Pointe (17 page)

“Doing anything for Christmas Eve Eve?” His voice is a little thick, as if he just woke from a nap.

I hear people talking in the background. His television. A few more seconds reveals it's a show with a horribly obnoxious laugh track.

“Nothing,” I say quickly.

Too quickly. Maybe I should have invented plans so it doesn't look like I was waiting around for him to call.

“Me either.” Hosea clears his throat. “Grams will be away until tomorrow night, so . . . you want to come over later?”

“Over to your house?”

I sound as if I've been invited to have tea with the queen of England, but I couldn't be more surprised if that's what I'd been asked. Going to his house is almost like a date. The closest we can get to one right now. There are only four more weeks left until he might not want me, after all.

“Yeah, I thought we could hang out without any . . . distractions.”

He coughs away from the phone and I wonder if his face is hot like mine.

Still, I try to play it cool. Pause for a moment, try to keep the elation out of my voice as I say, “Sure. What time?”

• • •

I have to get a little creative to leave the house later. Nothing crazy, but I usually spend most nights around the holidays at home with my parents, and so do my friends, so they're curious about where I could be going the night before Christmas Eve.

“I need to drop off Sara-Kate's present,” I say, and then go on before I lose my nerve to continue with the lie. “She leaves tomorrow to go to her relatives' and I want her to have it before Christmas.”

It's not completely untrue. They
are
going to her grandparents' house—but her grandparents live a few miles away in the city and Sara-Kate and her family are just spending the day with them.

Dad and I have just finished cleaning up after supper while Mom has her cup of post-dinner coffee and pores over a stack of holiday cookbooks. As if she doesn't already have her favorite recipes picked out, ones she's made dozens of times now. Dad and I told her about the pecan pie together. She wasn't mad. She hardly said anything at all, except to sweep her hand over the top of my hair, kiss my forehead, and say, “He just needs time, sweetheart.” I think she felt bad for me.

“You won't be in their way while they're packing?” she says now, flipping the page to some sort of elaborate baked dish that looks heavy on the melted cheese and bread crumbs. A dish that would make my mouth water so much, I'd have to pinch myself on
both
sides.

“They're all packed. She invited me and it's just for a little bit.” I lean against the counter and try to appear not at all invested in the conversation at hand. “I'll be back by curfew.”

“That was never up for debate,” my mother says without looking up from her cookbook.

I glance at Dad, who's trying to hide his smile. “Go,” he says, waving the dish towel at me. The long sleeves of his plaid shirt are rolled up to his elbows. “Wish Sara-Kate and her family a merry Christmas.”

I spend a long time getting ready because what do you wear when you'll finally be alone with the person who occupies half of your thoughts? I go through my entire wardrobe, wish I could call Sara-Kate. She'd know exactly what I should wear tonight, could march into my closet and pull out four excellent options in less than five minutes.

But I can't ask for fashion advice or she'd know I was going to hook up with Hosea. And I can't listen to the judgment in her voice, so I work with what I have: nerves and indecision. When I walk out the door, I've finally decided on a cream-colored cardigan over a red silk tank top that glows against my skin, and a pair of jeans that gives off the appearance of an ass.

The drive to Hosea's is quick, just a little over five minutes on the empty Sunday-night streets. He lives on the left side of a mint-green duplex. I park a couple of houses up from his and sit in the car with the engine still running. I dig a fingernail into my wrist to make sure I'm here. On Hosea's street, only a few feet away from the front door of his house, where we'll finally be alone.

I check my reflection in the rearview mirror, smile with my mouth wide open to double check that I brushed away any food in my teeth. I didn't want to put on too much makeup in case my parents noticed before I slipped out of the house, but it's just enough, I think. I apply more lip gloss before stepping out of the car.

I look around as I'm walking up the path to his house, as if someone followed me here. As if Ellie will be standing just inside the door, ready to confirm her suspicions.

