I'll Be Here (19 page)

“What can I say Willow?  I’m sorry.”  Taylor is looking at me closely.  Probably she’s working out if I’m going to freak out or cry or something. 

“Whatever” I mumble. 

And as I walk to my first period class hoping that I make it through the door before the bell rings, I realize that all the feeling that I can muster up really does amount to that one word. 
Whatever
.

Nothing’s more fun than being carried away.

~Jerry Spinelli

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The sex question comes up a lot lately.

Laney asks.  Nate asks.  Colleen asks.

Like all of a sudden it matters.

Had we done it?

Well, yeah.

We had.

Dustin and I dated for almost two years. 

We were prone to teenage hormones.

Neither of us was from an uber-religious family.

Yes, we’d done it.

It happened last summer in the spare bedroom at Adam’s house while a party raged outside the locked door.  I know that’s cliché and I wish the story was better—more romantic—but in light of current events maybe it’s fitting.

We’d talked about it before—for months actually.  Dustin was ready, eager.  Maybe even a little desperate.  I was a virgin.  He was not.  He’d lost his virginity at the beginning of sophomore year when he was fifteen to Melanie Kwarcinski who was a senior at the time.  To say this intimidated me would be a gross understatement.

Melanie Kwarcinski had been Homecoming Queen and captain of the pep squad and was considered by nearly everyone to be the most popular girl at Northridge.  Melanie was Taylor before Taylor was Taylor if that makes any sense. 

I assumed that she was also experienced sexually and considering the fact that I had seen her body flex and flip in a tight top and short skirt at many sporting events, I think that my nervousness was warranted. 

It wasn’t that I didn’t
want
to have sex with Dustin.  I did.  It had almost happened over Christmas break.  And then again that June when my mom and Jake had taken Aaron on a weekend trip to visit Jake’s parents in Miami. 

I always stopped it.  Dustin would tell me that it was okay, but I kind of felt like it wasn’t.  He’d lean back and sigh through his nose and we wouldn’t touch again after that.  At all. 

I hated that I was making such a big deal out of the whole thing.  Sex was just sex.  Everyone did it.  Every living being on the planet.  I understood the basic mechanics.  How hard could it be?

Mom had always made a point that she was liberal on the matter.  She’d been talking to me about sex since before I’d had my first kiss, and her openness embarrassed me.  I didn’t want to “communicate” my feelings with her.  I didn’t want to ask questions and I especially didn’t want to hear her answers.  It mortified me that my mother could use words like “condom” and “oral sex” in my presence without her skin blistering with red splotches.  

When mom got diagnosed with cancer and her hair fell out and she started to worry about dying, she pushed me even more.  It was like she was afraid that we were running out of time for all the hard stuff.

“Tell me about it,” she’d say when I came home from a date with Dustin. 

Are you being careful?

You know that you can come to me.

I won’t judge.

But by that point in her treatment I’d stopped talking to her about my life or boys or about anything that mattered.  I knew that she felt it—the distance that lay there like a wet towel on the floor between us. 

She would come into my room at night and perch at the end of my bed and watch me read and I would play a game in my head to see how long she could wait for me to break the silence.  I’d continue to read and she’d watch me and sometimes she’d say something mundane just so that she could hear words fill the thinness of the air.  Sometimes she would walk out of my room without saying a thing and I would hear her gasp in the hallway outside of my room.  And I would want to go to her, but I never did. 

Then her cancer was cured and life moved forward and nothing was the same but we were both too busy to dwell.  Or maybe I’d made things too difficult and my mom had given up on me.  Whatever the reasons, by the time Adam’s party came along, she’d quit asking me so many questions. 

I hadn’t planned on that being the big night but then Melanie Kwarcinski had shown up to the party.  She was home for break and she was still the same as she’d been in high school only better.  Melanie was social chairman of her sorority.  She was majoring in Biomedical Engineering.  She’d spent a semester abroad in Paris and a few weeks in Madrid.  She wore an expensive scarf loosely tied around her neck.

