If He Had Been with Me (22 page)

We are on his bed. I am curled up near the headboard with my laptop on my knees; Finny is stretched out on his stomach, finishing off a boss in his video game.

I just finished a chapter and my head feels light. I watch his character throwing bombs at the dragon. It’s just past noon, but I’m not hungry; we stay out late now and sleep past breakfast time. We spend most of the time driving around with the windows down. We go to drive-thrus after midnight and wander the aisles of twenty-four-hour grocery stores. Last night we sat on the hood of his red car and ate sugary candies with neon food coloring and artificial flavors. Finny left the radio on and we leaned back against the windshield, but the streetlights were too bright to see stars.

I close my laptop and Finny must hear the click because he says, “You done?” Another bomb explodes on the screen and his controller buzzes.

“For now,” I say. I lay my computer next to me and stretch my arms above my head. I watch him win the fight and save his game.

“So when do I get to read it?” Finny says.

“Never,” I say without thinking. “Sorry,” I add.

“Why not?” He sounds surprised. He isn’t looking at me; he’s playing his game again.

“Because it’s private,” I say, “and it isn’t very good yet.”

“Can I read it when it’s good?”

I shrug even though he can’t see. “Probably not.”

“Why are you writing it if nobody can read it?”

“I didn’t say nobody could read it.”

Finny looks at me over his shoulder. “So it’s me then?” he says. On the screen, his character runs in a circle and hits a tree repeatedly.

“No,” I say. I scoot forward on the bed and stretch out on my stomach next to him. “It’s—it’s that I know you. And if you read it you might think ‘Oh, this character is that person’ or ‘she’s talking about that time here,’ but it’s not really like that.”

“What if I promise not to read into it? No analysis at all. I swear on my mother’s grave.”

“I’m going to tell her you said that.”

“Come on, please?”

I shrug and roll my eyes. “Maybe.”

“Ha.” Finny turns away and looks back at the TV. He holds up his controller and begins pushing buttons. “That means yes.”

“It does not!”

“Does too.”

“Does not!” I punch him in the shoulder and he laughs.

“So what do you want to do now?” he says. I shrug again, but I’m smiling.

“This,” I say.

Finny answers his phone after one ring.

“Hello?”

“Hey, I’m home.”

“You still outside?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“Stay there,” he says. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

When he comes out the back door, I am sitting on the hood of his car. It’s almost midnight. The crickets are chirping and the air is still warm.

“So how was it?” he says.

“It was okay,” I say. “I think she was acting as a representative of everyone else.” I just got back from seeing a movie with Brooke. During the half-hour car ride home, she told me that everyone understood that I was mad at Jamie and Sasha, but that everyone still wanted to be my friend, that I was still part of the group.

“She said that nobody wants to take sides,” I say.

“I figured it would be something like that,” Finny says, “You hungry?”

“Yeah.”

On our way to the all-night drive-thru, I take off my sandals and hang my feet out the window. Finny doesn’t mind.

“Do you feel any better?” he asks. I shrug.

“Kinda. I mean, it’s nice that I can still be friends with the rest of them, but—” I shrug again and sigh. “I dunno. How can we still be a group after this? And we’re all going to different schools…” My voice trails off. A minute passes in silence. We pull up to the bright lights of the fast food restaurant.

“Is it that easy for you to drop friends?” Finny says.

“No,” I say. I pull my feet inside and lay my cheek on my knee. “I really did think we would be friends forever,” I say.

“Are you talking about us or them?” Finny says. He is looking out the window.

“Can I take your order?” The box squeals at us.

“Hold on,” Finny says, and then turning to me, “do you know what you want?”

My heart is still beating fast from his other question. We haven’t spoken about being friends again. The Mothers are beside themselves, but they know better than to mention it. Just before Brooke dropped me off, she asked me if I was with Finny now. I said that he was still with Sylvie and got out of the car.

“Just get me a number one. With a Coke,” I say. He orders for us and pays. After he pulls forward and we are waiting on our food, I say, “Them, just then. But I thought that about you too.” He doesn’t answer me. He hands me the bag and pulls the car around. When we’re back on the road, he says, “Sylvie’s in Italy now.”

“Oh?” I say.

“She was in and out of art museums all week.”

“I can’t really imagine Sylvie in an art museum,” I say. Finny glances at me. He frowns at the road.

