I'll Be Here

by Autumn Doughton

  “It’s uh… uh,” I sit up straighter and try to take it all in. “It’s really nice Diana.” I make sure to pronounce her name right.

  She’s got her hands on her hips. Her eyes sweep left to right, from mirror to mirror to mirror, her face creased in contemplation.

  A woman in a non-descript black skirted suit is standing off to the right beneath an arched entryway. She’s got a clipboard in one hand and a fresh mimosa for my soon-to-be-step-mom in the other hand. The walls of the oversized dressing room are a rustic pink trimmed in pearly ivory. It’s all very prim.

  “I think I like the one with the empire waist better,” Diana declares. She looks at me and I can tell that I’m supposed to acknowledge this.

  Which one? To me, they morphed into white cupcake frosting about seven dresses ago. “Uh huh,” I mutter sheepishly.

  Diana’s eyes narrow. Great. She turns to the woman in the black suit and asks a question. It’s like a foreign language. Something about crinoline and “hideaway buttons.” They disappear behind a slotted door and I am left alone in the dressing room to make sense of the whole thing.

  This trip has been nothing short of a disaster. Diana’s sister had to back out at the last-minute because of bronchitis and my father called me and asked me in a panicked voice to be Diana’s wedding gown shopping buddy. As if I have any interest in wedding gowns or Diana.

  She picked me up early this morning, and we spent three hours in the car listening to an audio book about risk assessment and not speaking. At lunch Diana finally spoke. She asked a few questions—mainly about college.

  I told her, “I’m considering some art courses. I’m too late to apply for RISD or another arts school for this next fall but maybe if I work on my portfolio and take some intro classes, I could be a transfer student next year.”

  Alex actually suggested this the other night on the phone and I didn’t realize that I’d been thinking about it seriously until the words were out there on the table in front of Diana and me dancing around the black olives in my Greek salad.

  Diana pursed her lips, which is the universal sign of disapproval. She and my father don’t think a fine arts degree from the Rhode Island School of Design or an art degree from anywhere else for that matter is very impressive. When she put a forkful of salmon in her mouth without saying anything, I figured that the conversation was effectively over.

  Now, her head peeking around the door, strands of blonde hair escaping her clip, she asks me, “veil or no veil?”

  This time I need to appear more certain. “Veil,” I say in an assured voice.

  Diana buys it. She nods very businesslike and her head disappears again.

  On reprieve, I sink back into the velvety chaise lounge. My mind floats away, over the past week, over Alex. It’s a complete cliché but I am on cloud nine. We’ve been talking twice a day and we’ve sent cute, quirky emails at two in the morning.

  I’m ninety-nine point four percent sure that I can’t even think about him without smiling wider than a circus clown. Two nights ago we laughed for an hour discussing British terminology that we wish would become popularized in the States.

  “Who wouldn’t want to attend a ‘fancy dress party’ over a regular party?” He asked with an exaggeratedly proper British accent.

  “It is total bullocks,” I responded.

  We laughed. The only time I didn’t laugh was when he told me that our weekend plans had been thwarted by the professor for his Technical Drafting course. He assigned a massive project due early next week and there was no way Alex would be able to make the trip home to see me.

  I was disappointed but obviously I understood. These are exactly the types of things that you have to cope with in grown-up relationships. At least, that’s the advice that Laney had given me and I know that she’s right. Plus, dad called about coming on this trip with Diana and even though the amount of lace that I’ve encountered has made me physically nauseous, I have to admit that it’s been distracting.

  “So you like it?”

  My faraway eyes refocus on the space in front of me. Diana is on the raised carpeted platform half-twirling in the empire waist gown and a delicate lacey veil that falls to just below her bent elbows. She is looking intently at my smiling face and her eyes are open wide. She’s taken the clip out and her hair is loose, falling in soft waves that curl up at the ends near her collarbone.

