The Truth About You & Me (15 page)

But … “That's a weird goodbye.”

“It meant more than just canceling a plan. It was her way of saying that I'd no longer have a way to contact her. She didn't want me to.”

“That's cold.”

“Yeah. I thought we'd be something forever. Took me a while to feel whole again.”

I nodded, listening to the underlying tones in your voice, listening to the rumble of your chest as you spoke and breathed and lived, wondering how a girl could possibly walk away from a guy like you.

“So, that's my deal. I can be a little gun-shy at times. Sometimes it feels like I'm waiting for the rug to get yanked out from under me.” You pursed your lips and stared upward, and as the silence lingered, guilt overwhelmed me. You'd been hurt and there I was, right next to you, my big secret wedged in between us. “So, what about you? Have you ever been in love?” you asked, and in the darkness you found my hand, squeezed it.

I forced away thoughts of the ways that I betrayed you every day, forced myself to believe in our love, in your ability to forgive me and choose me even after you found out how old I really was. The dark of the night and the blanket surrounded us, my hair splayed out on the pillow we shared, our heads tilted toward each other.

So often, Bennett, you kept me at a literal arm's length, careful not to touch me, to get too close. You were restrained. But that night, as you thought of old love, as we looked up at the blanket of stars, you let us lie so close, our palms touching.

And all it did was make me want more, made me shove that secret deeper than ever.

More, More, More.
You made me hungry for you with each word, each touch.

“No,” I said simply, even though I wanted to lie. Even though I wanted to say I'd had a thousand relationships, prove to you I was old enough, mature enough.

But I didn't think I could fake the details of love, build the kind of story you did, make you believe that there'd really been another guy, a perfect, beautiful guy who was too broken to stay with, who didn't deserve me.

“Yeah, kinda tough when you live at home,” you said.

“It won't be that much longer,” I said.
Just two more years or so.

“Nah, don't feel like you need to make an excuse. College is expensive. I mean, I went away to a four-year school, so I lived in dorms until my senior year, but I still stayed with my parents every summer until I graduated.”

Yeah, it's expensive. Especially when EHS pays for everything.

“And the first year after I moved out, I'm pretty sure I lived on ramen noodles, and I had three roommates,” you said, laughing. I remembered a photo of you at a bar and I pictured that life, you living with roommates and making your own way. “This place isn't much, but it's a huge upgrade. I'm hoping I can buy it someday. I like the setting. I could always add on to the house.”

“It is a nice place,” I say. “And everyone has roommates at some point.”

“Yeah, but it was three of us … in a two-bedroom apartment.”

“Oh,” I said, laughing, my breath coming out in puffs of white.

“I mean, we had big bedrooms, but sharing a room when you're that age?”

“Sucks,” I said.

“Yeah. Basically sums it up. Life goes on, though, you know? It has a way of getting better with age.”

I grinned into the darkness. It was funny how fast the time slipped by when I was with you, hidden under the stars, in a valley where the river wound around and around, where farms dotted the landscape, the monotony broken only by enormous mansions and the occasional, cozy little house. I could build an entire life for myself in that valley.

“Did you always want to be a teacher?” I asked.

Silence ensued, and I wondered if I'd encroached, gone somewhere I shouldn't have.

“Yes,” you finally said. “My dad … he's a brilliant welder, but his brain works like my mom's, kind of off the wall, scattered. I'd ask him for help with my homework, and even though he could build these huge custom gates for million-dollar homes, he couldn't conjugate a verb or isolate x in a math equation. And every time I asked, I saw that it drove him crazy. He
wanted
to know those things, but he didn't. And my mom … she's just as talented, but … ”

“But neither of them are the book sort of smart,” I finished.

“Yeah. Drove me crazy. They're like the Einstein sort of smart. Incredibly intelligent but barely functional. I mean, they'd have money in their bank account and bills smashed into the to-be-paid bin. I always craved more order, structure.”

I laughed a little under my breath.

“What?”

“I think my parents are as much the opposite of that as it's possible to be. Meticulous.”

“Sounds amazing,” you said.

“It's … ” I searched for the word, when there were so many options. “A challenge,” I finally said.

You squeezed my hand, turning toward me, and when I did the same, our faces were so close our noses were just a breath apart, and when our breaths came out in white misty clouds, it was like they washed over us. Even after everything that has happened with us, sometimes I still think that this moment on your lawn, in the chill autumn night, was our most intimate moment. The moment we saw each other. Not in a physical way, but in a soul-baring, emotional, bonding kind of way, a way that can never really be undone by other relationships, by time or distance. It was the kind of everlasting intimacy that I didn't ever want to experience with someone else.

“You're not like them, are you?” you finally said, your eyes boring into mine, knowing it was a statement not a question.

Moments passed, moments where your words echoed in my ears.

I'd never told a soul that I didn't really want to be like my mom and dad. So many people would pat me on the head and call me a “mini-me” of whatever parent was present. So many teachers compared me to my brother, who they'd had in class just a few years prior.

To them I was a Hawkins. I would be the person they expected me to be, nothing more, nothing less. I would ace the tests, slam-dunk the finals, complete every piece of homework.

And you lay there, and you saw me as someone else.

“No. I don't know what the hell I want,” I admitted, my heart lifting from the release of my confession.

“You're not supposed to.”

“In my house, it never occurs to anyone that I'd even want to be anything else. It's math or medicine. MIT or Harvard. It's success … or you're not a Hawkins.”

“Hard to imagine.”

“My dad lives every day thinking he's a failure, and he's made it his mission to ensure that I succeed. And then, on the opposite end, my mom's so damn proud of how she worked her way up in the world—she grew up pretty poor—that now that I've been given all this opportunity, she just assumes I'll seize it like my brother did. They always just assume … ”

“Sometimes not being seen at all is worse,” you said.

