My Only (6 page)

How could she not know? Had we not just had this conversation? She was smart—even if she needed a little help, I could
tell
she was smart.

How could she seriously need to ask why studying history could be beneficial? I almost started explaining to her like she was Aaron. Usual y with him it was vague statements because I knew he wasn’t
really
listening anyway.

But then instead of just looking at her, I
looked
at her. She was genuinely interested in what I was going to say. While I stil felt the same way I always did around pretty girls—worthless and unworthy—something about her, something in this moment, made me feel just a little bit more confident. It wasn’t that I thought she might’ve liked me or wanted me to be her boyfriend or anything like that. It was that she was treating me like an equal—like a
friend
.

She deserved better than a short answer. She deserved more energy than I gave to Aaron, or anyone else for that matter. I had to be real, because while we were only talking about a subject in high school, I felt like we were real y talking about something else. Something deeper.

“How can we move forward, how can we have a future, without understanding our past? Understanding where we’ve been and how we got there is extremely important. It isn’t just about dates and dead guys. It’s about people coming together and doing great things, horrible things, things that changed the course of al humans. The past can guide us. It can teach us. If you forget about it, you’re real y just stumbling around blind, bound to make the bad decisions of those before you.”

Olivia sat silent for a moment, her head was cocked to one side. She was nibbling on her lower lip as her eyes were fixed on some spot above my head. Final y, she looked at me with those beautiful brown eyes. “What if I already understand the past, but have no flipping clue about the future?”

“No one real y knows about the future,” I said.

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That’s why it’s cal ed the present.” Her voice, while confident, sounded sad.

I’d heard it before, but never spoken with such quiet conviction. “I like that.”

“Me, too.” Olivia hopped up and stretched. “I respect how you feel about history, but it’s over and done with. The world is the way it is because it is the way it is. Studying how we got here won’t change it. Even studying the past can’t help clarify the future, so until the future gets here, today is al we have.”

Olivia tugged on her shoes then reached out, her index finger extended, and poked me on the shoulder. “I’l be back with my notebook.” And with that, she was gone.

I heard her go down the stairs. I got up and went to the window. She skipped out into the street, her hair flowing behind her. When she got to the bottom of the steps of her house, she slowed down, then she disappeared behind the door.

That’s when my head started to spin. I couldn’t believe she’d just been in my room. She’d spoken to me like I mattered. She was smart, and pretty, and total y nice. Olivia had been in my house and was coming back for me, not Aaron! Sure, it was because she needed help with History, but stil . There’d been times in the past when girls like her—pretty girls—talked to me. It was because of academics as wel , but this was different.

Even if we’d only mainly talked about history, I felt like something meaningful had been exchanged.

From the window, I saw her come back out, items in hand. It was then I realized that it was rude for me to be up here in my room and not waiting downstairs. Now she’d have to stand outside with books in her hands until I got down there to open the door.

I scratched behind my ear and made my feet move. I was out of my room and to the top of the stairs when I saw her coming up them. She hadn’t waited. I hadn’t heard the doorbel , which meant that she’d just opened the door and come right on in. Did she do that at other people’s houses?

I just stood there watching her, wondering who the hel she was and why I found her so fascinating. She was different, that was for sure. Different from me, obviously, but different from anyone I’d ever known. Casey had been my friend since kindergarten and had been coming over to my house since he was five. He’d never just walked in. He knocked. Every time.

But not Olivia. She walked in like she was meant to be here.

The thought both soothed me and wound me up. I liked that she was here. It felt like I was at the edge of the stairs, toes hanging over, chest pushed out. Like I wasn’t holding on and I would be fal ing forward at any time. It felt like something big—life changing big—was happening.

I heard a laugh then felt a poke in my abdomen. With a hard swal ow fol owed by a deep breath, I blinked and looked down. I literal y was standing on the edge of the stairs, and Olivia was right below me.

“Can I come up?” she asked. The way her voice sounded gave me chil s. It was teasing, accentuating the fact that she’d already entered back into the house, but now I was standing in her way. Her fingers were pressed against my stomach, and for a moment I didn’t think I would be able to breathe ever again. Her gaze caught mine.