  Maybe it’s the lighting or maybe it’s the dress—I’m not sure, but for the first time since I’ve known her, Diana looks… I search for the word. It’s there, just in front of me and I don’t realize how simple it is until the word comes to me. Diana looks happy.

  “It’s perfect,” I say and this time I mean it.

  Her shiny eyes get even shinier when she smiles back. She turns and picks up the skirts of the dress between her thumbs and forefingers and sways her body from side to side, watching in the mirror as the light plays on the almost iridescent fabric.

  “It is isn’t it? It’s just perfect.”

  ***

  “So this weekend…”

  Silence.

  “Um… Is this weekend not good? I thought—” I can tell by Alex’s voice that he’s worried. It’s cute. Very cute.

  I laugh. “No. I just like for you to squirm.”

  I roll over, my arm disengaging from beneath Ferdinand’s big belly. He doesn’t wake and only burrows deeper into my bed covers. “I thought we could do something fun like play pinochle or learn about the history of macramé plant holders.”

  He adds, “Or we could make wind chimes out of seashells.”

  “Or whatnot.”

  “I like the sound of whatnot,” he says and I can hear papers shifting in the background.

  I realize that he didn’t mean it to sound sexual, but considering where my head’s been over the past week, everything sounds sexual. It took me over a year to feel ready to have sex with Dustin, and I’m not saying I’m ready with Alex, but it’s… it’s different. Sure, Dustin’s touch stirred heat and longing in me, but just thinking about being with Alex like that is like tossing a match on a heap of papers. Papers doused in gasoline.

  God.

  I am in trouble.

  I try to ignore the sudden increase in my heartbeat. Alex clears his throat before he continues. “Honestly, I don’t think Friday can get here fast enough. This is going to be a hellish three days.”

  “Because you miss me?” I ask and my voice hits a note somewhere between joking and honesty.

  “Well there’s that… and the fact that I put off all my other work so I could complete that project last weekend and now I’ve got a backlog the size of Everest.”

  I wince. “And here you are spending oh…” I look over at the digital clock on my desk. “Over an hour on the phone with me. Why didn’t you just say that you had stuff to do? You don’t have to spend so much time on the phone with me. You’re in college and you have big boy stuff to do and it’s not like just because we’re—”

  We’re what? What exactly was I about to say?

  My brain is going madly trying to figure out how to cover my tracks. For the first time all night I’m thankful for the phone and the miles between us so that Alex can’t see the scarlet blush overtaking my face.

  He doesn’t even catch my embarrassment. “Willow, I’m not on the phone with you because I have to be on the phone with you. I want to be on the phone with you. In fact, I’ve considered having it surgically implanted in my ear.”

  Alex pauses for my laughter. “I’ve waited two years to be able to call you whenever I want and now that I can—” His voice trails off like he’s working through the words and I think that I catch a soft sigh. I wonder if his heart is beating as fast as mine. I squeeze the phone up to my ear. “You’re the bright spot in my day.”

  And you’re the bright spot in mine. I don’t say the words but I think them.

  ***

  Last year, the prom theme was “Glittering Lights” and the auditorium was
decorated with dozens of threaded white Christmas lights we found marked down forty percent in January. I was on the committee last year and spent two Saturdays twisting strands of crepe paper and debating the angle of the droop in the center with six other girls as if we were engineering a four lane bridge over Jackson’s Bay. I felt important—important to be assisting in what seemed at the time to be something big—something larger than my own pathetic life.

  This year is different. I’ve been avoiding the posters emblazoned with the school logo and the title “Arabian Nights.” I’m not even sure what that’s all about.

  Answer me this: is everyone going to come in Middle Eastern garb? Will camels complete the romantic ambience?

  I did email Wes Hardin awhile back to tell him that although his offer was wonderful to receive, I couldn’t go to prom with him. He responded right away assuring me that he understood and that he would be fine going stag. His words were kind and understanding but I still felt like a bit of a dolt.

