The Fifteenth Minute (19 page)

S
malls
—

I’m so sorry I was a dick the other night. It turns out that wallowing in your problems turns you into an asshole.

You’re the best thing about this whole year. I don’t know what’s going to happen to us, but I want you to know that I’m doing my best to figure it out. I called Georgia last night after you left. You told me to do it, so I did. She was really helpful to me, and so thank you for kicking me in the ass when I needed it.

I also told my sister everything. Not only did I tell her about my mess with Annie, but I told her all about meeting you at Capri’s. The way you played “I Wanna Sex You Up,” and then said it was an accident. :) I told her every (g-rated) thing about you, and then she ripped me a new one for losing my cool when you were just trying to help me.

I’m sorry. In case you missed that the first time, I’m really, really sorry.

My sister is awesome, and if everything goes my way, I hope she’ll visit again so we can all go out somewhere together.

But if it doesn’t go my way, I’m really going to miss you. So please return one of my calls so I can apologize in person.

D.

“
S
o
that
explains
why you’ve been in a mood this week,” Bella says from over my shoulder. “Are you going to call him?”

I ignore the question, because I don’t feel like talking about it. “Let me ask you something, and I want you to be honest.” I stand up and face her.

“Kay,” Bella says, sipping her coffee.

“Do I need implants?”

Bella chokes on her coffee. “What?” she asks between choking sounds. “Who said that?”

“My asshole manager.”

My neighbor’s hands begin waving in the air because she’s coughing too much to speak, yet she has a lot to say. I think.

“Do you need the hug of life?” I ask.

Her eyes are watering when she answers me. “No—to both questions. Don’t get a boob job. Your future nurse practitioner does
not
approve of unnecessary surgery just to please a man.” Bella is starting nursing school in the fall so she can be a nurse midwife and talk about vaginas professionally. “Are you seriously considering it?”

“Not
seriously
. I know I shouldn’t listen. But it is Hollywood. And my boobs are—”

“—Fun-sized,” Bella finishes.

Ugh. “My head is not in a good place,” I admit.

“Is this because DJ was an ass?” Bella probes. I haven’t told her the whole story, so she’s digging.

“No.” I click my email shut so I don’t have to read his apology for the tenth time. “Okay, yes. That’s part of it.”

“What did he do?” she asks softly.

“He got mad at me for meddling. I told him I’d been researching the way colleges handle sexual assault, and he kind of lost it.” I open up DragonFire to see how my dragons are holding up. I feel a video-game binge coming on. Forget my ninety-minute rule. It didn’t do me any good.

“Men aren’t always good at accepting help,” she says.

“Pretty sure he had a point,” I grumble. “He shouldn’t let me tell him what to do. I’m not even a little bit impartial.”

“You care about him, though. That counts for something.”

I pick up the game controller and fire it up. “I care too much. And if he leaves, I’m going to be really hacked off at the universe.”

Bella nudges my chair with her toe so it swings me a little bit. “I know,
pequeña
. You aren’t very good at taking chances on people. So you need to make sure they stick around.”

“I take chances,” I growl while staring at a bunch of dragons which are nothing but pixels of light on a very expensive screen.

“Come to Capri’s with me,” she says. “A little pizza and some weak beer will cleanse your spirit.”

“Can’t,” I say automatically.

“DJ will probably be there. And I’ve got a stack of quarters you could use in the jukebox.”

The pull is so strong. I want to see DJ’s smile so badly it aches. But to what end? He’s probably going to get snatched away from me. And that will just suck for both of us. Why should I put us through that any longer?

The screen lights up with messages.
Vindikator! You’re back again tonight! Awesome
. These are the friends who won’t desert me. We’re not close in the real sense of the word. But it’s better this way.

“Really?” Bella sighs. “You’re going to spend the night with your dragons?”

“And Brecht. I’m writing a paper on my least favorite playwright. It’s due next week.”

“Okay…” she says slowly. “Work hard.”

“Will do,” I say without looking away from my screen.

Bella leaves, and I’m not even sorry to be alone. Maybe Harkness really wasn’t a good choice for me. I should go somewhere people really do think I fart glitter.

I
stare
into the depths of the juke box, wondering what to play. I’m sick of the eighties and nineties tunes. If Lianne were here, we’d have fun joking about the lack of selection. We’d marvel at the one-hit-wonders. We’d argue about the classics.

