Lingering Touch - A Story of Young Love (15 page)

I hugged him tight on the way in and glanced around nervously for his mother.

"Where did you go this morning? I woke up and you were gone." I had left because his mother asked me to, then she stayed with him on the couch. She must have left before he woke up…

"Um, I just didn't want to intrude…" I shrugged. Why wasn't I telling him about his mother? Well, I guessed if she hadn't told him, it wasn't my place to, either.

"Oh but now you don't care?" He snarked.

"Ok, fine. I left because your mother asked me to, while you were asleep. Happy?"

He didn't say anything for a minute. "My mother… talked to you? As in, she actually said… words to you?"

"Um, yeah. She did…" His face was blank. He stared blankly ahead, I waved my hand in front of his face. "Hey, uh, she only said a few words, she just asked who I was and then told me to get out. When I left she was sitting by you."

"Yeah, ok, but… she actually said those things to you?" He slumped on the couch and held his face in his hands.

I sat beside him, taking his hand in mine. "What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing, I guess. I just… can't believe she actually…" Trevor trailed off and looked at me with wide eyes. "Don't you get what that means? That means she's… and I thought… Wow. Ari, you actually got her to talk!" He turned to me and grabbed both my hands. A grin stretched across his face, making him seem a lot younger than he had a few seconds ago.

"Yeah, well, I don't think she was very happy about it." I frowned, had she really been so catatonic that he would act like this when she spoke to me?

"I don't really care right now, but Ari, she talked to you! The last time I heard her voice must have been… oh, I don't even know. Too long. Let's go up there right now, I bet she will talk to you again!" He pulled me up and raced to the stairs, dragging me along like a rag doll. Copper followed behind, yipping excitedly.

"I don't know that this is a good idea, I mean, she didn't seem to like me at all!" I groaned, but he pulled me toward her door anyway.

"Ariana, hey, did you hear what I said?" Austin asked, snapping me out of my trance.

"Oh, I'm sorry, what?"

"I asked if you wanted any ice cream?"

The same girl, Lilly Wess, was still operating the little ice cream vendor Trevor and I went to together not too long ago. I shook my head and smiled at him, taking his hand and steering him away.

"Uh, ok. So anyway, then I was gonna go talk to her and she was all…"

Trevor pushed open the door gently, revealing the same picture I had seen the first time I was here. She sat unmoving on the bed, watching the static-y TV but without really seeing anything. Her glazed-over eyes glanced over at us and back to the TV, and back to us, or more specifically, me.

"I thought I told you to leave," she whispered, narrowing her eyes.

Trevor squeezed my hand tighter, and smiled like a five year-old on the 4th of July. "Mom, this is my friend, Ariana Luke, you met her before, remember?" he took a tentative step forward, "She's going to stay here for the night, because she can't go home right now. Don't worry, we won't do anything."

Miss Rushton got up, and walked slowly to us on tiny legs. She stopped 2 feet away from me and pointed a knobby finger at my face. "You be good to my son, do you hear me? Don't you ever do anything to hurt him, or I will… I will…"

"Mom…" Trevor whispered, and hugged her, pulling her away from me carefully. Tears streamed down his face as he held her tight, and she hugged him back, closing her eyes.

I shouldn't be here, I thought. I should leave. And so I did, shutting the door quietly behind me. I picked up Copper and carried her downstairs, plopping her on the couch while I picked out a movie from the collection in the cabinet under the TV.

I put in
A Walk to Remember
and curled up on the couch with Copper. After a few minutes Trevor came down, still smiling broadly. His grin faded when he saw the tears on my face.

"Ari, what's wrong?" he asked and rushed to sit beside me, pulling me into a hug and laying down so that I was laying with him. It didn't feel weird, it felt… right.

"Nothing, it's just this movie always makes me cry," I lied, and smiled up at him before laying back down and hiding the fresh tears springing in my eyes.

Austin held me back, pulling me into a hug.

"What the?" I muttered into his shoulder. The flash of a camera snapped behind me and Austin let me go. "Why did you?..."

A little girl, probably still in middle school, held a camera to us so we could see the picture she just took of us. It looked natural enough, probably because you wouldn't see my face. Austin complemented her and she thanked him about 50 times and then ran off.

