All You Never Wanted (21 page)

As they move through the crowd, Joshua lassos her waist and whispers in her ear. “Am I shallow to say how much I love that you’re the hottest girl in this room?”

Maybe cheating makes me look hot
. “Ha.” It feels cruel to smile
at Joshua. To give him anything. Thoughts of Xander pound on the doors and windows of her mind. Can her entire life change in a single day?

Though most lives do.

“That charity work you’re doing in the Bronx. I gotta say it was a good call,” Joshua continues. “I shouldn’t have jumped all over that. You couldn’t be in a losing streak all year. And it looks like you had the right idea all along.” He is steering them to a corner sofa. Shooing off the lone spacy kid who’d flopped himself on it. “You spend the day dealing with other people’s pathetic lives and then your problems aren’t all that bad. Right?”

“Right.” She visibly winces at the word “pathetic.” Len, Marisol, Lucia—they’re hardly pathetic.

It’s not Joshua’s fault that he can’t say one right thing tonight.

As they sit, he pulls her in. Kissing her, tucking her solidly under his arm. And she lets him. She lets him be the “boyfriend” to her “girlfriend.” Putting off the drama.

But she knows he can feel the disconnect. He’s being overly showy, like when he’s rolled a strike and everyone’s clapping for him.

She’d stopped checking her phone half an hour ago. Xander never sent that message from the airport. At first she’d half expected it. A last goodbye. Xander was impulsive, a romantic.

Yes. He’d do it.

Then she’d talked herself out of it. She’d been rude. Insensitive.

No way he’d do it.

A thin sprig of hope planted deep down inside of her made her keep checking. But even if Xander’s still here, he’s boarded by
now. Obeyed the command to shut down all electronic devices. Clicked on his seat belt. Locked and upright. Maybe now he’s looking out his window.

Is she on his mind the way he’s on hers?

“What’s going on?” Joshua whispers. Then he adds, in a stylized infomercial voice, “Talk to me, Alex. You’ve been distracted all night.”

She can’t tell him. She’s not ready. The catastrophe of the house is so distractingly awful. “I know. It’s nothing. It’s … my phone,” she murmurs. “I was thinking I must have left it in the kitchen.”

“I’ll grab it. I’ll bring us new drinks, too. We oughta stay in here anyway. So we can keep an eye on the front door.” He stands and scans the crowd. Returns someone’s whistle with a raised hand. “Unreal. All these dorks are seniors now.”

“Hey, that’s me, too.”

For a moment, they’re back. Alex-and-Joshua. He’s smiling down at her. Reminding her of when he’d been “Shady Sheriff.” Unknown and mysterious and desirable.

“Don’t move, dork. Two seconds,” he whispers. And then he’s gone, heading for the kitchen. Leaving her to sit talking to nobody while chewing uneasily on her cuticle.

Later, she’d think to herself that she’d had a sixth sense about it. She’d been so frozen on that couch. As if waiting for it. Because she knows exactly what’s happened when Joshua returns. Her phone cement-stuck in his hand and his face numb.

“Xander’s got a message for you.”

“Who? What?”

“Your pal Xander? Your pal Xander needs to tell you something tonight. On Saturday night.”

“What?”

“
Xander Heilprin
is what your phone says.” Joshua’s voice has a deep animal growl. “He’s that NYU dude, right? Who runs the program? Didn’t know he was address book–worthy.”

Her face gets hot. Adding Xander’s contact information had been an impulse.
X
marks the spot.

Cupped in Joshua’s hand, there it is. The message she’s been waiting for all night.

Holding the phone over her reach, Joshua clicks for it. Scans the note and tosses the phone in her lap. Quickly she picks it up and reads:

Her heartbeat floods her ears. The living room has become oppressive, a trap. “ ‘Miss you so bad,’ ” Joshua repeats. “ ‘Miss you so bad,’ Alex. Want to let me in on it? What’s Xander been missing? What’ve you been giving him that he’s missing it ‘so bad’?”

“Joshua, keep it down.”

“Why? Why should I?” His voice snags in the current of noise. “You’ve been out all day with this guy. Of course I’m gonna be angry. So own it.” A few heads turn on the catch of his words. Primed for a better look. “And I don’t give a shit, you hear me?”

“We all hear you,” pipes a voice over the crowd. Laughter.

