If He Had Been with Me

“If it’s what I want,” I say. He nods. “And only if it’s what I want. If you wanted to come and I didn’t want you to, you wouldn’t come anyway.”

  Dad wipes his hands on his napkin and sighs. “Honey, if you don’t want me there—”

  “What if I don’t want Mom there? Can I just tell her not to come and then she won’t?”

  “Now, honey, your mom has to come. That is not optional.”

  “Why? Why are you optional and she’s not?”

  “You’re saying that you want to move into the dorms without either of your parents there?” Dad says.

  “No,” I say, “that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that—never mind.”

  We look back down at our food. It’s too hot out to be perfect weather.

  “Your mother told me about Jamie,” he says after a while. The name startles me.

  “Oh, yeah,” I say. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

  “Is that why you’re upset?”

  “What? I’m not upset.”

  “You’re not upset?”

  “No,” I say. “I’m fine.”

  ***

  When I get home, I don’t call Finny. I want to, but I don’t. At my desk, I write a couple of sentences, delete them, and close my laptop. I try to nap but I’m not tired. I close my eyes anyway. The sun bleeds through and all I can see is red. I’ll wait for Finny to call me first. The afternoon passes.

  75

  A day passes. And then another. I write a little; I read a lot. Finny doesn’t eat dinner with us; he’s out with Jack, his mother says.

  On the third day, I watch him as he pulls the red car into the driveway. He hesitates before closing the door; he looks down at the keys in his hand for a long time. He doesn’t move until Aunt Angelina comes out onto the porch and says his name. Then he slams the car door and looks up at her and smiles.

  On the fourth day, my mother asks me if Finny and I have had a fight again.

  “What do you mean ‘again’?” I say.

  “Well, I just mean that you were spending all this time together and suddenly—”

  “What do you mean by ‘again’? Who ever said we had a fight the first time? Maybe sometimes people stop spending time together and it doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Okay, Autumn,” she says. She lets me go up to my room.

  ***

  Sasha calls me. I don’t answer.

  I wake up early in the morning, and I cannot sleep. I stare at his window until the sun is up and then sleep again.

  ***

  On the sixth day, I call him. He doesn’t answer. I lay my phone down on my nightstand and curl up into a ball. He must have seen it in my eyes.

  I’ve managed to ruin everything again.

  My cell phone rings. I pick it up. I look at it. It rings again.

  “Finny?” I say, instead of coolly saying “Hello?” like I had planned.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “Hey.” We’re quiet for a little while. I can hear him breathing. He clears his throat.

  “I’m going to break up with Sylvie when she comes home.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  “Yeah. It’s—it’s gonna be hard.”

  I draw my knees up to my chin. He would think I was crazy if I started to cry right now.

  “You want to come over and watch a movie?” he says.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Really?”

  “Of course.”

  “Right now?”

  “Sure.”

  After the movie, we go out for pizza. And we don’t talk about Sylvie.

  76

  “Do you remember in fourth grade,” Finny says, “when we read Charlotte’s Web in class and you cried?”

  “Yes. Do you remember when that baseball hit you in the head?”

  “Yes. Did you cry then too?”

  “No,” I say. We’re sitting in his car. It’s late at night again, but we aren’t quite ready to go inside. The engine is off, but the dashboard light is on; I can barely see his face. I’m curled up in my seat. I’m so tired, but I don’t want him to know.

  “You were scared though. You said you thought I was dead.”

  “It was scary. You fell like a rag doll.”

  “Do you remember the Christmas it snowed and then iced over the snow?”

  “We went to the creek.”

  “Yeah.”

  I lay my cheek on my knee. The windows are starting to fog up, but it doesn’t feel like we’ve been sitting together all that long.

  “Do you remember when you punched Donnie Banks?” I say.

  “Of course I do.”

  “He said I was a freak.”

  “You weren’t a freak. You were the only cool girl at school.”

  “How would you know? You never talked to any other girls.”

  “I didn’t need to. Do you remember the Valentine’s Day that my mother had the date with the bald guy?”

  “Which one?”

  “The creepy-looking one.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Finny turns in his seat to look at me. I struggle to make out the expression on his face. “Yeah, you do, we were plotting to throw a bucket of water from the window when they came home—”

  “But the babysitter made us go to bed in separate rooms! I remember that, but I don’t remember the guy.”

  “I do. He was creepy-looking.”

  “Or maybe you just remember thinking that he was creepy. Maybe if you saw him now, you wouldn’t think so at all. Memory isn’t objective.”

  “But you and I always remember things the same way.”

  “But that’s because we always thought the same way back then. I bet we wouldn’t remember—” I stop when I realize what I was about to say.

  “What?” Finny says.

  I shrug like it’s no big deal. “We probably won’t remember middle school the same, or high school.”

  “Oh. Maybe.” We are quiet then, and I wonder why I said that and if he’ll say that we should go in now.