My breath shook as I inhaled, but I needed to answer, or move, or both. I swal owed hard and scratched behind my ear again before taking two steps back, and whispering, “Yeah.”

I fol owed her into my bedroom, trying not to acknowledge how perfect her body was, how shiny her hair was, or how good she smel ed. When she got to my bed, she tossed the book and notebook onto it before plopping down herself.

“Tuition included the books, so I kept my history book from last year. They encouraged us to highlight and write in it, so I thought you might want to look at it.”

“Yeah.” That intel igent reply came as I just stood there in the doorway, eyes focused on her fingers as she drummed them against her folded legs. I let my eyes fol ow the fingers of one hand up beyond the knuckles, over the veined top of her hand to her slender wrist, up her forearm to the beautiful y pale skin of the inside of her elbow. Her bicep was partial y covered by her T-shirt, and I couldn’t see her shoulder, but I imagined that it was just as pretty as the rest of her. Her neck was perfect, long and elegant, with her golden brown and honey hair spil ing over it.

Her chin had a smal dimple in it, but had I not been studying her, I might have missed it. I intentional y skipped looking at her lips. I already knew how perfect they were. Instead I focused on her nose. It was the one part of her face that wasn’t so perfect. It was a little too wide, and the end was a little too rounded, but somehow that imperfection helped make her seem even more perfect overal .

When I got to her eyes, it was like a punch in the gut. They were rounded and her brows were raised. She was waiting for me to do something other than stare at her. I felt caught, like when I was younger and Aaron convinced me that it was a good idea to get into my dad’s “secret” stash of Belgian chocolates. He’d kept it on the top shelf and Aaron nominated me to be the one to climb up and get it. I’d been sitting on top of the refrigerator when my dad found me, and had been frozen when he’d asked, “Just what do you think you’re doing, Adam?” When I’d looked around for help, Aaron was nowhere to be seen.

But instead of my dad’s patient, yet expectant face gaping at me, waiting for an answer, it was Olivia’s face, her expression mostly neutral but sort of amused, I saw. Clearing my throat, I pushed myself to pretend as though I hadn’t just being staring at her for God knows how long, went over to the bed, and picked up the text.

Sitting down next to Olivia on my bed, I flipped open the book. It didn’t take long to figure out what some of the problem was. “You’ve highlighted almost every word in here.” I turned to look at her. Her expression was blank. “The point of highlighting is to take a large amount of text and boil it down to the most essential parts. When you study, your eyes should be drawn to the yel ow marks, and you should read only the main themes and important supporting information. What you have here is,” I paused, struggling for a word that wasn’t offensive. “It’s not helpful.”

“I highlighted what I read.”

I nodded. “It’s good that you read it, but then you need to pick out the important parts.
That’s
what you highlight. Not the whole thing.” She tapped a yel ow paragraph with her finger, and I realized how close we were sitting. Again, my gaze fol owed the length of her arm until her breasts took my attention. With much concentration, I pul ed my eyes away and focused them on the book in my lap.

“So what’s the important part of that paragraph?”

She wanted an il ustration, so I stood up for a moment and grabbed the pen from my desk. Settling back down next to her, I quickly scanned the page, underlining certain words. In less than a minute I was done.

I read. “Ponce de León. Spanish Explorer. c. 1474—1521. Governor of Puerto Rico. Fountain of youth. Florida.”

“That’s not a lot of information.”

I turned to look at her, moving away from her just a little in order to see her better. “It’s al the information you need. The rest just fluffs up the paragraph. Train your mind to focus on the meat of the text and let the fil er fal away.” Her voice light. “I must like fil er.”

I chuckled with her. She was so gorgeous when she laughed. I had to stop thinking girly things like that, so I took a deep breath and cleared my throat again. “History isn’t hard after you figure out what’s most important.” I closed the book and set it between us. “But since you can’t mark in the books at our school, let’s focus on note taking.”

