The Infinite Moment of Us (16 page)

mock. “Do you mean that, Wren? About P.G.?”

Wren was surprised at Tessa’s sudden intensity. Then

she felt dumb. Tessa’s approval mattered to Wren; didn’t

it make sense that Wren’s approval would matter to Tessa?

P.G. had continued to grow on Wren over the course

of the hot, lazy summer. She appreciated how outgoing

he was. She liked his easy grin, and his ability to act like

an arrogant ass-hat while somehow letting everyone know

that he was fully aware that he was acting like an arrogant

ass-hat, which made it funny instead of annoying.

More importantly, P.G. saw the real Tessa, Wren thought.

Possibly because he was like her in so many ways.

P.G. was Tessa’s “more than.”

“P.G.’s great,” Wren said, and Tessa flopped back onto

the hammock, making it bounce.

“Yeah, I love him,” she replied. “Or, I think I do. Do you

love Charlie?”

“
Tessa
,” Wren said.

“What? Why is that not an okay question to ask?”

Wren tilted her head and gazed at the sky. The sun was

sending up its last orange rays of the day. Charlie would be

finishing work before long.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Why do you only
think
you

love P.G.?”

“I didn’t say
only
. Even if I think I do . . .” Tessa pushed Wren’s rib with her bare foot. “Love’s a big deal.”

“You think?”

“I know. And here’s something else I know: I’ve got kind

of a big personality, if you haven’t noticed.”

“Ah.”

“Yes, you’re making fun of me. All right. But I won-

der if sometimes you forget that I’m putting on a show.

I’m almost always putting on a show. Do you know that,

Wren?”

“Are you putting on a show now?”

“I’m not, which is why what I’m saying matters. I think

I love P.G.”

“That’s huge,” Wren said.

“I know.” Tessa’s foot lay against Wren’s side. It was the

same foot from when Tessa was younger. It would be the

same foot when she was ninety-nine.

“When I’m sad, do you know what P.G. does?” Tessa

asked.

“Why are you sad?”

“Wren. Everyone’s sad sometimes.”

Right, Wren thought. Now
she
felt young. “What does

he do?”

“He brings me frozen yogurt. He picks out a movie for

us, one he thinks I’ll like. And he holds me.”

“That’s sweet,” Wren said.

“And for the rest of the night, or whenever, he’s just . . .

extra nice. Like, I can tell that he cares. It
is
sweet.”

“And you’re not pretending.”

“I’m not pretending.”

“Got it,” Wren said. She hesitated. “Well, Charlie, he’s

wonderful. He’s so
good
, as in a good, good person.”

“Tell me more,” Tessa said, her voice shifting to a less

serious mood. Still serious enough, but more back to fun-

and-games Tessa. “Don’t get me wrong. I like the guy. But

he’s not the most talkative.”

“He talks to me,” Wren said. “And he cares what I think,

even off-the-wall stuff like trees having souls, or whether

time is linear or stretchy.”

“‘Stretchy’? You lost me.”

Right. The stretchiness of time wasn’t for Tessa, and that

was okay. The stretchiness of time wasn’t for most people,

perhaps, and, in fact, time
wasn’t
stretchy for Wren except when she was with Charlie.

But with Charlie, she could—and did—talk about any-

thing. Charlie was super smart, and he was reading up on

discrete math before starting at Georgia Tech in August.

He was doing this for fun. When he came across an idea

he thought Wren would appreciate, he shared it with her.

A couple of days ago he’d told her about a math professor

who was interested in multiple, coexisting dimensions—

beyond the familiar three. This professor tried to explain

those overlapping dimensions by making a cube out of

paper, then flattening the cube into a cross.

“It’s hard to visualize,” Charlie said, “but the point was

that he’d taken a three-dimensional cube and represented

it in two-dimensional space.”

“All right,” Wren said.

“Then he said, ‘Imagine this cube, which now appears to

be a flat cross. And imagine I used rubber bands to hold it

in that shape, so that it didn’t pop back into a cube. Well,

now imagine that a mouse crawls onto the cross, and—

bam
! The rubber bands pop, and suddenly the mouse is in a cube. Just think how surprised that mouse would be!”