  “You were Mr. Laughegan’s favorite,” Finny says.

  “Yeah, I know,” I say. “But all the other teachers liked you better.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Yes, it is!” I say. I lift my head off my knees and sit up straighter. “Everyone always likes you. It was the same in elementary school too.”

  Finny shrugs. “I don’t know about elementary school,” he says, “but nobody liked me in middle school.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Yes, it is; I was nerdy and you were, like, the Queen.”

  “No,” I say, “Alexis was the Queen. I was just a flunky.” Finny shakes his head. “What are you talking about?” I say. “She was the leader of The Clique.” I can’t tell for sure because of the dark, but I think Finny rolls his eyes.

  “But you were the one all the guys liked,” he says.

  “Oh,” I say.

  “Yeah, it was—weird. Hearing them talk about you like that, I mean.”

  “Oh,” I say. The windows are completely fogged up now. I can only make out the glow of the streetlight coming through; otherwise, it could be any street in America out there.

  “So why did you leave them?” Finny says.

  “Who?” I ask. I’m thinking about the way he stumbled over his words when he said it was weird to hear guys talking about me.

  “The girls. Why did you and Sasha leave them?”

  “We didn’t leave them,” I say. “They kicked us out.”

  “That’s not what they say,” Finny says. I look up at him and wish I could see his face better. “They told me that after they joined the cheerleading squad you started talking about how cheerleading in high school was a stereotype and
you wanted to be a part of something more meaningful. And you stopped returning their calls.”

  “That is not how that happened,” I say. “They stopped being friends with us.”

  “But that does sound like something you would say,” Finny says.

  “Yeah,” I say, “but they’re the ones who thought they were too good for us.”

  “That’s what they say about you,” Finny says.

  “But that’s not true!”

  “Memory isn’t objective, right?”

  “I guess so,” I say, and for the first time I’m wondering what else might be different from Finny’s point of view.

  77

  We’re in his car again, but it’s under different circumstances. It’s one a.m., and a police car has just pulled us over. It’s the second time this week, but Finny has never done anything wrong. They just pull us over because we’re teenagers in a red sports car.

  “Do you ever wonder,” I ask Finny as he gets back in after watching the policeman search his trunk, “if this car is more trouble than it’s worth?” Finny shrugs. Behind us, the police car pulls away. Finny turns off his flashers and looks over his shoulder as he pulls out onto the street again. “Your mom says the insurance is crazy.”

  “Yeah,” he says, “but I like it.”

  “It is a cute car,” I say.

  “Don’t call my car ‘cute,’” he says.

  I giggle. “Finny has a cute car. It’s so cute.”

  “Shut up,” he says, “or I’ll stop driving you everywhere.”

  “Will not.”

  “Will too.”

  “You’d miss me.”

  “Not if you keep calling my car cute.”

  I laugh again.

  “I should teach you to drive,” Finny says.

  I frown. “What? No,” I say.

  “Oh, come on, you can’t go forever without learning to drive.”

  “Watch me.”

  “Take the wheel.”

  “Nope.”

  “Autumn, take the wheel.”

  I don’t know if he’s realized that I can’t refuse him when he says my name like that, but it works. I lean closer to him and take over the steering, and the car immediately begins to swerve to the right.

  “Whoa!” Finny says. I start to take my hands away but he places his over mine. He presses gently and turns us straight again. “There we go,” he says. My heart is hammering and I feel as if I am falling. “You have to make little adjustments as you go,” he says. “Otherwise you’ll end up going off to one side.”

  “Oh,” I say. My voice is shaking. I swallow.

  “You’re okay,” he says. “I’ll catch you if we start to go too far.”

  He helps me turns us around a corner and then another. We circle several blocks and then he takes us back to Main Street.

  “Do you want to go on the highway?”

  “No,” I say.

  “Too bad,” he says. His hands press down on mine as he forces me to turn us toward the on ramp.

  “Oh my God,” I say. Finny takes my right hand off the wheel and places it on the gearshift. “Oh my God,” I say again.

  “It’s okay,” he says. “I’ve got you.” He presses on my hand again and we change gears. My palms are sweating but his are hot and firm. The highway is nearly empty and the road stretches in front of us uninterrupted.

  78

  I’m surprised the next time Sylvie calls when I am with him. I had somehow forgotten her. I had somehow forgotten that the world was larger than just us.

  We’re watching a movie on my couch. I pause it as he says “Hello,” and that’s how I know that it’s her—the way he says it. He also says “uh-huh” five times, and “that’s cool” twice. He says “nothing much” once and glances at me. I look back at him and keep looking after he has turned away from me again.

  “Okay,” Finny says, “I’ll remember.” He hangs up. “You can push play,” he says to me.

  “Was that Sylvie?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Huh.” I don’t know what I mean by that, but Finny answers me anyway.

  “I can’t break up with her over the phone.”

  “I didn’t say you should,” I say.

