When You Were Mine (15 page)

“Corny,” I say, “but I’ll take it.”

He stabs himself in the chest with his hand.“Only for you.”

“Okay, Romeo,” Charlie says. “Are we dancing, or what?”

The song changes, and “Walking on Sunshine” starts playing. Charlie thought old songs would be appropriate for the Fall Back theme. “Like throwback,” she said. I’ve always loved this song. It reminds me of summer and being young, and when Rob grabs my hand and starts twirling me on the dance floor, all thoughts of Juliet fly right away.

It’s dark out, and as Rob spins me around, the paper lanterns zigzag beams of light across the courtyard. I feel like I do on the
swings ride at Six Flags, like the world is going a million miles a minute and yet I’m completely lost in one moment. Things moving by so quickly, they look like they’re completely standing still. The best kind of paradox.

Charlie and Jake are getting along for the moment, and Olivia is stuck to Ben, dancing way too slow for this song. I find myself smiling so hard I start to laugh. It’s perfect, this moment. So completely wonderful I want to stay here forever.

The song ends, and Rob twirls me one last time. “Nice moves, Rosie,” he says. We’re both a bit breathless.

My dress has shifted dangerously low, and my hair is wet, some of it matted to the back of my neck. I already feel like a drowned rat, and we practically just got here. I need to freshen up.

“I’m going to go to the bathroom,” I say to Rob.

“I’ll be waiting for you,” he says as he pulls me to him and kisses me once softly on the cheek. He’s a little bit sweaty, and the kiss is damp, but I still walk away with my hand over the spot where his lips have just been. It’s perfect. This entire night is turning out better than I ever could have imagined.

A few freshman girls are in the bathroom, and they take one look at me and scramble to leave. It’s funny to remember feeling that way—small and insecure. Between this dress and Rob’s kiss, it seems like such a long time ago.

I’m alone in the bathroom, in front of the mirrors. I feel dizzy, like I need to sit down, except I’m too excited to even stand still.
You’re beautiful,
Rob said, and being here now, for the first time since he said it, I think it might be true. I look at this girl in the silver backless dress and
feel
beautiful. I was so silly to think that things might not work out for us, or to even give two seconds to this Juliet thing. It’s Rob. And me. And when he kissed me, it felt right. I was so comfortable being close to him.

I mean, Rob was the one who rode behind me the day I took the training wheels off my bike. He was the one who, when I got stung by that wasps’ nest while pulling up tomato plants in my mom’s garden, bought me sunglasses to cover how swollen my eyes were. He was the one who trained with me every day in the pool at summer camp our fifth-grade year so that I could finally make it to the color orange group. He was there when our dog, Sally, died. He was the one who insisted we have a funeral and even wrote a poem: “Sally did not dillydally. She died today. It’s sad to say.” He was the one who held me when Charlie and I got in a gigantic fight last year, when I thought that maybe we wouldn’t be friends anymore. He was the one who knew it would all be okay.

He knows that Twizzlers are my favorite candy and that up until the fifth grade I thought my middle name was spelled a different way. He’s Rob. And the fact that I’ve known him forever
and that he knows me, really knows me, is proof that it was always supposed to be us. That he’s the one. And what makes it really remarkable is that he’s out there right now, waiting for me.

My body is buzzing with this quiet excitement. I can feel it in my toes and through my fingers. Maybe this is our night. I can’t think of anyone else I’d want it to happen with, and standing here now I can picture a lot more than Rob’s hands in my hair. Charlie’s right. This is going to be the best year ever. And next year Rob and I will both be at Stanford. Suddenly I can see the rest of my life laid out in front of me like a red carpet. All I have to do is step onto it.

I apply some more lip gloss with a shaky finger, smooth out my dress, and walk down the breezeway. I feel invincible. Like Beyoncé in a music video. Like I have my own personal wind machine in front of me.

I can hear the notes of a slow song playing. It’s that one from the movie
Ghost
. The one that goes, “Oh, my love, my darling.” Usually slow songs make me uncomfortable, but I’m already anticipating being in Rob’s arms, having his hands around my back, resting my head on his shoulder. I’m walking so briskly, I don’t even notice that I’ve walked right into someone. “Sorry,” I say, not looking up.

“Hang on.” Len puts his hand on my arm, stopping me.

“Umm, hey,” I say, shaking him off.

“I was actually looking for you,” he says.

“Has hell frozen over?”

He cocks his head to the side. “Yeah, it has,” he says. “But it’s kind of a nice change from this sauna of a summer.”

“Is there something you need?” I ask, impatient. I want to get back to Rob. To tell him, absolutely and definitively, I want to be with him.

Len shrugs. “Need? Nah. I just wanted to ask what’s up with your man.”

“My man?”

“Cut the act. I’ve seen the groping.”

We have not been groping, have we? “There hasn’t been any groping.”

“You know, you’re right. It was nothing compared to what’s going on up there.” He gestures above the courtyard.

“Up there?”

“Look, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He gives me a little salute with two fingers and then stuffs his hands into his pockets, walking backward and away.

“What are you talking about?”

“He’s a jackass,” Len says, turning. “You heard it from me first.”

“Who?” I mutter stupidly, but he’s off the breezeway already, and if he’s heard me, he doesn’t answer.

I glance around the courtyard. Charlie and Jake are swaying together, although it looks a little like Charlie is leading. Ben and Olivia are completely tangled up in the corner. It’s impossible to see whose limbs are whose. I can’t seem to spot Rob, but I still feel dizzy. It’s making it hard to focus.