"She needed it for a photography class," he explained. "She asked you if she could and you just kinda nodded. You seem a little distracted, are you ok?"

"Huh? Oh, uh, yeah. I'm – I'm fine, I'm just a little tired I guess…"

I must have been dreaming, I was still laying beside Trevor on the couch. I was curled up to his chest and the movie was still playing, though I was almost positive I had watched it until the end to fall asleep… I definitely had to have been dreaming. And because this was a dream, I had no shame, really, I could say or do whatever I wanted to.

"Hey Trevor, if you could go anywhere, where would you go?" I asked him. For a moment he stayed silent, and I almost thought he was asleep. But this was my dream, he couldn't be asleep in my own dream. Then he shifted slightly and sighed.

"Probably… Japan. I would want to go to Japan."

"Why?"

Again he paused. "I don't really know, I just think it would be cool. What about you?"

"Texas," I whispered.

"Texas? Why Texas? It isn't too far, and you're pretty much filthy rich anyway, so why haven't you already?"

"I guess I just never had the time, or will. I've always wanted to go there because my parents were married there," it was only a dream, so I figured, why not tell him all of this? "That's where they met, too. It was love at first sight. She grew up there, in a small town down south. Then she came up to see the city the same day my father, from Phoenix, went down to see the city. They met at a park and stayed together the rest of their vacations.

"Eventually they lost touch, until one day he went down again with his girlfriend and saw my mother again. Then of course he broke up with his girlfriend to be with mom, and they got married in the nearest chapel. My mother might even be there now… in Texas. I would like to see her again, I haven't seen or heard from her since the day she left six years ago." When I finished I wasn't crying or anything I thought I would be if I ever talked about my mother. I didn't sob and throw myself at dream-Trevor. But it felt weird to say these things out loud, because I never had before, and now here I was, spilling everything to him.

"Your mother left you? And you haven't seen her since then?" He asked, hardly breathing.

"Yeah," I said, and yawned. And then I reached up and kissed him on the cheek. After all, it was only a dream.

"Hey Ari, if you don't want to hang out, you can just say so," Austin said, plopping down at an empty picnic table. He looked tired and defeated.
Crap
, he must have been trying to talk to me and I was so absorbed in my own thoughts
about Trevor
that I completely disregarded him!

"No! Er, no. I'm so sorry babe, I'm all yours now." I smiled sweetly at him and held his hand, playing with his fingers.

"Whose were you before?" He asked hesitantly.

Whose was I? I was lost in my own thoughts, so that would mean "Myself," I said without thinking. Or maybe I was Trevor's, it was him I was thinking about.

"O-kay," He stretched out the word into two syllables.

We sat awkwardly at the table for a few silent minutes. Somehow I kept myself from thinking about Trevor more but every time I looked at Austin, I felt a pang of guilt at how my heart seemed to wish he was Trevor.

"Uh, maybe I should be getting home. I haven't showered in like, 3 days." I laughed and stood, holding out my hand to help him up.

He hesitated to touch me, and nearly flinched as he took my hand. I tell a guy I haven't showered and he will barely touch me. Well, that's not true. Trevor and I were… very intimate, you could say, last night and he never once shied away from my stinky self, and he knew full well I hadn't been home to shower. Even Collin wasn't so anal about me when he saw me after running when I was all sweaty and gross. Although that may have just been because he was thinking about sweaty sex… cue shudder.

I dropped Austin's hand immediately, and grinned sheepishly as I backed away. And then I took off running. Partly because if I really was that gross, I needed a shower ASAP, and partially because I didn't want him to see the tears forming in my eyes.

It didn't matter that we had come here in my car, and if I left alone now he'd be stranded here. I ran to my car on willing legs, and he couldn't keep up. That freshman, Lilly Wess, must have seen me running. She had to have seen Austin running after me, asking what was wrong, slowing to a stop, panting heavily. My vision became blurry with tears.

After driving for a whole two minutes to a little neighborhood just outside of the city, I had to stop and breathe. I held my shaking hands in front of me, watching them shiver and shudder, tears still streaming down my face. Austin was disgusted by me.
Austin was disgusted with me.
My subconscious screamed those five words at me, tearing bits of my already low self esteem with it. Of course he was disgusted with me. I was disgusted with myself. My eyes squeezed shut.
No. I won't do this again.

