What Happens Next (28 page)

I am lying on my bed doing some of my required summer reading:
Best Loved Poems From Around the World.
Whatever idiot invented the concept of summer reading should be shackled in the town square. They should be spit on and kicked repeatedly and heckled by passersby. Summer is for fun, end of story.

My phone rings and I can tell it’s My Super Sweet Hot Boyfriend Corey Livingston because George, Paul, John, and Ringo are telling me so via poly ringtone. Apparently, Corey Livingston wants to hold my hand.

I throw the book across my bed and pick up my phone.

“Yus,” I say in a pompous Mayfair accent.

“I want to take you out on Mr. D’s boat for your birthday. I want to cook for you and I want us to spend the whole night together.”

“Uhhh…” I say, following it up with a big chunk of dead air.

The stretching silence speaks loud and clear. It says,
I’m not ready for that!

“Oh, no. I didn’t mean that,” Corey stammers. “I… I didn’t mean that. Really, I meant… I just want us to be together until really late. I have something planned, but it won’t work until really late.”

“How late?”

“It starts at midnight. You’d be home by two at the latest.”

My curfew is midnight. He always makes sure he has me home a few minutes early. He’s not one of those assholes who always finds a way to screw up a girl’s curfew. You know the kind—they argue or find weaselly ways to stay out later or
be
late because, well, they want what they want, and they could give two shits if a girl catches hell for it. He likes that my mom trusts him.

“What is it?”

“I can’t tell you. It’s a surprise.”

“I guess I could tell my mom I’m spending the night at Kirsten’s? She wouldn’t know.”

The line goes silent for a few seconds while he considers this.

“Is your mom there?” he asks.

“Yeah, she’s in the kitchen, whipping up one of her big-ass mom meals.” I cringe when I realize that I have spoken this out loud. I didn’t mean to say it like that. Especially to him.

“Let me talk to her.”

“To my mom?”

“Yeah.”

“O-
kayyyyy
,” I say and take my phone to her.

I try to listen but she immediately goes to her room and shuts the door. When she comes back out, she is smiling.

“What? What is it?”

“You wish, loser,” she says to me.

Fack!

26

It’s not technically
my birthday yet, because it’s only ten o’clock. Corey and I are on Mr. D’s boat. He told me to eat a late lunch and skip dinner so I would be hungry again by ten thirty. Skip dinner? No problemo.

He got his boating license at the beginning of summer as part of his job. He has to have one to work at the marina. Mr. D’s boat is really nice for being an older model. He keeps it clean and it has an aft cabin with a little kitchen, a booth table that converts to a bed, and then two more bunk beds. When Corey shows the beds to me, I kind of tense up, and he says, “Don’t worry. Just giving you the tour. Your mom made me swear on a stack of Bibles that I wouldn’t try to sleep with you tonight.”

“Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Swear on a stack of Bibles.”

“I swore on the phone book.”

I laugh. “So what are you saying?”

He considers this for a moment. “I told her I wouldn’t try to sleep with you. I never said I wouldn’t try to have sex with you.”

“Oh, yeah?” I say.

I know he is joking around. He knows I’m not ready for that—he hasn’t even made it up my shirt yet.

“I’m just kidding around, you know that, right?” he says, hugging me tight and kissing my cheek. “I didn’t bring you here for that. I want to cook for you and give you your birthday present. That’s it.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“And kiss you a lot.” He holds my face and kisses me over and over, fast and nibbley, like he wants to eat my lips up.

“But right now, we eat,” he says, pulling back.

He kisses me once more and then I watch him as he cooks me a really nice meal. He really knows his way around a kitchen—he’s drizzling, he’s whisking, he’s chopping and sautéing. It’s kind of a turn-on. I have to look away and excuse myself to go to the bathroom once so I don’t start panting like Ronan does when Trixie the rottweiler strolls by. He keeps checking his watch every so often, probably to make sure he has me home by two.

“So where did you learn to cook?” I ask, sitting on the bottom bunk bed and pretending to read a boating magazine. It’s in Italian, so I just look at the pictures.

“My mom, she used to cook a lot. I do most of it now.”

Oooh, an opening. I pounce and run with it.