  When Sabine washes her hands beside me in the oblong sinks in the first floor girl’s bathroom between second and third period and asks into the mirror what I’m wearing to prom, I barely flinch as I say, “nothing.” By the look on her face I can’t tell if she thinks that I’m going naked or if she understood that I meant that I’m not going at all. Katie Evans is coming out of a stall behind us and she cracks a funny sort of smile.

  Ugh.

  Laney and I are browsing the racks of a vintage store downtown. I’ve decided to buy a ridiculous metallic silver cowboy hat because it’s a metallic silver cowboy hat. Come on.

  “I’m thinking of asking Brian to go with me.” Her platform boots sidestep a display of scarves slithering colorful tails to the floor. She bends down to release her heel from a persistently clingy purple one.

  Watching a salesgirl move past us, her arms loaded with clothes to return to the racks, I round the corner in Laney’s wake. “To prom?”

  Laney pauses at a cluster of long dresses and glances back at me over a bony shoulder. Small lines appear around her clear grey eyes. “Is that weird?”

  Looking down and running my fingers over a silky green dress, I shake my head. “No. It’s not weird I guess. Brian seems… Well, he seems really great.”

  It’s true. I’ve met Brian only once when he came by the record store on Monday afternoon to return Laney’s silver hoop earrings. She said that she left them in his car on Saturday night when they met at a party. She’d invited me to go with her but I was away on the wedding dress adventure with Diana.

  I refrained from asking Laney why she’d taken her earrings off to begin with. From her coquettish grin and the wistful look that’s been plastered on her face for the past few days, I figure that my guesses on the matter are pretty accurate.

  Brian is about two inches shorter than Laney. His face is pale and freckled and his dusty hair is in need of some attention, but there’s something about him. Some people have it and some people don’t and Brian has it. He’s three years older than us but he isn’t in college. By day he works behind the counter of a sandwich shop and by night he’s the bass guitarist for an indie rock band called Phosphorescent.

  She says, “It’s not for two more weeks so I guess that I can think about it for a little while longer before I ask him.”

  Laney’s fingers pause on a dress with slim blue straps and ruched sides. “He probably wouldn’t even want to go, right? A high school prom seems sort of lame.”

  I sidle closer to her so that she is forced to look at me. “If he likes you as much as he should, he won’t think that going to prom with you is lame—he’ll jump at the chance.” I pull the dress off the rack.

  “Try it on,” I suggest. “It will look great with your complexion and eyes.”

  She doesn’t look entirely convinced but a tiny smile plays at her lips. “Can you imagine me in heels and a corsage?”

  “Well, I’ve seen you in a smocked dress with ladybugs that your mom made you wear to school when she was taking that sewing class so...”

  Laney’s groan transforms into a laugh. “Please don’t remind me of that ever again. I thought that I’d taken care of all the witnesses already.”

  She yanks the dress from my hands and moves towards the rear of the store where a girl with lemon-colored pigtails, a dangling name tag and a mouth full of pink gum leads her into a fitting room. Laney pulls the curtain closed behind her and I sit down on a wire bench just on the other side of the fabric barrier so that we can still talk. I try not to dwell on the fact that this is the second time in less than a week that I am in a dressing room waiting to give my non-professional opinion about dresses.

  “Are you going to invite Alex?” She asks.

  “I haven’t thought about it.”

  Lie. Lie. Lie. Okay, I have thought about it. Of course I’ve thought about it.

  I almost tell Laney that Alex might think that a high school prom is stupid, but considering the advice that I’ve just given her, that seems a bit hypocritical. And, if I want to build a relationship based on trust and mutual respect, I should tell Alex the truth—that I want him to go to my senior prom with me. Mutual respect? God, I sound like my mother.

  “You already have a dress, don’t you?”

  “Hmmph…”

  Her head peeks out from behind the dressing room curtain. “I’ll take that as a yes.” She waits for my nod before she moves behind the dark fabric curtain again.

  “And it will be fun. Maybe we can go together. Like rent a limo or something cheesy. I’ll ask Asher and Dizzy what they’re planning on doing.”

