The Next Forever (5 page)

I guess I had been asking her permission. I’d been asking permission from someone I didn’t even know because once again I was too afraid to just do what I wanted to do.

Even if I wasn’t completely sure what that was.

The bathroom door opened for her turn.

“My Twitter handle is @RockinRed15,” she said. “DM me what happens.” She closed the door behind her.

I grabbed my phone from my pocket, logged in to Twitter, and followed her, because at least if things went to shit with Joe, I’d have someone to talk to about it.

Even though I knew I really needed to be talking to Joe.

Why did he have to ask me to move in with him?

…

Joe

Emily and I had compromised, and she was wearing my shirt. She still wouldn’t admit if she knew where hers was or not, so while she made it feel like a compromise, I’m not sure that’s really what it was. At least I didn’t have to keep trying not to stare at her breasts.

I crossed my arms over my chest. My name tag now covered one side of hers. I tried not to think that my chest was bare, tried not to think about the hickeys that Amy had left in a line down my stomach.

Her idea of a joke.

Which would have stayed as an inside one, if I wasn’t so fricking polite.

The shirt hit at the top of Emily’s thigh, but she pulled it lower—the navy blue giving her pale skin the pallor of skim milk—as if now that she was partly dressed, she was modest.

“So tell me about your girlfriend,” Emily said, putting the collar up on my shirt, so it covered her cheeks, her face an
O
inside a deep
V
.

“That came out of nowhere,” I said, though I couldn’t deny that of course I’d been thinking about Amy. Maybe Emily could feel it. Or more likely she couldn’t help but notice the treasure map of hickeys that led into my pants.

“You made me put on your shirt,” she cooed. “You obviously either love her or are afraid of her.”

“You’re crazy.” I laughed.

“So both,” Emily said, in that way girls say things that lets you know they are smarter in ways you will never understand. In ways you didn’t want to understand.

“I had you put my shirt on for
you
,” I said. “In case you forgot, you were practically naked in a room full of frat boys.” I thought about it. I wasn’t afraid of Amy. I was afraid for her. She was vulnerable when she made the wrong decisions. That was why I had to make sure she made the right ones.

Of course it had been my decision that brought me here and now
here
had turned into being a half-naked girl’s babysitter.

“Whatever. Make excuses,” Emily said, still pulling on the bottom of my shirt.

“Weren’t you cold?” I asked, rubbing at my arms, trying anything to bring them to life, even if it meant taking my hands from my pockets. It was cold down there, the feeling of being in the earth that only a basement can bring.

“I guess I would be if I wasn’t totally wasted,” she said, smiling what I now noticed was definitely a crooked, drunk smile.

Why hadn’t I noticed it before?

Was it because I was trying so hard not to notice her? Was it because I only looked for things like that in Amy now?

The flushed cheeks, the high pitch of her voice, the way Amy’s eyes darted like gray hockey pucks in her head. I didn’t care if she drank as long as she was drinking with me. Not because I didn’t trust her, but because I needed to make sure she was okay. It took so little for her to go from okay to
not okay
.

I knew because I’d seen it, because I couldn’t be there to help her the last time.

“I guess that makes sense,” I said, watching Steve and Deanna doing funnels. Steve was pouring the beer down the funnel and Deanna was holding it to her mouth like it was a snorkel. She gagged and pushed it away, unable to finish it all. It went down the chest of her already wet shirt and dripped from her nipples like the rock wall of a cavern.

“Party foul!” Emily yelled, cupping her hands around her mouth like a megaphone.

Deanna laughed as Steve sucked the beer away from her chest, bending down to go from her navel to her breastbone.

I crossed my arms over my stomach, knowing what Steve was feeling. Knowing he was trying so hard to taste the person below the skin, or, I thought as I watched Steve stumble over, maybe that was just me.

Amy couldn’t hide things from me. I knew her too well for that, but when we were together, in bed, it was like even the little part of her she tried to hide was exposed, open, mine.

“He can clean me up anytime,” Emily said, licking her lips.

“You want a guy like that?” I asked, glad to be able to talk about someone besides Amy and myself.

“You want to be in this frat because of guys like that.” She responded in a way that let me know she wasn’t used to explaining things she’d said. That she was the kind of girl who didn’t have to. “I mean, he’s confident. He knows what he wants,” she rattled on. “Who doesn’t want a guy like that?”

Steve reminded me of some of the guys on the football team in high school. They thought they were cooler than we were because we played volleyball, but I knew if a football player and I were in a room together with a ball, only one of us would come out with a bloody nose and it wouldn’t be me.

“Maybe some girls,” I said.

“Oh, not your girlfriend?” Emily mocked, cuddling into my shirt.

“Why do you keep bringing her up?” I asked. It was getting annoying, like when someone kept reminding you that you had a test the next day when all you wanted to do was watch a football game with your friends. I mean, I could think about Amy all night and talk about her with people who really knew her, but Emily didn’t.

“Well, we can’t do anything fun because of her. So I figure we might as well talk about her. It’s not like I need to pretend I care about what you’re talking about, since we both know this isn’t going anywhere.”