“Tell me about your mom,” I say. “You never really talk about her.”

He goes quiet for a second. His back is to me and he’s stirring something on the stove. He clears his throat and says, “She’s really an amazing person when she’s not…”

He stops talking.

“Not what?” I say, trying to sound casual. My mind finishes his sentence with words like:
High? Stoned? Smashed out of her gourd?

“Um… when she’s not working. She works a lot.”

I can tell he’s holding back. Or lying. And I’ve pushed too hard. I detour us out of the awkwardness.

“Yeah, mine, too. Well, it looks like she taught you well. Whatever you’re whipping up over there smells great.”

“Tarragon chicken with lemon, garlic smashed potatoes, and asparagus with hollandaise sauce.”

“Sounds yummy,” I say.

The way he rattles off his menu combines with the smells he’s making. I toss those two things around in my head, then add in the exceptionally hot way he is looking right now, and my mouth is full-on watering within seconds. I realize I’m starving. But I can’t help wondering how many calories are in all of it. I’m going to be running my ass off tomorrow, but I’m going to get through this meal. And the cake. I am. He’s making it for me special, and I won’t let my craziness spoil it.

Dinner is out of this world. I cut it into really small pieces, because for some reason it makes things go down easier.

“This is incredible. You totally have to go to the Culinary Institute in New York. We need to start working on your application and financial aid forms and stuff.”

“Yeah, I hope it works out. We have family in Brooklyn. My mom would probably move out there, too, if I got in.”

“That would be great,” I say, thinking more about how he just said the word
mom
again. I resist the urge to pounce, instead saying, “Yeah. I need to get busy myself. I need to pick a school already.”

“Are you thinking of anywhere specific?”

“Well, I kind of would like to go away. But then I figure it’s probably cheaper to just commute. If I can get into Baldwin Wallace or Case, maybe one of those.”

“You should go away,” he says.

I stop mid-bite and look at him; our eyes lock.

“You think?” I say, resuming eating my tiny morselettes of chicken.

I’m not sure where he’s going with this. Is he trying to send me away? Is he planning on ditching me after graduation?

“Yeah. I think you should go away. You have really good grades, right?”

“Yeah. A 3.7 overall. A 3.8 if I bust my ass next year. All AP courses.”

I say this calmly, but I’m starting to get upset. He’s not going to wait until graduation. He’s going to ditch me on my fucking birthday. At the stroke of midnight, he’s going to say,
Happy seventeenth birthday, Sid! Now scram!

“Have you ever thought about NYU or Columbia?” he asks, looking at his plate.

Things snap together in my brain; these are both colleges in New York City. He’s not trying to get rid of me. He’s hoping I might be near him if he gets into the Culinary Institute. I relax.

“Um, yeah. Those are places I’d like to look into; I don’t know if I could get in, though. They’re kind of competitive.”

This is not a lie. It’s the suck-ass truth of it.

He takes a bite and then sets his fork down and looks at me.

“You should go where you want to go. I’m sorry. I…”

He wads up his napkin and tosses it down.

“I’m beating around the bush here. I want you and me to be together. And if I don’t get into the Culinary Institute, then I’ll have to either get a job or try for another cooking school. Then I’ll probably want you to pick some college near me wherever that is, too. I’m being a selfish dick, and we’ve only been dating for a couple of months. You’ll probably get sick of me by then anyway.”

He gets up and starts clearing dishes.

“Wait. Sit down,” I say, standing up with him.

“God, I’m ruining your birthday. This is too heavy, I’m sorry.” He’s picking up dishes and his hands are shaking.

“Stop. Put the dishes down, Corey,” I say, reaching out and touching his wrists.

He puts them down and is staring at the table. He doesn’t want to look at me. Or maybe it’s that he doesn’t want to see me looking at him. I walk around to his side of the booth and I slide my hands under his arms and hug him. I put my head to his chest and I squeeze him.

“I want to be near you, too. I could never get sick of you. Ever.”

“Good,” he says, sighing. He kisses the top of my head and hugs me back for a long time. We rock and hug and I think about saying,
I love you, Corey—
but, again, I don’t dare.