Dustin hadn’t done anything wrong.  Not exactly. 

He had talked to her.  He listened to her story about going to the Eifel Tower when the elevators were down and hiking all the way to the top.  He offered to fill up her beer when he went to get more for himself. 

And when I saw Melanie smile her perfect smile all I could think about was that this girl had gone out with my boyfriend for about five minutes but she’d been the one to have sex with him.  She could say things like: “Oh, do you see that guy over there?  Yeah, Dustin.  We had sex.” 

And I couldn’t. 

It killed me. 

After a few cups full of liquid courage I’d asked Taylor of all people for a condom because I knew that she carried them in her purse “just in case.” 

I remember the way my hands shook when I led Dustin to the upstairs bedroom and how his eyes had widened when he realized what was happening.  I remember that he fumbled with the condom.  I remember that we laughed together.  I remember that it hurt a little but not as much as I’d worried it would.  I remember that afterward I lay my head on his chest and I wanted him to say something perfect and romantic but instead he asked me if I wanted to go back to the party.

***

I fall into a routine over the next few days.

            It starts out on Monday afternoon as I walk from my car up the path to the house.  My phone titters.  I look at the name of the sender twice before I read the text and respond.

            Alex: Hey there

            Me:  Hey yourself

            Alex: How’s your week so far?

            Me: Slightly better than crappy

            Alex: lol.  I think we can do better than that…

            Somehow that easy line of conversation turns into two hours of texting and the only reason it stops is because Alex is late for a study group.  I smile so much at dinner that Jake asks me if I’m feeling all right.  That only makes me smile more.

            The next day Alex sends me a picture of his roommate passed out buck naked on the floor.  The caption reads: Apparently, Joey had a rough night.

Luckily Joey is facedown.

            I respond with a photo of Ferdinand wearing the hat that Diana had bought me on our ski trip last winter.  The red pompon that embellishes the top is nearly as big as his entire head and the whole thing slouches down over his eyes and to his whiskers. 

            And it goes like that for days.  Eventually we move to the computer where we can expand our vocabulary without worrying about our texting thumbs falling off. 

Alex tells me about his classes and his three dorm-mates.  Their room is considered a quad—two guys to a bedroom and a shared bathroom and living space that Alex laments is really not much more than a glorified closet. 

There’s Monroe—a junior who collects rocks and all things related to geology for fun; and Joey, who pledged a fraternity last fall and keeps a notebook in his desk drawer detailing the number of pushups and sit-ups he does each morning.  Alex is convinced that Joey must have a cotton allergy because he never wears a shirt.  I laugh but he insists that he’s not joking.  Adam, he tells me, is the person he shares his bedroom with, though Adam has a serious girlfriend (Sarah) and he stays at her apartment off-campus most nights.  I can tell by his words that this is a person that Alex genuinely likes.

I reciprocate with stories about my mom and Jake and Aaron and Ferdinand.  I mention art school and when he pushes me further, I say it all.  How I bailed on my dream and never even applied to art school.  I realize how much easier is to describe what a tremendous failure I’d turned out to be over a keyboard and monitor.  He writes me back right away. 

                        You could never be a failure at anything Willow.

            True or not, it is one of the best things that anyone has ever said to me. 

Then on Thursday night comes a text that makes my heart skip.

            Alex: Can I take you out tomorrow night on an official date?

***

I hate to sound like every girl on the planet but I am in the middle of a crisis.

I can’t decide what to wear!

It’s like the clothes hanging in the closet, seemingly unaware of their treachery, have morphed into a puzzle far too advanced for me to decipher.  I will myself not to start freaking out and pull down a shirt and jeans.

No…

Cropped pants and a light grey sweater.

No…  The pants are all wrong and the short sleeved sweater washes out my complexion.

A vintage inspired skirt and plain fitted green tee-shirt.

No, no, no.  All wrong.

Ferdinand stares up lazily from the bed and I stick my tongue out at him.  Not surprisingly, his response is to close his eyes and go back to sleep.  Cats. 