“You know, you wouldn’t think she was so bad if you gave her a chance.”

“Who said I thought she was ‘so bad’?” I say. “I just don’t see her as an art museum kinda person.”

“From you, that is a bad thing,” he says. “And you don’t really know her,”

“Okay. So I don’t really know her,” I say. “She doesn’t really know me either, and God knows what she thinks about me.”

“Mostly she’s scared of you,” Finny says.

“Scared of me?”

“You intimidate her.”

“Whatever.”

“I’m serious,” he says.

“Okay. You’re serious,” I say. We sit in silence the rest of the drive home. After Finny pulls into the driveway, he turns off the engine and we stare straight ahead.

“Are you mad at me?” I ask.

“No, I’m not,” he says. I can’t think of anything else to say, at least not anything I should say, so I don’t. I take out the food and hand Finny’s to him. “Thanks,” he says. His profile is handsome in the dashboard light. I want so much to lean over and lay my head on his shoulder. When we were kids, I could have.

“I don’t hate Sylvie,” I say finally. “I don’t know her, you’re right. But that means I don’t know if she’d like museums.” Finny shrugs, but it isn’t a dismissive shrug. “I bet if she knew me she’d see what a dork I am and wouldn’t be scared of me,” I offer. “Does she know that I got dumped by Jamie?”

“I told her,” he says. He looks over at me. “I didn’t give her any details though,” he adds quickly.

“Does she know about us?” I ask. Finny shakes his head and looks out the window again. “What are you going to tell her when she comes home?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he says, and then, “you’re not a dork.” I eat my burger before it gets cold. Finny eats all of his fries first, then starts on the burger. I leave half of mine behind and wrap it in the foil before dropping it back in the bag. Curled up in my seat facing Finny, I watch him eat in the half light. The radio is playing quietly. It would be kinda romantic if we were together.

“So,” Finny says, “what are we doing tomorrow?”

We are sitting together by the lake. The sky is slowly darkening and the fireworks will start soon. Mom and Aunt Angelina are nearby, but they are not sitting with us. They leave us alone these days, and I pretend not to know why and Finny doesn’t seem to notice at all.

“They should start now,” I say. “It’s dark enough.”

“They will soon,” he says, and then we hear a pop, and the sky lights up.

I lean back, so that when I look up I can watch him and pretend to look at the sky. His chin is tilted up, a smile curling the corners of his mouth gently up. He reaches up and brushes a lock of his hair out of his eyes.

At moments like this, it amazes me that the words don’t come tumbling out of me. I can feel them in my mouth like three smooth pebbles. I can feel them there when I swallow and when I breathe.

His eyebrows raise slightly and I wonder what it was in the sky that surprised him, but I cannot look away.

Is it possible that the last six years were real, and not a dream as they feel to me now? I think that if I concentrated, I could make those memories vanish. I could close my eyes and believe that we have never been apart. I could invent a new past to remember.

I see myself sitting on the bleachers at Finny’s soccer game. He looks up at me and I wave. We are fifteen.

“Autumn?” I open my eyes and he is looking at me. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I say. “I’m just tired.”

“Do you want to go?”

“No, no.” I smile at him. “Don’t worry about me.” I rip my eyes from him and look at the sky.

When Finny’s car pulls up, I am sitting on the front steps waiting. They are early. Finny honks and I stand up. It is night, and it is warm. I run down the long lawn to him.

When I get there, Jack is getting out of the front seat and moving to the back.

“Oh no,” I say. “I can sit in the back.”

“No,” he says, “ladies up front.” It’s our longest exchange ever. I sit down and close the door.

“Jack likes to pretend that he’s a gentleman,” Finny says. “But don’t be fooled.”

“Finn, how am I supposed to make a good impression on your friend if you talk about me like that?”

“I didn’t say you had to like each other,” he says. What he did say—to me at least—was it bothered him that his two best friends hardly knew each other. He just wanted us to go to one movie together, just one. I had been ready to protest, but when he called me his best friend, I was too pleased. I’m not sure if Jack was hard to convince.

“Let’s get along just to spite him,” I say. Jack laughs. This might be okay.

I don’t want to see the spy movie or the comedy with crude humor, so the boys convince me to agree to the horror flick. In the first fifteen minutes, the girl opens a closet door and a dressmaker’s dummy falls out. I scream and cover my eyes. Jack and Finny both laugh, but Finny also asks if I’m going to be okay. I nod and hunch down in my seat.

