Fireworks

by Katie Cotugno

  I love those guys, Olivia had said when we first got to Orlando, but none of them are ever going to get out of Jessell.

  The truth was, I could see myself falling into the familiarity of it; I knew exactly how easy it would be to seamlessly settle back into this life, as if I’d never left at all. A month ago, I might have given myself over to it—accepted it as inevitable, surrendered without a fight. But now there was a part of me that thrashed against the idea that the world didn’t hold anything for me but a thousand more nights like this one, as if I was having my head held underwater.

  Sarah Jane offered to drive me home that night—it was late enough that the buses had stopped running, and she lived right around the corner from my mom’s. Still, normally I’d have gotten a ride from Olivia, and SJ must have been thinking the same thing: “So where is Liv tonight, exactly?” she asked as she unlocked the door of her hatchback, fixing me with a long stare over the roof of the car.

  “Oh,” I said vaguely, cringing a bit. I thought I’d successfully dodged that line of inquiry. I should have known better than to let my guard down where SJ was concerned. “She had family stuff to do, I think.”

  “I knew it,” Sarah Jane said, sliding into the driver’s seat. “I knew when we were down there that there was something weird going on with you guys.”

  “There’s not,” I insisted. It occurred to me that even now, when things were worse between us than they’d ever been before, my allegiance was to Olivia first and always. We’d never talked about each other to our other friends, not ever; just because Olivia had broken that promise with Kristin and Ashley didn’t mean I was about to. “She’s just busy with her mom.”

  “Uh-huh,” Sarah Jane said, in a voice like she didn’t believe me but knew she wasn’t going to get anywhere by pushing it. “Whatever you say.” Then she hesitated, glancing at me as we pulled out of the parking lot. “Can I ask you something, though?” she continued carefully. “Can she, like, handle it down there?”

  I thought about the night after Guy’s pool party. I thought of how she’d wanted this her entire life. I shrugged a little, turning and staring out the window. “I don’t know,” I said finally, and this time I was telling the truth.

  Sarah Jane nodded at that. “Fair enough.”

  We drove home in companionable silence, past the high school and Waffle House, the landscape that had made up the entirety of my life until this summer. SJ hugged me again before I got out of the car. “Stay in touch, yeah?” she told me. “And, Dana—take care of yourself.”

  The house was dark when I got inside that night—my mom was still out, though I hadn’t a clue where. Elvis was whining for a pee at the back door, urgent; I was just shooing him back inside when the phone rang. “It’s you,” Alex said when I picked up the receiver in the hallway, and just like that I burst into tears.

  “Oh my God, I’m sorry,” I said once I could talk again. “That’s embarrassing.” I sniffled. “Hi. Sorry. I’m tired, is all.”

  “It’s okay. What’s up, huh?” Alex asked me. “What’s going on?”

  I hesitated, twisting the phone cord tightly around my finger, looking through the window at the dark, weedy yard outside. Part of me wanted to tell him everything—my mom and the socks in the living room, Mrs. Maxwell in the supermarket and how badly the idea of coming back here for good scared me—but truthfully, I was embarrassed. “Just weird being back, I guess.”

  “I know what you mean,” Alex said. “The first time I came back after I started with Hurricane State, all kinds of dumb stuff set me off. My mom had moved everything around in the kitchen cabinets and I totally lost my mind.” He paused then, like he was catching himself. “But I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that this is a different kind of thing.”

  I smiled at that. “Yeah,” I said.

  “You want to tell me about it?”

  I banged my head lightly against the wall. God, me being back in Jessell just underlined everything I’d been worried about the past couple of weeks. How would we possibly stay together if I came back here? How would we ever make it work if he was on tour with Tulsa in places like Jakarta and Manchester and I was back in Jessell, slinging burgers for two-dollar tips?

  We wouldn’t, was the answer. Whatever we had would have to end.

  “Dana?” Alex asked, his voice low and familiar in my ear. “You still there?”

  “I’m here,” I managed, trying to keep my voice steady. I shook my head, forced myself to pull it together. “Just talk to me, will you?” I asked him finally, dragging the phone back to my room and climbing into bed with the receiver. “Tell me what it’s like there.”

