While You're Away (3 page)

Instead, I typed out my response as quickly as I could. I hit send, then put away my phone. It was out there in the ether, floating in the night.

It wasn’t just you.

I
texted my sister Ellie, and she saved me from the rest of the party. I couldn’t go back in there, not with those texts from Will taunting me. Not knowing that I’d walk in and see Tricia hostessing away, completely unaware she’d been betrayed. Especially not knowing that I’d have to face Dave, even if he was oblivious.

Sliding my guitar into the backseat, I tried to sound light when I climbed into the front. “Homeward, Jeeves.”

“It’s early,” Ellie pointed out, ignoring my put-on expression. “Bad gig?”

Really, I should have known she’d ask. She and I were both pathologically addicted to our arts. That’s probably why we didn’t fight like most sisters. Sure, there was the standard-issue stuff. Closet raiding, special cereal eating, little battles. But never any wars, because we connected on a completely different level.

We saved the hardcore rivalry for our older sister, Grace. She was off at Loyola. Acing her GREs, getting a degree in financial mathematics that would make her crazy rich. Grace liked to complain that she was the one who’d have to take care of Mom and Dad in their old age.

Obviously, dancer Ellie and musician Sarah wouldn’t be any help. Grace didn’t believe that success could exist if it wasn’t quantifiable by equations and tables and charts. She was the alien in the family. She just didn’t know it.

But because Ellie and I shared that wavelength, it also meant that Ellie was hyperaware when my artistic schedule changed. Much like I would be shocked if Ellie were home on a Saturday morning—prime matinee time—she knew that I shouldn’t be heading out this early. A gig usually meant that Dave drove me home, sometimes just before my midnight curfew. A round of homework, one last tour of e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter, and then bed—an early morning for me on the weekends was noon.

Clicking the seat belt into place, I shook my head. “It was good. Short, though, and really crowded.”

“Oh, good,” she said.

The other nice thing about Ellie was that she took me at my word. With surgical precision, Grace would dissect every single bit of that sentence to see if there was something more beneath it. Not Ellie. Whether she believed me or not, she didn’t push. She also didn’t pry, and I was glad.

I still didn’t understand what had happened with Will. Or more importantly, why it had happened. Was I only trying to get even with Dave? Was I just another one of Will’s endless conquests? Or was it possible that I hadn’t imagined anything, and Will and I shared some inexplicable pull? I felt split in pieces, and none of them matched. It turned out that it was possible to feel guilty and elated at the same time. To be ashamed and emboldened at once. Though it had been wrong to even try it, I wanted another taste of Will.

The quiet in the car gave me too much time to think. I wanted to get home, because there I could burrow in my own bed and welcome sleep. In the morning, things would be clearer. Emotion would give way to reason. That’s what I needed, a good night’s sleep. A return to normalcy.

Reaching over, I grabbed Ellie’s hand and squeezed it. “Thanks for picking me up.”

“Anytime,” she said and drove on home.

~

I was wrong. In the morning, everything felt more scattered than ever. I wasn’t ashamed to admit I couldn’t figure it out on my own. That’s why I grabbed my keys and headed straight for my best friend’s house.

“Morning, Westlake,” Jane said. “Somebody beat you with the hangover stick?”

With a groan, I replied, “You suck, I hate you.”

Because Jane was my best friend, I muscled past her and right inside. We had fridge privileges at each other’s houses, so I never felt bad about busting into Chez Dubinsky. But instead of taking my usual route to the kitchen, I headed to Jane’s bedroom and flopped facedown in her bed.

A moment later, Jane tossed a pillow onto my head. I heard her drop into her desk chair. It squeaked in F minor, and she refused to fix it. I felt her sling her feet on the edge of the bed. Every move she made added another squeak; it was maddening.

“Are you seriously hungover?” she asked.

