I'll Be Here Read online

So he and Brooke do talk about me…

  I shrug. “I’m just playing around today. I’m honestly a little rusty. When I saw you over there,” I gesture to where he’d been standing earlier, “I was experimenting with light and dark.”

  “Can I see?”

  Can he see? My sketchbook?

  Ummm… No.

  Does that sound bitchy?

  I sort of laugh but it’s not really a laugh. “I don’t think I’m ready for that.” I am shaking my head. “But, I will let you pose for me.”

  Did I just ask Alex if I could draw him?

  What the hell is wrong with me?

  He thinks about this briefly and with a wicked smile he turns his head to the side and strikes a ridiculous pose. “Shirt on or off?”

  Jesus. I think a shirtless Alex Faber may actually cause me to go into cardiac arrest. “Uhhh…”

  “I was just kidding Willow.” He laughs.

  I take a seat at the bench and proceed to draw Alex Faber. It’s a quick sketch—full of brief lines and dark smudges—just to make up the edges of him.

  “Done?”

  “Just about.”

  A minute later Alex turns to face me head-on. I am still looking and I catch my breath. I start a second drawing on a new sheet of paper. With a new purpose, I can study his eyes without feeling like a total creeper. In the sun they are almost clear—like an aquamarine stone that you hold against the light.

  He tilts his head and the corners of his mouth lift. He opens his mouth to say something but then it snaps shut. His eyes, focused on something behind me, narrow and I start to turn around to see what’s captured his attention. “Wh—?”

  A large, muscled arm snakes around my middle and I jump about a foot in the air nearly toppling off the bench. Then I see that it’s just Lance and the shriek on the tip of my tongue morphs into a laugh.

  “Jesus. You scared the crap out of me Lance! You’re lucky that I didn’t hurt myself or your ass would have been grass!” I nudge him with my arm and take the crumpled brown paper bag that he’s offering me. It smells heavenly. I put my sketchbook down so that I won’t get grease on the pages.

  “Is that so?” Lance takes a massive bite of his gyro to show to me just how little I scare him. Lamb juice dribbles down his chin. Gross.

  I turn back to Alex and he’s looking between me and Lance like he’s working out what’s going on. “Alex, this is Lance. Lance—Alex.”

  Lance turns his head to me with one eyebrow cocked up. The look clearly says, so this is the guy.

  Awwk-waard.

  Peeling back the waxy paper, I take a bite of the vegetarian wrap that Lance brought to avoid having to referee this exchange. It’s delicious.

  Alex raises his hand and I note that his shoulders are weirdly stiff. “Hi.”

  “Nice to meet you man.” Lance nods his head because his hands are occupied with the gyro. “You’re at State, right?”

  The question throws Alex but only for a second. He nods and Lance starts asking questions about college life. Alex responds but his mind is somewhere else. I can tell that he’s thinking hard and if I had to make an informed guess, I would say that he’s wondering how Lance knows who he is and whether us being here together means anything.

  Or maybe he thinks that Lance is actually more than just a friend. Lance is seriously hot and for a second it’s enticing to go along with the charade, but the truth is that I don’t want Alex to think of me that way.

  Alex’s gaze is direct and I force an uncomfortable smile. He doesn’t smile back.

  Oh Lawwdy.

  Lance swallows and shoves the last of his gyro into his mouth with two fingers. He touches the inside of my wrist. “Willow, we should go find Laney and Colleen and everyone before they get sucked into a swirling vortex of groupies and we never see them again.”

  “Sure.” I want to say something more to Alex. He’s standing there with his hands in his pockets looking unsettled and I’m not sure what to do about it. His furrowed brow is only accentuated by the silver eyebrow ring reflecting the bright sunlight.

  Lance notices Alex’s demeanor too.

  “I’m gay.” He blurts out in this oh-I’m-going-to-wash-my-hair tone. Alex’s eyes pop wide.

  I let out a strangled choking noise and Lance automatically hits me on the back thinking that I’ve got a piece of the veggie wrap lodged in my throat.

