All We Left Behind (11 page)

“This.” He motions between us. “You, busting my balls.”

“I'm serious about the Lilith thing.”

“I know you are, that's the point.” He smiles like he used to under the apple tree. “I miss how you can call me on my shit, and that you don't let me get away with it because I'm smart.”

“You're not that smart.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay, maybe a little smart.”

“See. I love that
that's
your idea of flattery. A
little
smart. I am going to be valedictorian, you know.”

“I know.”

“And you don't want to reconsider that ‘little' comment?”

“Would you like me to call
other
things little?”

“Maybe not.”

“Like your vocabulary?”

“ ‘Coruscating' is not a little word.”

“You don't even know what that means.”

“But I
said
it like I did. Only someone like you would know I don't.”

“Someone like me?”

“Yes, exactly,” he says with a quirk. “Precisely, unquestionably, unequivocally, certainly, sure.”

Suddenly we're both grinning at each other and my eyes catch the whisper of curls at his neck. They glow like the fluff of a dandelion, and I want to lean in and smell the sunblock he wears year-round. It temps me to blow on the fluff of his hair and make a wish.

“
This
is what I meant the other day,” he says seriously. “This is better than kissing Lilith. This—” My smile drops and he immediately backpedals through my silence. “Never mind, forget that. Would you like to get out of here? Work on this paper?” He holds up his notebook again.

“I, uh—”

“I swear I'll stop being a shithead. Plus this is brand-new
graph paper. Completely untouched.” He flips the pages under his nose like he's smelling a stack of hundred-dollar bills.

“Are you really trying to bribe me with graph paper?”

“I am.” He flips through the pages again and I can't help but smile. He's such a dork.

“Okay,” I agree.

“Brilliant. Shall we library or coffee shop?”

“Does the library serve lattes?”

“My kind of girl.” He winks, swinging a ring of keys around his finger. “I'll drive.”

The thought of his car makes me want to puke.

I turn to my locker and swing open the door so he can't see my face.

“I forgot . . . ,” I mumble, pretending to search for something important. Only my mind is suddenly on that empty chair in chemistry class. Kurt's empty chair—the one that sat vacant for fifty minutes without him in it. I dig through my notebooks, annoyed that something that takes up no space—the absence of him—is actually worse than him being in class. Because if he'd shown up, I could at least get it over with—the seeing-each-other part. The ignoring each other. The—

“Did you find it?”

“Yeah.” I shove a book into my bag like it's what I was looking for. “Did you say
you'll
drive? Is it possible that the state actually gave you a driver's license? Remind me how many points there are in a three-point turn?”

“That was a special circumstance!” Abe launches into a detailed defense, and I love how riled up he gets over nothing. I love that we're joking and talking to each other again. It makes those two years of silence seem less awkward and not in the way. I shut my locker and turn, when—

I see Kurt.

Walking straight for us, with that grace, swift and certain. Before I can blink or think or react, he's in front of me. Abe stops midsentence, and all the energy shifts to Kurt. Kurt's gaze flicks from me to Abe and back again, and I'm not sure what to do. I can't move or breathe or—

“What's up, Medford?” Abe asks, yanking Kurt's eyes to his smiling face. He sizes up Abe, but only for a second before he's back on me.

I open my mouth to . . . I don't know, speak, breathe, throw up.

“Taylor.”

That's it. That's all he says. One word—my last name—and he's gone as fast as he came, disappearing through the light.

“What was that?” Abe asks, and I shake my head.

“Nothing,” I lie, looking into the sun, not sure if he was a mirage, half-real or just gone.

“Are you two . . .” Abe fishes, his eyebrows rising, and I attempt to swallow the flutter in my throat.

“Are we . . . ?” I deflect back at him, buttoning my coat, but the snaps are sweaty.

“I dunno.” He looks down the hallway where Kurt slipped away. “Are you guys friends?”