“No. Not even. I had, like, half a beer last night.” Sighing, I rolled onto my back. My head felt stuffed full of cotton. My heart kept beating weird, random patterns. Was it possible to die of guilt? Maybe the deathblow would be unconfessed guilt. With that possibility in mind, I looked to Jane. “And maybe also a taste of Will Spencer.”

The chair squealed when Jane all but threw herself out of it. “What?!”

“Yeah . . . I know . . .” I moaned. The judgment was coming. I was waiting for it. Practically anticipating it.

Instead, Jane knocked me even more off-balance when she said, “Whoa. Okay, lay it on me. How was he, with one being
I’m permanently traumatized
and ten being
I think I saw the face of God?
”

Pushing up on my elbows, I stared at her. “Jane! I cheated on Dave!”

“Oh, I’ll get to that,” she assured me. “But, well? I’m intrigued! I want to know if the rumors are accurate. Or if they’re the most carefully orchestrated PR campaign since Gwyneth Paltrow morphed into macrobiotic Martha Stewart.”

I shrugged, unsure of where to start. “I don’t know.”

“Sarah!”

“Eight? Point five?”

Jane clapped her hands together, rubbing them like some cartoon villain. “So he’s not perfect! I knew it!”

“It probably would have been more like nine, nine and a half if we hadn’t been in a rowboat. And if we hadn’t been interrupted. And, you know, if I hadn’t been
cheating on my boyfriend with someone who has a girlfriend.
”

Bouncing from her chair, Jane sprung onto the bed. The headboard thumped the wall, but Jane didn’t care. Her house was chaotic on the best day. Her dad was a life coach, and her mom specialized in DIY carpentry.

If Jane didn’t have a cause to shout about, her dad had top-of-the-lungs advice or was yelling because her mom was ripping apart an armoire to distress it. Frankly, a little headboard thumping was the quietest it got around there.

Jane looked down at my face. She blotted out the entire ceiling; she was nothing but brown eyes and orange juice breath. “Explain yourself, Jezebel.”

With a roll of my eyes, I plastered my whole hand across her face. “I feel bad, okay?”

“I said explain, not defend.”

Ugh. I sat the rest of the way up, then slumped against Jane’s shoulder. She was going to give me a hard time because that was just her way. But I knew she had my back, no matter what. And the truth was, I didn’t know if I could explain. Not completely. Dave had flirted with the entire world for as long as I’d known him. Never before had I ever considered going behind his back. But Will had happened so naturally.

Flapping my hands uselessly, I finally dropped them in my lap. “I don’t know. Heatherly was all over Dave after the set we played . . .”

“Loved the T.I. cover, bee tee dubs,” Jane interrupted.

“Thanks, I arranged that,” I said and slipped right back to the topic. “But it was Heatherly, and then it was Olivia . . . and look, I know I’m not the main draw when it comes to Dasa, but come on. They both know Dave’s my boyfriend. Also? I was up there, too. He wasn’t harmonizing all by himself, you know?”

Sagely, Jane nodded. “Double jealousy whammy, okay. Now please explain. How does this end with you sampling Will Spencer’s unlucky charms?”

I played it back in my head. Was the talk about my costume relevant? Would anything in the boathouse have happened without it? I thought of him trailing his finger along my back. The way he looked at me and seemed to really see me. I didn’t know what to put in and what to leave out. It was easier to purge everything and let Jane sort it out.

Well, almost everything. The texts afterward, those I kept to myself. They were mine, and they were secret. I wasn’t ready to let them out of my grasp.

After I told Jane the almost-entire story, I sat back and watched her curiously. What would she say?

Jane seemed to struggle with her own reaction. Her face contorted, three different times. Like she started to say something, then changed her mind. Finally she landed somewhere between amused and concerned. “I mean, it’s not cool, right? You know that.”

“Oh yeah, trust me. I know.”

“And that magical connection was probably just party and hormones,” she continued.

I wasn’t ready to concede that. It had felt like more. It still felt like more, even the morning after. Even feeling as badly as I did for what I had done, I had this spark, the faintest glow deep inside that insisted there had been something more there. The secret texts, the ones I wasn’t ready to reveal—they proved that Will had felt it, too.