  I sputter and cough.

  They’re both asking me if I’m okay and I lift my hand between coughs to show that I am not choking though I may still be in danger of death by mortification. My eyes are watery and my face feels like it’s on fire.

  I cannot believe Lance. When we get out of sight I am going to strangle his tree trunk neck with my bare hands. He wisely senses this and scrunches up his face.

  “Okay then…” He says and slinks away into the crowd before I fully catch my breath. The last thing he does is call out to me over his broad shoulder. “Stage four!”

  Alex is bent down over me and he puts his palm on my back. I take a deep breath.

  “You sure you’re all right?” He looks genuinely concerned.

  I nod and swallow again. “Sorry. I think I momentarily forgot how to chew.”

  The place where his hand is resting on my back burns even through the fabric of my shirt and I have to focus so that my heavy breathing doesn’t give too much away. Hopefully he thinks that the flush on my face and my racing pulse has more to do with the fact that I’ve just been choking and absolutely nothing to do with his close proximity.

  I straighten and turn. We’re so close that I can see the way his nostrils shrink and stretch when he breathes in and out. His chin has that dark stubble like he hasn’t shaved in a few days and I think about what it would feel like against my hand—like sandpaper or would it be softer?

  My lips part and I wonder if we’re sharing the same air. Then I worry about how awful my breath must be after eating that wrap. There was definitely garlic in it.

  I don’t worry long because Alex remembers himself and steps away. I feel the absence of his touch throughout my whole body. I watch him and he watches me.

  This whole situation screams of crazy. Alex Faber is someone that I used to crush on but lost the right to think about a long time ago.

  I should just turn away and go find my friends. Alex will go back to college and I’ll never see him again. Right?

  I should say goodbye and have that be the end of it.

  I should remember how depressed I am about my boyfriend of two years breaking up with me last week.

  I should be thinking of ways to get him back.

  I should do a lot of things.

  What I do is this: I take a step towards Alex and pluck a stray eyelash off his cheek. His head jerks back as I reach up, but when he sees what I’m doing he relaxes and smiles. The skin of his face is warm—so warm. My finger lingers on the spot and I imagine the blood moving beneath the surface. Alex sucks in his breath.

  The eyelash evades me and I have to attempt to remove it twice before I am successful.

  “Make a wish,” I say and he blinks at the dark eyelash balancing delicately on the tip of my index finger.

  His fingers wraps around my wrist to steady it as he blows. He closes his eyes and opens them. I am so close that I can see the dark pupils expand and contract in the sunlight. I can feel the warmth of his breath in my hair. It is a combination of pepper and honey.

  “I’ll be home again next weekend.” The watery words pour from his mouth and wash over me.

  I fall into eyes, blue and endless. “I’ll be here,” I say, coming up for air.

  We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

  ~Ray Bradbury

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “So will you?”

  “Hmmm?” I’m so deep in thought that I don’t realize that someone has been talking to me.

  I look up and the shadow
in front of me solidifies into the shape of a boy. It’s Wes Hardin. He’s got this funny look on his face and he pulls on his earlobe like maybe he’s uncomfortable. Puffy white clouds pass lazily in the blue sky that frames the space beyond his head. “I’m sorry, Wes. Did you need something?”

  “Ummm. I asked you to go to prom with me.” He screws up his nose.

  “And I know that you and Dustin just broke up and that this is pretty fast, but I saw you sitting over here by yourself and I figured if I can’t ask you now then I might never do it.”

  “Oh.”

  Ohhhh.

  Crap.

  I’m stunned. I honestly wasn’t expecting anyone to ask me to prom. Not with the way that Taylor has been encouraging the entire school to treat me like I’ve contracted the plague.

  Wes is nice. Cute in a nerdy glasses-wearing, skinny-armed kind of way and we would probably have an okay time at prom, but I’m not sure I even want to go anymore. I’m definitely not ready to commit to a date.

  “Wes, that’s really nice of you to ask but I’m not really sure that this is a good idea. Would it be horrible for me to say no?”

