Lola and the Boy Next Door (28 page)

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Authors: Stephanie Perkins

Tags: #Young-Adult Romance

BOOK: Lola and the Boy Next Door
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Max is gone. And not just gone as in he’s not my boyfriend anymore, but gone as in he’s
gone.
I asked Lindsey to retrieve a textbook I’d left at his apartment, and his roommate said he left the city on Tuesday. Johnny wouldn’t say where Max went.
He finally ran away. Without me.
I wish it didn’t hurt to think about him. And I’m not upset because I want to be with him, I don’t, but he was so much to me for so long. He was my future. And now he’s nothing. I gave him
everything,
and now he’s nothing. He was my first, which means I’ll never be able to forget him, but I’ll fade from his memory. Soon I’ll just be another notch on his bedpost.
I didn’t know it was possible to simultaneously hate and ache for someone. I thought Max and I would be together forever. No one believed me. We were going to prove them wrong, but we were the ones who were wrong. Or maybe I’m the only one who was wrong. Did Max think of me as forever?
The question is too painful, either way, to consider.
My parents are worried, but they’ve been leaving me alone so that I can heal. As if it were possible to ever heal from heartbreak.
It’s around midnight—not quite Friday, not quite Saturday—and the moon is full again. Traditionally, farmers called the December full moon the Cold Moon or the Long Nights Moon. Both feel appropriate tonight. I opened my window to better absorb her coldness and longness, to use it feed it to my own, but it was a dumb mistake. I’m freezing. And I had another long shift at the theater, and I’m exhausted, and I can’t find the energy to shut it.
But I can’t sleep.
The silk fabric of my Marie Antoinette gown, draped across my sewing table, shimmers with a pale blue glow in the moonlight. It’s so close to completion. The winter formal is still a month and a half away, there was plenty of time.
It doesn’t matter anymore. I’m not going.
And I don’t even care about not having a date. It’s the idea of showing up in something so ridiculous, that’s what hurts. Max was right. The dance is stupid. My classmates wouldn’t be impressed by my dress; they’d be merciless. I don’t know how long I’ve been staring at its folds when a yellow light flicks on outside my window.
“Lola?” A call through the night.
I close my eyes. I can’t speak.
“I know you’re in there. I’m coming over, okay?”
I stiffen as the
CLUNK
of his closet-bridge hits my window. He called out to me once more last weekend, but I pretended that I didn’t hear him. I listen to the creak of his weight against the bridge, and a moment later, he drops quietly onto my floor. “Lola?” Cricket is on his knees at the side of my bed. I feel it. “I’m here,” he whispers. “You can talk to me or not talk to me, but I’m here.”
I close my eyes tighter.
“St. Clair told me what happened. With Max.” Cricket waits for me to say something. When I don’t, he continues. “I’m—I’m sorry I didn’t call you back. I was angry. I told Cal about that night in your bedroom, and she went ballistic. She said she’d warned you to stay away from me, and we got into this huge fight. I was angry with her for talking behind my back, and I was angry with you for not telling me. Like . . . you didn’t think I could handle it.”
I cringe and curl into a ball. Why
didn’t
I tell him? Because I didn’t want him to realize that her accusations were true? Because I was afraid that he’d listen to her words over mine? I’m such a jerk. As fearful of Calliope as she is of me.
“But . . . this is coming out backward.” I hear him shift on his knees, agitated. “What I was trying to say—what I was getting at—is that I’ve been thinking a lot about everything, and I’m not actually angry with you at all. I’m angry with myself. I’m the one who keeps climbing in your window. I’m the one who can’t stay away. All of this weirdness is my fault.”
“Cricket. This is
not
your fault.” It comes out in a croak.
He’s silent. I open my eyes, and he’s watching me. I watch him back. “The moon is bright tonight,” he says at last.
“But it’s cold.” The tears have found me again. They fall.
Cricket reaches out and brushes my neck. He traces upward, along my jaw, and then my cheek. I close my eyes at the unbearable sensation of his thumb drying my tears. He presses down gently. I turn my head, and it becomes cradled in his hand. He holds the weight for several minutes.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that I talked with Calliope,” I whisper.
He pulls away, carefully, and I notice another star drawn on the back of his hand. “I’m only upset that she spoke with you in the first place. It wasn’t any of her business.”
“She was just worried about you.” As the words spill out, I realize that I believe them. “And she had every right to be worried. I’m not exactly a good person.”
“That’s not true,” he says. “Why would you say that?”
“I was a terrible girlfriend to Max.”
There’s a long pause. “Did you love him?” he asks quietly.
I swallow. “Yes.”
Cricket looks unhappy. “And do you still love him?” he asks. But before I can answer, he says in one great breath, “Forget it, I don’t want to know.” And suddenly Cricket Bell is inside my bed, and his torso is flattening against mine, and his pelvis is pressing against mine, and his lips are moving toward mine.
My senses are detonating. I’ve wanted him for so long.
And I need to wait a little longer.
I slide my hand between our mouths, just in time. His lips are soft against my palm. I slowly, slowly remove it. “No, I don’t love Max anymore. But I don’t want to give you this broken, empty me. I want you to have me when I’m
full,
when I can give something
back
to you. I don’t have much to give right now.”
Cricket’s limbs are still, but his chest is pounding hard against my own. “But you’ll want me someday? That feeling you once had for me . . . that hasn’t left either?”
Our hearts beat the same wild rhythm. They’re playing the same song.
“It never left,” I say.
 