“Nice,” I said.

“What? I’m honest.”

“You’re mean.”

“And you’re too nice.”

“What the hell is too nice?” I asked. Steve and Deanna had moved to a ratty couch and were making out some more. Emily and I were still talking. Even if I was talking to
her
, at least we were only talking.

“You have this air around you like you’re afraid you’re going to break me,” Emily said, putting her face in front of mine so she was sure I was listening. “
That’s
too nice.”

I felt her saying that right in my chest, right where the remnants of Amy’s kisses sat, mostly because it made me wonder if Amy thought the same thing. I knew that before me Amy had done her best to stay away from nice.

“Well, you’re kind of a bitch,” I replied.

“Kind of?” she asked playfully. “See? Too nice.”

“My girlfriend is different,” I said.

“Right. She hates frat parties.” Emily laughed.

“Do you want to talk about her or not?” I asked.

“Do
you
?” she asked. “If so, tell me something real.”

The music was loud down there, loud enough that the two of us could have gotten away with not talking at all, but we were way past that.

“I’m afraid she doesn’t want to be with me anymore,” I said, amazed that I had. It was something I had been thinking for weeks, but couldn’t, didn’t want to put to words until a half-naked girl I barely knew had asked me. “I’m afraid I’m not ready to be with her.”

“I think we need a drink,” Emily said, getting up and padding on bare feet across the basement to the bar.

It was the first time I’d been able to tell someone about what I felt like was happening between Amy and me. The problem was that I hadn’t told her.

Chapter Five

Amy

I finally ducked into the bathroom, put the seat down, sat, and called Joe. He probably wouldn’t answer. You weren’t allowed to have your ringer on in the library and when Joe was doing work, he got lost in it. I’d seen it. His eyes practically sparkling as he turned the pages in the dusty, old leather-bound law books. It was almost like he was inhaling knowledge. I always admired him for being lucky enough to find something that he’d really cared about.

I pictured his phone shaking in his backpack as mine rang in my ear, a vibration like someone trying to wake another person from slumber—from a bad dream. Except it wasn’t him who had to wake up from the nightmare, it was me.

I probably didn’t have any right to really call it a nightmare if it was self-induced.

It went to voice mail and I heard his message:
This is Joe’s phone. He’s not answering, but you can talk after the beep. If he’s not ignoring your call, he’ll call you back.

It was Joe in recorded form—smart, funny, confident Joe.

I didn’t leave a message myself, though. It was strange considering that was how we had gotten together. How after my arrest, he had tried to connect to me via my parentally forbidden phone during the time we were across the street from each other but I had still assumed worlds apart.

Back then, we weren’t even friends anymore. Not like we had been before sophomore year when everything changed. I thought he was mad at me. He thought I was done with him. We talked, but only because we lived across the street from each other.

But he had been calling me, checking on me, wanting me to know he hoped I was okay. It was all archived on my phone. When I was finally allowed to have it back, Joe’s messages were waiting.

Each recorded time he reached out, when I didn’t even know he was there. When in real life he and I were too afraid to
really
talk to each other.

That was what I needed to be thinking about. Not why I was here with Trevor and was such a shitty girlfriend.

Maybe not remembering
that
when he asked me to move in with him was what made me so shitty.

Not being able to fly across the dining hall table and kiss his lips off was what made me so shitty.

Hanging up without leaving a message was also what made me so shitty.

I called back and said quickly, “Thinking about you,” before hitting end.

In the months before Joe and I arrived here, we were in the perfect bubble between my arrest and now. Our lives back then were only waking up each day and being with each other. It was beautiful.

And most importantly, simple.

I remember the two of us in my backyard on my old, rusty swing set. Joe and I would spend hours on those swings not even swinging, but being held up off the ground. The feeling bringing me back to the day we first kissed and kissed again—that weightless, flittering sensation that being on a swing can give.

Even though the arrest was behind me, we hung out in my backyard because my parents still liked having me near enough to know I wasn’t fucking shit up.

Shit being my life.

With Joe in the picture I finally didn’t feel like I was. I actually thought things were starting to make sense, were starting to fit. I probably should have known that continuing to count on someone else to validate my happiness would backfire on me. But at the time, I was too blissed out to care.

At least until we’d talked about coming here.

“I wish we could stay like this forever,” I’d said, because I knew that being outside this perfect bubble would change things. I had reasons for my suspicions. The world had pushed us apart for years when I was too bad-girl for him and he was too all-American-boy for me. When we let the choices we made and the people around us dictate how we felt about each other.

With no one around, with just the two of us, we only had to worry about pleasing one person. Lucky for me, Joe was easy to please, and when it came to him, I was, too.

“In your parents’ backyard?” Joe had asked, laughing his laugh that had the power to make my stomach float like it did on the swing.

Being on the swing, I felt it double.

“Life goes on, Amy,” he’d said.

I looked at him, his profile turned pink in the sunset. “That’s what I’m worried about,” I’d mumbled.

