The Infinite Moment of Us (19 page)

Dev. Could Wren have found out he lied?

He shouldn’t have lied. He was an ass. He was an
idiot
.

But Wren . . .

Refusing to tell him what was really wrong, refusing to

talk to him—that wasn’t cool, either.

He felt gutted. Long shadows from the trees on the side

of the street fell over his car. Everything was wrong. Every-

thing was broken.

He shouldn’t have gone to Starrla.

He should have told Wren how beautiful and smart and

sexy she was right away, the very second she sent that pic-

ture. But Starrla sounded so desperate, so urgent, and it

had touched on old needs.

He needed to be needed—but by Wren, not Starrla.

He’d messed up.

But why didn’t Wren cut him some slack? If she thought

he’d gone to Dev—which was wrong and a lie, and he

would come clean when he got the chance—why hadn’t

she cared how Dev was? If it
had
been a Dev emergency . . .

It hadn’t, but if it had . . .

He was trying to rationalize his behavior, which was

wrong. Everything was wrong. His thoughts circled and

spiraled until he felt like he was going crazy. Please text

back, he prayed. Wren? Please, just text back.

Ten seconds passed. Thirty. Had she really turned off

her phone? “Um, nah,” and she was gone?

One minute.

Two minutes.

Ten minutes.

For ten and a half minutes Charlie sat in the deepening

gloom. His soul hurt. He shut his phone and drove home.

c h a p t e r t h i r t e e n

Wren woke up feeling like a three-dimensional girl

in a two-dimensional world. Her head pounded. Her lips

were chapped, and her tongue was fuzzy. A memory of

something bad—something potentially very bad—pressed

down hard on top of her, only she couldn’t call up the

details. They slipped and slid just beyond the reach of her

consciousness.

What was it? What was the bad thing? She attempted to

sit up, and an ice pick stabbed her brain. Ow. Ow, ow. She

gazed at her surroundings through half-shut eyes. Where

was she? At Tessa’s?

Yes, because there Tessa was, her hair a tangled river

on her pillow. She still had on her shirt from last night.

Wren looked down at herself. She did, too. Jean shorts, the

waistband digging into the skin above her hip. Her sum-

mery periwinkle blouse with buttons down the front.

Buttons down the front. Something . . . something

about buttons.

She pressed her fingers against her temples. Crap, how

much had she had to drink?

She needed to pee. She pushed herself up, squinting

even more. She found the floor with her bare feet.

Move, she told herself.

Ow, ow, owwww. Pain shot through her skull. She was

surely dying, or might as well be. But she waited, and the

pain dulled. She held on to Tessa’s bed as she made her way

around it. She gripped Tessa’s desk chair for balance, and

then she used the wall to steady herself. Years later, she

reached the bathroom. She didn’t turn on the light. She

might never turn on a light again. She tugged down her

shorts and sat on the toilet, which was cool on the back of

her legs. She closed her eyes and leaned forward, resting

her arms on her thighs and her head on her forearms.

She peed forever. Afterward, she was sorely tempted to

curl up on Tessa’s fluffy pink bath mat and take a nap.

But the bed would be softer. There were covers to crawl

beneath. And Tessa. She could ask Tessa what the hell they

had done last night to make her feel so totaly, utterly shitty.

She shuffled from the bathroom to the bed and eased

herself onto the mattress. She lay her aching head down.

Did something happen with Charlie? Something bad?

Her blouse, with the buttons.

Oh.

Oh no.

But so much was foggy still.

“Tessa,” she croaked. She found Tessa’s calf with her toes

and nudged her. “Tessa. Wake up.”

“No doughnuts on my coffee,” Tessa mumbled.

“Wake up, or I’m going to throw up all over you. All

over your long, pretty hair.”

Tessa moaned. She rolled over, slowly, and peered at

Wren with one eye. “That again? Really?”

“What again?”

“My ‘long, pretty hair.’ Last night, at P.G.’s house. P.G.

and I went swimming, and you went on and on about my

long, pretty hair.”

