First There Was Forever (25 page)

M
om and Dad and I ate on the back porch that night. I sat where I always sit, with my back to the house, facing the ocean. The sunset was fluorescent and fake-looking.

Even though Mom made roast chicken, one of my favorite things in the world, I was too preoccupied to eat. My mind kept circling from Meredith, to Nate, to Hailey, and then back to Meredith again. Even though Meredith had let me off the hook today, I didn’t actually feel better. Her words from Friday night kept coming back to me.

I wished I could say she was wrong about me being a user. But hadn’t I been using her house to meet up with Nate? I mean, I’d had sex in her dad’s bed. That thought, that one action, which had felt so natural at the time, suddenly seemed filthy and selfish and the kind of thing only really bad kids did. I had thought I would lose my virginity at college, or in my own room. Not in someone’s parent’s bed. It was just sleazy.

“Lima?” Mom said. “Earth to Lima!”

My eyes snapped from the gooey sunset to Mom’s face.

“Daddy can clear the table,” she said. “Stay here. I want to talk to you.”

We sat there quietly while Dad took our plates away. I felt passive, pliable, patient. I was no longer afraid of getting in trouble. No lecture from her could be as painful as this self-loathing I was feeling.

“Where are you?” she asked. “What are you thinking about?”

“I saw Meredith at school today. I tried to talk to her about what happened, and she just, like, blew me off,” I said. “She thinks we made a big deal out of nothing. I feel like, she’s just, like, over me.”

“You did the absolute, one hundred percent right thing,” Mom said without hesitating.

“But what else is going on?” she asked.

I stiffened. “Nothing.”

Mom closed her eyes for a second and pressed her forefinger and thumb into her forehead hard. I had only ever seen her do that when she was really mad about something.

“Mom? Are you okay?” I asked.

“It hurts me that you’re being so secretive about this boy,” she said.

My heart caved in.

“Mommy, what—what boy?” I asked.

“Give me a little credit, Lima. I can tell there’s a guy.”

I felt cagey. I was tempted just to start spewing lies, denying everything, but something about Mom’s expression stopped me.

I didn’t know where to start, so I just blurted out the only thing I could think of.

“His name is Nate,” I said.

I started talking. I told Mom about how Nate and I started studying together in the fall, and how I never meant to go behind Hailey’s back. I thought Nate and I were just friends, and by the time I realized it was more than that it felt too late to tell her. Once I started talking, I didn’t want to stop. It felt so good to share that a small part of me I even wanted to tell her that we had sex. But I didn’t. And not just because I didn’t want her to judge me. I actually felt protective of Nate. I didn’t want her to think he was bad.

Mom listened, nodding and frowning, her brow permanently furrowed.

Finally she said, “You know, it’s okay that you and Hailey like the same boy. That happens all the time. My best friend in high school, Ashley Petersen, she and I both had crushes on Trey Krieger. And he ended up going out with Ashley. I was devastated.”

Mom had a nostalgic gleam in her eye, and it actually made me kind of angry. Mom liked Trey and he ended up going out with Ashley? It didn’t match the intensity of what had been going on between me and Nate. I felt myself clamming up again.

“You don’t understand. It’s not like that. Nate is . . . ” I searched for the word. “Real.”

“Listen, Lima,” Mom said. Her tone had turned serious. “You should talk to Hailey.”

“I know I should,” I said. “But I’m scared.”

“We’re a lot alike, you and me,” she said. “I also have a big capacity to hold things in.”

“Do I hold things in?” I asked.

She smiled. “I think so.”

“Hailey is going to kill me. You don’t understand. She is obsessed with Nate. She talks about him constantly.”

“What do you do when Hailey talks about him?” Mom asked, looking concerned.

“I don’t say anything,” I said.
I encourage her
. But I couldn’t tell Mom that. It was too twisted and shameful.

“Tell her before she finds out,” Mom said. “Look, you were so afraid to tell me about him, and it hasn’t been that horrible, has it? I’ve done okay, right?”