Without her, it’s just a bunch of so-so tracks, and a long night to fill with them.

I know I pushed Lianne away last weekend. At the time, it seemed like the right thing to do. Who wants a guy on the verge of becoming a college dropout?

Except that I miss her terribly.

“Hey,” a female voice says, and I look up fast. It’s Bella. I don’t even try to disguise my disappointment or the way my eyes go right over her shoulder, hoping to find Lianne. “She didn’t come,” Bella says, reading my not-very-opaque mind. “I tried. But she’s kind of down in the dumps.”

“That’s my fault,” I grunt.

“No,” she says, patting my shoulder. “It’s not. But there’s something I want to explain to you.” Bella flips a chair around backwards and straddles it. Then she sips her beer. “Okay, I know Lianne seems like the most sophisticated girl in the world. And, yeah, she could hack into NASA and launch a spacecraft from those computers in her room. And she has a selfie of herself with Bono on her phone.”

“Bono? Really?”

Bella nods. “She puts up a big front. But the people in her life? They’re shit, DJ.” She holds up a hand. “Present company excepted.” She gives me a smile and I try to return it. “Her mother is a world-class narcissist. I mean—the woman was too busy with her new twenty-five-year-old French pool boy to come to New York over Christmas to watch her only child perform Shakespeare at a famous theater. And I’ve
met
that creep she calls her manager.” Bella gives an exaggerated shudder. “Lianne doesn’t trust people, because she’s been burned. A lot. So I know you’ve done right by her, except for the one argument. But you just need to try a little harder. It’s like, she needs proof that you’ll stick by her.”

“Okay,” I say slowly. I’m pretty sure I just learned something important. If only I knew what to do with it.

Bella grins. “I know you won’t let her down.” She stands up, pats me on the head, and heads straight to the rowdiest table, where two of my brother’s teammates move aside for her to sit down and join their game.

I’m not in the mood to play quarters. Or for smack talk. So I grab my coat and duck out the back way. I walk home slowly, wondering what I could do for Lianne. It’s a nice thought—a project that has nothing to do with my lawyer and the case. They’ve been keeping me busy all week. Phone calls. Emails. Words they want me to use when I explain what happened that night. Phrases they want me to avoid.

Nobody’s asking me to lie, of course. But they want the truth to come out in a certain way. And that’s hard, because the truth is a messy, untidy thing.

So it’s a relief to brainstorm ways to make Lianne smile. Even if she and I are going to be separated, I can still make the effort. There are six days left until my meeting. Lianne had accused me of behaving like someone who had three weeks to live. And now I could finally admit she was right. A week from now, I’ll still be a guy who likes a girl named Lianne, no matter what. And she’d still be lonely.

I turn the corner onto York, and the T-shirt vendor is there, bundled up against the cold. The offensive shirt with Lianne’s name is still there, too. I’m half a block past when something occurs to me. Backtracking, I hurry back until I’m in front of the guy. “Can you make a custom shirt?” I ask without preamble.

“Sure. Would take me a day, maybe two. Costs twenty bucks, forty if you want two-sided.”

I pull out my wallet. “One side will do.”

B
ella sticks
her head into my room for the third time this evening. “Are you preparing for a role as a vampire?”

“What? Why?” I don’t bother taking my eyes off my screen.

“Because you never leave your room. It’s like you think the outside air will burn your skin off.”

“Uh huh,” I say. I’m battling a new kind of droid-troll that’s been cropping up in DragonFire this week. They’re hard to kill, even with an X-level weapon. But I think I’m making progress. Words of encouragement from my online buddies scroll past.
Hit ’im again, Vindikator! I think it’s working!

“What’s that shirt you’re wearing? Oh my God. Did you have that made?”

I knew Bella would notice, but I wore it anyway. Because it’s too good not to wear. It reads,
Yes, I go to Harkness. Just deal with it
.

Bella does something drastic then. She puts her body between me and the screen.

“Shit!” I scream, freezing the game because she’s going to get me killed.

“Now you’re listening,” she says. “Great shirt. That’s showing them.”

“Thanks.” DJ sent it to me. I found it in a gift bag hanging from my doorknob. He couldn’t have been the one to put it there, though, because he’s not allowed in the building. I suspect one of the hockey players. There was a note, too. It read, “Thought you needed this. Love, D.”