“We went swimming?” Wren said. Tessa’s hair, which

usually
was
long and pretty, was matted in places, as if she’d slept on it wet.

“Not you. Just me and P.G.,” Tessa said. Her breath was

sour. “You sat in a lounge chair. You weren’t happy. You

were very, very not happy. Can I go back to sleep now?”

Wren frowned. In her mind, she saw the moon, as well

as littler moons that were underwater, their light radiating

upward. Pool lights? Yes. They
had
been at a pool—P.G.’s pool—and Tessa, with her long, pretty hair, had resembled

a mermaid.

“You swam naked,” Wren said.

Tessa sighed. “I did.”

“Did P.G.?” Another image came to mind, which she

shooed away. “No, forget I asked.”

Tessa felt around beneath the covers. Next she patted

her T-shirt. “Huh. I must have left my undies there.”

“Wait—are you undie-less right now?” Wren asked. She

held up her hand. “Again, no. Forget I asked.” She paused.

“How did we get to P.G.’s? How did we get back? And I

didn’t skinny-dip . . . did I?”

“P.G. came and picked us up, and later he drove us back

to my house. You don’t remember?”

“I kind of do,” Wren lied.

“Well, you
were
pretty wasted. More wasted than I’ve

ever seen you, to tell the truth. And you were mad at Char-

lie. Do you remember being mad at Charlie?”

Wren’s stomach turned.

Tessa wasn’t wearing underwear, and Wren had been

mad at Charlie. Was she mad at him still?

She searched her heart. What she (almost) recalled

scared her. She stared hard at the ceiling.

“You kept saying your parents were right, that boys

were bad news,” Tessa said. “Again and again. You were on

auto-repeat. But you wouldn’t tell us what Charlie did.

What did Charlie do?”

Was that the grand prize question? What did Charlie do?

Or was it what did
Wren
do?

Abruptly, Tessa rolled over, got out of bed, and

announced, “I’ve got to piss like a racehorse.”

Wren turned away to give bare-bottomed Tessa some

privacy. When it seemed as if Tessa had reached the bath-

room, she said, “Would you bring me a glass of water?”

Tessa stuck out her arm and gave Wren a thumb’s-up.

She accidentally whacked her hand on the bathroom door-

jamb. “Dammit,” she said, but she laughed as she drew her

hand to her chest. After a long time, she returned to her

bed with a glass of fresh, cold water. Also, she had lounge

pants on.

“Hey, don’t drink it all at once,” Tessa said.

Wren took one last sip and passed the glass to Tessa.

She dragged her hand over her face and said, “I don’t feel

so good.”

“No, no, you don’t,” Tessa agreed. “You don’t look so

good, either.”

“Neither do you.”

Tessa gave herself a once-over. “We both look pretty

rough, I gotta say.”

Cautiously, Wren sat up. Her head still hurt, but she no

longer felt as if she were being stabbed by an ice pick. She

propped her pillow against the headboard and leaned back

on it.

“This is progress,” she said.

Tessa patted Wren’s knee. “Absolutely. And you didn’t

spill water all over yourself.” She cocked her head. “Do

you remember spilling your Manx Whore all over your-

self? Last night at P.G.’s pool?”

“My . . . I’m sorry, what?”

Tessa arched her eyebrows. “Really? We had such a long

discussion about Manx Whores. Wow. No more hard liquor

for you, my friend.”

“What is a Manx Whore? Will you just tell me?”

“P.G. made them for us, but he didn’t have one himself,

since he knew he’d be driving us home.” She considered.

“He had a beer or two, though.”

“But we had Manx Whores.”

“We did.”

“And we drank them out of Mason jars. And they tasted

like licorice?”

“Because of the sambuca. It’s coming back to you!”

Wren covered her ears. “Too loud, too loud. Sambuca?

I don’t remember that. I don’t even know what that is. But

I do remember . . .”