I knew Mom was right that I had to tell Hailey before she found out. But telling Hailey was going to be so much more complicated than telling Mom. I was scared she would hate me and judge me. I was terrified Hailey was going to find a way to take everything good I had with Nate and smash it.

M
om and I rolled down the windows on the way to school the following Thursday and let the hot air blow through the car. It was the last week of May, but it felt like summer. The mornings had grown warm enough to sit outside without a sweater; the city smelled like a mixture of cement and salt. The sky seemed to have been drained of its springtime moisture and turned back into a hard, cobalt blue ceiling.

I’d spent the two weeks after the Lily episode grounded. The most social thing I had done since that night was talk on the phone to Nate for an hour on Sunday. I had to call him from the landline downstairs while Mom and Dad were at a movie because they had confiscated my cell phone as part of my punishment.

Nate and I didn’t talk about any real topics, like what had happened to Lily, or Meredith, or what we were going to do with our summers. Instead, we talked about random stuff. We discovered a shared preference for winter Olympics over summer Olympics, and then I tried to explain to him why
Top Chef
was better than the other reality TV on the air. We talked for so long that the phone got hot in my hand.

Talking to Nate was insanely fun even though what we talked about was mostly meaningless. Just picturing him at his house, holding his cell phone to his ear and thinking about me, made me feel close to him.

“So, Hailey called the house phone last night to talk to me,” Mom said.

I had sunk so far down into thoughts of Nate, I had almost forgotten I was in the car with Mom.

“She did?” I asked. “That’s so weird. Why?”

“It was sweet of her, actually,” Mom said. “She told me about the Memorial Day party she’s having this weekend.”

“She told
you
about it?” I was shocked. Hailey had been obsessing about her party for over a week. I couldn’t go because I was still grounded, so I hadn’t been paying much attention when she brought it up. “Wow, she is literally telling everyone.”

“She told me because she said she knew you were grounded and she really wants you to come,” Mom continued. “She wanted to see if we’d let you.”

“You’re joking,” I said flatly.

“So Daddy and I discussed it and we said yes. You can go,” Mom said with a conspiratorial smile, as if this was supposed to be good news.

The truth was, I had been glad to miss it. Hailey’s party was the last place in the world I wanted to be and now I had no excuse not to go.

“Great, Mommy, thank you,” I said, trying to sound happy.

“Have you talked to her yet?” Mom asked. “About you know who?”

“I haven’t had time,” I said quickly. “But I’m going to, like, today.”

T
he day of Hailey’s party, we rode the bus home from school, like the old days. We didn’t talk very much but Hailey’s excitement was electric. Even though she wasn’t saying a lot, she was buzzing with energy.

When we got to her apartment, we set up right away. We strung white Christmas lights around the living room, fastening them to the wall with duct tape and thumbtacks. They were sloppy and sagging, threatening to crumple to the floor at any second.

“Atmosphere,” Hailey explained.

When Hailey took a break, I followed her onto the balcony. Sounds of traffic and black dust from car exhausts blew up from Venice Boulevard and seemed to crawl all over my skin. I missed Meredith’s house. The magical twilight of the Hollywood Hills.

“Are you okay?” Hailey asked.

I didn’t answer because suddenly I couldn’t speak. I felt as if I might cry.

“What’s wrong?” she pressed.

Everything.

“Nothing,” I lied.

“I’m not trying to be mean or pry or whatever,” she continued in a gentle voice, “but you’re acting really weird.”

“It’s a weird day,” I finally said.

She shook her head. “It’s not just tonight. It’s been lately. For, like, weeks. Are you mad at me or something?”

I felt heat rising to my face. Guilt. Lies formed on my lips, but I couldn’t speak. I opened my mouth.

“Hailey, I don’t think you should go for Nate anymore,” I blurted.

Hailey bristled. “What?”

“I just”—I was trying to ease into the confession—“don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Look, Lima,” Hailey said defensively. “I get that you’re sick of hearing about him. So is Skyler. So I should probably shut up about it. I’ll just keep it to myself.”

“It’s not that. I just think it seems kind of frustrating for you. I think you would be happier if you didn’t worry about him.”