I ring the bell and stick my hands into my coat pockets as I wait for him to answer the door. It could be colder but I'm grateful when I hear footsteps coming toward me. I hold my breath as he fiddles with the lock, get a quick rush in those moments of anticipation when you can feel the other person, just inches away.

“Hey,” he says warmly when we're standing in front of each other.

He's wearing a black T-shirt and jeans and he smells good. Fresh, like he just got out of the shower, but his hair is dry. And beautiful.

“Hi.” I smile at him as I step inside the little foyer, which contains a table with a tray for mail and a small, horizontal rack above it to hang keys.

Hosea closes the door and reaches for my hand, pulls me all the way into his house. I barely have time to take in the living room before he's pushing my hair back from my face, brushing his lips against mine in a kiss hello. I close my eyes and lean into him as I kiss him back and we stand like that for a while. Slowly kissing in his grandmother's living room, like we have all the time in the world.

“I'm really happy you came,” he says in that same warm voice that melts right through me. I look up at him, sketch the contours of his face with my eyes. I remember the night we talked at Klein's party, how I really looked at him the first time. Noticed the way his eyes softened and the tension seemed to relax from his strong jawline when he was talking to me.

“I am, too.” I squeeze his hand.

And I am happy—I am—but I'm mostly nervous. Maybe even more so than when I was getting ready earlier. Hosea will be my first since Chris. What if I don't remember what to do? I thought I would feel different going into this. Worse about planning to be with him, about helping him cheat on Ellie. But I'm not sure how I can feel bad about it when I know he's supposed to be with me.

I look around now. It's your typical living room: love seat, recliner, couch, and coffee table. It's almost too much furniture for the room and there's barely enough space to walk around but it works because there's no clutter. Not even a stray sweater or a discarded pair of shoes on the thin carpet. Just a couple of old photography books on the table next to the TV remote. An artificial Christmas tree sits in the far corner, small and white with silver ornaments and garland. I look under the tree, see a couple of wrapped gifts, and flush when I think of the mountain piled under the massive tree we brought home the first week in December.

A piano sits in the opposite corner. That makes me smile.

“Want the tour? It's small,” Hosea says almost apologetically.

“I'd love a tour.” I unbutton my coat and drape it over the arm of the couch before we move into the next room.

It
is
a small place, with just the front room, a kitchen, and two bedrooms and a bathroom off a short hallway. But it's clean and tidy and it smells nice. It smells like Christmas, like fresh pine and warm cinnamon, and I only notice the scented candles burning in the kitchen as we're leaving the room.

“And this is my little hole,” he says, pushing open the door across the hall.

The room could belong to anyone with its beige walls, bare except for a calendar of landscapes hanging from an orange pushpin. A bed with a plain navy comforter is shoved up against the far wall, across from a three-drawer bureau and a small desk and chair. His room is clean, too, and I wonder if he cleaned for me or if it always looks like this.

“Where's all your stuff?” I ask, looking for any sign that this room belongs to him.

That's when I see it. A picture on top of the bureau. It's not in a frame. It's just a loose photograph, leaning against a dark wooden box. It's slanted at an angle so there's a bit of a glare, but I can still make out him and Ellie. They're at a party, outside in the summer. Or maybe a festival. His arm is around her and she's standing close to him, her body pressed to his side. Ellie's mouth is open in a wide smile. She looks pretty. Hosea is smiling, too, the glowing orange tip of a clove barely visible between his fingers. They look comfortable together. Happy.

“When I moved in, I wouldn't put up anything because I was convinced I wouldn't be here that long.” His voice surprises me. When I look at him, he moves to the right, blocking my view of the picture. “Guess you can see how that worked out.”

“It kind of looks like a guest room,” I say, trying to shake the image of that picture.

I gaze at every wall and corner, want to burn this into my memory in case I'm never back here again. I make a special point to not look at the picture but Hosea is still there, still standing in front of it. My eyes slide to a different side of the room. I wonder where he keeps his pills, but it doesn't seem right to ask. It's not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of him now.