I shake my head and clutch the strap of my bag. This next part's easy, because it's true. It
isn't
a lie.

“No, we're not friends,” I say, busting open that unspoken space all over again.

I walk away and don't
look back.

I feel lighter now that I've done it. Now that I've said her name and she can't hold it over me—like I don't know, like it was wrong of me not to know it. Well, I know it now, and she knows I know it. So . . .

Good.

I go outside and take the long way around the building.

I jog toward the soccer field.

I run.

Then sprint.

Mom used to tell me there was no reason to tell anyone you were sorry if you didn't mean it. And Mom never said sorry to anyone.

My latte steams and Abe
hunches over our homework, his pen tapping our chemistry chart. Curls dangle in his eyes, whispering to me, dandelion tufts waiting for me to disturb them. I almost brush them back, wishing the gesture could take us back to his apple tree, where a kiss could be innocent and unpoisoned.

Only I'm not allowed that snug bit of his skin. I'm not allowed to touch those curls and ask for a kiss. The sting of cotton candy burns at the back of my throat, and I can't stop thinking about how I ended us. It was the week before sophomore year and Abe and I had been dating all summer. We were at the top of the Ferris wheel, and the carnival lights blinked red and yellow below us. The hair of Abe's leg brushed against my knee and I stared at the horizon as his arm slid over my shoulders. The seat rocked and I wondered how many times we'd have to go up and down and around on that ride before they'd let us off again.

Before I'd tell him.

Curls hung in his eyes, the ends frayed and in need of a haircut. Without thinking, I tucked the brown whorls behind his ear. But when he leaned in to kiss me, I looked away, forcing my gaze over the ring toss and dart balloons, to the forest that cradled that funny carnival of lights. Wishing we weren't up there alone, so far from the ground.

“Are you all right?” he whispered in my ear, and I shook my head.

“Too much sugar,” I lied.

He pulled back to give me some air and
that's
the moment I wanted to kiss him. But one of his hands still touched my shoulder, where the strap of my bra dented the skin. My whole neck prickled, remembering the release of that elastic the night before. Of how our breath had been hot, and our lips inseparable, but then hooks were unsnapped and this cotton layer of me was on the floor and his hands were on my breasts.

“Do you need some water?” he asked. I took the cup he offered, which was tucked next to him by the bag of cotton candy.

“Thanks.” But there were only a few sips left before the straw gurgled with air. Abe faked a smile and I felt the slow of the Ferris wheel as the bucket swayed and the machine began its pattern of start and stop.

“What's wrong?” Abe asked, his lips sugar blue. He tilted his head so those curls fell back in his face, but I didn't touch them. I pressed myself into the far side of the bucket, feeling
the sway of the night and the weight of what I'd spent the whole evening avoiding.

“I, uh . . . ,” I started, my back sweating, and I grabbed that cotton candy and started to pull out the fragile puffs. The sugar melted on my tongue, too sweet and dissolving. I shivered, thinking of the ghostly echo of his fingers that had been just as light on my skin. “I can't be
that girl
,” I whispered, and he looked at me confused.

“What kind of girl do you think I want?” he said, the copper bulbs lining the bucket blinking distractingly. I folded my arms over my chest, thinking of his bedroom and the movie ending. Of the credits rolling and him laying me back on his flannel comforter. His hands under my shirt. His hands in my hair.

“The kind that you kiss and . . .” I think about caramel apples, covered in too much sweet, dripping sticky gold onto wax paper. How was I supposed to tell him I didn't want his hands? “I just, I can't . . .”

“Why not?” he said, and I shuddered, because he wanted an explanation to something that didn't have shape. “Don't you like me?”

“It isn't you,” I said, wanting off this ride. “It's
me
. I'm the—”

“Don't say that,” Abe interrupted, suddenly furious. “You're going to sit there and break up with me with some shitty TV line!”

“No, it's . . .” I dug my toe into the metal bucket. But that was the problem.