Hailey looked away from me and sighed. She faced out toward the city, rested her elbows on the banister and leaned out and over the ledge, thinking.

“The thing is,” she said softly after a minute, “I could stop talking about him with you if you want. And I could even stop strategizing how to get him or whatever. But I can’t stop liking him. It’s not like a button I can push and make the crush go away. Trust me. I’ve tried that many, many times.”

I was being choked. She really liked him. She couldn’t stop herself. And I knew how she felt, because it was how I felt, too. There was nothing I could say to make the truth hurt less.

“I’m gonna get dressed,” Hailey said to me. “This conversation is bumming me out.”

She walked back inside, abruptly, leaving me on her balcony. I waited outside for another minute, but I felt weird being alone. Her sudden absence had a presence, like a fossil, or a footprint in the sand.

T
ons of random people from school came to the party. Even Emily showed up with her older brother. The apartment was packed. The music was loud.

I didn’t see Nate arrive, but he found me where I was talking to Emily and came over to say hi.

“How’s it going?” he asked us, sipping a beer.

“It’s okay,” Emily said in her usual straightforward tone. “I’m really happy it’s a three-day weekend.”

I liked seeing Nate and Emily talk. There was something sweet about it. I looked up admiringly at Nate, and he looked back at me and I felt that invisible string tugging at my chest. My mind flashed on to us having sex. Is that what it’s like when you’ve had sex with someone? Like you can never look at them again without getting flashes to this dark, shapeless moment you shared?

Emily turned to me and launched into a story about her cousins who were visiting from out of town. I don’t think Nate could hear Emily over the noise in the room, and he eventually drifted away and dissolved into the crowd. I was sad to see him go, but sort of relieved, too. Talking to him in public scared me. I didn’t trust myself not to reach out and kiss him.

The crowd thickened and thinned as groups came and left. Hailey opened the windows so everyone could smoke inside. The apartment thumped. People kept switching the music in the middle of songs, trying to find the one that would get the most people dancing at once.

After a while, I went into Hailey’s room to get a sweatshirt and found Nate sitting on the edge of Hailey’s bed alone, talking on his phone. When he saw me he gave me an acknowledging nod.

“I gotta go,” he said into phone. “Me too.”

“Who was that?” I asked.

Nate snapped his phone shut. “My sister. She just drunk dialed me from school to complain about her roommate. She’s so crazy.”

Without thinking about what I was doing, I sat down next to him and let my head fall onto his shoulder.

“You having fun?” he asked, placing his hand on my thigh.

I giggled and shrugged. “Eh.”

Just then the door opened. I jerked upright, and pushed Nate’s hand away as Hailey tumbled in. She froze when she saw us.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

I looked at Hailey. The room was spinning.

“Just tell her,” Nate said to me softly. “It’s okay.”

“I can’t,” I stammered.

Nate stood. He looked at me, his expression a mix of pity and disappointment. Then he crossed the room and left.

When he was gone, Hailey moved her eyes slowly to mine. “Tell me what?”

“Hailey,” I began. “It’s—there’s, well—I, I mean—we . . .”

My voice trailed off. The stretch of room between us seemed to grow wide and dark as a ravine. As soon as I told her the truth, it would swallow me up entirely.

“I’m sorry, Hailey, I’ve wanted to tell you, I just—” I tried again and stopped. I had no idea what to say. I wished I had memorized a statement, something concise and simple. Instead, I was going to have to go into the whole long story. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I would never be able to un-tell her.

Hailey rolled her eyes and scoffed. “Don’t be so dramatic. Just spit it out, Li.”

“It’s Nate. We, like, like each other.”

“You like
each other?” she repeated.

I nodded.

“That’s ridiculous,” she said, and she started laughing. “He doesn’t like
you. If it’s anything, he probably just wants to fuck you.”

I was stunned. I thought about Nate and about what had happened between us over the last year. I thought about the conversations and the silences and the super-gentle way he touched my hair. Hailey was wrong. Nate liked me for real.

“So that’s it?” she egged me on, staring. “You like Nate. Big surprise. I could have told you that. Everyone likes Nate.”

