Someone Else

by Rebecca Phillips

  “Have you ever seen him smile?” I asked.

  “I don’t really pay attention to his facial expressions,” she said, and then turned to stare me down. “You seem awfully curious about him all of a sudden.”

  Now my face was warm. To cover my embarrassment, I hiked up my backpack and started for the corridor. Ashley followed, still darting suspicious glares my way.

  “Taylor, do you have a crush on Dylan?”

  I stopped walking and spun around to face her. “Of course not. First of all, I have a boyfriend and second, I don’t even know him.” I didn’t dare confess the reason I seemed interested in him—for her sake. She’d kill me. Then again, when we arrived at chemistry lab on Monday already paired up with Jessica and Dylan, she was likely to murder me outright in front of twenty-five witnesses and some Bunsen burners. Ashley wasn’t stupid.

  “It’s okay to feel attracted to other boys, you know,” she said in her lecture voice as we continued down the hall. “You’re not dead...or married.”

  Boy, did she have the wrong idea. “I don’t feel attracted to him, Ashley. He’s okay, I mean, for you. But—.”

  “For me? I told you, I don’t have time for dating right now. He’s cute, sure, but that was just a superficial observation. Nothing more.”

  So much for my matchmaking. I wondered if it was too late to change the groups around in chemistry. Jessica would probably think I was a nutjob for even suggesting it.

  “I have to get to work,” I said, glancing at my watch. “See you tomorrow.”

  She wiggled her fingers at me and pulled open the library door. “See you.”

  I took off toward the side door that led to the parking lot. Outside, the sun was shining for the first time all week, and my earlier excitement rose to the surface once again. This time tomorrow, I thought, Michael will be almost home. My entire body buzzed with anticipation at the thought of seeing him again. Ashley was right—there were other boys, attractive boys, all over the place. But I knew in my heart that no one else in the world had the power to make me feel like this.

  Chapter 5

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” my father said as I came barreling down the stairs at warp speed, passing him by like a gust of wind. “Where’s the fire?”

  “Michael will be here soon.”

  “Oh?” he said, as if it were the first time he had heard this piece of news. As if we had not, just two hours ago, discussed Michael’s homecoming and our plans for tonight. When it came to my father’s attention span, I may as well have been conversing with the coffee table.

  Earlier, when I found out that Dad and Lynn had plans to go out for the evening, I immediately offered to stay home and watch my stepbrother Jamie (my sister was at a sleepover). My dad and stepmom had brushed away my proposal, assuming it was just a cursory offer. But I meant it. I did not want to spend my first night with Michael in six weeks at some party surrounded by people, or anywhere else that involved being in public. Jamie was usually asleep by ten, so for a couple of hours at least, I’d have him all to myself. Alone.

  My father didn’t catch on to my plot right away, but Lynn did, and I could tell that she had some reservations. As my mother’s infamous rule stated, Michael and I were not to be left alone without parental (or nosy sibling) supervision. This rule, along with a plethora of others, had been in effect for many months now, and my mother assumed these rules were being followed to the letter. She expected it. And most of the time, they were followed. Except for the many times that they weren’t.

  As for my dad, well, he was content to believe that Michael and I were good friends who maybe kissed occasionally. However, Lynn knew better. I found that out one day over the summer when she came into my room and asked me what I knew about birth control. When I told her I’d been on the pill since February, she looked relieved. As for my mother, I suspected that her thoughts on this matter reflected Dad’s more so than Lynn’s. But with Dad, it was about blind trust. With Mom, it was all about denial.

  After my father and stepmother left, I wandered into the kitchen to see if Leo had enough food in his dish to last him the evening. He did. Water too. He’d be fine until Dad got home to walk him. I gave the lonely dog some love and attention, running my hands along his head and ears. Suddenly, he let out a low bark, which meant someone was outside on the porch, about to ring the bell. Michael. I hurried out of the kitchen, Leo’s protective barks barely registering in my ears. Upon swinging open the front door, I barely had a chance to look at him before our bodies came together in a crushing hug right there on the front porch, in plain view of the entire neighborhood.

