I'll Be Here Read online

  “God, Alex I am so, so sorry,” I tell him, my eyes brimming with tears and my head moving subtly back and forth. “What you saw with Dustin wasn’t what you think! He asked me to meet him and I should never have agreed to it, but I did and I’m sorry. But, everything with him is over. Completely. I only want you.”

  I’m talking so fast that all the air has whooshed out of my lungs. I’m practically shivering with nerves. Alex is still looking at me like he’s not sure what to do with me and I try not to fall apart. After what feels like an eternity he lifts his hand and cups it around the back of my neck. He pulls me to him so that my head is tucked into the space between his chin and his collarbone. He’s got a twinge of sweaty boy smell to him. Is it weird that I think it’s sexy?

  “It doesn’t even matter,” he whispers and gently kisses me just below my ear. I shudder. “All week I’ve been thinking about how I fucked this up by running away, but I was afraid…” Alex stiffens and takes a deep breath.

  “I was afraid that you were still using me to get Dustin back and I couldn’t take that.” When he pulls back and ducks his head so that we are eye level, I see the earnestness in his gaze. “I can’t take being just some rebound or a means to an end. I—”

  I cut him off placing my finger over the soft skin of his lips. “Shhh. I am not using you and you are not a rebound guy. You never could be.”

  I quickly squeeze my eyes shut for courage before I continue. I need to say this. “Maybe I gave my heart away to you once and I never really got it back in the first place. It feels like I’ve either been chasing you or running from you for most of my life and when that didn’t work I locked you away into a box because it was safer and easier. But I’m not trying to do that anymore.”

  “I’m not either.”

  By now, we’re both smiling so hard and loony that we’re almost laughing and Alex leans closer, resting his forehead against mine. He reaches for my hands, intertwining our fingers. “You drove all this way.”

  I nod against him.

  “To see me,” he whispers almost accusingly.

  I nod again.

  Then he rolls back and just looks at me for a minute like he’s figuring something out. My skin is prickling.

  Alex stands and pulls me to my feet. “Come with me?”

  This time he doesn’t wait for me to nod; he just starts walking, trailing me behind him. We make two rights and then a left and we pass a tall building that I recognize as Wyman, and then we go up a flight of cascading stairs that open onto a sunny concrete balcony bordered in sturdy-looking steel rails.

  On one side of the raised courtyard is a modern building of rocketing glass and shiny metal and on the other side is a complex of three smaller buildings that look almost like industrial sheds. Sandwiched between the sheds and the stairs are a cluster of tables and mismatched chairs buffeted from the sun by drooping trees bursting with a constellation of delicate star-shaped flowers the color of a kitten’s tongue.

  “What is this?” I ask.

  “This,” Alex says, taking a step away from me, his hands held outward like he’s pushing the air away from his body, “is where the University’s Art Department is.”

  I look around again and now I notice a tall boy with crazy, puffed up hair and ripped jeans carrying a black artist’s portfolio under one arm. He disappears beyond the double doors of the modern building.

  Alex starts talking and he’s pointing, telling me which shed the kilns are in and what sketching classes are offered. There’s even a letterpress class being taught in the fall.

  I am shaking something off, as if I’m waking up from a lucid dream into a fog of sunshine. “Wait. How do you know all this?”

  His face turns sheepish. His bottom lip disappears into his quirked mouth.

  “I got a tour last week and I may have talked to a few professors.”

  “What—”

  But Alex cuts me off, encircling my arms with his hands, his face an earnest canvas. “I still want you to apply to whatever art school you end up settling on—whether it’s in Rhode Island, or New York, or the Antarctic,” he insists.

  “And I’m there, right beside you. I can promise you that. I just figured that with next year already a done deal, you should at least be as happy here as you can be. And one of the professors that I talked to assured me that you still have time to get them to look at your portfolio before you have to register for classes. And if you can get at least one recommendation from a past teacher, it shouldn’t be a problem for you to get into any of the classes.”

  Whoa. My brain is lagging seconds behind. “You got a tour last week? But that was while you were still mad at me.”

