I'll Be Here

I remember the way my hands shook when I led Dustin to the upstairs bedroom and how his eyes had widened when he realized what was happening. I remember that he fumbled with the condom. I remember that we laughed together. I remember that it hurt a little but not as much as I’d worried it would. I remember that afterward I lay my head on his chest and I wanted him to say something perfect and romantic but instead he asked me if I wanted to go back to the party.

  ***

  I fall into a routine over the next few days.

  It starts out on Monday afternoon as I walk from my car up the path to the house. My phone titters. I look at the name of the sender twice before I read the text and respond.

  Alex: Hey there

  Me: Hey yourself

  Alex: How’s your week so far?

  Me: Slightly better than crappy

  Alex: lol. I think we can do better than that…

  Somehow that easy line of conversation turns into two hours of texting and the only reason it stops is because Alex is late for a study group. I smile so much at dinner that Jake asks me if I’m feeling all right. That only makes me smile more.

  The next day Alex sends me a picture of his roommate passed out buck naked on the floor. The caption reads: Apparently, Joey had a rough night.

  Luckily Joey is facedown.

  I respond with a photo of Ferdinand wearing the hat that Diana had bought me on our ski trip last winter. The red pompon that embellishes the top is nearly as big as his entire head and the whole thing slouches down over his eyes and to his whiskers.

  And it goes like that for days. Eventually we move to the computer where we can expand our vocabulary without worrying about our texting thumbs falling off.

  Alex tells me about his classes and his three dorm-mates. Their room is considered a quad—two guys to a bedroom and a shared bathroom and living space that Alex laments is really not much more than a glorified closet.

  There’s Monroe—a junior who collects rocks and all things related to geology for fun; and Joey, who pledged a fraternity last fall and keeps a notebook in his desk drawer detailing the number of pushups and sit-ups he does each morning. Alex is convinced that Joey must have a cotton allergy because he never wears a shirt. I laugh but he insists that he’s not joking. Adam, he tells me, is the person he shares his bedroom with, though Adam has a serious girlfriend (Sarah) and he stays at her apartment off-campus most nights. I can tell by his words that this is a person that Alex genuinely likes.

  I reciprocate with stories about my mom and Jake and Aaron and Ferdinand. I mention art school and when he pushes me further, I say it all. How I bailed on my dream and never even applied to art school. I realize how much easier is to describe what a tremendous failure I’d turned out to be over a keyboard and monitor. He writes me back right away.

  You could never be a failure at anything Willow.

  True or not, it is one of the best things that anyone has ever said to me.

  Then on Thursday night comes a text that makes my heart skip.

  Alex: Can I take you out tomorrow night on an official date?

  ***

  I hate to sound like every girl on the planet but I am in the middle of a crisis.

  I can’t decide what to wear!

  It’s like the clothes hanging in the closet, seemingly unaware of their treachery, have morphed into a puzzle far too advanced for me to decipher. I will myself not to start freaking out and pull down a shirt and jeans.

  No…

  Cropped pants and a light grey sweater.

  No… The pants are all wrong and the short sleeved sweater washes out my complexion.

  A vintage inspired skirt and plain fitted green tee-shirt.

  No, no, no. All wrong.

  Ferdinand stares up lazily from the bed and I stick my tongue out at him. Not surprisingly, his response is to close his eyes and go back to sleep. Cats.

  Alex is going to be here in ten—no—five minutes and my brain is starting to spin the roulette wheel of panic-inducing thoughts. With make-up splayed out on the floor by a propped mirror and discarded clothes in a frenetic pile near the closet, my room has taken on the hectic look of a department store the day before Christmas.

  In a last-ditch effort for casual-yet-fashionable, I pull down a lightweight cotton dress—dark blue, nearly black—and slip into clunky grey shoes with a thick strap that buckles on the side. I assess myself in the mirror. Not terrible, but will he think I’m trying too hard if I’m wearing a dress? The hemline dances across my upper thighs.