Love
. It’s not a word people use when they write to me. I’m ashamed to admit I tucked his note into my nightstand drawer.

The previous night there’d been a delivery from Gino’s pizza. It was a MOR pie, and I also received two Diet Cokes. Then I got a text which read, “I was thinking of you when I ordered mine. And you showing up at my door with a pie was one of the nicest things anyone ever did for me. Hope you’re hungry. —D.”

Bella and I feasted. I texted him a polite thank you instead of calling. I would have rather heard his voice, but I was afraid of what I might say.
Pizza is fine, but I just want you
. And that would only make him feel bad the week before his big appointment with the dean. So what was the use?

Tonight I hadn’t heard from him. Yet.

“Hockey game starts in thirty minutes,” Bella says. “It’s weird that they’re having a Monday game, but it’s because of the midterm break.”

I’d forgotten she was there. “I’m not going tonight.”

She heaves a sigh. “Please? There’s pretzels and hot dogs. And your paparazzo hasn’t been back.”

“I still have that paper to write.” It’s a dodge, and she knows it. But Bella disappears without a word.

DJ texts me later.
Hockey game tonight. The booth makes me think of you now. Wish you were here with me
.

I feel the floor bobble beneath me as the diving board adjusts to the weight of my heart. I picture myself slipping into the press box just like I did that first time and choosing songs with DJ as the players slice across the ice below. This could be his last hockey game. He didn’t say that in the text, but we both know that in less than forty-eight hours, he might be finished here.

So when the final buzzer rings tonight, what would we find to say to each other?
Hey, it’s been nice knowing you
.

I don’t want to have that conversation unless it’s really necessary. So I stay in my room like I’d planned.

Later, I get another text.
In your honor, I’m playing only artists that start with L tonight. I’ve cued up Los Lobos, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Linkin Park. It’s the weirdest playlist ever. The guys are going to think I’ve lost it. Unless you come up here and make it better
.

This makes me smile so hard. I know he’s teasing, but it’s kind of adorable. I reply:
Don’t forget Lyle Lovett. Lisa Loeb. Led Zeppelin
.

Two hours later, Bella bursts into my room. This time, I’m actually working on my Brecht paper when I look up to see her face, red from running up the stairs. “Lianne, seriously? For the good of hockey fans everywhere, will you call that boy? His music has gone to shit.”

“Wait,” I say, sitting up. “What happened?”

“He played Linda Ronstadt. At a fucking hockey game,” she fumes. “And that’s on you!”

Yikes
. “I thought he was teasing!” Which makes my text—adding three artists to the list—kind of a
fuck you
.

Bella shakes her head. “When I went into the booth to complain, he just said to give you this.” She pulled a scarf out of her pocket. My scarf—the itchy one I’d abandoned on the park bench the night he stood me up. “Here.” She thrust an envelope at me, too.

“Thanks,” I say, taking it.

She gives me a disappointed look and then leaves. I open the envelope and unfold a piece of notebook paper.

D
ear Lianne
,

I was doing a little cleaning in my room this week, just in case I won’t need it after spring break. And I found this. That night when I stood you up at Gino’s, I watched you walk into the square. I only bailed on our date because my accuser was inside the restaurant when I got there. I panicked and cancelled on you.

That was the theme of this winter, and I’m sorry.

You’re the best thing that happened to me all year, smalls. I’m sorry if my panic made it seem like I was always blowing hot and cold. You’re the most amazing girl I’ve ever met, and I’m crazy about you. I hope I get many more chances to tell you in person. But if I don’t, I wanted to say it tonight.

I understand why you didn’t come to the game, though. We can keep those memories happy if you want. It’s okay.

Miss you,

D
.

W
ell
, damn.

Now my eyes are hot, and the sounds of foreplay are bleeding through the bathroom door. Great.

I wake up my computer and flip over to Spotify, where I begin to blast the first song I see from the playlist I made for the women’s game. It’s “Real Gone” by Sheryl Crow.

Pushing my copy of Brecht aside, I curl up on top of my bed alone. The upbeat tempo of the song does not match my mood. I lie there and wonder what it would be like to have a boyfriend sharing my bed. Why did I have to fall for the guy who can’t?