  “Sure,” Alex promised, seeming to understand that this was what I needed more than anything else—reassurance that I had a life to come back to in Orlando, that I was a part of something there. “Of course I will.”

  Alex talked to me for a long time, patient, filling me in on the broad strokes and small moments alike: that Mikey had overflowed the toilet at the studio, how Guy had them learning a Jackson 5 song for their encore on tour. “I can’t wait till you come back here,” he told me softly. His voice was the last thing I heard before I fell asleep.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I hadn’t been sure what Olivia’s mom had meant by party, but when I turned up the following afternoon, I saw that she’d gone all out: picnic tables set up in the Maxwells’ backyard piled with burgers and potato salad, a Jell-O mold Olivia’s grandma Grace had made. There was also a giant sheet cake from the grocery store, the same kind Mrs. Maxwell had gotten for Olivia’s graduation earlier that summer—although this one, I saw with no small amount of horror, said Congratulations Olivia & Dana on top. I felt my cheeks burn with embarrassment. God, if Olivia didn’t already hate me, her mom slapping my name on her damn cake would probably have been enough to do it. You steal everything, I heard her say.

  I made myself as scarce as humanly possible, lurking around the edges of the backyard where I’d spent so many summers, nibbling barbecue potato chips I knew Charla wouldn’t have liked me eating. The fact that none of our other friends had mentioned the party made me think they hadn’t been invited, either, and as I looked around now I saw that I’d been right. Instead, I talked to Olivia’s cousins Sophie and Kayley, twelve-year-old twins who wanted to hear every breathing detail about Tulsa; they didn’t seem to care that I’d only met him once. Olivia ignored me, flitting from group to group across the lawn like a brightly colored hummingbird. In spite of everything that was going on, it made me happy that Olivia had all these people at home rooting for her. It made me kind of sad that I didn’t have it, too.

  “How you doing, honey?” Olivia’s mom asked, sitting down beside me on the steps to the side door, a plastic cup of lemonade sweating in her hand. She always made the kind with actual lemons floating in it—at least one thing, she always said quietly, that southerners knew how to get right.

  “I’m good,” I said, hoping I sounded convincing. “Thank you for the cake.”

  Olivia’s mom waved me off, handing me the lemonade. “This has all been a bit overwhelming, huh?”

  I shrugged. “I try not to take it that seriously.”

  She smiled at that. “No,” she said. “I know you wouldn’t.” Then she sighed. “Look, sweetheart, Olivia hasn’t told me what’s going on between you two, and I’m not dumb enough to ask. But I can tell that she’s suffering. I said this to her, and I’ll say it to you also: not everybody gets to have the kind of friendship that you girls have, you know?”

  I glanced at Olivia across the yard, her dark hair swinging. It didn’t look like she was suffering at all. “I do know that,” I managed. “I understand.”

  But Mrs. Maxwell put her hand on my arm. “She needs you, Dana. She’s my girl, she’s my own true heart, but you’re the strong one.”

  I stared at her for a moment. What else do you know? I wanted to ask. Still, I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

  “I do,” Mrs.
Maxwell said. “Look out for her for me, will you do that? Even if you girls are having problems. Just—keep an eye on her, all right?”

  I thought again of the night in the bathroom after Guy’s party. I thought of how I’d stolen Alex out from under her nose. I thought of how much Olivia seemed to hate me lately, how in some ways going to Orlando in the first place had been the worst thing I could possibly do. “I’ll try,” I finally said.

  “Sylvia!” Olivia’s dad called from across the yard. “Can you grab some napkins?”

  This was stupid, I thought when Mrs. Maxwell had left me; it was time to get out of here and go home. I edged across the lawn and went inside to get my purse. The house was cool and dark, quiet compared to the scrum in the yard. The kitchen was a mid-party disaster, plates and cups piled on the counters, the trash overflowing in the corner. I pulled the bag out and got a fresh one from under the sink, then stuck a block of sweating cheddar cheese back into the fridge for good measure. I put a fistful of silverware into the dishwasher, then figured I might as well load the whole thing up while I was at it. There was something soothing about it, weirdly. No notes to remember, no politics to navigate. I’d grown up in this kitchen: here was the cookie sheet we used for gingerbread men every December; here was the Dalmatian-shaped pepper shaker with her nose chipped off from when Olivia had smashed it on the floor. Even with things between Olivia and me like they were, I felt more at home here than I did at my mom’s house.