  I turn to one side to check my reflection from this angle. I’m about to change back into the lengthier vintage skirt but then I hear the doorbell chime and the muffled tones of a greeting.

  Alex has arrived. I brush aside the sticky cobwebs of doubt and open my bedroom door.

  He is standing in the arched entryway that leads into the living room. And if my pulse skips or speeds up I can’t hear it over the whirling of my brain. My mother is half-blocking him and Jake is beside her, his hand hovering above her back as if to guide her to one side. All that I can see are his shoes—black and leather and peeking at me, and his dark messy hair.

  Mom moves a step to her left opening up my line of sight. The first thing that I think of is the way that his mouth felt on my flesh last weekend so of course I’m staring at his lips and it’s like the dormant embers under my skin have been rekindled and are beginning to burn. I’m betting that a warm, red flush is creeping up from my neck. Alex lifts his gaze from my mother and when his eyes land on me, his head snaps up. I watch his as he takes in my bare legs and loose hair and I’m suddenly very glad that I settled on the dress. His open-mouthed expression sends a tingling sensation through my veins.

  Mom is smiling widely. Almost to the point of looking ridiculous and although I’d been hoping to avoid the thousand and one questions that will likely accompany this situation, I can tell by her face that she won’t be appeased so easily. The look she gives me as she opens the front door for us clearly says: “And we’ll talk later.”

  After the step-down from the porch the front path widens with room enough for two people to walk side-by-side. Alex keeps pace with me and opens my car door. I try to think if Dustin ever opened the door for me. I can’t remember. Images from our first few dates pass through my head but I realize that I shouldn’t be thinking about one boy when I’m on a date with another. A date. With Alex Faber.

  Ack!

  Nervously looking forward, I wait for Alex to round the car to the driver side and slip into his seat. He turns the ignition and backs out of the driveway, making a northbound turn out of my neighborhood. I’m so full of electricity right now that I think I could power a small appliance. I wonder if Alex feels it too.

  Cautiously, I cut a glance to my left and catch him looking back at me. We both smile shyly.

  “So…” he says biting on his lip.

  “So…” I answer biting my own lip.

  We laugh. It’s timorous but softens the tense line between us and we begin again—hesitantly, but better this time.

  By the time Alex parks the car and we are walking in the direction of the movie theater, we have fallen into something resembling a comfortable banter. As we round the corner his elbow touches my arm and I wonder what it would feel like to hold his hand but I quickly quash that idea. I am not going to be the one who makes a move tonight. At least that much I’m certain of.

  We step, carefully avoiding the shallow rain puddles that mottle the sidewalk. It rained earlier and the familiar musky aroma of freshly washed world whorls around us.

  I look at Alex in profile. He’s fallen quiet and I can’t help but wonder what he’s thinking about. I don’t have to wait in suspense for long.

  “You didn’t tell your mom that I was coming to pick you up,” he says matter-of-factly.

  I wasn’t expecting him to bring up my mother and I’m momentarily thrown. “No, I didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  There’s something
in Alex’s voice that forces me to stop walking and look at him.

  He is nibbling on his lip and I wonder if he is worried that I was embarrassed to be going out with him. Nothing could be more ridiculous and I want to reassure him. I place one hand on his forearm and he turns to me.

  We are standing still in the middle of the sidewalk. A man and woman pass beside us, their feet kicking up water on the rain-stained sidewalk.

  “Alex, my mom and I…” I trail off. This part is hard to put into words.

  “You were so close.” Alex prompts. “Before.”

  I don’t need to ask what he means by before. He means before the cancer, before the winter solstice debacle, before Dustin, before I stopped drawing. Take your pick.

  His blue eyes search mine. I realize that I want someone to understand and I want that someone to be Alex. So I do what everyone has been trying to get me to do for almost two years—I open up.

  “There’s this picture of my mom and me on a side table in the living room,” I make a rectangle with my fingers.