“It doesn’t matter where we are. I’ll be there,” Joe had said, taking my hand.

“What is this, a love song?” I’d asked, even though I held his hand tightly.

“I don’t think you want me to sing,” he’d said. “But I can,” he added, leaning into my ear and humming, his breath on my neck, making me shiver.

I’d wanted to believe him. That no matter where we were, this, us, wouldn’t change. With the two of us connected as the swings below us wobbled, I tried to believe him. Unfortunately, I also knew I’d been wrong about a lot of things; the highest on the list resulted in me being arrested.

He kissed my neck.

“But we both know what noise can do,” I’d said.

We did.

I did.

The years he avoided me and I avoided him. The years we wasted that we could have spent like we were now. The years that may have led me to an actual prom night I could have celebrated with him, instead of celebrated in a jail cell.

“I think we’re beyond that,” he’d said, getting up and pulling me out of my swing. He touched my face, his hand still. Somehow when he was with me, close to me, he could get the shaking in his hands to stop. The shaking that started the day his father left, that he hid any way he could.

He moved his hand over my cheek like water to my thirst, a blanket to my cold. Before I even knew I was thirsty or cold. He kissed me. His kiss that made me want so much I bit his lip. That could only be a kiss because my parents were a kitchen window away. That could and would turn into more later when he snuck into my room that night.

The other place we could be where we could forget about the rest of the world.

“I’m scared,” I’d said into his lips. I didn’t say anything else, knowing I didn’t have to explain it to him. That he would know what I meant.

That maybe he knew what I meant because he was scared, too.

“We’ll be together,” he’d said, kissing me again, launching me like the swing, up, up, up. Each kiss pushing me higher and higher.

And we had been, until I was alone in the bathroom at a party having to make myself bother to leave him a message.

Having to make myself remember why I’d agreed to come here with him in the first place.

…

Joe

I took out my phone: two missed calls from Amy and a message. I would call her back, but not here. This sounded less like a library than a bowling alley did.

It was odd that she’d called twice, but I also knew she second-guessed herself a lot. To be honest, it was one of the things I loved about her. If she felt like something wasn’t right, she went back and kept trying until it was. I knew she’d called again just to leave the message, and I also knew it would probably say,
Sorry I hung up before
.

I watched Emily at the fridge across the room. I didn’t really like talking to Emily about Amy. Amy was mine.

Finally, mine.

Or at least she had been.

Not in a weird, possessive way, but in a
how could I not have known that this was what I always needed
way. I didn’t want to share her and because of the arrest I hadn’t had to. She didn’t want to be friends with the girls she used to be friends with anymore. She was afraid of other guys because of the ones from her past who only wanted to use her, so she chose me.

She chose me.

I hoped Emily, regardless of how semi-naked she was, wouldn’t change that.

Living across the street from Amy meant that after we got together I could sneak in to her bedroom whenever I wanted, and I did
want
.

I would carry a ladder from my garage to her open and waiting-for-me window. The heavy, metal, clunking one my mother never used but made me hoist up every fall to do the gutters. I would lay it against Amy’s house so lightly, so quietly, hoping not to wake her parents, the rest of the neighborhood, but most importantly her.

I would climb up to her window and push the screen out to be in her room—right across the street from my room. Once inside, I would sit on her bed and touch her face, waiting for her to wake up. Loving the way her lips pouted like she was angry. The way her chest moved up and down, up and down so gently, her hair growing over her pillow like dark ivy.

She was Amy.

The one I’d known since she was six. The one I’d loved since she was ten. The one I hoped I would love until she was one hundred and ten.

That is, once we both got through the confusion that the freedom and choices of college seemed to be causing for both of us.

Sleeping in her bed, she was my Amy without the voices in her head that plagued her and made her think she was anything less than the amazingness she was—funny, smart, and so caring.

When she would finally wake up, the look of fear I saw at first was quickly transformed to recognition and then to love.

Then to a kiss.

“Joe,” she would say, her breath minty with toothpaste.

“It’s me,” I would say. The bed would always squeak while I tried to get comfortable.

She would say, “Shhh my mom has ears like a Doberman in heat.”

I would say, “I think your dad sees my ladder every morning.”

She would laugh and kiss me again.

AJ, her parrot, brought in from his aviary for the night, would twitter in his cage. And repeat,
Joe, Joe, Joe
and make kissing noises.

We would laugh.

Amy would say, “Don’t you ever sleep?”

I would say, “How can I with you across the street?” and growl into her neck.

She would laugh harder. The kind of laugh that made her body fold in on itself as she said, “You’re crazy.”

I would say, “For you.”

She would say, “No, just crazy.”

AJ would repeat
crazy, crazy, crazy
and fly around his cage.

In those moments I would know what Amy meant when she said she wished we could stay here forever.

Except my forever was under her blankets, body to body, breathing like one, sweating and kissing and reaching for each other in the night, kissing her shoulder and her kissing mine.

And after, her head on my chest, perfectly fit in the crook of my neck, my arms around her in a tight, constant orbit.

When did that become not enough anymore for either of us?