Wren had tilted her head. “Was it a two-dimensional

mouse? Because if it was a three-dimensional mouse, it

would already know about cubes. And if it was a two-

dimensional mouse, it wouldn’t have snapped the rubber

bands.”

“I think the math guy was just trying to find a way of

helping his students wrap their minds around the concept

of assuming the world was one way, and then—
bam
—hav-

ing those assumptions be forever changed.”

“Cool,” Wren said. They were lying in their ditch, and

Wren leaned on Charlie and ran her finger down his nose.

“Meeting you changed my world forever.”

Their thighs touched. Wren’s breasts grazed Charlie’s

chest.

“Mine, too,” Charlie said in a low voice. Then, even

lower, his lips just brushing hers, he whispered, “
Bam
.”

That low voice of his. God. It made her pulse quicken.

Tessa nudged her. She was holding out the lemonade to

Wren, and Wren took another sip. She was now truly tipsy,

and she closed the bottle and dropped it onto the grass

beneath the hammock.

Oh, but she was supposed to be telling Tessa about

Charlie, and how Wren thought he was the most caring

person she’d ever met. Wren wanted to help people in the-

ory, but Charlie jumped in and helped Chris and Pamela

and Dev—and Wren—without thinking about it or seeing

himself as any kind of hero.

Wren sometimes thought that Charlie cared for people

in a “realer” way than she did, even though she volunteered

at the hospital and even though she’d signed up for Proj-

ect Unity. Secretly, Wren thought Charlie was realer than

she was in general. She didn’t want to tell Tessa that part,

though.

“He always opens the door for me, if he gets there first,”

she said.

“Aw,” Tessa said. “He’s sweet, just like P.G.!”

“And he always makes a point of telling me how beauti-

ful he thinks I am.”

“You
are
beautiful. What else?”

“Well, his car? It’s a vintage Volvo. He bought it for, like,

three thousand dollars, and it’s over forty years old, and

when he bought it, it didn’t run or anything.”

“And he restored the engine and fixed up the interior

all by himself,” Tessa said. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I heard about

it from P.G. But I don’t care about Charlie’s car. I want the

juicy stuff.”

“The juicy stuff,” Wren said. “Hmm.” She gazed at the

tree branch that extended over her. “I don’t know if this

is juicy, but mainly, when I think about Charlie, I just . . .”

“Want to jump his bones?”

Wren smiled. Yes, that. Yes, yes, yes. But there was

something different she wanted to share, and it contrib-

uted to
why
Wren wanted to jump Charlie’s bones, because it had to do with who Charlie was at his very core.

“When I think about Charlie,” she tried again, “I think

. . .
how
? How did he get to be this brilliant, gentle, amazing guy? He had a crappy childhood. I’m not going to go

into details—and I couldn’t even if I wanted to, because he

doesn’t talk about that stuff, so don’t you dare go asking

him about it. Really, Tessa. Do you swear?”

From her end of the hammock, Tessa made a peace sign.

“Girl Scout’s honor.”

“I mean it, Tessa.”

“I do, too.”

“I know. Sorry. I guess I get protective of him some-

times.” The vodka-lemonade was fuzzing up her thoughts.

“He’s been through
a lot
, Tessa. I sometimes worry that I’ll never understand everything he’s been through. Like, he

lived in all these different places, and he had lots of different foster parents . . . and some of them were bad.”

“But, Wren. Living with your own parents hasn’t been

a piece of cake.”

“Compared to what he’s gone through, it has

been,” Wren said.

“Really? Are you sure you’re not doing that good-girl

thing you do, where you say everything’s fine because you

don’t want to cause any trouble?”

Wren was startled. Even though she knew she had a

tendency to do that, it threw her off balance to hear Tessa

point it out.

“Whatever,” she said. “But even so, he came out of all

that as the sweetest, kindest, most loyal guy ever. He’s,

like, a miracle. I mean it, that’s how I think of him.”