  “It’s black and white and framed the way you frame special pictures. It’s my mom and me a few years ago and even though we don’t look anything alike, we look the same—like mother and daughter. It’s the way we’re standing, our bodies leaning towards each other, her arms wrapped around me, our heads tilted exactly the same way, you know?”

  He nods. I don’t know if I’m making any sense but I keep talking.

  “And people would always make comments like ‘you can tell who you belong to,’ or ‘you’re just like your mother,’ and I guess I took them as compliments. But, when she got diagnosed with cancer I would look at that picture of us and it would feel like it was already a memory—like she’d already died and everything else was just a flashback of what happened before. Like I was living a life that I already lived and I knew what was going to happen and I didn’t want it to hurt so much,” I sigh.

  “I can’t explain it but it was like I grieved for her or something and when it was over I couldn’t figure out what normal was supposed to be like. I couldn’t figure out who I belonged to anymore.”

  “Willow, you don’t have to belong to anyone but yourself.”

  “Wise you are indeed,” I say in a stupid imitation of Yoda.

  Alex chuckles. He raises his pierced eyebrow and says, “You’re scared.”

  I jerk my chin up. “Do you know the relapse rate for cancer patients?”

  “You’re scared,” he repeats without answering my question.

  “Maybe,” I admit turning away from him without saying anything else.

  All at once I feel exposed on the open street and I don’t want to be where I am. I start to walk too fast.

  “Whoa!” He moves his feet faster to keep up.

  I turn to him, my hair whipped in front of my face. It sticks to my moist mouth and I push it away with my fingers. “Honestly, I don’t even know where to begin with my mom. It seems too hard. Or maybe too late.”

  Alex steps closer.

  He reaches forward and tucks my hair back behind my ear and his fingers linger on the side of my face. I want them to pull me in. I want them on every part of my body. I think that he’s going to kiss me on my lips and I close my eyes and breathe in. Alex wraps his free arm around my shoulders and places a soft kiss on the top of my head.

  When he speaks into my hair, it is barely a whisper. “Willow, it’s never too late. And there’s always a way to begin again.”

  Holy hell.

  How is it that every single thing that he does is so sexy? I am so far gone that I’m surprised that I can even stand on my own. I take a big, steeling breath and swallow.

  We don’t say much the rest of the way to the theater and then we’re in the movie and we really can’t talk, but it’s crazy how singularly he occupies my mind. Just sitting there beside me I can sense every little movement that he makes. I’m aware of Alex’s arm draped over the armrest between us, and the way his fingers crawl the distance to a bag of popcorn propped on his lap. I suck in an embarrassing gulp of air when his lips part to meet the straw of his drink. The creaky sound the theater chair makes and the rhythm of Alex’s breathing in the darkened space are amplified in my mind and I shift nervously.

  A half hour into the movie Alex’s calf brushes up against mine. It stays parked there, still as a cat that has found a sunny spot to take a nap.

  If someone were to ask me what the movie was about, I don’t think I’d be able to come up with a coherent response. All I know is that there’s a girl. And a guy. And something happens with someone’s uncle and there’s a scene on a boat and I laugh because everyone else laughs but I’m not following it. Instead I’m thinking about Alex Faber’s leg touching mine, and Alex Faber’s eyes and then his lips and the way he smells like soap and something else so incredibly masculine that it causes my stomach to clench.

  After the movie lets out, he buys me an ice cream cone from the metal cart in front of the theater. The vendor is wearing a silly hat embellished with pastel polka dots and a smiling black and white cow. He hands me a scoop of mint chocolate chip on a sugar cone. Alex gets strawberry for himself. I don’t comment on the rainbow sprinkles.

  We scoot along the railing of the pier. My eyes sting. They narrow against the salty wind pushing in from the water. After the rain and the falling black night I expect it to be cooler than it is, but the air that moves against my skin is moist and warm and for the first time in what feels like awhile, I am not cold.