I weave in and out of people on the dance floor. Couples, swaying. Matt and Lauren are locked in an embrace, and I wonder, briefly, if they’re together. Stranger things have happened, I guess.

I’m standing in the middle of the dance floor when instinctively I look up. And as soon as I do, I understand what Len meant.

There’s this little balcony over the breezeway that was part of the old mansion and that the school kept, even though it serves no practical function. It’s small, probably seven feet by four or something, and it’s covered in ivy.

Rob’s up there. His brown hair is falling slightly into his eyes, and the collar of his shirt has come undone. He’s swaying to the music, just like I imagined. He looks handsome and strong and charming all at once, and I want more than I ever have to be in his arms. The problem, though, is that somebody else already is.

He’s holding her. His arms are around her back and her head is on his shoulder, and they’re swaying slowly, so slowly they look like they’re not even moving. The girl in his arms should be me,
but it’s not, not even close. The girl he’s swaying with is none other than Juliet.

There’s something in the way that he’s holding her that makes me stop in my tracks. It’s not friendly and it’s not platonic. He’s holding her like she’s a leaf, like she might just at any moment blow away in the wind. She looks like a ballerina in his arms, so small and delicate and fragile. And then I see him lean over and smell her hair, and it’s like someone has just knocked the wind out of me. I just stand there, gaping. They’re so close together, you couldn’t even fit a feather between them.

I blink, but they’re still there. She doesn’t pick her head up off his shoulder. He doesn’t move his hands from her back. They could be a statue, that’s how still they are standing together.

Is anyone else seeing this? Olivia and Ben are still smothering each other, but I don’t see Charlie. I suddenly desperately don’t want her to know. I don’t want anyone to know. I want to take back the last forty-eight hours, to avoid this humiliation. I want to run as far away as I possibly can from here and never look back. I want to reverse time. I want to do a million things rather than stand here, watching them.

I finally look away from them, and Len’s face comes into view. He’s looking at me, and I expect him to smirk, to roll his eyes, but he doesn’t do anything. He just looks away.

Then Charlie is there. Her red hair has fallen out of its bun,
and it’s hanging around her face like braches on a weeping willow tree. She’s seen them too, and she’s looking at me, her expression mirroring mine. She crosses over to me in two paces, and I feel her take my hand in hers. She squeezes it twice, the way she did on our first day of high school in the car when I was nervous. The way she always does when things get to be just a little bit too much. It’s her way of saying, “I’m here.”

And then, still holding my hand, she leads me away. Off the dance floor, through the breezeway, past Cooper House, and out to upper, where she opens the door and helps me inside Big Red. It’s only once we’re pulling out of the parking lot that I start to cry.

I wake up before my alarm. All night, all weekend, I’m
actually not sure I have been sleeping at all. I’ve been in and out of consciousness, hoping for something to change but knowing it won’t. My chest hurts, or is it my heart? It’s hard to tell. People are always throwing around the term “broken heart,” but this
is
physically painful. So much so that as I lie in bed, waiting for the buzzer to sound, I press my hands over my heart, like if I apply enough pressure, I can keep the pieces from drifting apart.

“Charlie’s here,” my mom calls.

Obnoxiously early, again. Except when I glance at my clock, I see that it’s 7:10. We’re already late. I have no idea if my alarm went off. Maybe I never even set it.

“I’ll be right there.” I leap out of bed and throw on yesterday’s
jeans. I pull on a white tank top and a blue cardigan that’s dangling over my desk chair.

I’ve been avoiding Charlie’s calls and texts. Olivia’s, too. I don’t really know what to say to them, and I don’t feel like hearing how sorry they are for me. Especially since I haven’t heard it from Rob. He hasn’t called me or come over. Which makes me feel like he isn’t going to apologize, because whatever happened Friday night is just the beginning of something else.

The worst part is, I’m not even sure he was home once this weekend. I stayed up Friday night, almost until morning, just to see if he got in. He never did. No tires on the gravel. No bedroom light. Nothing.

“Everything okay?” Mom asks when I come drudging into the kitchen. I know I probably look like a mess. I haven’t washed my hair since Friday, and I didn’t even bother trying to find my makeup bag this morning.

“Yeah,” I say.

“You sure? You’ve been really quiet.” She puts her hands on her hips and peers at me, the way she does when she knows I’m not telling the whole truth. I’m surprised she even noticed. She and my dad have been locked in his study whispering for most of the weekend.

I perk my voice up and give her a quick kiss on the cheek.
“Don’t worry.”

“What am I, chopped liver?” My dad is sitting at the kitchen counter, and he taps his cheek with his index finger. I go over to him, and he pulls me into a hug. “Knock ’em dead, cookie,” he whispers to me. There’s no reason for him to say that today, but I’m not surprised. He has always known when something’s not right, and how to make it better. And today, more than anything, I wish I could go back to being a little kid, when my dad calling me cookie could turn back time and erase anything that was wrong. Instead I put on a smile, steal a sip of my dad’s coffee, and head out to Charlie’s honking car.

Olivia is in the back, her arms looped around the front seat. Twice in a week. We’ve definitely hit a new record.

“Hey,” I say. “Sorry I’m late.” I slip in and click my seat belt into place. Maybe if I act normal, the world will play along.

“How are you?” Charlie asks. She’s turned to me wearing this grave expression, her features all set in a row. I expected her to be pissy about my being nonresponsive all weekend, or at least about my being late this morning, but if she is, she’s not acting like it.