The volume of the music in the living room spiked, and people shrieked excitedly as a song I vaguely recognized came on. It was exactly the kind of thing Hailey would have wanted to dance to, but she didn’t even seem to hear it.

“So how do you know that Nate like-likes
you? Did he, like, try and make out with you when he was drunk at the Hayeses’ or something?”

“It’s not like that,” I said.

“Have you kissed him?” she asked.

I nodded.

Hailey’s face fell, all the color draining from it like air going out of a balloon. When she spoke, her voice was tiny. “When?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t know?” she asked, her bottom lip trembling. “Last weekend? Today? Just now?”

“Hailey, stop,” I pleaded. I stepped toward her and gently touched her shoulder. She pulled away from my hand like it burned. Until that moment, I almost wasn’t sure if she was mad or upset or what. But when I touched her, it was as if I literally felt her pain.

“Don’t,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” I said, my heart pounding. “Hailey, I’m so sorry.”

“For what?”
she said, shaking. “You haven’t even told me what happened yet.”

“We’re sort of together,” I said. “We have been for a while.”

Hailey dropped back, leaning into the edge of her desk for support like she was too weak to stand.

“I’m so sorry,” I choked. Hot tears stung my eyes. “I love you so much.”

“Since when?
”
she asked.

I was too dizzy with anxiety to focus on what had happened with Nate. “We kissed for the first time like maybe a week or two before my birthday.”

“Your birthday? In March? That was so long ago,” Hailey said. Her tears were streaming fast now, cutting dark tracks through her makeup. Hailey never let her makeup get messed up, and for some reason the fact that she all of a sudden didn’t seem to care wrenched at my heart.

“I know,” I whispered.

Something thudded in the other room. A lamp getting knocked over? A picture falling off the wall? Hailey ignored it. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

“Why have you been telling me to go for him?” she asked. “Are you evil? Seriously. Are you pure evil? Who are you?”

“I don’t know,” I said, uncertain. “I wanted to tell you about us but I was scared. I’ve hated having a secret from you, you have to believe me.”

Hailey shook her head. “I don’t have to believe you, Lima. I don’t have to do anything for you ever again.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” I stammered. “I never wanted to hurt you. But it’s so complicated. Nate’s not your boyfriend.”

“He’s not my boyfriend, fine,” she hissed, “but then why keep it a secret? Don’t even pretend that you don’t know how fucked up this is.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m a terrible person. But I’m telling you now so that we can start to make it better.”

Hailey’s face contorted with a fresh wave of pain. She reached for a tissue off of her desk, and blew her nose. For a moment, she stood there silently crying, her shoulders shaking.

“Hailey,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”

“I can’t even look at you,” she said softly. “Just leave.”

“Hailey, I want to talk about it; I want to make it better,” I pleaded.

“Seriously, Lima. I don’t want to talk to you,” she said. “I don’t want to be around you. Ever again.”

“What can I say that will make it better?” I begged.

“Nothing. I have no idea who you are. I thought you were my best friend,” she began, but her voice caught on the word
friend
and she let out a ragged sob. “And it turns out you’re a total stranger.”

“Hailey, I’m so sorry,” I sobbed.

“I seriously can’t look at you,” she said again. “Just go.”

I looked at Hailey’s door and my gaze snagged on a squiggly-looking tree that I’d drawn on the back of the door in green marker. I wondered if I would ever see it again.

“Now.” Hailey hissed. “Leave.”

I wrenched open the door, stumbled through the party and then down the stairs of Hailey’s apartment building, blinded by tears, my sobs echoing in the cold stairwell. When I finally got outside, I pulled out my cell phone to call a taxi, but my hands were shaking so badly the phone clattered to the sidewalk and bounced away from me.

I was crouched down, cursing and crying and crawling to find my phone in the dark, when I heard Nate’s voice.

“Hey,” he said.

I looked up at him for second and then back down at the dark pavement.

“I know what you’re thinking,” I said. “And I know I should have told her sooner. I’ve told her now. Please don’t make me feel worse than I already do.”

“That’s not what I’m thinking,” Nate said softly. Then he bent down and picked up my phone. “Is this what you’re looking for?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Let me take you home,” he said.