  “Hi,” he said when we finally loosened our grips.

  “Hi,” I said, taking my first good look at him. Relief coursed through me when I realized he hadn’t changed at all in the past six weeks. Not that I was expecting a big physical change, but maybe just a subtle difference to let me know he wasn’t the same Michael I once knew. But he was the same.

  When we kissed, it was as if the past few weeks hadn’t happened at all. It all felt so familiar—his hands in my hair, the sweet, cinnamon taste of his mouth, the warm spark igniting at the bottom of my stomach as our tongues grazed. We kissed until Leo’s frenzied barking brought us back to earth and then, reluctantly, we detangled ourselves and went inside, sparing the neighbors from witnessing any more of our shameless PDA.

  I left Michael in the kitchen with a very excited Leo while I went upstairs to look in on Jamie. He lay on his stomach on his bed, playing a game on his iPod. I gave him fifteen minutes to finish up before I declared lights out for the night. He must have had a long day too because he agreed without a fight.

  Back downstairs, I found Michael leaning against the sink in the kitchen, gazing out the window into the darkness. When he saw me, his arms extended to pull me in for another hug.

  “It’s so good to see you,” he said, his lips against my forehead.

  I closed my eyes and basked in this new emotion. I’d missed him before, but never this much. Our past reunions had been great, but never this intense. I’d wanted him before, but never this desperately.

  “Did your mom mind that you didn’t stay home tonight?” I asked. “She only got you for a couple of hours.”

  “She understood.”

  I reached up to slide my fingers over his jaw. It felt smooth, like he’d just shaved there. As I did this he gazed down at my face, his blue-gray eyes smoldering at me in a way that made it difficult for me to keep myself upright. We kissed again, this time with Leo as our audience. He sat in the doorway to the laundry room, staring dejectedly at us, but I didn’t care about that. Nor did I care that the counter was digging into my back, hard enough to raise bruises. I wasn’t aware of anything beyond the feel of a solid body against mine, hot breath on my neck, hands on my skin and in my hair.

  After about five minutes of this I tore myself away, feeling dizzy and disoriented. “I have to go check on…um…” I said between gasps for air. What was his name again? Oh yes. “…Jamie. See if he’s asleep yet.”

  “Okay,” Michael said, looking pleased now that he had single-handedly rendered me braindead.

  My knees still quaking, I swiftly scaled the stairs and peered into Jamie’s room. He was passed out cold. I made sure his door was shut tight before carefully maneuvering the stairs again, making sure to use the railing to support my unsteady body.

  This time I found Michael stretched out on the living room couch, head back, eyes closed. I slid in beside him, nudging his leg with mine. His head lifted and he gave me a tired smile. “You’re exhausted,” I said, snuggling into him.

  “I was in class all morning, then I packed up the car and drove for six hours non-stop. I think I’m just crashing from all the coffee I drank on the way home.”

  “Are you glad to be home?”

  “I’m glad to see you,” he said again. “Yeah, it’s good to be home. It’ll be nice to have some decent food and a bathroom all to myself for a couple of days.�
�

  “And some rest,” I said when he yawned.

  “Yeah, that too.”

  I twisted my body so that it lay flat against his and slipped my hand under his shirt. He was warm and smelled faintly of dog drool from Leo’s enthusiastic welcome.

  “I missed this,” he said, his fingers raking across his back.

  There were certain things I promised myself I would not say this weekend, no matter what. Because I knew if I said the words out loud they would set a snowball rolling downward, growing bigger and more dangerous by the second, picking up speed with every inch it traveled. But I said them anyway.

  “This is too hard.”

  Michael opened his eyes to look at me. “What is?”

  “The long-distance thing.” I bit my bottom lip. Too late to take it back now. “It’s too hard for me.”

  “It’s hard for me too,” he said, stroking my hair.

  My thoughts came out in a rush, like someone had opened a release valve in my brain. “I was so excited about you coming home but I dreaded it too, because I knew you’d just have to leave again.”

  “Well, I’m here now, so...”

  “I know, but we have four years of this. How can we survive four years when it’s only been a few weeks and already I’m sick of it…” I stopped then because my throat had swelled up, damming the flood.

  “I hate it too,” Michael said. “It sucks. But we knew it was going to be like this, right?”

  “You don’t hate it. You like Avery. You’re having a blast there.” I didn’t mention what I had once believed, deep down—that he would hate Avery and miss me so much that he’d transfer to our local college within weeks and swear to never leave home—and me—again.

  “I like it,” he said carefully. “But not all the time. Sometimes I get homesick. Sometimes living with so many different people really gets on my nerves. Sometimes I’m miserable when I think about you, back here. That’s why I stay so busy, and why I distract myself with school and my friends.”

  I had to laugh a little. That sounded all too familiar. Michael and I were alike in a lot of ways, but that was one of our biggest similarities—in the face of despair, we kept our minds busy and tried not to wallow.

  “We can make it work,” he said, brushing some hair off my cheek. “It’ll get better.”

  I stared into his storm-cloud eyes, trying to soak in the optimism that shone there. Then I took his hand and we went upstairs to my bedroom, where we locked the door and turned off the lights.

  ****

  The same day I found out that Michael was coming home for the weekend, I’d fixed it with Charlie—my supervisor at Chick N’ Burger—to have that Saturday off. Michael came back to my father’s house in the early afternoon, looking a lot more rested than he had the night before.

  “I slept in until eleven,” he said when I commented on his lack of dark circles. “The house was so unbelievably quiet.”

  He seemed to be enjoying his short reprieve from dorm life, at least.

  We stopped by the kitchen so Michael could say hello to my dad, who was busy getting his golf equipment together for an afternoon on the course. He ignored his clubs for a few minutes to grill Michael about college, and he didn’t let up until he’d heard about each one of Michael’s classes. As a professor, my father was always interested in materials being taught at other universities. I hated to think about the interrogation when I started college. God forbid one of my future professors teach a poem or play that Dad had deemed “glorified tripe”.

  When my father left I took Michael down to the basement to show him the latest renovations. Not that there was much to see beyond dust and exposed wires and stacks of subflooring. But the walls were up, finally, and ready to be painted. The rest of the basement looked like a Home Depot had exploded.

  “When will it be done?” Michael asked, stepping into the roughed-in bathroom area.

  “By Christmas, supposedly, but I doubt it. I mean, look at this mess.”

  “This house is so old. I’m sure there must be structural problems.”

  “And electrical problems and plumbing problems…” I squinted at the bare bulb that hung from the ceiling. “Right now, instead of calling it the rec room, we’re calling it the wrecked room.”

  He smiled. “Fitting.”

  We surfaced from the basement and set off for Michael’s house. His mom had invited me over for dinner and I was anxious to see her and Michael’s twin sisters. I hadn’t seen them since September and I missed them. The feeling was mutual, I guess, because the moment Michael’s mom laid eyes on me, she folded me into a tight hug.

  “We’ve missed having you around,” she said when she finished squeezing me. “You should come over and visit, you know. Michael doesn’t need to be here.”

  “Wish I’d gotten a reception like this yesterday,” Michael said.

  His mom swatted his arm. “Oh stop.”

  During dinner, I caught Michael’s mom—or Cheryl, as she kept insisting I call her—up on what I’d been doing since August. I told her about school and work, the two main things that had dominated my life over the past six weeks.

  “Are you still at that same chicken place?” she asked, passing me the basket of rolls.

  “Chick N’ Burger,” I said. “Yes, unfortunately.”