  I was scrubbing a pasta pot when Olivia appeared in the doorway. She was wearing a short denim skirt and a pink tank top with spaghetti straps, her hair brushed long over her shoulders. “Hey,” she said. “What are you doing?”

  I shrugged—feeling stupid all of a sudden, feeling like even more of an interloper than I had all day long. “Just . . . making myself useful.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I know.”

  I thought she was going to tell me to cut it out, but instead she picked up a dishtowel and stood next to me, drying off the big chip bowls and the other stuff that couldn’t go in the dishwasher. We hadn’t talked all afternoon—we hadn’t really talked in weeks—and we didn’t talk now, either, working side by side in a silence that felt, if not exactly comfortable, then at least not quite hostile. We’d washed dishes like this a million times before; it was our job after dinner, every time I’d eaten here since we were little kids. We had a rhythm. That much, at least, hadn’t changed.

  Soon everything was put away and the kitchen was cleanish, the dishwasher chunking away. All of a sudden, it felt totally weird again. It felt awkward just to be standing next to her, like the breach between us was too wide to be crossed.

  “I’m going to go,” I said finally. “Thanks for inviting me—or for not telling your mom that you hadn’t invited me, or whatever. I’m sorry she put me on the cake like that.”

  Olivia looked at me strangely. “I told her to,” she said.

  That stopped me. “Oh,” I said, taken totally by surprise. “You did?”

  Olivia nodded. “This morning,” she said. She held her hands up. “I mean. This is your thing, too, right?”

  You tell me, I didn’t say. “Okay. Well—thanks.” I nodded.

  Olivia nodded back. “Car’s coming at eight,” she reminded me.

  “I’ll be ready.”

  “Dana—”

  I turned around. “Yeah?”

  Olivia shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “See you tomorrow.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  I found Alex as soon as I got back to Orlando Sunday night, pulled him out of the Model UN, where he was watching reruns of The Simpsons with Mario, and led him downstairs to the side of the building near the vending machines. One good thing about Olivia knowing about us now was that there was no reason to sneak around, not really; still, it felt like there was nowhere to be alone here, that we had to take every scrap of privacy where we could get it. I pushed him up against the side of the building, popped up onto my tiptoes, and pressed my mouth hard against his, rough and urgent. I felt like I needed him to ground me, to remind me what I was doing here and who I was.

  “Hey,” he said, both of us coming up for air after a moment, Alex gasping a bit against my mouth. “Hey hey hey, hi, talk to me.”

  I looked at him for a moment, searching. I didn’t know exactly what to say. I wanted to tell him that spending the weekend at home had terrified me more than anything, that I didn’t see how he and I would ever last if I got sent back. That until I’d made the trip to Orlando I’d never realized how little I had. I wanted to tell him that I could physically feel my life changing and that he was the reason, that I was scared I was falling in love with him and was pretty sure it was all going to end in heartbreak and disaster, but when I opened my mouth to explain all that, the only thing that came out was “I missed you.” I huffed out a laugh at how lame it sounded, how completely I was failing to explain. “Shit, Alex. I missed you really bad.”

  “I missed you, too,” Alex said, cupping my face with both hands and kissing me again, desperate. My shoulder blades scraped against the rough outside wall. “Trevor’s got a date with the frozen yogurt girl,” he murmured breathlessly, his fingertips skating along the hem of my tank top. “There’s nobody upstairs.”

  “Seriously?” I said, pulling back and looking at him, the possibilities zinging through my brain and my body. “Why are you just telling me this now?”

  “I don’t know,” Alex said, laughing a little, nervous or hopeful or both. “I got distracted.”