  Abruptly, the curtain pulls away and Laney steps out of her dressing room. She’s left her boots on and the chunky black leather toes peek out from beneath the silky fabric giving her a look all her own.

  “Ya think?” She asks even though I haven’t said a word.

  “Yes,” I breathe. “Definitely.”

  “Definitely sounds pretty sure.” She turns, checking her reflection from a side angle.

  I am smiling. “Laney, you have to get that one.”

  “It’s not very Arabian.”

  “Who cares?”

  Laney sticks out her thin hips. “Honestly, I don’t get the whole Arabian theme. Are we supposed to show up on camels or something?”

  I laugh. My thoughts exactly. I am going to say this but my phone buzzes and I leap for it, my heart thumping at the prospect of a text from Alex.

  It’s not Alex.

  Laney notices my quiet and spins to me. “What is it?”

  I look up. Suddenly the light overhead seems too bright and I have to squint to see Laney’s face.

  “It’s from Dustin.” His name feels weird on my tongue, like when you put on flip flops for the first time after months of wearing closed-toed shoes and your feet feel strange, almost like their afraid of so much freedom. I stare at my phone. It stares back but the text on the display screen is the same.

  Dustin: Can we meet up?

  Me: Why?

  Dustin: I want us to try to be friends.

  Um. What does that even mean?

  I hold up my phone so that Laney can read the screen. She leans forward squinting into the blue light of my phone and then her face clears and she laughs. It sounds bitter and unlike her. My stomach hurts. I think about lying down on the bench and going to sleep.

  “It’s just typical,” she says simply. Her lips pinch together.

  “What’s typical?”

  “I told you that Dustin would get jealous about you spending time with Alex and now, right on cue, he wants to shove his way back into the picture.”

  I wince, my mind wrapping itself around the idea. “I wanted that before but not now when things with Alex are....”

  “Are what?”

  Inexplicably I blush. “Well… progressing.” Progressing seems like a fairly safe word.

  “Ahh,” she says, slipping back behind the dressing room curtain. “Here’s what I’m thinking… Meet
with Dustin anyway and clear the air. It will give you some closure.” I hear the fabric of the dress rustling as she pulls it over her head. “Closure is good.”

  I swallow.

  Is it?

  ***

  I’ve reasonably started to think that this part of my life is over. Waiting for Dustin. That was from before. That was then—when I would sit on an uncomfortable bench outside and wait the three hours it took for track practice to be over so that we could make the ten minute ride to my house together all in the name of sharing a few measly slippery kisses. Or when we’d study for a calculus test and I would hang back, waiting for him to catch up. Or when I’d wait on him to be ready to leave a party after I’d told him I needed to be home an hour before.

  It’s easy enough to think those days are in the past, but here I am, sitting in a corner booth at Pacelli’s. It’s Thursday and I left Patty’s office fifteen minutes early to meet my ex-boyfriend for pizza. Diet coke fizzes in a tumbler in front of me—the caramel bubbles scurrying along the inside of the glass like tiny prehistoric one-celled animals. I lean in and suck the drink through a straw. It’s cold and sweet and for a moment I forget about the dull throbbing coming from behind my ribs.

  When I sit back, Dustin is standing at the end of the booth, his chin tilted down. He’s smiling. He’s looking charming. His clothes are expensive.

  Okay, I think, I can do this.

  He slides into the other side of the booth. His knee kisses mine and I scoot left, shifting to avoid anymore skin-to-skin contact.

  The restaurant is practically empty. It’s early for dinner and the only people here are very young families and a few elderly people. The interior lights are turned low, but sunshine filters in through the street-facing floor to ceiling windows that line the front wall.

  Dustin moves in, the weight of his upper-body balanced on his forearms. I move back.

  Before we have to wade through any awkwardness, the waitress is upon us asking to take Dustin’s drink order. He doesn’t wait. He just goes ahead and orders a whole pizza at the same time that he orders his soda. Half green pepper and half salami. This is what we always used to get here.