  “Yeah, well.... You may have beaten me to the main event by showing up here today, but I told you that I had already decided that I’d messed things up royally.” He laughs. “I was just so crazy—so crazy about you that I wasn’t thinking right.”

  My face must show all of the wonder I feel. He pulls me to him with one hand on my lower back and the other cupping my waist. His thumb plays against my ribs and his fingers make a small repeating pattern on my skin. My body is flaming and I want to attack his mouth, but I also want to hear the words that are coming out of it.

  “Willow, I was just waiting for your finals to be over then I figured that I’d come and sweep you off your feet and we’d have the entire summer to you know—figure things out.”

  I cock my head to one side. “You mean that you’d climb a trellis up to my window?”

  “Something like that.” Alex takes a deep breath and squeezes his eyes shut. When they open again, his pupils refigure as if they are two inflated black balls bobbing on a watery surface. “I’m done running.”

  I smile. “Me too.”

  Alex reaches between us for my left hand and places it on his naked chest just over his heart. His voice is softer now. “Do you feel how fast my heart is beating?”

  This time my nod is barely perceptible. Alex’s heart is insistent under my hand like a racehorse pounding it’s hooves on the red earth impatient to be released from the paddock.

  Alex sucks in another long, steeling breath, flexing the muscles of his jaw. I shiver.

  “I love you,” he says quickly, his blue eyes spilling light over me all at once.

  There is a silence. A breath passes. Then five. Then twelve.

  I am taking too long to answer and his beautiful face dims. He looks down at the octagonal pattern etched into the pavement.

  “I’m sorry. That was too much too fast. You don’t have to say it back. Honestly. I don’t know what I was thinking laying that on you so soon. I’ve just been thinking it for so long,” he says, his teeth sinking into the words.

  Now it is my turn. I pick up his hand and place it over my chest.

  “Do you feel how fast my heart is beating?” I ask.

  Alex looks up. His nod is wary.

  “I love you too,” I say.

  Now we really are kissing and maybe the sun blows up and maybe the universe is reborn. And maybe we actually do take off into the air this time.

  All I feel is Alex all above me, below me—everywhere. His fingers grip me tighter, grazing half-forgotten places, edging up the pale skin on the inside of my arms and winding into my hair. I can barely breathe but I think that his lips might be better than oxygen at the moment.

  Alex’s mouth stills against the scorched skin of my neck and he mumbles in a funny voice that we should head back to his dorm so that he can put his shirt on. I pull his face back to mine and tell him that if he thinks I’m going to let him put more clothes on he’s out of his mind.

  He laughs and kisses me again.

  The sky is everywhere—open and wide all around us.

  It’s infinite.

  Anything can happen.

  And I’ll be here.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I always wonder if anyone but me takes the time to read this part. You know, the part where the author gushes about how
many people have helped him or her get to this point and blah, blah, blah. Well, it’s sometimes my favorite part of a book and I always dreamed that one day I’d get to write an acknowledgements page that was all my own.

  I would like to thank:

  My beta readers. Also known as “friends.” Especially Sarah—my very first reader, who excels so completely at being human that I wasn’t afraid to put myself and my words in her hands. And my Aunt Susan and my book buddy Stephanie, who devours cheesy lit almost as fast as me.

  My husband, Dave, who amazes me each and every day with his incredibly high threshold for crazy. And who gave me two perfectly imperfect girls that are my favorite part about the world.

  My mom and my dad. I could say the million and four ways that you are brilliant and supportive, but the truth is that no words are adequate. I will never be able to repay you for what you’ve done for me—for letting me stay home from school to finish reading that book, for raising me in paradise, for always stopping the car to help people (even when we were running late), and for constantly thinking that I am better than I am. It gives me something to live up to.

  Jackie and Tara. I owe you for thousands of wonderful days. For grown men dressed up like chickens and cookie hunts in New York complete with a miniscule telescope and hot air balloon wishes and manatee kisses and basically for being a part of everything good in my life. I don’t know who I would be without you both and I never, ever want to find out. I may not believe in everything but I believe in us.

  You, dear reader. For searching for something to interest you, something to make you smile, and for choosing this book. Thank you!

  And my mom. Again. And again. To infinity and beyond.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS