I'll Be Here

  Alex knew Laney’s name though he couldn’t think of her exactly. He asked questions about my life and I answered. I told him about deciding to become a vegetarian and how much I loved art and then I mentioned that I wanted to start a compost program at the school which he thought was a great idea.

  Alex wanted to be an architect.

  He said it like there was no question that he would one day become an architect and I liked that. When I asked him why architecture, he looked down at his hands and I couldn’t see his eyes through the dark lashes that lay on his cheeks.

  “I want to make something beautiful from nothing,” he said finally and I thought that his answer was beautiful.

  Alex told me about Antoni Gaudi and Carlo Scarpa, who were two of his favorite architects and I loved the way his eyes brightened and his hands moved as if he could shape his words into the buildings he described.

  And at the end of the night Alex handed me his box of hot tamales and told me that I could finish them off.

  I tried not to read into that.

  I tried not to imagine us at the winter dance together, in coordinated outfits swaying to a cheesy love song.

  I tried to play things cool through six more family outings, sixteen “hellos” and four casual waves in the hallways of our middle school. Then I gave up.

  Of course I loved Alex Faber.

  But I couldn’t tell him about it. That would ruin absolutely everything. So I kept my romantic inclinations to myself. Laney knew and I think that my mom suspected as much, but for the most part, I crushed hard core on Alex in secret.

  I was content to watch him go out with Clarissa Kelly for exactly twenty-seven days at the end of his eighth grade year because I knew it wouldn’t last. I was okay when Marina Hattersfield talked to him for far too long at his middle school graduation party because her laugh was frightfully high-pitched and I knew from an incident involving a whistle months earlier that his ears wouldn’t be able to withstand that laugh of hers for any significant period of time.

  Alex and I ended up going to different high schools because of zoning lines (I cursed the county commissioners), but I stayed current on his life through the constant gossip of our mothers. When I would overhear Brooke telling my mom about the girls that called the house or the one that slipped a note under the front door on Valentine’s Day I can’t say that my stomach wasn’t churning in protest, but I lived.

  There were boys in my life too. There was Clay Allen who I had a one-day romance with that began on the morning bus and concluded by the fourth stop of the afternoon bus. And Jared Teague, an older boy who escorted me to the fall homecoming dance freshman year and attempted to grope me gracelessly all night. When he tried to drive me somewhere other than home after the dance I threatened to call his house phone and tell his mother what he was up to.

  And there was the other Jared that I met on vacation at Aunt Delta’s. He was fifteen months older than me and had a cute smile and muscled stomach that he liked to flaunt on the deck of his dad’s speedboat. He had square fingers and a mole just above his collarbone that I kissed one night out on the dock in a sudden burst of recklessness.

  I had kissed exactly four boys a total of eleven times.

  And it was nice. Not great, but nice.

  I figured that “great” was being saved for Alex. The rest was practice.

  Because, Alex Faber wasn’t just a boy that I thought about from time to time. He wasn’t just a boy that I spent time with when our parents threw us together.

  Alex was a world. He was an entire galaxy. A universe of possibilities.

  I could write a ten page essay about his hands alone. There was the way that he talked with them—rolling them in the air to describe something. Or how he brought them to rest in his pockets when he was being particularly thoughtful. Or the way that he held a pencil so tight that he had a permanent callus on the middle finger of his right hand.

  I could describe in detail how his face lit up when he had a good idea and how his brow furrowed into three lines when he was confused. Or the way he stood with his shoulders rounded slightly forward and his head cocked to one side when he was listening.

  These were the things I noticed about Alex. In fact, I noticed everything about Alex. Like that his left nostril was slightly larger than his right nostril. And the way he ate a Kit Kat bar: chocolate first and then the layers of wafer separately.

  I could pick his one sneeze out of a room full of sneezers.

  His voice talked to me in my dreams. Low and soft with a touch of huskiness that made him sound a bit older than he was.

  “Try this,” he said, handing me a roll of masking tape.

  “Thanks.” There I was struggling with a strand of white paper garland for my mother’s winter solstice party. She was trying for something “out-of-the-box” so the standard red and green holly berry theme had been passed over in favor of frothy white paper decorations and twinkling metallic stars and moons.

  By the front door there was a table set up with little slivers of colored paper and those tiny pencils that you get when you play mini golf. Her idea was that each party guest should write down a wish and at midnight we would all throw our wishes into the backyard fire pit. Mom theorized that the winter solstice was the perfect time to make wishes come true even if Wikipedia didn’t mention it as a traditional part of any of the worldwide rituals.

  My job was twofold: to set up the coolers and cheese trays and to hang the garland over the French doors that led out to the patio. Alex’s sudden appearance almost an hour before the party sent a shiver through my entire body. I was probably lucky not to fall off the ladder considering that his presence generally resulted in a severe uptick in my rampant klutziness.

  Without meeting his infinite eyes I tore off a piece from the roll of tape that he held out to me and attached the end of the white strand to a shelf that housed stereo equipment. Alex’s left hand rested casually on the ladder near my leg.

  “My mom’s trying to stay green this year so she wanted me to use tacks instead of tape but there’s environmentally responsible and then there’s ridiculous. I mean—I’m hanging paper decorations. I don’t think that using a few measly strips of tape is going to increase the size of this party’s carbon footprint all that much.”

  He laughed and the sound killed me. “I think you’re right and if you want, the use of tape can be just between us.”

  I looked down at him from where I stood braced on the second rung of the ladder. I noted the changes in him since the last time we’d seen each other. It had only been about two months, but something had changed. I felt the shift in the air that surrounded him.

  Alex’s squared jaw seemed somehow squarer; his cheekbones, always high and angular like his mother’s, were even more defined under his skin. He was wearing slim pants and a soft corduroy jacket and a pair of beat-up black chucks on his feet. He looked like he’d just rolled out of bed and I mean that in the best possible way. His rumpled inky hair stood out in all directions like he’d just pushed his hands through it to keep it from his forehead.

  My fingers itched and it took all my willpower not to reach out right then and touch the dark strands the way that I’d dreamed about. The half-smile he wore was all crinkles and secrets as usual, but it was those insistently bright blue eyes that did things to me. And with the way that they were looking up at me, I thought “this is it.”

  I was fifteen. Alex was seventeen. We were at a party. I had a winter solstice wish to make and I knew exactly what it would be.

  So, after I’d finished with the garland and arranged two cheese and cracker trays under the supervision of Brooke and my mother, I took extra time getting ready. With a large round bristly brush I pulled my hair out under the blow dryer until it was as smooth and shiny as it had ever been. Leaning closely into the mirror, I applied a second coat of mascara to emphasize my lashes and shiny coat of reddish lip gloss. Pomegranate Pout. That’s what it was called.

  I we
nt through three outfits before I decided on my favorite pair of jeans and a light green raw silk top that I’d purchased the week earlier. The long sleeves billowed gracefully around my arms and the neckline was trimmed with silver embroidery. My earrings were silver stars.

  “Knock, knock,” Laney called out, not waiting for me to respond before she opened my bedroom door.

  She took in my makeup, my hair and the new top and her eyes widened. “Alex?” She asked.

  I smiled crookedly and I guess that was enough of an answer.

  Laney laughed and clasped her hands together. “Finally,” she squealed.

  If I had dreamed up a night, I couldn’t have made it more perfect. I was all anticipation and spin and flustered breathing. I couldn’t remember Alex ever looking at me the way that he was looking at me and it made my heart go thump, thump—stop—and then thump some more.

  This night was special.

  I could feel that truth like it was the salty wind kissing my hair.

  It was a promise.

  And I would be more than I had ever been. This was also a promise. Because I looked pretty good and I was clever and full of witty party banter like I had never been before. And I didn’t trip even when there was a chair where there shouldn’t have been on the walkway between the grill and the shrubs. And when I told the story about the missing library book, Alex laughed along with mom’s friends from work.

  I decided that we were in love. Mutual love. A far better thing than singular love.

  There were too many clues to just ignore it. By the food table when I was sorting out the silverware situation, Alex commented that the shirt that I was wearing brought out the green in my eyes and that my earrings matched the festive decor. Were those the types of things that guys that were exclusively “friends” noticed?

  And then he placed a lemon on the side of my soda glass because he knew that’s the way that I liked it and I was sure.

  It was as simple as that.

  At midnight we tossed our paper wishes into the fire and although I’d told mom that the whole thing was silly, I’ll admit that it was exciting to see our dreams hover in the heavy-clinging grayish smoke and then waft upward like a hot breath.

  Laney leaned into me and whispered low, sparing a glance in Alex’s direction. “Willow, I think your wish is going to come true.” Just then his eyes swung towards mine and his face transformed into a rare full-watt grin.

  When most of the guests had gone and Laney was in my room texting her then-boyfriend, I stood outside in the night by myself, trying to squeeze bravery out of every pore in my body. I would speak with him. I would tell him how I felt. If only I could make my brain work properly.

  I shuffled my feet.

  I wrung my hands.

  And then Alex was there, his face lined by the glow from the outdoor lighting. “Are you cold?” He asked the question because I was shivering.

  I couldn’t explain that the tremble in my body was not from the cold.

  “A little,” I said.

  “Here.” He slouched out of his corduroy jacket and passed it over my shoulders. It was still warm from his body heat and it smelled of him. I entertained a wave of crazy thoughts. I will never take this jacket off. I will sleep with it tucked under my pillow. I will cut it up into a hundred smaller pieces and always keep one in my pocket.

  “Thanks.” I said. Alex’s smile was like a slow wink and his fingertips grazed the edges of the jacket sleeve close to the skin of my wrist. So close.

  We talked at the same time, each of us saying the other’s name.

  “Alex—”

  “Willow—”

  I laughed first and he followed.

  “Jinx.” Alex was facing me head-on and he was beautiful in his tangled kind of way. I noticed a dark freckle peeking out from just above his collar.

  When he reached up to swat at a flying insect that lazily circled our heads, the front hem of his shirt lifted and I caught a slice of bare skin. I wondered what it would feel like to run my fingertips over that smooth skin.

  I knew that I was blushing and was glad for the muted light.

  Alex said something about the moon and I guess that I must have answered but I can’t remember what I said and it doesn’t really matter. What matters is the way that my head was humming and the magic of my body tingling and the grinding of my heart against my ribs.

  There was this current between us—electrical… magnetic. It felt like I was connected to Alex by a string and I imagined that I could feel the slightest movement of every one of his limbs. As he talked, his tongue sometimes came out and licked his lips and I was overwhelmed by that. By him. By those lips. And those blinking blue eyes.

  I wanted him.

  I was so full of wanting I thought I would explode.

  I wanted to lean in.

  I wanted to reach forward and graze his face with my tongue.

  I wanted to bury my hands in his dark hair and kiss the slight indentation in the middle of his chin.

  I wanted to nestle into the curved hollow space between his neck and his jaw.

  I wanted to breathe him in and hold my breath.

  I wanted Alex more than anything that I’d ever wanted in my whole life and I was hanging onto a thread of hope that he wanted me too.

  But, how was I supposed to cross the distance?

  I could just come out and say: “Alex, I want you.”

  That sounded creepy—like it should be the line of a pathetic and lonely character in a romance novel read by bored and overfed housewives.

  I could go with a more classic approach. I could tilt my head to the side and bat my eyelashes coyly and say, “I wouldn’t stop you if you kissed me.”

  But, what if he said didn’t even want to kiss me?

  How incredibly embarrassing would that be?

  Maybe the best method would be full-on action. I could just go for it. That’s what a girl in a movie would do. She would reach out and grab the leading man by the collar and pull him down towards her mouth and they would have a sweeping, grand kiss and the camera would pan up to the night sky full of pulsing stars and soft, romantic music would flare up in the background.

  Yes, that could work.

  He blinked down at me, thick, dark lashes touching his cheeks.

  I swallowed my doubt and stepped in slipping my hands to his neck to pull him towards me.

  It was just like the movie! And the music started to roar in my brain. Stars twinkled! But just before our lips touched he put his hands on my shoulder and pushed me back gently but firmly.

  Oh. My. God.

  I’d been dissed.

  Majorly.

  Because I was an ugly, disgusting ogre. Snot was probably pouring from my nostrils onto the ground.

  “Whoa.” Alex’s voice was soft, breathy.

  His hand fell to my arm. He squeezed. I watched his face change and the outer edges of his mouth turn down. It was the worst kind of look and my stomach plummeted ten thousand feet.

  I stepped back, feeling hot all over, wanting to die right there on my porch. “I—I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. I—”

  “It’s okay, Willow. These things happen.”

  These things happen? Like I’d dropped and broken a piece of everyday china. Like I’d put too much salt in the cookie batter.

  I nodded like I understood, but I couldn’t look at him and I decided that I would never look at him again. My face was red and only getting redder as I stood there and ate my mortification with a spoon.

  I wanted to turn away but I was trapped in that spot—in that moment—by those moon eyes. Because even though I couldn’t see them, I could feel them looking at me and they burned me so bad that my legs didn’t work.

  It was him touching me that freed me from my frozen stupor.

  Alex’s hand came forward and I jerked back so violently that he rocked on his feet. He made a sound that might have been words but I didn’t catch them and I didn’t ask him to re
peat himself.

  Somehow, I found my voice. “I should go. Laney’s probably wondering where I am.”

  He made a grab for my hand but I sidestepped him.

  “Willow, wait! I think you misunderstood. We should talk about this.”

  He was following me. He tried to put a hand on my shoulder. He asked me to walk down to the cave with him. He said other things but I couldn’t even make sense of the words. It might as well have been in another language.

  I moved quickly, my shoes slapping against the stones. I didn’t want to talk to him. I didn’t want to hear Alex explain to me in slow, painful detail the reasons that he didn’t think of me that way. I didn’t want to hear him say the words that I knew were coming. That I was a just a little girl to him. A family friend. Like a sister.

  “Please,” he pleaded again.

  “I don’t want to talk about it Alex.”

  “Willow, you have to let me explain.” Alex’s voice was taking on a note of panic. He was trying to place himself between me and the house. He walked backwards, his shoes crunching in the gravel and I had to step to the right to avoid squashing his toes.

  “There’s nothing to explain. I get it.”

  Despite myself, this time I looked up. Alex wobbled as his foot found the path and I worried that he would trip. I stopped walking.

  “Are you crying?” He sounded shocked. His fingers came forward but I pushed them away. “Willow…”

  My eyes were wet. Ugh. I hated those tears. I hated that I’d been betrayed by my own stupidity. I hated my cracking voice and the way that my throat was caving in on me and that I felt so, so unbelievably stupid.

  And his concern for me only made the whole thing worse.

  Maybe it would have been easier if he’d laughed or said some chickenshit thing to make me angry. Maybe then I could have gotten pissed and thought “good riddance.” But he didn’t do either of those things. He stood there with his forehead creased into three distinct lines looking very Alex-like and I still wanted to reach up and touch him. I still wanted to kiss him.