She picked up the pink notebook and handed it to me. “I’m sure it’s the same as the book. Too much information.” I flipped it open. Her handwriting was girly—al big bubbly letters. The margins were littered with doodles and designs. “Bored a lot?” I asked.

“Not bored,” she answered. “Sometimes it’s just hard to keep on task.”

Her notes were scattered. Some of them stopped mid-sentence; some of them were complete—probably word for word what the teacher had said. “First, do the same thing I told you with highlighting. Just write down the essentials of what you read. Do the same thing when you’re in class.

Not everything your teacher says is meaningful. Just listen for key words and write it down. You’l have less to write and an easier time when you go to study.”

She asked a few more questions, and I told her a few more tips. It was almost seven thirty when she said she’d better get back. I felt pul ed. I wanted her to stay, and yet I wanted to be alone so I could relax a little.

I walked her downstairs and just as we got to the foyer, Aaron came busting in the house, changing the entire atmosphere. When he saw Olivia, the grin split his face. “Wow! Look at who’s in my house,” he said, excitement apparent. “Here I thought tonight would be boring, just me and Adam.” The insinuation was clear. He thought I was boring.

My brother basical y circled her once, like a predator around its prey. Anything good that had been building within me from my decent interaction with Olivia was trickling out of me. Aaron was doing his thing—the thing that made most girls swoon or whatever it was girls did. “You’re not going home, are you?”

“Actual y, I am. My grandparents are—”

“Stay,” he interrupted her. “We can watch a movie or something.”

Olivia shook her head. “No, I have to get home. Maybe another night?”

“Maybe tomorrow night?” Aaron asked, ful of hope.

Olivia sighed. “Don’t you have practice or something?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Then another night.” She went to the door, and with her hand on the knob, she turned back to me. “Night, Ad.” She retrained her eyes on Aaron, probably melting inside at the sight of his chiseled features. “See you later.”

After she left, Aaron pumped me for information. I wasn’t very forthcoming. She hadn’t told me much about herself, but it didn’t seem to matter to him. He wanted to know things I’d have no earthly way of knowing, so I glazed over the questions and we played
Gears of War
for the rest of the night.

When I was alone in my room, I thought about Olivia’s parting words. To me she’d said, “Night, Ad,” shortening my name, but to my brother she’d said, “See you later,” indicating that they would hang out again. The difference drove me crazy, but final y I managed to shove them from my mind. I fel asleep and didn’t remember any dreams the next morning.

The day started off like al other days. Casey and I stuck tight to the rest of our friends. We kept to ourselves and made sure not to hang out where anyone “cool” was going to be. In reality, maybe no one “cool” even thought about us. Maybe instead of targets we were invisible. Stil , the perceived threat was enough to keep us on our guard.

I noticed the change in my day during Current Events. It was close to the start of class and nearly everyone had already taken their chairs. When someone entered, just barely making it before being official y tardy, Bel man gave a stern look. I turned to see who it was.

Olivia was wearing a black T-shirt and tight black jeans. Her hair was pul ed up in a ponytail. Just like every other day I saw her; she was absolutely beautiful. As she crossed the room, she glanced at me. I dropped my eyes to my desk instantly, but then raised them back up to see if it was a fluke that she’d looked at me. She gave me a little wave. In class. In front of everyone.

At lunch, as she passed our table and waved to me again, she said, “What’s up, Ad?” Al of my friends were in shock, but none of them were as paralyzed as I was. I didn’t know what to tel them. I didn’t even know what to think about it so I avoided most of them for the rest of the day. Even in the locker room, changing for P.E., I kept to myself, not even looking at Casey for fear he’d ask me questions.

It was after band practice when he came up and pushed me after I took off my tenor drums on the sidelines. “What the hel ? ‘Ad’? She’s in town for, like, a week, and already she’s got a nickname for you. That’s so freakin’ awesome. Oh my God, this is epic. She’s so—” I didn’t want him to spin out like he usual y did, having large fantasies in which we were cool and did the same things the cool kids did. “I’m tutoring her in history. It’s nothing.”