“Stop. You’re talking too loud. It’s embarrassing me. Please,” she whispers. “This is private.”

“I should have known something was up. The way you’ve been tonight.”

“He’s just a friend.”

“Now, here’s where I’d think you could do better than that line.”

It wrenches her how she can see boy-Joshua screwed up in his face. She’d never noticed it before, but in this moment he looks identical to his brother. Poor hungry little Buddy, forever creeping around the bowling alley, on the hustle for scraps of whatever—food, money, jokes, love. All those Gunners were raised on less of everything.

She is suddenly acutely conscious of all that Joshua doesn’t have. Of how little she can give him. Tonight, or probably ever.

But Alex can’t say this here. Not in this torn-apart room full of strangers. She stands. “Upstairs?” Her body’s trembling. Same as she’d been at Gussman’s.

In a way, the afternoon felt like practice for tonight. She begins edging out of the living room toward the hallway. With a quick glance back over her shoulder for Joshua to follow.

The house is an obstacle course of foreign bodies. Somebody’s taken control of the sound system. Cranked up and jarring, like music at a pep rally. She picks her way around kids sprawled and draped and crammed and coupled. On the furniture. On the stairs. Along the wide corridor to her room.

With Joshua shadowing her, Alex plows a path. Only to find, when she snaps on the light of her bedroom, two wriggling bodies in her bed.

“You guys! Get out! This isn’t a hotel!” Actually, come to think of it, her bedroom looks exactly like a hotel.

Empty room, empty life
.

It almost makes sense that a couple of strangers are here in it.

Joshua steps out of the way as the girl and guy—muttering and righteous and caught—collect articles of dropped clothing and slink out.

Any other night it would have been funny. In this moment, it seems too intimate. A reminder of who Alex-and-Joshua aren’t anymore.

Joshua closes the door, blunting the noise to a reverberation in her bedroom walls. “Oookay,” he says. “No more surprises. I hope.” He sinks into her dressing-table chair. Stretches his legs and exhales. “What a night. I just want it over with, you know?”

“Sure. It’s … yeah.”

“I mean, what am I doing at a high school party? What am I doing hanging out all day with your kid sister?”

“You hung out all day with Thea?”

“Is that a problem?” He’s immediately on the defensive. “Since I had no idea where you were?”

“No. It’s just … You’ve got to be careful there. She worships you.”

“Huh. Guess I caged the wrong Parrott.”

“Don’t.” She grimaces. “You know I hate those.”

“Hate what?”

“You know. Stupid jokes on my name.”

“Don’t kill me for trying. I feel like I spend half my life trying to get you to smile.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, whatever. Let’s just drop it.”

She nods. As if this had been a meaningful conversation instead
of one that chased itself in a circle. Alex had expected Joshua to be more outraged and demanding about Xander. To attack. Like how he gets when his truck or the remote doesn’t work.

Instead, he’s been vague.

Because he’s not innocent, either
.

The thought is a foghorn. It startles her. And then it makes immediate sense. Joshua and Thea. Oh God. Of course.

“Listen, Joshua.” She sits on the edge of her bed, facing him. They could touch each other if they both leaned over for it.

“I am.” He fits one hand over the other and presses for a full-knuckle crackdown.
Crack​crack​crack
. Then he works them joint by joint.
Crack. Crack. Crack
.

“Please don’t. You know that makes me cringe.”

He drops his hands. She rushes headlong into his silence before she loses her nerve. “I wasn’t planning to lie. It’s just, you caught me by surprise,” she starts. “So, confession. Xander and I hung out today. And we made this connection. He was leaving tonight so … I stayed with him too long, probably.”

And I’m sorry. It didn’t mean anything
.

The words that should be next don’t come.

“Where is he now?”

“In the air. Headed out for some summer program in Australia.”

“So what am I, then? The backup plan?” She’s never been so conscious of how Joshua expands himself. Crossing his arms to flex his biceps. Squaring his jaw. Pushing out of his Joshua-shaped space. “Your hometown fling before you leave for college?”

“How can you be a fling after a year? Honestly, Joshua. That’s not how it is.”

“How is it, then?”

“It’s … it’s … maybe it’s …” This is not going well. “It’s not what we used to be.”

“Because you’re not who you were. You used to be my girlfriend. I don’t know where she went.”