• • •

Nate and I didn’t speak or listen to music in the car. I tucked my knees up to my chest and stared out the window. The only motions I made were to wipe tears off my face. I wasn’t even sure if I was breathing.

The city was indifferent. Sepulveda Boulevard was abandoned this late at night. It was all brown and black and mustard yellow in the streetlamps. The only sound we could hear was the gentle, patient ticktock of Nate’s turn signal while we waited at a light.

“Let’s go get something to eat,” Nate said. “I’m starving.”

I wasn’t even a little bit hungry, but I nodded anyway. I didn’t have the energy to argue. Besides, where could I go? Upsetting thoughts would chase me down anywhere I went.

“I love this one,” Nate said as we walked into a glowing twenty-four-hour Taco Bell on Venice Boulevard. Synthetic music sprang from the speakers. Fluorescent lights paneled the ceiling, making the whole room feel brighter than daylight.

“Want anything?” Nate asked.

I shook my head no and wordlessly took a seat.

The fight with Hailey had been replaying in my head this whole time. It was more real, more vivid, than reality. Her words were jumbled and I couldn’t straighten them out, but they were all there, surfacing and resurfacing.
I thought you were my best friend and it turns out you’re a total stranger.

“Hey,” Nate said, sitting across from me with a tray of food.

He pushed a blue slushie across the table toward me. It had a fat red straw sticking out of it.

“That’s for you,” he said. “I know you like blue slushies.”

“You remember that?” I asked. It was the first time I’d spoken since we left Hailey’s.

He nodded. And then he ate his burrito in silence. When he was done, he scrunched the paper into a waxy ball and threw it four feet into the trash can. Even though he was finished eating, he gave no sign that he was ready to leave.

I glanced outside. A cop car with its siren light on zipped past us.

“You okay?” Nate finally asked. “Want to talk about it?”

“She hates me,” I said.

I took a sip of the blue slushie, and it was so sour I practically spit it out.

“That’s disgusting,” I said. “It’s gone bad or something.”

“Do you want something else instead?” he asked. “A Coke?”

“No. We should tell the people who work here that there’s something wrong with the formula.”

My mind flashed again on Hailey’s distorted, crying face, and I felt nauseous. Her pain had been so white-hot, I could see it. She didn’t just look upset or mad, like I expected. She looked injured.

“The formula?” Nate replied, cracking a smile. “This is straight from nature, Lima. This is a native blue fruit that grows on trees in Mexico.”

Nate was trying so hard to make me feel better.

This observation grew in me, changed shape. It seemed profound. Even though nothing could make me feel better about Hailey, I wanted Nate to think I was feeling better. I wanted to make him happy by showing him that he was making me happy. I realized that our own separate happinesses had grown intertwined.

I took another sip of the blue slushie and said, with a fake newscaster’s voice, “Yes. This is definitely the blue slushie plant of the coastal region of Mexico. It is commonly used for candy and soda, but it also has ancient medicinal purposes.” It was a stupid joke, and I was terrible at doing voices, but I saw a smile flash somewhere behind Nate’s eyes.

“Right. Some tribes have been known to smoke it for its hallucinogenic properties,” he said. He spoke in the same fake official tone of voice I had used.

“Those people are generally never heard from again,” I added, pretending to hold a microphone this time.

“Or actually, they just materialize at Walker and Meredith’s house,” Nate said, dropping the fake voice. “With a flask of whiskey and pack of French cigarettes.”

It was a mean joke, and for a second I bristled. But then I started to laugh. And not a little bit, but a lot. It was the first time we had joked about Meredith and Walker and all the bad stuff that had gone on there. It was weird how something that had felt so heavy and filthy could be looked at from another angle and all of a sudden seem funny.

“You like that joke?” Nate said, smirking a little, watching me laugh.

I nodded, still laughing. “I don’t know why that’s so funny.”

Nate wasn’t laughing, but he looked really happy. He slumped back in his seat, finally relaxing a little.

When my laughter died down, I let out a sigh. The fit of laughing seemed to have relieved a little bit of my tension.