  “Yeah, no kidding.” I smiled at him, knocked our foreheads together one more time. “Do you want to go upstairs?”

  “I—yeah,” Alex said. “Of course. Yeah, I do.”

  “Okay,” I said, looking at him and making a decision. “So let’s go upstairs.”

  Trevor and Alex’s apartment had the same layout as ours did, though you could definitely tell two boys were living there with no actual adult to be found. Half-empty bags of chips gaped open on the counter in the kitchen; a pile of jumbled, unlaced sneakers sprawled near the door. Something had spilled on the coffee table and been wiped up only hastily, a film of something sticky-looking still coating the fake-wood surface.

  Alex’s room was neat-ish, though—neater than mine, at least, which was perpetually strewn with clothes and magazines and hair supplies—but a little stale smelling, too, air conditioner and boy. The bedsheets were rumpled, and Alex reached forward and smoothed them out. We looked at each other in the half dark, neither one of us saying anything. All the noise and uncertainty of the outside world had evaporated into the air, but at the same time it felt like everything was changing at once, like at any second the earth might start moving underneath our feet. It was as if we were in a vacuum somehow, the only two people for miles or years.

  “Have you ever?” I asked him, one knee up on the mattress. I didn’t think he had, but for everything else we’d told each other, we’d somehow never talked about it before now.

  “No.” Alex shook his head. “Have you?”

  “No,” I said, and Alex looked so openly relieved that I cracked up. “You thought I was going to say yes!” I accused, shoving him in the arm, everything feeling lighter all of a sudden, less serious, the tension breaking like an egg. “You jerk. You thought I was going to be like, oh, yeah, with like fifty guys.”

  “That’s not what I thought!” Alex protested, the tips of his ears turning pink like they always did when I’d caught him at something.

  “Uh-huh.” I reached out and shoved him down onto the mattress, swung one knee across his lap. “You totally did.”

  “I didn’t,” Alex said breathlessly, tilting his face up to kiss me. “I just—feel like you know stuff. It’s a compliment,” he said when I raised my eyebrows. “I mean it as a compliment. I mean you’re smarter than me, I mean you’re not afraid of anything.”

  “That what you think?” I asked him in between kisses, working his T-shirt
up over his head. “I’m afraid of stuff.” I took a breath. “I’m afraid of having to leave you.”

  “Hey.” Alex pushed my hair out of my face, looking at me seriously. “It’s not gonna happen,” he promised. “No matter what, it’s not gonna happen.”

  He sounded so sure in that moment that it was impossible even for me not to believe him. It felt like all I had to do was hold on.

  We kissed for a long time on top of the covers, Alex’s soft tongue and his pulse thudding away beneath the vellum skin at his throat. He smelled like soap and a little bit like sweat. “Do you have . . . ?” I started, then trailed off.

  “In the dresser,” he told me, his voice a little ragged, and we didn’t talk a whole lot more after that. My bra hit the floor, then Alex’s boxers; after that he stopped, though, his breathing gone heavy and his expression concerned. I could feel him trying not to push himself against my hip.

  “I’m scared I’m going to hurt you,” he said, tucking my hair behind my ear.

  “You’re not going to hurt me,” I promised, panting a little myself. Every single part of me felt almost unbearably tightly coiled, like I was a gun about to go off. “It’s okay, I promise. You won’t.”

  That wasn’t entirely true—when it happened it did hurt, a little, a fast sharp pain and then something closer to an ache. Alex propped himself up on his elbows as he moved. “Dana,” he said quietly, his voice a desperate gasp in my ear.

  It was over pretty fast: “Oh my God,” Alex said again, his sweaty forehead buried in the crook of my neck. “Oh my God, Dana, please.” I tangled my fingers in his hair and hung on. When he was finished, Alex reached down between us and rubbed until I felt like I was bursting into a thousand pieces, as if I were an exploding star.

  “Hi,” I said when I came back to myself, turning my face against his warm, soft shoulder. There were a handful of freckles scattered there, like somebody had thrown a fistful of glitter.

  “Hi.” Alex smiled, looking at me with a mixture of love and shell shock. “You okay?”