The Next Forever (6 page)

Chapter Six

Amy

I found Trevor leaning against the wall, alone. In addition to thinking about Joe while I was in the bathroom, I was also thinking about what I could say to Trevor when I saw him again.

I didn’t do well with being caught off guard, especially with guys, especially
especially
with hot guys. It wasn’t surprising that being around Trevor made me feel like a mute, drooling freak.

It could have been that I was out of practice from having spent so much time with Joe, or it could have been that I really was a mute, drooling freak. Regardless, my plan was not to be caught with nothing to say again. I’m glad I didn’t have a pen with me, because I was not beyond writing stuff down on my hand to remember it for later.
Anything
not to feel like when Trevor looked at me he only saw the words
duh
and
bathroom
floating above my head.

I watched him for a moment, his back tight on the wall—leather to plaster—like the wall was leaning on him. He was so sure of himself, so strong, he probably could have held up the wall.

I took a deep breath, got my line ready, and walked over.

“Where’s your date?” I stood next to him and leaned like he was leaning.
See, I’m just as confident and sure of myself as you are.

When he didn’t respond, I lifted one eyebrow.

“You mean Pete?” he asked, staring into the heart of the room. “Funny,” he said, even though he seemed like he thought it was anything but.

I didn’t know what to say,
again
, so I smiled with what anyone around me would probably have referred to as the smile of a deranged homeless woman—wide, unflinching, my teeth desperately holding up my lips so they didn’t collapse into screams.

“You’ll do anything to deny that you’re my date, huh?” Trevor asked, swishing the beer around in his cup.

“I’m not your date,” I said, faster than I probably needed to. “I don’t have to deny it.” It was easy to say the words, but I couldn’t swallow and my face felt like I was walking on the surface of the sun. I knew it probably wasn’t working, but I was hoping to show him I wasn’t the kind of girl who said
yes
to everything.

I had a backbone. Sure, I didn’t always, but if the arrest gave me anything, it was that. It wasn’t made of jelly and I didn’t want to slide down the wall and sit in a lump on the floor and close my eyes and wish myself into my backyard with Joe.

Even though of course, I really did.

I was afraid if I didn’t pretend otherwise, Trevor would keep asking me things he wanted me to say yes to. And eventually one would involve unzipping his jeans.

“I kind of feel like the more you reject it, the more you wish it could be true.”

“It has nothing to do with wishing,” I said, remembering that I had been holding a practically full beer all that time. “It can’t be true.” I took a drink. It had gone warm and flat.

“Because of the boyfriend?” Trevor asked. I could feel him watching my profile, his eyes trying to make contact.

“What else?” I said, moving nothing but my lips.

He nodded. “It’s interesting you didn’t say,
Who else
?”

“What, are you studying rhetoric or something?” The music was still so loud my throat was starting to hurt from shouting. I took another drink of warm beer. It made me gag.

“No, I study people,” he said. “I don’t need a class to do it.”

“Lucky me,” I said, realizing that all along, this was really what he had been doing. It might have felt like his eyes were stapled to me because he couldn’t look away, because I was just that irresistible, but really it had more to do with the fact that he was trying to figure me out. Figure out why I’d even agreed to go to the party with him if I had such a serious boyfriend.

Just like I was. The belief that it was because Joe had asked me to move in with him was becoming a flimsier and flimsier excuse.

I looked at Trevor’s boots. They were scuffed like he’d kicked the crap out of someone with white paint all over him.

“I’ve seen you watching me,” he said. “I like being watched, especially by a girl like you.”

“Oh, a bad girl?” I joked.

He sighed and I saw something change in his eyes, almost like they were melting from the ice they had been. “Someone who doesn’t need to wear a paper hat.” He looked down, suddenly vulnerable. I understood what he was saying. He meant someone who was better off than he was.

Why did everybody always seem to care about that?

Maybe because they had to and I never did.

“I’ve never worn a paper hat, but I’ve worn a hairnet,” I said, suddenly seeing the part of him he’d tried so hard to hide with his leather jacket and too-long bangs. The part he was trying to hide with
his
bad boy.

“That definitely sucks, but you haven’t had to wear one here.”

“Yet.” I laughed.

“You like slumming, bad girl?” he asked, leaning closer.

I could see that whatever part of him he’d exposed to me, he’d buttoned up just as quickly with slick words.

I had been watching him. I couldn’t help it and he couldn’t help but notice it and Joe couldn’t help but not notice it.

But I was starting to realize that maybe it wasn’t me watching him, it was the old Amy, the one I thought I’d left behind when I said yes to Joe. It was like she was locked in a tiny room inside me and she was knocking, screaming from the inside of it.

I was also starting to realize that leaving her behind really had nothing to do with Joe. It was just easier to blame that on him. It had been my choice, to be healthy and to let go of her. To finally stop being afraid of being myself, but she was crafty. She knew better than to let me actually be happy. It would mean she would be gone forever.

Trevor put his hand just next to me. Not touching but so close to touching my waist. It was like he wanted me to know he was adhering to my boundaries while at the same time making it obvious he wanted to break them down—wanted me to tell him to break them down. It made me wonder if he had asked me to come to the party just to see what he could get away with. I knew most guys lived by this mantra, but I guess I’d forgotten, because Joe wasn’t one of those guys.

I took a long drink, finishing my beer. My stomach filling with liquid, my cheeks filling with heat, I almost spit the whole thing out it was so warm.

“Want another?” he asked, his hand still there.

“I don’t think I should,” I said, even though I’d practically drunk the plastic insides along with the cup when I was slugging it down.

“You don’t think you should, or you don’t want to? Those are two different things.”