Alex is going to be here in ten—no—
five
minutes and my brain is starting to spin the roulette wheel of panic-inducing thoughts.  With make-up splayed out on the floor by a propped mirror and discarded clothes in a frenetic pile near the closet, my room has taken on the hectic look of a department store the day before Christmas. 

            In a last-ditch effort for casual-yet-fashionable, I pull down a lightweight cotton dress—dark blue, nearly black—and slip into clunky grey shoes with a thick strap that buckles on the side.  I assess myself in the mirror.  Not terrible, but will he think I’m trying too hard if I’m wearing a dress?  The hemline dances across my upper thighs.

I turn to one side to check my reflection from this angle.  I’m about to change back into the lengthier vintage skirt but then I hear the doorbell chime and the muffled tones of a greeting. 

Alex has arrived.  I brush aside the sticky cobwebs of doubt and open my bedroom door. 

            He is standing in the arched entryway that leads into the living room. And if my pulse skips or speeds up I can’t hear it over the whirling of my brain.  My mother is half-blocking him and Jake is beside her, his hand hovering above her back as if to guide her to one side.  All that I can see are his shoes—black and leather and peeking at me, and his dark messy hair. 

Mom moves a step to her left opening up my line of sight.  The first thing that I think of is the way that his mouth felt on my flesh  last weekend so of course I’m staring at his lips and it’s like the dormant embers under my skin have been rekindled and are beginning to burn.  I’m betting that a warm, red flush is creeping up from my neck.  Alex lifts his gaze from my mother and when his eyes land on me, his head snaps up.  I watch his as he takes in my bare legs and loose hair and I’m suddenly very glad that I settled on the dress.  His open-mouthed expression sends a tingling sensation through my veins. 

            Mom is smiling widely.  Almost to the point of looking ridiculous and although I’d been hoping to avoid the thousand and one questions that will likely accompany this situation, I can tell by her face that she won’t be appeased so easily.  The look she gives me as she opens the front door for us clearly says: “And
we’ll
talk later.”  

            After the step-down from the porch the front path widens with room enough for two people to walk side-by-side.  Alex keeps pace with me and opens my car door.  I try to think if Dustin ever opened the door for me.  I can’t remember.  Images from our first few dates pass through my head but I realize that I shouldn’t be thinking about one boy when I’m on a date with another.  A
date. 
With Alex Faber.

Ack! 

Nervously looking forward, I wait for Alex to round the car to the driver side and slip into his seat.  He turns the ignition and backs out of the driveway, making a northbound turn out of my neighborhood.  I’m so full of electricity right now that I think I could power a small appliance.  I wonder if Alex feels it too. 

Cautiously, I cut a glance to my left and catch him looking back at me.  We both smile shyly. 

            “So…” he says biting on his lip.

            “So…”  I answer biting my own lip.

             We laugh.  It’s timorous but softens the tense line between us and we begin again—hesitantly, but better this time. 

By the time Alex parks the car and we are walking in the direction of the movie theater, we have fallen into something resembling a comfortable banter.  As we round the corner his elbow touches my arm and I wonder what it would feel like to hold his hand but I quickly quash that idea.  I am not going to be the one who makes a move tonight.  At least that much I’m certain of.

We step, carefully avoiding the shallow rain puddles that mottle the sidewalk.  It rained earlier and the familiar musky aroma of freshly washed world whorls around us. 

I look at Alex in profile.  He’s fallen quiet and I can’t help but wonder what he’s thinking about.  I don’t have to wait in suspense for long.

            “You didn’t tell your mom that I was coming to pick you up,” he says matter-of-factly.

            I wasn’t expecting him to bring up my mother and I’m momentarily thrown.  “No, I didn’t.”

            “Why not?”

            There’s something in Alex’s voice that forces me to stop walking and look at him. 

He is nibbling on his lip and I wonder if he is worried that I was embarrassed to be going out with him.  Nothing could be more ridiculous and I want to reassure him.  I place one hand on his forearm and he turns to me.