunching in the gravel and I had to step to the right to avoid squashing his toes. 

“There’s nothing to explain.  I get it.” 

Despite myself, this time I looked up.  Alex wobbled as his foot found the path and I worried that he would trip.  I stopped walking.

“Are you crying?”  He sounded shocked.  His fingers came forward but I pushed them away.  “Willow…”

My eyes
were
wet.  Ugh.  I hated those tears.  I hated that I’d been betrayed by my own stupidity.  I hated my cracking voice and the way that my throat was caving in on me and that I felt so, so unbelievably stupid. 

And his concern for me only made the whole thing worse. 

Maybe it would have been easier if he’d laughed or said some chickenshit thing to make me angry.  Maybe then I could have gotten pissed and thought “good riddance.”  But he didn’t do either of those things.  He stood there with his forehead creased into three distinct lines looking very Alex-like and I still wanted to reach up and touch him.  I still wanted to kiss him. 

I took a shaky breath. 

“Let’s just forget it,” I said finally.  “I was an idiot and you don’t need to explain to me the million and one reasons why this was a terrible idea.  I get—”

Alex interrupted.  “You’re not an idiot Willow.”  The tone of his voice begged me to look up into those saltwater eyes but I couldn’t bear it.

I sighed.  “I feel like one.”

He moved close enough that I could feel his breath.  “You shouldn’t.  If you’d let me explain then you’d understand—”

But he never completed the thought because Pete appeared on the back porch and announced loudly that they were going home.  He’d had a little too much to drink and he was laughing.  I could hear Brooke behind him on the porch shushing him. 

“We have to finish
this
,” Alex insisted but I was looking elsewhere—anywhere but at him.

I said nothing as he took the other darkened path and met up with his parents in the driveway.  I thought that he might look back but he didn’t.  He didn’t even remember his coat.

We found out about mom’s cancer nine days later.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)

it’s always ourselves we find in the sea.

~E.E. Cummings

CHAPTER TEN

“Wait.  Did he tell you why he was in town?”  Macy is twirling a leaf between her fingers.  The sounds of traffic hum in the background.  We are outside at the picnic tables that edge the park.  A gathering of scraggly oak branches form a shade roof over us.  Colleen leans forward expectantly, waiting for me to answer.  She’s sucking on a lollipop and it’s turned her tongue a deep shade of purple. 

I shrug.  “I would assume he was in town for a long weekend and stayed for his dad’s birthday like he said.” 

“Interesting.”  Colleen chirps.  I don’t know why Laney told Macy and Colleen about Alex because now the whole group wants to know the story even though I’ve been swearing up and down that the only story is that there is no story. 

Macy vaguely remembers Alex from our middle school. “Do you think he knows about you and Dustin breaking up?”

Okay.  This is what I keep coming back to.  I didn’t let myself dwell on Alex most of last week, but once I started thinking about him, I couldn’t stop.  And thinking too much about Alex Faber is not something that is historically good for me. 

I won’t even go into how erratic my pulse gets, or the way my fingers curl tightly into my palms when I think about him.  God.  It’s so embarrassing. 

I’ve already asked myself a dozen times if Alex knew that he’d see me at Patty’s office.  I couldn’t tell from his demeanor. 

Did he know about my breakup with Dustin?  He didn’t say anything, but it would be perfectly normal for my mother to share that sort of information with Brooke, and of course Brooke could have told Alex. 

But would my relationship status or lack thereof cause Alex Faber to drop his plans and come see me at work?  Probably not.  It was dangerous to think like that. 

  I shrug at Macy, feigned indifference sneaking into my voice.  “I have no idea.  Probably not.” 

“Hmmm.”  This is Colleen.  Her platinum hair is tied to one side in a spiky ponytail.  Her fingernails are painted an iridescent dark blue.  She’s already told me that I can borrow the color. 

I like Colleen.  And she’s been amazingly cool that I’ve crashed their group of friends.  So has everyone else. 

There’s Macy and then Dizzy, whose real name is Desiree but has gone by Dizzy since she was in kindergarten.  Laney and I were friends with her back in elementary school, but then she transferred to a snotty private school and we lost touch the way kids do.  She’s been back in the unfortunate public school system for a little over two years but I don’t think we had even spoken until this week. 

Asher Grigsby is Dizzy’s boyfriend.  He’s tall and hulking and an itsy bit scary.  Asher’s got that whole emo, I-don’t-give-a-shit vibe nailed down.  The first time he talked to me I wouldn’t look him in the eye.  But then I realized something.  It’s all an act.  Maybe he’s a tad socially awkward and has multiple facial piercings, but Asher’s a total softy.  He lives with his grandparents and he dotes on his girlfriend and according to Laney he’s a genuine friend to animals, even going so far as to bring a baggy of bird seed with his lunch for our school’s finch population.  And he loves salt and vinegar potato chips with a passion.  Go figure. 

And of course there’s Lance who I’ve grown ridiculously fond of in the short amount of time that we’ve spent together.  Lance used to work with Colleen and Laney at a music store downtown, but he quit last fall in protest of some dress code amendment about closed toe shoes.  I find this interesting since so far I’ve seen Lance in nothing but closed toes shoes, but Laney says that he insisted it was the
principle
of the whole thing. 

Despite the dress code, the music store sounds like a good place to work.  They sell obscure vintage records as well as some current stuff in cd form. 

Laney says that digital downloads haven’t exactly been good for business but that they’ve got a pretty solid customer base so they make it.  She also tells me in a whispering tone that their manager, a scrawny twenty-three year old with terrible teeth, is painfully in love with Colleen but she remains oblivious.  This doesn’t surprise me.  Colleen’s beautiful and cool in the effortless way that people that don’t try too hard and could care less what you think of them are cool.

“And you haven’t seen him in over a year?”  Asher asks with a mouthful of salt and vinegar potato chips.  He always seems to have a bag nearby.  Seriously.