She didn’t finish. She bit her lip. And then it was hap-

pening, her memories mixing with the contents of her

stomach, and all of it toxic. She stumbled out of Tessa’s

bed, and the ice pick was back, but she made it to the bath-

room in time. She threw up again and again, but at least she

did it in the toilet and not all over Tessa’s long, pretty hair.

Tessa’s mom was teaching a yoga class, so Tessa and Wren

had the house to themselves. After a shower, a piece of

toast, and a tall glass of orange juice, Wren felt . . . better.

Not good, but better. Able to piece together what had hap-

pened the night before without making a mad dash for the

bathroom again. Able to tell Tessa she needed a little time

to herself, if that was all right, so she could try to sort out her tangled-up feelings.

She was crazy-ashamed of how she’d acted, and crazy-

ashamed of sending that sexy picture in the first place, or

the trying-to-be-sexy picture that now seemed so foolish.

What had she been thinking? Ooh, look at me, I’m so hot?

Only Charlie, without knowing it, had given Wren the

courage to think that maybe she
was
hot, at least in his eyes.

He told her how beautiful she was all the time, and every

time, it made her feel special—which made it hurt even

more last night when he didn’t.

She felt selfish for wanting Charlie to be there to reas-

sure her instead of helping Dev. She hadn’t even asked if

Dev was okay.

But she also felt small, and exposed, because in addition to sending that picture, she’d told Charlie she wanted to

have sex with him. She knew in her gut that he wanted

that, too, but still. His reply last night had been something

along the lines of, “Hey, sorry, but I’ve got to go. I’ll call when I can, all right?”

When Charlie had finally called her back, she was no

longer tipsy but drunk. She was at P.G.’s house with Tessa,

and drunk and sad, and she watched Charlie’s calls come

in but didn’t answer. He left a series of voice mails, which

she listened to and then deleted. She was drunk and sad

and
mad
, and because she felt cut off from Charlie, she felt cut off from herself.

Her parents had been right all along, she’d told herself.

They’d wanted to help her stay focused on her schoolwork,

but they’d also wanted to protect her, even if she hadn’t

seen it at the time. She wasn’t ready for this. She wasn’t

ready for love. Stupid Charlie with his stupid auburn eyes

and stupid gorgeous muscles, his stupid tousled hair and

quirky-sweet smile.

Sitting on P.G.’s pool chair with her knees to her chest,

drunk and mad and lonely, Wren had come to the obvious

conclusion: She couldn’t love Charlie, because love hurt

too much. Love could be withdrawn. Before Charlie, her

world may have been small, but it had been predictable.

Then Charlie had stopped calling and started texting.

Her rational mind knew that
he
wasn’t withdrawing.
She

was. She couldn’t seem to help it. So she didn’t respond

and she didn’t respond, and then, when she final y did,

her responses were non-responses. Non-answers. Words

strung together that said
I’m afraid that you’re leaving me, so
I’m leaving you first
.

And then, his last text . . .

Wren’s heart ached when she reread it:

I feel like my world is falling apart. Can I please please call?

And her response?
Um, nah.

That’s what she typed back to him. Just
nah
, like what she might say if Tessa offered her some Skittles, or if she

was at Starbucks and the barista asked if she wanted her

receipt.

Nah
. So cold. And she’d
felt
cold, huddled like a ball on P.G.’s chaise lounge while P.G. and Tessa laughed and

splashed and skinny-dipped. She’d gazed vacantly at her

phone, wanting Charlie to call again, text again, even while

knowing that if he did, she was too wounded to reply. She

felt as if she were watching her life from afar, willing to let it fall to pieces.

Last night, Wren had felt justified in hurting Charlie,

because he had hurt her. This morning, all her justifications

fell away like dead butterflies. She did love Charlie. She

loved him with all her heart, and that was
why
it hurt so much.

Text him, she told herself, remorse gnawing at her belly.

Make it right. Better yet? Call him. Talking was better than

texting; it always was.

But she felt too quivery for an actual conversation, so

she opened the text application on her phone and started