  “Well, you just—never mind.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” Finny says.

  “I was thinking that it was weird how you’re going to break up with her but she still calls—I mean, it makes sense ’cause she doesn’t know, but it’s weird.”

  “I guess so,” he says. I look down at the remote control in my hands, but I don’t push play.

  “You never told me,” I say.

  “What?” His quiet voice matches mine.

  “Why,” I say. He doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t shrug. He doesn’t look over at me. He has not moved since he told me to push play. I wait.

  “She’s not who I want to be with,” he says “She’s not—that’s all.”

  “Okay,” I say, and I nod, as if he has said a lot more. He looks up at me now.

  “Do you miss Jamie?” His question startles me; I can see Finny studying the reaction on my face.

  “I don’t know,” I say, because I want to tell him the truth. “I don’t want to say yes because I don’t want him back, but I can’t say no either because I do care about him still. He’s still Jamie.”

  “Do you love him?” I shake my head.

  “I’m not in love with him.” We are quiet again, and I think what a relief it is, how strange it is, to say that I am not in love with Jamie.

  “Why are you smiling?” Finny says to me.

  “I don’t love Jamie,” I say, and I laugh because it sounds so funny to say.

  “I’m glad that you’re happy,” Finny says.

  “I am,” I say. “Actually, I’ve been really happy.”

  Finny’s eyes soften, and we’re looking at each other.

  It was another moment when one of us could have said something, could have given us time, but neither of us did. We looked at each other until I couldn’t bear it anymore.

  “We should finish this and then go get something to eat,” I say. We’ve invented a new meal, one that takes place after midnight and before dawn, and we rarely ever miss it. It’s more time that we can spend together without saying what we should.

  “Good idea,” Finny says, but it isn’t. Sylvie will be home soon.

  79

  Finny and I stand in the driveway as the car pulls away. I wave and Finny just watches them. My parent’s divorce was finalized today. Coincidently, The Mothers are going to a winery for the weekend. They gave us a hundred dollars for just two days, and Jack is coming over later. We’re going to have pizza and alcohol for dinner and probably stay up all night.

  “This is going to be fun,” I say.

  “Yeah,” Finny says, and it reminds me of the way he used to say “yeah” to Sylvie at the bus stop as she prattled on and on. I always suspected—no, I just wanted to believe—that he was bored with her.

  “Is everything okay?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” he says. I look up at him. He’s still staring at the driveway.

  “I think I’m going to go over to my house and write,” I say. He looks down at me then.

  “Oh, okay,” he says.

  “Send me a text when Jack comes over,” I say. “Or whenever you want me to come over.”

  “All right,” he says. I turn and walk away then, and I hear him walking away too. I look over my shoulder. He closes the door. I turn away quickly.

  An hour later I get a text. I take off my headphones and pick my phone of my desk.

  When do I get to read it?

  Never, I type back.

  How about tomorrow?

  Maybe.

 
Another few hours later, I get another text. I’m lying on my bed staring at the ceiling.

  Jack is coming over in half an hour.

  Ok

  Why don’t you come over now? I’m bored.

  I smile and swing my legs over the side of the bed.

  ***

  When Jack knocks on the front door, Finny and I are inside a tent we made of couch cushions, chairs, and quilts. We made it big enough so that all three of us would be able to stretch out inside of it, and we left one side open so that we can watch movies. Finny leads Jack into the living room. He’s carrying a handle of rum and two liters of Coke.

  “Hi, Jack.” I stick my head out and wave.

  “What is that?” he says.

  “It’s our cave,” I say. Jack looks at Finny.

  “Wow, dude,” he says.

  “Come on,” Finny says. “I don’t trust you to bartend.” He tugs his arm and Jack follows him out into the kitchen.

  “What are you talking about?’ he says. “I’m a great bartender.”

  A few minutes later, Jack crouches at the cave’s opening. He hands me my drink and says, “Okay, let’s try this thing out then.”

  “You’re going to love it,” I say. I scoot over and he slides in next to me. He sits cross-legged and ducks his head down to fit.

  “Okay,” he says. He looks around the cave. The floor is lined with more quilts and pillows, so it’s like a giant bed inside. “This isn’t bad.”

  “Finny and I used to make these all the time,” I say. “Every time one of us slept over. It was a tradition, and since I’ll probably crash here tonight, it seemed appropriate.”

  I take a sip of my drink and make a face; it’s way too strong. Jack laughs and shakes his head.

  “That’s weird,” he says.

  “What? That I made a face?”

  “That your parents let you sleep together.”

  “Not like that!” I say. “I told you, it’s never been like that with us.”

  “Hey,” Finny says. I look up. He’s bending down to peer inside. “Pizza will be here in an hour.”

  “Cool,” Jack says. He scoots over and Finny climbs in. He stretches out next to me, three inches between us. I’m glad that he overheard me, in case he suspected something. As long as he doesn’t know, I’ll be able to keep him close to me.