It
was
me.

“Is this about last night?” he asked, hooking fingers into his curls and pulling them from his eyes. “Because we—”

“Some other girl is going to make you really happy,” I said, trying to smile. Only my chin wobbled and the muscles couldn't hold up the corners of my mouth.

“I don't want another girl.”

“You do,” I insisted, staring down at the controller below. He was helping another couple out of their bucket and I was suddenly envious of their chair, swinging free and empty of them.

“Marion, I—”

“Abe, I will never have sex with you!”

It came out so fast and I couldn't stop it. His mouth dropped open and I knew that was it. Eight words and there was no more cotton candy. No more carnival rides. No more dandelion wishes. Eight words followed by two years of silence, and I deserved every unspoken word of it.

The espresso machine hisses and I can't believe Abe is speaking to me again. Flirting even. It feels good to joke with him again and return to something that feels so easy.

But then, nothing's really easy, is it? I
know
Abe hasn't forgotten that carnival ride. I can't erase what I said. I can't explain to him that I felt trapped on that Ferris wheel and I couldn't breathe. That I needed those eight words to make space, to give me air, to create the room to run. And I did. I ran away from Abe as fast as I could so he couldn't touch me. I ran away from Lilith in the firefly
field, because I didn't want to see her underneath that boy.

I ran because I
could
run.

Because some things you can't run from. Some things tangle, and hold you down by your hair.

The foam of my latte clings to the inside of my cup. It creates a sticky residue that hangs on the porcelain. I look around the shop and wonder what would have happened if I'd actually come
here
yesterday, if Kurt had taken me out for coffee, instead of to the ridge. Would it have been different? Would we have had . . . I don't know,
anything
, a connection? Something more than those woods. Or is this all I can be? Like with Abe and Kurt and the few half-assed attempts in between that were nothing but sloppy kisses and hands tangled in my hair. Will my toes always be slick with mud and unable? Always running scared?

“Taylor.” Abe's voice jolts me back to the shop and he slides the chemistry chart across the table.

“Yeah?” I pretend to be fascinated by it.

“Do you like the column weighted on the left?” he asks, but all I can hear is my last name—Taylor—on Kurt's lips, echoing down the hall, off lockers and light, like my name is worth knowing. Like there's something there. Anything.

More to us.

*  *  *

The air is wet and rimmed with a fog that cradles the soccer field. It's been a few days since the lookout and his car, yet here I am again, watching Kurt practice. Chain link between us.

He didn't ask me to come and I don't know why I'm here, other than that one word in the hallway—my last name on his lips. One word and I'm all spun up and standing here, needing him. Or rather, needing to know why he even bothered to find out. To know if learning my name was an apology or an invitation or . . .
anything
.

Or maybe I simply can't ignore one word spoken, and how brave it is, when all I want to do is run toward the quiet.

The team breaks for water and Kurt walks up to the fence. I grip the chain link, unnerved by the parts of me he's touched and watched and seen me shed. I'm suddenly furious that he hasn't said more than that one word, like he's allowed to touch and kiss and forget.

“What are you doing here?” he says, and I smell the dregs of mud under his cleats, mixing the scent of the earth with the scent of the sky. I don't have an answer, because after his car, I don't want to be alone with him. Yet I'm still here and I don't know what this is.

If
this
is anything.

“We never did have coffee,” I say, and he raises his eyebrows like I've asked for a date. My neck burns and it seems stupid to be concerned with such a little thing, considering his car.

“I don't drink coffee,” he says, and I'm happy he says it. Cold rushes through me, clean as a single bird flying through the sky, because maybe a date is all I wanted in the first place. And if he doesn't do that, then . . .

“That's cool,” I say, dropping my hands from the chain link and looking at my feet. His cleats hook the edge of the fence with their teeth clotted with dirt. I stare at the bloated grass between the spikes and a lump starts to rise in my throat.