  He lets go of a breath that he’s been holding and when he smiles tentatively it reaches his eyes. “No, it wouldn’t. But it would be less horrible if you say that you’ll think about it.”

  I bite my bottom lip. “Okay then… Can I think about it?”

  Wes smiles adorably. “Thanks Willow. You’re just... You’re so awesome and I—” He’s blushing and it’s making me blush right back at him. “W-will you just, you know, let me know? Or whatever.”

  He leans forward awkwardly and grabs my wrist almost like he’s shaking my hand. His skin is soft and slippery. The whole thing is so incredibly strange that I almost laugh. Wes looks back over his shoulder twice as he walks off towards the cafeteria.

  “Tell us everything right this minute,” a deep voice says from behind me.

  Laney and Lance plop down on either side of me. Lance drops his backpack in my lap and I let out an oath at the weight.

  “Wes Hardin just asked me to prom.”

  Laney is scribbling something on the inside flap of a folder. “And?”

  “And I told him that I would think about it. I think that I’ll send him an email letting him down easy.”

  “Wes was my chemistry lab partner sophomore year,” Lance offers. “Pretty cool dude. He did almost all of our assignments and I got an A in that class.”

  “Well, if I need someone to go over the periodic table with me, I’ll give him a call but I don’t think that I want to go to prom with him.”

  Laney shakes her head and gives me a direct look. “Of course not. You’re going with Alex.”

  I laugh. “Yeah right.”

  Lance stretches his arm across my shoulder. He pulls me toward his warm body. “Look babe. If you don’t ask Alex Faber to be your prom date then maybe I’ll take him.”

  I start to giggle but the look on Lance’s face is so serious that I swallow hard.

  ***

  Aside from staring at the back of his head in calculus, I have my first real encounter with Dustin on Tuesday morning, a week and a half after our break-up. Today, I’m late to school because I agreed to take our neighbor’s Australian Shepherd out three times a day for the next four days while they are out of town. This morning Aaron came with me, tripped over the leash and landed on his juicebox. This necessitated an outfit change for both of us.

  I’m running to my locker so that I can switch out my books and make it to American Lit before Mr. Greyson sends me to the office. Rounding the corner, I see Dustin slipping something through the locker vents. I slow up my pace thinking that I’ll be able to shirk bumping into him, but he looks up at the sound of my steps in the nearly empty hall. For a brief moment I wonder at the guilty look on his face and then I see where his hands are at.

  Wait. Is that my locker?

  With his head tilted slightly to the side so that his hair falls forward, Dustin flicks a wave to me. He shoves his hands in his front pockets and rocks back on his heels while he waits for me. I would swear that time slows to an exaggerated lop as I move toward him.

  “What are you doing?” I croak.

  The toe of Dustin’s two-tone top-siders bounce against the locker with a thud. He looks embarrassed. “Oh, sorry Willow. I was—uh—I wrote you a note.”

  All I can think is: oh.

  So that’s what I say.

  “Oh.”

  Very articulate, I know.

  At this point, I am really late for class so I sort of sidle past Dustin and spin my combination (which he knows) and switch out my books. The note is in my hand and I stuff it in between the pages of my Lit book.

  I am trying not to notice that he still wears the cologne I got him or the way his shirt sleeve brushes my arm. Dustin looks over his shoulder tensely and I briefly wonder if he’s looking for Taylor.

  He meets my eyes and says, “So read it, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  Then he just looks at me for awhile and I start to feel like there’s something wrong with my face. Maybe I have a booger dangling down from my nose. Or maybe a bit of strawberry cream cheese from my bagel this morning is clutching my cheek.

  “What?” I ask, defeated. Deflated.

  He says nothing. Just more of that quiet looking and weirdness.

  It’s like the rules are changed and we don’t know how to behave. I don’t even know what the rules are anymore and maybe Dustin doesn’t either. So I turn away because I’m not sure what else to do.

  In my head I say something about Taylor ruining everything and Dustin agrees with me.