“Huh,” Tessa said.

Wren felt slightly foolish. “I mean, he’s not perfect. I’m

not saying he’s
perfect
.”

“P.G. certainly isn’t,” Tessa said, and the way she said it

made both girls laugh.

Tessa leaned over the side of the hammock and fumbled

for the bottle, which still had a little special lemonade in

it. “But back to Charlie. What does Charlie do that isn’t

perfect?”

“He lets me down sometimes,” Wren said slowly.

“Except, ‘lets me down’ isn’t the right way to put it.”

“How?” Tessa said.

“Well . . . his family. He’s devoted to them. Especially

his little brother.”

“His foster brother,” Tessa clarified.

“His
brother
,” Wren said.

“Okay, his brother. And it’s bad that he’s devoted to him

because . . . ?”

“It’s not bad,” Wren said. “It’s great that he loves Dev so

much, and Chris and Pamela. He’s never had a real family

before, and now he does, and that’s
great
. And I tell him it’s great.”

“Oh,” Tessa said. “You’re jealous.”

“Am I? Ugh, I guess I am, but only when he picks them

over me. But that’s dumb. I know.”

“I didn’t say it was dumb,” Tessa said. “It’s what you feel,

and guess what? Feelings are like three-year-olds. They’re

not rational. They’re just there.”

“Yes, but I don’t want them to be there. That’s what

I’m saying.”

“And I’m saying, too bad.”

Wren changed the subject, saying, “Also, someone stuck

a note under the windshield wiper of my car. It said
Bitch
.”

“Wren. Shit.”

“It could just be random, but I think it was Starrla.”

“Starrla, Charlie’s ex-girlfriend?”

“It was just a note. It was dumb. Childish. And Charlie

says Starrla was never his girlfriend, that they just . . . they sort of . . .” She growled. “No, I didn’t tell Charlie. What

would be the point?”

“Wren. Come on. So he could tell her to back off.”

But what if he didn’t? Or, more likely, what if he
did
, but in his good and caring Charlie way, and it ended up

bringing Charlie and Starrla closer again? What if Starrla

still had some sort of hold on him?

“If Charlie told Starrla to back off, all that would do is

make her decide
not
to back off,” Wren said.

“You don’t know that,” Tessa said.

“Maybe. But, Tessa?”

“Huh?”

“When it comes to Charlie, those are the only nega-

tives. Well, and my parents. They’re a negative because

they could be way more supportive of the fact that I finally

found this boy I really, really like.” Whom you
love
, she admitted to herself. You love him, Wren, and you know it.

“Which do you think bugs your parents more, Guate-

mala or Charlie?”

Guatemala, Wren started to say. Last night she got onto

the family computer to see if any good movies were playing

that weekend, and she saw her father’s search history. She

knew it was his because he’d left his coffee mug behind, a

blue glazed mug with elephant ears and a handle that was

supposed to look like the elephant’s tail. It was a Father’s

Day gift from when Wren was five.

According to his history, he’d been reading an article

called “The Pros and Cons of Taking a Gap Year Before

College.” Before that, he’d read “Natural Consequences—

Why You Should Let Your Child Crash and Burn,” “How

Parents Can Help a Teen Get Back on Track,” and, worst,

“The Bad Parent (Proof That Certain People Just Shouldn’t Be Allowed to Procreate).”

Her dad was definitely more bothered by Guatemala.

But before Wren gave Tessa an answer, she thought of

her mom, who’d hovered outside Wren’s room last week-

end until Wren shot off a “gtg” text to Charlie and put

down her phone.

“Mom?” she said.

“Oh, hi,” her mom said. She hovered in Wren’s doorway.

“May I . . . ?”

“Mom, yes. Come in.”

She did. She sat next to Wren on Wren’s bed and said,

“So, things with Charlie are going well?”

“Uh-huh,” Wren said.

“He’s a nice boy. Ann Wilson, who knows him from that

cabinet shop he works at, says he got excellent grades. She

says he’s going far.”

“Um, that’s nice,” Wren said.

“Is he the one who talked you into postponing college