“Hey, wait a minute. No judgments here.” That’s what the family counselor used to say after her father had left.
This is a safe space. No judgments here
. She’d forgotten that. The sense it had made.

“Look, Alex.”
Crack crack crack
. “The bottom line is, I
still
loved you.” The way he says it feels more like a charge than a fact. “Even with all your secrets and your mysterious I’m-not-talking, I’m-not-eating, I’m-just-gonna-sulk-in-my-room problems. Even when you stopped wanting me. Even then, God. I loved you, Alex.”

“Loved? So you don’t love me since Friday morning, the last time you told me you did?”

“Loved, love. It’s you who’s pushing this conversation toward the breakup zone.”

“No. No, I’m not.” Although of course he’s right. Why is she fixating on “love” versus “loved” when a breakup is exactly what she wants?

She wants it over. Joshua wants it better. It can’t be both ways.

“Listen. This is a lot to deal with late at night. Especially when there’s a stadium crowd in the living room.” Joshua reaches for her. She moves off the bed and into the half welcome of his arms and his lap. Turning and stretching herself out against him.
The scratch of his cheek rubs the side of her face. Joshua wraps his arms around her. He smells faintly skunky. Not his right smell. Or maybe he’s the same as ever.

But he’s not pancakes.

“So maybe you should leave, okay?” she whispers. “And we’ll go somewhere tomorrow, when it’s quiet? Like maybe brunch? To talk?”

His muscles stiffen.
“Brunch?”

“Sunday brunch, why not?”

“First off, I can’t leave this party,” he answers. “Thea’s got no idea how to keep it in check.”

“Don’t you think we’re kinda past that point?”

“Things can always get worse. Like a fight, or the cops—” And as if to punctuate his remark, there’s a sudden violent crack and boom.

“What the …?” She leaps off Joshua’s lap and is at the window at once. She’d heard a sound like that once, a long time ago. It had been at their old house, in the middle of a storm. Lightning had struck a tree.

Joshua hovers over her shoulder.

Outside, it’s dark as a graveyard. She can hear kids cawing and whooping. Feet pounding. Fun or fear? She can’t tell. “What was
that
?” She squints. Her vision adjusting to the lumpy gleaming shapes of cars parked all along the road. A view of the neighbor’s lighted tennis court.

Not a tree.

Not a car.

The sound had been hollow and thudding.

“What was it?” she murmurs.

She turns at the sound of Joshua opening her bedroom door. She hadn’t heard him cross the room.

“Where are you going?”

“Who cares? We’ve got a brunch date, right?” His tone is snide. “Is brunch what you and Xander Heilprin did today? Among other activities?”

“Joshua, stop.” She quickly casts another look out the window before she turns to face him. “Where are you going?” she repeats. Her buzzing pocket stops her cold.

Is it Xander? Another text, another goodbye? She stares at Joshua, paralyzed, as her brain cartwheels.

Downstairs, doors are slamming. Feet pound.

“Pass the French toast, Xander?” Joshua’s smile is only a bend in his lips. “Are you gonna finish your bacon and eggs, Xander?”

“Look, I can eat,” she says.
It’s halfway true if you say it out loud
. “I can eat,” she says again. If you say it twice, is it completely true?

They are staring at each other, listening to noise below. Joshua breaks the silence. “Brandon.”

“What?”

“The whale. It must have fallen off the porch. Might have taken some of the porch with it.”

The whale. The porch. Thousands of dollars. Massive destruction and she did nothing to prevent it. She’s just allowing Camelot to crash down around her ears.

“Actually,” Joshua continues, “I bet Xander’s more of a fiber cereal guy before he goes off to save the world. Am I right?”

“It’s just a thing that happened,” she says quietly. “It wasn’t like I aimed this in your direction.”

“We both knew you planned to friend-zone me, Alex.”

“Not true. What did I ever say to you that would have made you think that?”

“Let’s just say I never felt very welcome in your future. You never really talked about the long-distance thing.”

“You never want to talk about your future, either, Joshua. After you failed economics class—”

“Don’t say ‘failed.’ ” On the last word, Joshua slams his fist square into the middle of her door. The shudder of the impact gives him what he wants—the rage that the rest of him refuses to express.

She cups her elbows, squeezes herself inward. Doesn’t acknowledge that he scares her.

“Listen. Like you said,” she says softly. “Tonight is such a bad time to—”