  “They have the best onion rings,” Megan said. She was the twin who looked like her mom, small with dark hair and the same blue-gray eyes that most of the family shared. She was also more outgoing than her sister, Jennifer, who was tall like their dad and looked a lot older than her thirteen years. I couldn’t believe how much they’d both grown since the summer. Jennifer was taller than me now, and Megan had turned into a beauty.

  “You’re not happy there?” Cheryl asked me.

  I shrugged. “It’s a job.”

  “True, but I’m sure the pay isn’t all that great considering the amount of work involved.”

  She was right. I busted my ass for a wage that more often than not wasn’t even enough to keep gas in my car. “No one else would hire me,” I said. Michael smiled and bumped my knee under the table.

  “What about waitressing? At least you’d get tips that way. I was a waitress all through college and the tips alone were enough to keep me in gas and clothes.”

  “But that was the sixties, Mom,” Megan said, as if dinosaurs roamed the earth back then.

  “The seventies, actually, but thanks for reminding me how ancient I am.”

  “I applied at a bunch of restaurants,” I told her. “But no one called back.”

  “Their loss,” she said, and I felt all glowy inside. Michael’s mom tried her best to make up for her husband’s coldness by always being present and supportive for her kids, and occasionally it spilled over to include me.

  “What about Moretti’s?” Michael said. “He owes you one.”

  “Oh!” His mom beamed at him like he’d said something ingenious. “Why didn’t I think of that?” She turned to me. “David and I,” she said, glancing over at Michael’s father’s empty chair as if he were sitting in it, even though he hadn’t been home all day, “we have a friend who owns this little Italian place on Hudson Street. The food is amazing. Maybe Sal is looking for someone.”

  I tried not to get too excited. In fact, I was pretty sure I’d been in that restaurant during my job hunt to fill out an application. “He owes you one?”

  She flipped her hand modestly. “He almost went bankrupt a few years ago. We helped him out a little. This was before he changed locations. He’s doing really well now.”

  “So pull some strings, Mom,” Jennifer said.

  Cheryl stood up. “I’ll call him right now.”

  “Oh no,” I said quickly. “You don’t have to. I mean, it can wait.”

  “Don’t be silly, Taylor. The sooner you quit that chicken job, the better.”

  She left the dining room. I looked over at Michael. “Just like that, huh?”

  “How do you think I got
my job?” he said. “Connections.”

  Michael’s mom came back into the room five minutes later, carrying dessert and looking triumphant. “You have an interview next Monday at four-thirty,” she told me. “Is that okay? Will you have enough time to get to Weldon after school?”

  “I guess. I mean, yes, that’s fine.” My head was spinning from the speed at which she’d arranged this. “Really? An interview?”

  “Sal told me he’s been considering hiring a new server. May as well be you.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Thanks.”

  She grinned. “You can thank me when you get the job.”

  Later, after helping clean up, Michael and I went up to his room. It looked barren in there now with most of his things gone. Just his books remained, and his bed, where we stretched out together.

  “Better,” Michael said, closing his eyes. “Estrogen overload down there tonight.”

  I laughed. “It’s too bad you don’t have enough time this weekend to go visit Josh.” The prison that had been Michael’s brother’s place of residence for the past year or so was about a three hour drive away. Usually he went to visit him once or twice a month.

  “I’ll see him over Christmas break,” Michael reminded me. Josh was scheduled to be released, finally, in December. The family was cautiously excited about it. Jail time had never had much of an effect on him before.

  “What do you want to do tonight?” I asked, even though I was too full and tired to even contemplate standing, let alone leaving the house.

  Eyes still closed, he tilted his head toward me and smiled. “Lay right here,” he replied. “With you.”

  “That,” I said, wrapping my arms around his neck, “is the best plan I’ve ever heard.”

  When he kissed me he tasted like the apple crisp we’d had for dessert—sweet and warm with a hint of cinnamon, just like always.

  Chapter 6