An hour later, we are at the climax. The girl opens another door and sees her boyfriend hanging from the rafters. She screams and the camera zooms in for a close-up of his face. I flinch and turn my head to the side. My forehead nudges into Finny’s shoulder. More screams, and I flinch again.

“You okay?” Finny whispers. I nod, and my forehead rubs against him. He pulls away from me. Mortified, I quickly lift my head and look back at the screen.

And I feel Finny put his arm around my shoulders.

Kind of. Mostly it’s just on the back of my seat and sort of touching me, just barely. But his fingers are definitely on my shoulder and at the next scary part he gently presses them into me.

“I’m okay,” I whisper. Jack looks over at us.

Afterward, as Finny is starting the car, Jack says, “Hey, do you guys want to get drunk tonight?”

“Yes,” I say. Finny shrugs.

“If you guys want to,” he says.

“Where would we get it from though?” I ask.

“My brother works at the liquor store on Rock Road,” Jack says.

“Are you serious?” I look at Finny. “Is that where you always got your stuff?”

“Yeah,” Jack says. Finny shrugs again.

***

We sit in the parked car with the windows down and get drunk behind our mothers’ houses. The boys got a liter of Coke, poured a third out, and filled the rest up with whiskey. They are sitting in the front passing it back and forth. I’m stretched out in the backseat with a six-pack of something pink with tropical flowers on it. Finny picked it out for me. He said I would like it. I wonder if it’s what Sylvie drinks.

“You’re going to have to stay at my place tonight,” Finny says. “I’m not going to be able to drive you home.” Jack takes a long swig and passes the bottle.

“You sure won’t,” he says. I giggle and watch Finny take a huge gulp. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and somehow makes the gesture masculine and elegant.

“So, Autumn,” Jack says. He turns around in his seat to face me. “Why did you break up with Jamie? ’Cause everybody thought you two were gonna get married and stuff.”

“Yeah, so did I,” I say. “But he cheated on me with Sasha, so that’s not happening.”

“Seriously?” Jack says. He makes a face and holds his hands up. “She’s not even—um—”

“Half as pretty as me? Yeah, I know.”

Jack laughs out loud. “Well, you’re modest.”

“But it’s true.”

“Yeah, but you’re not supposed to know that.”

“Why?” I say. I sit up and lean forward so my head is between their seats. “Why should I have to pretend that I don’t know I’m pretty when everybody’s telling me all the time?”

“You’re just not supposed to know.”

“While you two argue, I’m gonna go to the bathroom,” Finny says. He gets out and closes the door. Jack watches him go.

“I mean, it’s not like I think I’m a better person or something,” I say. “It’s not even an accomplishment. It’s just the way I look.” I hear the screen door close behind Finny.

“Listen,” Jack says. He looks back at me. “Can you honestly tell me you’re not just screwing with his head?”

“What?” I say.

“I’m serious. Finn’s my friend, you know?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“I was there back in middle school,” Jack says.

“Okay,” I say. “So was I.”

Jack sighs. “If you’re not serious about this, then don’t mess with his head. He and Sylvie aren’t always good together, but it’s better than him obsessing over you again.”

“He—what?” I feel as if Jack had turned around and punched me in the stomach. I swallow even though my mouth is suddenly dry. Finny hadn’t kissed me just because he wanted to see what it was like to kiss a girl; he really had liked me. Even though we are alone, I lower my voice. “Has he said something to you?”

“No. He says you guys are just friends. But he said that last time and it still took him forever to get over you,” Jack says. I look down, afraid that I’m going to cry from disappointment. For one moment, my heart had leaped into my throat. “I didn’t mean to upset you or whatever,” Jack says.

“No,” I say, “it’s just not like that with me an’ Finny.” I swallow again and take a breath. Jack picks up the jug again.

“That’s weird,” he says.

“What is?” I say.

“You call him ‘Finny,’ like his mother does.” I smile a little.

“Well,” I say, “I’ve known him for almost as long as his mother has.”

“I know.”

“And that’s what everyone used to call him. The Mothers sometimes call him Phineas, though, and I only call him that when I’m mad at him.” I hear the back door open, and we both turn and look. Finny walks down the back steps. He’s carrying a bag of pretzels.

“Don’t say anything, okay?” Jack says.

“Of course not. And it’s not like that with us anyway.”