But Jane needed a narrative, so I nodded. “Okay.”

“So don’t do it again,” Jane said resolutely. “And don’t beat yourself up over it. Everybody makes mistakes. What’s important is how you recover from it.”

Eyeing her curiously, I wondered what she would have said if I hadn’t been her best friend. If I’d brought the situation to her as gossip about somebody else. Somehow, I had a feeling Jane would have been a lot less understanding. Was she secretly judging me? Nudging her, I said, “But I was so wrong. And Dave doesn’t deserve that.”

“Okay, look, I don’t want you to think I’m all down on Dave or anything—he’s fine. He’s a nice guy. But I’m not, and I never have been, a real big fan of the whole rock star thing he does after shows. I don’t care if it means anything, it makes you feel bad. And he knows it makes you feel bad . . .”

Suddenly defensive of Dave, I said, “I never told him to stop.”

Jane crystallized, hard and unyielding. “Yes, you have. And you know what? You shouldn’t have to tell your boyfriend to stop paying attention to everybody in the room but you. So yes, you did a bad, bad thing with a bad, bad boy. Bad Sarah. No gelato. But it’s not that easy. You would be absolutely furious if Dave did this to you. You’d never speak to him again. You’ve never thought about cheating on him before. Why last night? Why Will?”

If Dave had hopped off stage and danced with me, I never would have talked to Will in the first place. If he hadn’t been working the party without so much as a look toward me, I never would have gone to the boathouse. Or if I had, it would have been with him.

I had done a terrible thing, and I felt more confused than ever. Because while it was true I wouldn’t have ended up in that boat with Will if Dave had been at my side . . . I was secretly the smallest bit glad that he hadn’t been.

S
unday mornings in Dave’s garage studio were a tradition.

Or a long-standing date. Or a commitment. I don’t know; they were something permanent, anyway. Each time I looked at him, I shrank a little. Could he see it on me? Didn’t he realize what I had done?

Sinking into the threadbare plaid couch, I tried to keep my guitar level in my lap. Fingers trailing the fret board, I mapped out a C7 chord, then played it. A faint, flat buzz emanated from the strings.

“Is that off?” I asked Dave.

“No, it’s fine.” Distracted, he turned around twice, then picked up a bag of brushed chrome bushings. “Traded Nicky for these. Did I tell you he’s putting green tuning heads on that Rogue of his?”

Shaking my head, I played the C7 again. It sounded sweeter this time. Like music instead of practice, and that was the goal. “He’d be better off buying a new guitar.”

“Exactly what I said.”

Dave didn’t look up from his workbench. Instead of taking cars apart, Dave restored old guitars. Sometimes, we spent whole afternoons scouring thrift shops and flea markets for them.

A guitar with possibilities put a light in his eyes. Always so tender, his hands would skim the body, studying the instrument’s curves. In the end, he always said, “I guess I have to take her home.” Then he did, over and over.

Each time, he swore he’d refurbish the guitar and sell it—his contribution toward the recording studio time we needed to cut our demo. But Dave’s collection of guitars never shrank. It just kept growing.

Running scales, I watched Dave thoughtfully. He’d gotten his hair cut a little too short. It didn’t spike out, but it wasn’t as smooth as it usually was. Morning sunlight sparkled in the field of blond, making him look a little like a Japanese manga character. His red plaid shirt brought his color out—and made his mouth look like candy.

From my corner on the couch, I measured him with looks and memories. In the beginning, we were music, first and foremost. Even though that had turned into my hot hands under his white T-shirts, and his lips on mine, music was still our center.

Because we were good at lyrics but not titles, we called ourselves Dasa. Our first names, smashed together. His first, because Sada looked either depressing or cruel, depending on your frame of mind. Fortunately, Dasa looked good on a chalkboard marquee.