But within a minute, I was bent over on the side of my car, puking out my guts. Just as I was finishing, I heard a door slam. I didn't think much of it, as I was in a tiny neighborhood where it was unlikely that I knew anyone.

"Ariana? Oh my gosh, Ari!" None other than Amber yelled across the street and started running toward me. There was no point in trying to avoid her. She had already seen me, and likely saw what I had just done. I sat my butt down on the asphalt and wiped my mouth on my arm, sniffling like a little girl. She stopped a few feet away, simply staring.

"What are you looking at?" I asked, hiccupping in the middle. Amber just looked at me, pity filling her eyes, and right then I dropped my head and burst out in fresh tears.

She whipped a napkin out of her purse and cleaned my face and hands, and then helped me up and into the home she had just walked out of. A little lady with the same black hair as Amber's peeked her head around a corner at the sound of the door slamming, and gasped out loud at the sight of us. She hustled out and helped Amber sit me on the couch and wrapped a thick blanket around me. She then scurried into the kitchen and came back out soon after with a plate of chocolate chip cookies and a steaming cup of tea.

I looked up at her with sad eyes, there was no way I could eat that stuff after what I had just done. I mentally scolded myself, I had told myself I wouldn't do that again! And to be so careless to do it in public? First at the school in front of Lilly, and now in front of Amber, my life was going downhill real fast. At the thought, I began sobbing even more, emptying my eye sockets until there was nothing left to cry out. Amber kneeled on the floor in front of me and softly wiped a tear from my face.

"What's wrong honey? Did you do… that, on purpose?" She asked, coming to sit next to me and holding my hand.

I shook my head. I couldn't talk yet. I leaned into her and she hugged me tight. It was then I realized her hair wasn't done, she had no makeup on, and she was wearing sweats. The last time I had seen her like this was when her 8th grade boyfriend dumped her for some bimbo, which could only mean…

"Amber, why aren't you with Drew?" I gasped, pulling away to search her face.

"Oh uh, yeah, I've been meaning to tell you… we uh, we broke up," she shrugged and looked away. Here I've been, wallowing in self pity, and my best friend broke up with her boyfriend of 4 years and I was only just finding out about it.

"Oh my… When? Why? What happened? Why haven't you told me?"

"Whoa there, one at a time," she laughed and looked at me. If I hadn't known her for so long, I wouldn't have been able to tell she was about to cry. "Um, I haven't told you because you have just seemed to distracted lately, and with Trevor and Casey so happy together now," I cringed, "I didn't want to ruin the moment or anything." Then the waterworks started, and she groaned and I hugged her tight while she cried into my shoulder.

After a few moments, Amber sniffed and sat up, smiling sheepishly at me. She reached for a cookie and sat back, nibbling on the edge and sorting her thoughts.

"It was a while ago, like when Trev and Case were still in honeymoon stage… I don't know. It all happened so fast… one day we were totally fine and the next, well. I saw him with that girl… Carly Sanders. You know, that tall, thin, gorgeous, hateful bitch? Yeah, they were… well, you know the kinds of things she does. And I just, I just lost it. I mean, they were going at it so hard, like more than Drew and I ever really go! So I flipped out at him, and he said some, er, things. I just. I don't know what I did wrong, Ari."

"Oh, baby, you didn't do anything wrong! That boy was an idiot, and I am
so
sorry! I never should have… listen, you're better off without him, all right? You don't need some idiot boy to be the beautiful, amazing, talented, fantastic person you are! You're my best friend Amber, and I hate seeing you so sad because of him. I wanna go over there right now and just give him a piece of my mind. Come on, we could do it together! Let's go over there right now!" I grinned, and she smiled back, even laughing a little.

"I wish, Ari, but we can't. He's gone on vacation with his family, and guess who went with them."

"Carly." We both said at the same time, and started laughing.

"Hey, just now when I saw you outside, where you…?" she asked when we quieted down.

I thought about lying to her. I thought about telling her what I told Lilly when she saw me. I thought about laughing it off and pretending like it was nothing. But she was my best friend, and I couldn't keep this to myself any longer, I was killing myself here. I told her everything. From what I was just doing, to how I run so much and refrain from eating a lot, even how my father treated me and how I really got the 'battle scars' on my body. She interrupted several times with gasps and little noises of surprise and outrage.