At eleven thirty he starts up the boat and drives us out of the marina, past Whiskey Island, and then out farther so we can look at the city. The Cleveland skyline is incredible. It’s a clear, dark night with a crescent moon, and it’s really, really gorgeous. He puts on
Sgt. Pepper’s
.

“This is really nice,” I say.

His arms are around me and we’re sitting with a blanket around us on one of the wide, cushioned benches on the deck. I’m thinking this is the present—a boat ride. I wonder if it is? I don’t need another present. The dinner and boat ride are enough. He could skip Christmas and Valentine’s for the next ten years and still be in the black with me.

I’m all spooned up to him with my back against him, and he is kissing his favorite spot. I’m waiting for my favorite Beatles song of all time to come on, and just as it’s about to, Corey reaches over and pushes the pause button on the CD Player.

“Hey, that’s my favorite song. ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.’ ”

“Every Beatles song is your favorite song,” he says, checking his watch for about the hundredth time tonight.

“This is true. But that’s my überfavorite.”

“I know,” he says, and then adds, “Look.”

He points over to the far right side of the shoreline. A big chunk of city lights go off all at once. Corey releases the pause button on the CD player and turns it up really loud as my song starts up. We watch as the whole skyline goes black, bit by bit, until it’s disappeared altogether.

“Hey! How did—? What just—?”

I’m freaking out. How the hell did he do that?

“It’s a rolling blackout. It’s been scheduled for weeks. To save energy.”

“Holy crap!” I say. “That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!”

“No. It’s not.”

“Yes. It is.”

“No. It’s not. Look up.”

And as John Lennon sings my favorite song in the whole world, I look up and the sky is filled with more stars than I have ever seen in my entire life. I stand up and hold my head back and look up at the stars like I used to do in my room when I was little. Only the stars are real this time. I spin around and it makes me dizzy and I feel like I’m high. My face is about to break in half from smiling. Then I look over at Corey, who is watching me with a tenderness that makes me want to crawl inside his heart, pitch a tent, and set up camp forever.

“That’s the coolest present I’ve ever gotten in my whole life,” I say.

He laughs a little, looks out at the lake, fiddles a bit with his hands.

“Yeah, well, wait till next year,” he says, trying to be sly. “I’ve put a call in to God. Halley’s Comet’s gonna skywrite your name in cursive.”

It’s dark out, but I think he might be blushing.

I look at him. Man, he is beautiful. I walk over and sit on his lap. I kiss him long and slow and soon he shifts a little, moving himself back away from me. I lie back on the cushioned bench and pull him toward me by the shirt. I want his weight on me. I want to feel him against me. We’ve only kissed sitting up until now.

“Sid, I don’t want you to think I did all this to… you know.”

But I can feel him giving in; he leans down and kisses me.

“Just lay with me,” I whisper. “I want us to kiss and I want us to…”
—
and I’m not really sure how to say it—“… lay together. I want to feel you against me. I want to… um…”

“Oh,” he says, his eyes getting wide. He gets it now. “Okay. Yeah,” he says. “Hell, yeah.”

He pockets himself in on top of me, putting his weight on his elbows and sliding his fingers into my hair. He looks at me a second and then kisses me deeply. I bend my knees and we kiss and it is delicious. That gold, rich, and melting feeling is pouring through me again. I’ve had it many times while kissing him, but it’s never been this concentrated. The rich melted gold is pooling and I’m suddenly very glad that I went with the stretchy cotton leggings instead of the thick, sturdy jeans.

My body is telling me I’m ready for this. We kiss deeply and rock up against each other. He pulls away at one point and whispers, “Caprice.” I stare at him, blinking. “My middle name,” he says, catching his breath. “It’s Caprice.”

And we kiss more and more under the countless stars while we listen to my favorite Beatles album. I hold on to him tightly and, after a bit, he kisses my collarbone a few times and slides his weight to the side, propping himself on one elbow. He kisses me softly this time—my forehead, my cheeks, my eyelids—and I can feel him looking at me.

“Open your eyes,” he whispers.

I open them. He looks right into them, with the crescent moon and stars overtop of me.

“I knew it,” he says.

“What?” I say, looking up at the stars while he kisses my face.

“… You’re the girl…” he says.