He flips the light off once I'm finished looking around. “Grams says it looks like a serial killer's room.”

“That's nice,” I say, laughing as we walk back into the hallway.

“Yeah.” He cracks a smile. “She's . . . Like I said, I don't know if I'll ever forgive her for making me come live with her, but she's not so bad. She gives me my space.”

“Where is she now?”

“Her sister's, down in Lincoln.” He stops at the doorway to the kitchen. “You want something to drink? Or eat? I can't cook but she left some lasagna.”

“I'm fine,” I say. “Already ate.”

And it's true, even if dinner was only three bites of pasta that I swallowed, four that I spit into my napkin, and the rest pushed around my plate until my parents had cleaned theirs.

“Or toast.” He nods at the little silver toaster plugged in on the counter. “I make perfect toast.”

“As impressive as that is, I'll pass this time.” Again, I examine every crevice of the room because I still find it hard to believe I'm standing in Hosea Roth's yellow-and-blue kitchen, holding his hand. My eyes stop on him. “But I
would
like to hear you play.”

“You've heard me play lots of times,” he says in a strange voice with a strange look. One I've never seen on him. Flustered.

“Yeah, the stuff we've danced to for a million years.” I shake my head as I move back to the living room. “I want to hear
your
music.”

He stands in place so long, I wonder if he heard my response. Then he follows me, eyes the piano for a bit before he slides onto the bench, as if it's an impostor or he's sitting down for his first lesson. I perch on the edge of the couch as he turns and says, “Whatever I play sounds like shit on this thing. It's really cheap and out of tune, just so you know.”

He could probably play “Chopsticks” for an hour straight and I'd be thrilled.

“Stop stalling,” I tease. I'm a little nervous, too, though, and I don't know why. I guess because I don't know what to expect. All he's ever played in front of me is Tchaikovsky and Minkus and Gershwin—the music we know by heart, can play with our feet. Maybe I won't like his music as much.

He twists his wrists, stretches his fingers, and without warning he launches into a piece so startlingly gorgeous that I slide from the arm of the couch into the cushion. I watch his fingers move deftly over the keys, stare at the back muscles straining under his shirt as he pours every last bit of himself into his music. It is a cross between contemporary and classical, interwoven with surprising patches of dark chords that resonate down to my core.

I wonder what he thinks about as his fingers dance across the keys. If, like he said back in the gazebo at Klein's house, he's thinking about how his song makes me feel, if I'll be that one person in three hundred who is unduly affected by his talent.

I look at his jaw from the side, set in its hard lines as his creativity flows through him. I pretend that he will never play this song for anyone but me. I could sit in this tiny living room and listen to him make music forever. But then he's finished and the room is silent and when he turns around I don't know what to say.

“What do you think?” he finally says. And I can't believe how anxious he sounds, how nervous he looks when his eyes meet mine.

“That was your song?” I stand up, smooth my hand down over the front of my top.

“Yeah. I mean, I composed it. Yeah,” he says again. Then, as he stands, too: “Did you like it?”

“Not liked. Love.” I take a couple of steps toward him, which in this little room means two more will bring us close enough to touch.

“You could be famous,” I say softly. “If other people heard you play—”

“I'm not that good. I'm not anywhere close to being that good.” He actually blushes, his cheeks flushed by my words.

I decide that particular shade of pink is outstanding.

He looks away and then down at the floor. “I still have so much to learn and I need to save up for a better piano and—”

“You'll find a way. You're special,” I say. “I can't believe nobody knows this about you.”

“It's enough that you know.” He sticks his hands into his pockets and he's still not quite looking at me. “It wouldn't be fair if you didn't. I get to watch you dance all the time and you're pretty much perfect out there.”

“I'm not as good as Josh. He's the best. Ruthie's really good, too. And I still have so much to work on before my auditions—”