I blinked, just as you did, and I swear our lashes nearly touched. “Yeah. That's how I feel. Like they all know I'm there, but I'm supposed to be this robot, following a course they mapped out a long time ago. Except they haven't even thought to actually ask me how I feel, make sure … ”

I trail off. Make sure what? What do I want?

“That you want it? That you haven't changed your mind in the last few years?”

“Yeah, basically. Like they are all so focused on these stupid …
routines.
What if I don't want a freakin' routine? What if I want to live it one day at a time?”

“They wouldn't understand,” you said.

A strange warmth tingled through me.

You got it. You totally got it.

“Yeah. They'd freak out and think something was wrong. They'd ask a thousand questions. They'd tell me it was a phase I'd grow out of. Every time I even
think
of saying something, I realize it's fruitless, so I just stand around mute all the time, watching time pass and nothing changing.”

“It's no different from me thinking so methodically when my parents are anything but,” you said. “When someone thinks differently … they just … do. No way to change it.”

“It's maddening,” I said, the despair creeping in. “Sometimes I have these weird dreams.”

You pulled me against you then, so that we weren't staring into one another's eyes anymore. Instead, you somehow tucked the blanket more closely around us and I was cradled against your body, my lips, my nose, tucked into the curve of your neck, one leg tangled up in yours, my body heat mingling with yours.

Someone could have happened upon us a thousand years later and I would have been happy to be in the same spot.

“It's always the same,” I said, the dream creeping in again. “I'm standing at the front of a church.” I chewed on my bottom lip so hard it was uncomfortable and then forced myself to stop.

“And?” you prodded, when the silence had stretched out, my breath warm on your neck, my own nose suddenly growing cold from the frosty night.

“I'm standing there, in this horribly clichéd princess ball gown, all in white, and a veil is on top of my head.”

“And I'm standing across from you,” you said in a total deadpan.

Despite the intensity of the moment, I laughed, poking you. “No. There's nobody there at all. The officiant keeps droning on and on and on … exchanging vows and talking about love … and not
one
person in the pews notices that I'm the only one standing there, that the groom hasn't even shown up.”

You didn't respond, but your hand kept stroking the small of my back in an intimate way, a way that made me want to roll over, lie on top of you, straddle you. It took all I had in me not to do exactly that.

“In the middle of the dream, I always rip the veil off and start screaming, but everyone just keeps on with the ceremony, marrying me to this guy who isn't even there.”

“Classic dream,” you said, a long pause later.

“You think?”

“You want control but you don't think you have it.”

“Really?”

“You haven't even picked your groom in the dream. Everyone just expected you to show up in your white dress, and you did what they wanted.”

I raked in a deep breath. “That's so … obvious, though.” I said.

“Because it's the truth, right?”

“Or maybe it's about love or whatever. It's a wedding dream.”

“Who's in it?”

“Huh?”

“Do you know any of the people in the dream?”

My teeth slid together, clenching as I pictured it. “My dad. And my mom. And weirdly … my brother is the officiant.”

“Why would your brother be in it?”

“I don't know. He's always been good at one-upping me. I guess if it's my wedding, he'd want to be the one doing all the talking, somehow being in the limelight. Plus, I don't know. He's always so in control of everything.”

You chuckled then, and it was like everything I'd said was stupid, shortsighted. Yet you didn't make me feel dumb for everything I'd said.

“You know … ” You turned into me, like I'd done to you, so that your arms wrapped around me and we were fully entangled, our breaths entwined in clouds of frosty white. “There comes a time where you decide to be yourself.”

“Easy for you to say,” I mumbled into your skin.

“It's not. Easy, that is.” Your voice was soft and forgiving.

“Really?” I asked, surprised.

“It's not easy for anyone to break away from what they're used to,” you said. “But that's where you find yourself.”

“Spoken like a man who knows it all,” I said, partly to push the topic away from myself, and partly because I wanted so much to learn more about you.

“Oh God, I wouldn't say that.” You chuckled in a way that made your breath hot on my skin, such a stark contrast to the frosty night, the night that had grown so much darker while I'd been with you.

I should have left hours earlier. I should have been home right then, in my bed, or at the dinner table … or whatever was appropriate at that moment. I didn't even know what time it was, and I couldn't bring myself to ask you, to extract myself from your limbs, to walk across that yard and check my cell phone.

“You'll come around,” you finally said. “I wasn't totally sure what I wanted when I entered college either.”

But I knew you'd been eighteen, maybe nineteen then.

“It just takes some distance. Some perspective.”

“The ability to live outside of a ginormous shadow,” I said, but now I was murmuring, feeling sleepy as I spoke into your skin, nestling closer to you, feeling the soft, worn T-shirt, the all-too-rigid fabric of your jeans against my khakis.

“Exactly. It takes distance. No one works on a sculpture without stepping back and taking a look. Life is like that.”

“You're way too smart for me,” I said under my breath, my eyes closed, welcoming the heat of your skin and the way it somehow permeated me, found its way under my clothes and pulled me against you.

“We really should get inside before we freeze to death,” you said after a long beat of silence.

“Mhmmm,” I said. I knew we couldn't stay out there all night. We'd both be shaking within the hour, and there was no way in hell I could get away with just … disappearing for the night.

But when I was against you, my legs against yours, your arm around me, your hand sliding up and down the soft skin at the small of my back, your lips resting against the skin at the base of my neck—knowing, restraining from kissing me—oh God, it was impossible to think of December 13th, impossible to remember why we weren't making out, why I couldn't swing my weight over six inches, why I couldn't lie against you, why I couldn't part my lips and slip my head to the side to kiss you.