He was right. So right that with those words he had completely described this weird two-sided being I felt like I had turned into. Did I want to be this good girl I’d become for Joe, or did I think I wanted to be her? Was that why I couldn’t just say yes to moving in with him? Or was it really because I was afraid to finally leave my bad-girl shield behind and just be the real me with someone?

With someone who had actually seen her and loved her.

With Joe.

“I don’t want to,” I said, the first thing it felt like I had actually been sure of that night. If I had another beer, it was bound to put me on the path of doing things I didn’t want to do, things that after my other beer wouldn’t be nearly as easy to say no to.

We were interrupted by the sound of hoots and hollers. Two girls were dancing with each other in the center of the room—tight jeans, tighter T-shirts, their bodies slithering like the worms that come out on the sidewalk after a rainstorm. Guys stood around them chanting, “Kiss, kiss, kiss.”

“Give me a break,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“What?” Trevor said. “They’re just having fun.”

“They’re trying to,” I said. “It’s the guys around them I’m talking about.”

“You obviously don’t know very much about guys,” he said, taking another drink from his flask.

“No,” I said, watching the girls move closer with each chant, “I’m reacting this way because I do.”

“Oh,” he said, his lips close enough to my ear to bite it off. “Your heart’s been broken, huh? Big surprise.”

“Not broken, just woken up,” I said, trying to ignore the shivers his breath had sent through me. I knew it wasn’t him. I knew Joe could have a similar effect when he was that close.

Trevor pulled back to look at me. “Right,” he said, like he had remembered the words to a song and was reciting them. “But not by the boyfriend. The boyfriend is safe, but you don’t like safe, do you, bad girl?”

“You don’t know anything about me,” I said, and I could feel the words in my teeth. The thing was that he did. In one night he had figured out what Joe still didn’t know or didn’t want to know: that I was unsure about everything. But what I hadn’t realized until that night was that it wasn’t because I wanted something else. It was because I thought I didn’t deserve it.

I thought that Joe was wrong to want me.

…

Joe

“So if your girlfriend doesn’t like frats, why are you here?” Emily asked. She’d brought back a six-pack of beers and already opened two bottles on the cement stair above us. It was obvious this was not her first frat party.

I took a long drink, the neck of the bottle moist in my hand. It was so cold and good and it was going down so easily I’d finished one and she’d opened me another before I even realized it.

“Are you working undercover?” I asked. I could feel my eyes looking at her over the bottle, sort of flirting with her. I looked away. I wasn’t trying to flirt with her, but she was the first girl I’d spoken to for longer than five minutes since I’d arrived at college.

I had also—even though I hadn’t tried to—seen her basically naked.

“I guess I’m just asking,” she said, playing with the label on her beer bottle. “We have to talk about something, right?”

It was true. I’d been to enough parties in high school to know that girls and guys could do two things together: talk or something else. And there was no way we could do
something else
.

“It’s the pre-law frat,” I said, shrugging, shifting, slugging down my beer.

“No other reason?” she asked, her voice almost humming.

“Should I have one?” I knew I wasn’t hiding anything from her. So why not admit that really was the main reason? Amy always told me that I might have been the only person she’d ever met who didn’t have ulterior motives. I guess this was what she meant.

“They throw the best parties,” she said, running her finger up and down the neck of the beer bottle. “You don’t agree?”

I gulped. This girl made me gulp. This was bad.

“Sure,” I said. “I guess word gets around campus, huh?”

“Word gets around town,” she said. “I go to Casablanca, the cosmetology school.”

“So why are you here?” I asked.

“The same reason we’re all here,” she said, her gaze scanning her friends around the room. “It’s the pre-law frat.”

“Looking to snag yourself a lawyer,” I said, talking as much as I was drinking now. I had both hands on the bottle, holding them steady.

“That’s the plan,” she said, looking past me. “I’m ready to be set for life.”

“You don’t feel like it’s too soon to think about the future?” I asked, knowing I was asking not because I didn’t agree but because I knew Amy didn’t. She didn’t like thinking more than a couple of weeks ahead. Maybe it was because she knew how easily everything you had planned could go up in smoke.

Literally.

“No way,” Emily said, her whole body straightening. “I mean, there are things I want in life. A beautiful home, a bitchin’ car, an expense account, and I want a guy who can give those to me. I can spend my time looking for that, or I can spend them getting wasted and sleeping with losers. If I’m going to get wasted and sleep with someone, I’d rather he be able to take care of me the next day.”

“So you’re basically sleeping with guys for money,” I said. I didn’t really know how else to respond.

“I want a good life. Why should I sleep with them for free?”

I nodded. It was what I wanted to give to Amy. I was a guy, so I had to provide those things for someone, and why did Emily want all those things when Amy seemed like she still couldn’t decide?

Was it because I was trying to force her to decide? Trying to force myself to decide?

I guess I was rushing things between us because I wanted so badly to have the perfect life for myself—the life that my father couldn’t give me. It was a selfish reason.

“
You
could be a lawyer,” I said, gesturing with my beer, “or a doctor.”

“Right,” she said, running her fingers through her hair. “People transfer from cosmetology school to law school all the time.”

We sat there for a moment, drinking, watching the basement around us. Most of the girls had paired off and were dancing, or doing what Steve and Deanna had been doing. I was pretty sure Emily, even though she was acting like a good sport, was becoming increasingly annoyed with her decision to pair off with me.

But maybe she also could feel what I couldn’t deny, that I liked talking to her. Sitting next to her, being close to her.

“Isn’t that why your girl is with you?” she asked.

“No,” I said, “she doesn’t care about that stuff at all. Thinking about the future scares her.” I was surprised I’d admitted it, but it wasn’t like Emily was keeping anything from me. Of course, I didn’t add that I was forcing her to think about it because I was afraid, too.

“What’s scary about knowing what you want?” she asked, making sure I could see her face.