We hadn’t had any big professional gigs yet, but we played a lot of local shows and coffee shops. Parties like Tricia’s and a couple bat and bar mitzvahs. The community college radio station loved us. We made decent money selling our mini-CDs online. And none of it would have happened if it weren’t for coincidence.

We met freshman year, two gangly, goofy dorks who both brought guitars to school on the first day. For me, it was a security blanket. Carrying a guitar always gave me something to talk about with strangers. Pulling it out and playing whatever was popular was a good way to start making friends.

I sat on the top step of the atrium, where all the underclassmen congregated. I wore brand-new shoes and even newer jeans—and back then, really unfortunate braces.

Thirty minutes before first bell, I’d already played through most of the Billboard Top 40. I’d met three girls who would share classes with me, a couple of guys who wanted to ask questions about the guitar, and then there was Dave. Just as I finished off some Taylor Swift by request, a voice behind me asked, “Know any Iron and Wine?”

Tipping my head back, I smiled. My whole heart jumped up, because there was this guy, a really rather cute guy, hefting his guitar case up for me to see. He stood there, waiting for an invitation, so I slid over a little. Shaking my fingers out, I slid into the first chords of “Flightless Bird, American Mouth” and waited for him to join in.

And he did, singing along in a sweet tenor. Everyone near us stopped, turning to listen. It was a delicate song, with notes that drifted into the air like dandelion silk. Harmonizing with him, I sang along when we hit the second chorus.

Eyes meeting, we didn’t shy away. It was like we’d been singing together forever, not for a few minutes. There was a special current there, something instinctive. Our voices darted and tumbled, swirling together effortlessly.

Parts of that morning were preserved in my memory, kept pristine no matter how much time passed. I remember that the sky was unmarked blue, but it smelled like rain coming. That the stone steps in the atrium were rough and cold and never warmed up. And that when we finally stopped playing there was applause, but I didn’t really hear it.

“Do you write?” Dave asked. He curled his arms around his guitar. A silver ring on his thumb hummed against the strings. It was a low, whispering sound that I felt on my skin.

I answered with a lazy chord and a nod. “A little. Do you?”

“Yeah.”

For a moment, we ran out of words. The music was so good, so easy. Talking wasn’t like that. We were just a couple of fourteen-year-olds on the first day of school. Strangers, and potential losers, suddenly weirdly aware of each other.

To patch up the gap, I checked my position and picked out a few notes that I hoped he recognized. “Creep,” by Radiohead. It was ancient, but it was the ultimate
I feel awkward
anthem.

His expression transformed with a smile. All at once, his too-soft face resolved into richer angles. High cheekbones and blue-gray eyes that crinkled when he smiled. His bangs fell casually across his brow, and he smiled the smile of somebody who’d already gotten his braces off. I barely had time to wonder what it would be like to feel his lips on mine when he leaned over and graced me with one perfect kiss.

When he pulled back, he looked dazed. I felt it. With shaking hands, I found my chord and looked to him shyly. Falling into the music with me, Dave extended the opening long enough to say, “I have a studio in my garage, sort of. If you ever want to come play.”

Later, he told me he’d never carried a guitar with him. He’d just woken up that day, the first day of high school, and decided he should. At the time, it felt like destiny. Then it felt like love, and it still did. Dave was spun sugar, the sweetest kiss—I loved the way he laughed in my ear and whispered my name.

With a brand-new kiss, Dave drew me back to the present. His breath was warm, lingering on my lips. When he drew back, there was a smile in his eyes. Leaning forward, he bumped my nose and said, “So . . . ?”

Usually that was a sign that it was time to put music aside for a while. Making out with Dave was fun, ice cream on a hot day.

The phantom of Will’s kiss stung my lips. It burned, a brand that sent heat through me. It rushed with each heartbeat, not sweet at all. I felt the shock all over again, the pull when he opened his eyes and looked in mine. Was it just lust? Was I just jealous of the attention Dave got—and gave?

There was only one way to find out.