  Here the sidewalk ends in a half-moon slab of concrete. Curving metal rails make a perimeter—a guard against small children falling into the water. Alex presses his forearms against the iron—his body wrapping itself around the smooth hardness of the metal. I stand straight, licking the last of the green ice cream from the top of the cone before consuming the thing entirely.

  Abruptly, Alex puts an arm around my waist and pulls me close, and when he kisses me hard I have a newfound respect for strawberry ice cream.

  In spite of ourselves we’ll end up a’sittin’ on a rainbow

  Against all odds, honey, we’re the big door prize

  We’re gonna spite our noses right off of our faces

  There won’t be nothin’ but big ole hearts dancin’ in our eyes.

  ~John Prine

  “In Spite of Ourselves”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The rain starts early in the morning while it’s still almost yesterday. I wake up in the dark as the thunderstorm pounds its angry fist on my window demanding to be noticed and I finally fall back to sleep slowly just as soft grey dawn light is washing over the sky.

  Mom wakes me up after ten and as she sits on the side of my bed and lazily brushes the hair from my face she asks me if I can babysit Aaron tonight. She and Jake were invited to a fancy shindig over at the Royal Palm Resort at the last minute. Jake thinks it will be a perfect opportunity to schmooze and gain funding for his program. Myself, I highly doubt that the type of people that socialize at the Royal Palm Resort genuinely care about protecting our reef systems. But that’s just me.

  I send Alex a text around noon telling him that I am babysitting my little brother tonight. We didn’t make plans and I don’t know if he’s staying in town another night since I didn’t ask. I was afraid to sound presumptive.

  My phone hasn’t even made it back to my pocket when it chirps alerting me that I have a text message.

  ` Alex: Can I help?

  I wasn’t expecting that and for a few minutes I don’t respond. I’m thinking.

  The phone sounds again.

  Alex: I understand if it’s not okay.

  Me: No, it’s more than ok. Come over at 6?

  Alex: Sure. Want me to pick up chinese?

  Me: You don’t have to…

  Alex: I want to

  Me: Ok. Veg chow mein for me and cashew chick for Aaron. I’ll give you money when you get here.

  Alex: It’s on me

  Me: I’m giving you mo
ney. Period.

  Alex: I’m not taking it. Period to infinity.

  Me: Lol. We’ll resume negotiations tonight.

  Alex: K. See you at 6

  Me: Perfect.

  Sometimes time pounces for me. It whooshes by with the easy gait of a thoroughbred and I’ll look up at the clock and it will be hours later than I think. Today is not one of those days. Today plods along with the slow throb of a cold syrup.

  I paint my toenails. The color is called “Jazzy Night,” which is a deep purple mottled with silver glitter.

  I catch up on my homework.

  I call Laney.

  I explain to my mother for the second time in under an hour that Alex is just a friend. She uses phrases like “back in the picture,” and “pleased as punch.” Soooooo annoying!

  I sketch.

  I change my clothes four times, settling on a pair of dark skinny jeans and a capped-sleeve tee shirt.

  I engage in a war with my hair.

  I lose the war.

  Due to all the rain, the Florida humidity has reached a crescendo and a tube of straightening gel, mousse and pomade are all deemed failures in the face of Mother Nature. My hair is a nest of writhing snakes. I end up brushing the bangs out and braiding the rest of it to one side so that a single plait falls over my shoulder. There doesn’t seem to be anything that I can do about the frizzy baby hairs that have exploded from around my face and seem to glow with haloed light.

  I stare at the girl in the mirror. She stares back. A few weeks ago this girl was getting ready like this for another boy. This brings an image of Dustin—of his dimple and his laugh. I realize that the memory doesn’t sting. Am I over him? Is Alex really the cure—like some magic panacea?

  Part of me wonders what would happen if Dustin were the one to show up on my doorstep tonight instead of Alex. I shake my head as if I can discard the residue of the thought like a dog shedding water. I won’t let myself go down that path. The nerves in my belly are already snaking themselves into knots and now is not the time to play head games with myself.