  In my head we kiss and happily ever after sprawls out before us. Taylor disappears in a puff of evil green smoke and Dustin and I work everything out and it’s all perfect.

  Because Dustin and I had been a couple and Taylor had interfered with that. We had been happy. Right?

  I can feel Dustin’s eyes on the back of my neck the whole way down the hall. It takes everything I’ve got to not look back.

  A few heads turn my way as I enter the classroom, but I’m able to slip into my usual seat without Mr. Greyson making a big deal of my late entrance. He simply acknowledges me with a weary look over his glasses that says, thank you for gracing us with your presence Miss James. I smile innocently and flip my book open to the page number written on the board. Mr. Greyson is a hard-ass when it comes to essay questions and papers, but for most of the other stuff he’s a pretty tame teacher.

  My seat is just below an air conditioning duct and the edges of Dustin’s note flutter temptingly. I wait until Mr. Greyson is well into his lecture about Jonathan Swift before I risk it.

  Dustin’s penmanship is awful. It’s like trying to decipher the work of a dyslexic chimpanzee.

  Willow,

  Saturday afternoon I was downtown with my dad and I saw you walk out of the Quick Mart with a bag of jellybeans. I thought of the time that we picked out all the disgusting black jellybeans and dropped them on the beach and not even the seagulls would touch them. I almost called your name but then I thought that you might not talk to me because of how things stand. I want to apologize for what happened with Taylor. You were a good girlfriend and didn’t deserve that shit. I want us to be friends and I propose that we at least try it out. I’m having a party tomorrow night after the regional track meet. You should come.

  Dustin

  I read it twice, my eyes lingering on the words. The jellybeans had been a treat for Aaron who actually did eat the black ones because he’s strange like that.

  You were a good girlfriend.

  What the hell is he getting at?

  And the party?

  Yeah right.

  Because it would make a lot of sense for me to show up at my ex-boyfriend’s party and watch him make-out in a corner with my ex-friend while a bunch of people that don’t seem to like me very much stand around and talk about how awkward it is that I came to the p
arty in the first place.

  ***

  I lace my sneakers. Double-knots.

  This is the first time I’ve jogged since the breakup and my quads are tight and stiff. As part of my stretching routine I grab my ankle and pull it up behind me with my heel held against my butt. Today I repeat the stretch twice to make sure my muscles are loosened up.

  Jogging was really Dustin’s thing. I picked it up the first year that we were together since he was always training for the track team and I wanted to suck all of him in, like a breath of air that I’d gulp down before diving headfirst into the water. Dustin was thrilled that I wanted to run with him. Mom was pleased that I’d taken an interest in keeping my body healthy. In fact, it may be the only time that Dustin and my mother ever agreed on anything.

  With my earbuds snuggly in place and the beat of my favorite band filling me, I start out slowly. My feet are tentative against the pavement. My breathing is shallow. But when I round the corner where the narrow neighborhood roads meet and braid together to make one larger street, I let myself go.

  I run.

  I run like I’m screaming bloody murder. Legs throbbing like a tidal heartbeat, arms pumping like stumpy wings at my side. For one second, when the wind is whipping my sweat cold and the trees are green slurs blowing by, I think I might actually do it. I might take off.

  There’s a familiar deep blue Toyota parked in the driveway when I come back from my run. Sunlight flashes in the side mirror. My nervousness picks up as I walk up the driveway. Tugging gently, I pull my earbuds out and let them dangle over my right shoulder.

  Voices and laughter greet me at the door. Using my toes for leverage, I slide out of my running sneakers. Aaron is propped up on his elbows, his belly flat on the floor, coloring a rocket-shaped cutout.

  “Willow honey! Don’t you look amazing.”

  I grin. “Unfortunately I don’t smell amazing at the moment.”

  “Nonsense,” Brooke says pulling me into a quick hug. Her dark hair brushes my shoulder. She steps back to look at me, her hands still gripping my upper arms.

  I am hit full force by how alike she and Alex are, down to the clear faceted eyes and the curve of her cheekbones.