Cricket stays through the night. And even though we don’t talk anymore, and even though we don’t do anything
more
than talk, it’s what I need. The calming presence of a body I trust. And when we fall asleep, we sleep heavily.
In fact, we sleep so heavily that we don’t see the sun rise.
We don’t hear the coffeepot brewing downstairs.
And we don’t hear Nathan until he’s right above us.
chapter twenty-seven
 
N
athan grabs Cricket by the shoulders and throws him off my bed. Cricket scrambles into a corner while I flounder for my closest eyeglasses. My skin is on fire.
“What the hell is going on in here? Did he sneak in while—” Nathan cuts himself off. He’s noticed the bridge. He stalks up to Cricket, who shrinks so low that he almost becomes Nathan’s height. “So you’ve been climbing into my daughter’s bedroom for how long now? Days? Weeks?
Months?
”
Cricket is so mortified he can hardly speak. “No. Oh God, no. Sir. I’m sorry, sir.”
Andy runs into the room, sleep disheveled and frenzied. “What’s happening?” He sees Cricket cowering beneath Nathan.
“Oh.”
“Do something!” I tell Andy. “He’ll kill him!”
Murder flashes across Andy’s face, and I’m reminded of what Max said ages ago, about how much worse it was dealing with
two
protective fathers. But it disappears, and he takes a tentative step closer to Nathan. “Honey. I want to kill him, too. But let’s talk to Lola first.”
Nathan is terrifyingly still. He’s so angry that his mouth barely moves. “You. Out.”
Cricket lunges for the window. Andy’s eyes bulge when he sees the bridge, but all he says is, “The front door, Cricket. Out the
front
door.”
Cricket holds up both hands, and in the daylight, it’s the first time I see that there are still scattered shreds of blue paint on his nails. “I just want you to know that we didn’t do anything but talk and sleep—
sleep
sleep,” he quickly adds. “Like with eyes closed and hands to oneself and dreaming.
Innocent
dreams. I would never do anything behind your back. I mean, never anything dishonorable. I mean—”
“Cricket,”
I plead.
He looks at me miserably. “I’m sorry.” And then he tears downstairs and out the front door. Nathan storms out of my room, and the master bedroom door slams shut.
Andy is silent for a long time. At last, he sighs. “Care to explain why there was a boy in your bed this morning?”
“We didn’t do anything. You have to believe me! He came over because he knew I was sad. He only wanted to make sure I was okay.”
“Dolores, that’s how boys take advantage of girls. Or other boys,” he adds. “They attack when your guard is down, when you’re feeling vulnerable.”
The implication makes me angry. “Cricket would never take advantage of me.”
“He climbed into your bed fully aware that you’re hurting over someone else.”
“And we didn’t do anything but talk.”
Andy crosses his arms. “How long has this been going on?”
I tell the truth. I want him to believe me so that he’ll also believe Cricket is innocent. “There was only one other time. But he didn’t stay the night.”
He closes his eyes. “Was this before or after you broke up with Max?”
My head sinks into my shoulders. “Before.”
“And did you tell Max?”
It sinks farther. “No.”
“And that didn’t make you wonder if there was something wrong with it?”
I’m crying. “We’re friends, Dad.”
Andy looks pained as he sits on the edge of my bed. “Lola. Everyone and their grandmother knows that boy is in love with you.
You
know that boy is in love with you. But as wrong as it was for him to be here, it’s so much worse for you to have led him on. You had a boyfriend. What were you thinking? You don’t treat someone like that. You shouldn’t have treated either one of them like that.”
I didn’t know it was possible to feel any worse than I already did.
“Listen.” The look on Andy’s face means he’d rather eat glass than say what he’s about to say. “I know you’re growing up. And as hard as it is, I have to accept that there are certain . . .
things
you’re doing. But you’re an intelligent young woman, and we’ve had the talk, and I know—from this point on—you’ll make the right decisions.”
Oh God. I can’t look at him.
“But you have to understand this part is difficult for us, especially for Nathan. Norah was your age when she ran away and got pregnant. But you can talk to me. I
want
you to talk to me.”
“Okay.” I can barely get the word out.
“And I
don’t
want to find a boy in your room again, you hear me?” He waits until I nod before standing. “All right. I’ll talk to Nathan and see what I can do. But don’t for a second think you’re getting out of this easily.”
“I know.”
He walks to the door. “Never. Again. Understand?”
“What . . . what about when I’m married?”
“We’ll buy a cot. Your husband can sleep on that when he visits.”
I can’t help it. I let out a tiny snort of laughter. He comes back and hugs me.
“I’m not kidding,” he says.
 
The punishment arrives in the afternoon. I’m grounded through the end of my upcoming winter break from school. Another month of grounding. But, honestly, I don’t even care. It’s the other half of the punishment—the unspoken half—that makes me feel terrible.
My parents no longer trust me. I have to earn it back.
Throughout the day, I try to catch Cricket at our windows, but he never goes inside his bedroom. Around three o’clock, I see his figure dart past his kitchen window, so I know he’s still at home. Why is he avoiding me? Is he embarrassed? Is he angry? Did my parents call his parents? I’ll die if they called Mr. and Mrs. Bell, but I can’t ask, because if they haven’t, it might give them the idea.

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