The Accidentals

by Sarina Bowen

  Frederick stares up at the mechanism. “The time delay must mess with you,” he says.

  “You learn to anticipate yourself,” the kid answers. Then, when the reverb stops, he begins playing a second song from memory.

  Jake and I turn to each other. “That’s…” I can’t put my finger on it.

  “Duran Duran!” Frederick snorts. “‘Hungry Like the Wolf.’”

  “I like to play it at lunchtime,” the kid says as he bangs out the chorus.

  * * *

  Jake drops a ten-dollar bill on the dining hall entry desk. “We have a guest,” he tells the nice old lady who staffs it.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” Frederick argues, but Jake is already headed for the line.

  “Don’t go for the burrito,” I warn. “It doesn’t taste like L.A.”

  Frederick leans over me. “Jake is good people,” he whispers.

  I look up at him, and his eyes are smiling. “I know.”

  “Why’ve you been hiding him?”

  “I’m not even sure.”

  * * *

  “Scoot in,” I say to my father as he slides onto the banquette bench. Jake sits down across from us, his tray piled with two sandwiches, chips, and a salad.

  “This is pretty good,” my father says after taking a bite of his clam chowder. “You should see the slop they used to serve us in high school.”

  “I’ll bet it didn’t cost thirty large a year, though,” Jake says. The dining hall glasses are small, so he has three of them full of milk, lined up like soldiers at the front of his tray.

  “Good point. I’m not sure Rachel’s getting her money’s worth.”

  “She gets it back in library books.”

  And now I feel self-conscious.

  “Thanks for the bell-tower tour. That was pretty cool,” my father says.

  “Oh, no problem.”

  Then Frederick puts down his spoon with a chuckle. “When that door was shut…” He breaks off and laughs. “You should have seen your face.”

  I can see Jake’s cheeks beginning to color. He takes a sip of milk, but then a laugh threatens, and he has to put his hand in front of his mouth.

  My father rocks back against the ancient wooden bench and roars.

  Jake almost chokes, and then laughs harder. And that gets me going. I wonder what Jake would have done if that door had been truly locked? I giggle until tears begin to prick my eyes.

  The three of us are still shaking when Aurora stops in front of our table. “Oh my God,” she says. “What did I miss? And where was my invitation?” She puts her tray down next to Jake’s.

  Frederick pulls it across to our side of the table, and wipes his eyes. “You come here, missy. I haven’t seen you for a while.”

  Aurora walks over to the end of the banquette, where I sit. She steps over my back. “Lean in, Freddy.”

  “Oh, I forgot to get coffee,” Aurora says after she’s begun eating.

  “I’ll get it.” I hop up. “Anyone else?”

  When I come back with four mugs, two in each hand, Aurora is hysterical too.

  “Can you imagine our 911 call?” Frederick asks with a smirk.

  I sit close to my father, listening to the low sound of his voice, and Aurora’s laugh. I take in Jake’s bashful grin.

  How had Hannah once put it? She’d said she hoped I would soon have my feet back under me. Today it was possible to think I might get there.

  Jake has to leave first, so he can walk all the way to the college for a chemistry lecture. Frederick shakes his hand across the table. “Pleasure to meet you, Jake. Let’s do it again.”

  When Jake stands up to bus his tray, I follow him with my own. Placing it on the conveyor belt, I turn to him. “Thank you,” I say. “That was really fun. I’m sorry…” I take a deep breath. “I’m sorry I didn’t introduce you to Frederick before. That was stupid of me.”

  He gives me a little shrug that might mean anything. It might say, Hey, no problem, or it might say, You’re an idiot. I’m still trying to decide when Jake leans close to my ear.

  “I love you, Rachel,” he whispers. And then he turns and walks out of the dining hall.

  When I sit down again in front of Frederick and Aurora, I have trouble following their conversation. Jake’s words are like a gem I clutch in my hand. I can’t really hold it up to the light and examine it until I’m alone.

  “It’s on Choate Street,” Frederick is saying.

  “What is?” I ask. He’s trying to explain something.

  “This house that’s for sale. I want you to come and see it.”

  “Oh, okay,” I say, shaking off my distraction. “I’ll see it this weekend.”

  “Don’t you have Spanish now?” Aurora asks.

  “Yes. I should go.”

  Frederick pushes his tray toward the edge of the table and slides out of the seat. “Nice place you’ve got here,” he says.

  “Come back any time!” Aurora grins.

  I walk my father out. “Guitar next week?” he asks.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Good.” He ruffles my hair and walks away smiling.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The next evening, I sit alone on the window seat in our room, watching the sky turn pink over Claiborne. My phone buzzes, and I have to turn away from the sunset to get it. I hope it’s Jake. I’ve been thinking of him all day.

  But the message is not from him.

  When I open it, I see a single photograph. The glove compartment of Haze’s old car is framed in the shot. The compartment stands open, with something resting inside—the envelope I’d mailed him, containing my apology.

  “Oh, Haze,” I whisper, touching the screen. I look back up to the sky, but the color has already deepened to gray. I get up and go into my bedroom.

  My mother’s photographs lay on the dresser, and I pick them up. I’ve studied them many times already, memorizing the details. At first, they were shocking. Young and in love, the Jenny in the photographs looks like an entirely different person.

  Now the two women are blending together in my memory. In fact, I’m probably ruining my ability to recall my mother as I’d known her. But I don’t care. I prefer to think of her as someone open to love, and not bitter.

  Mom had been very clear that she didn’t want a repeat of her own heartbreak for me. “Finish college, be your own person,” she’d said. “That’s what smart girls do. It’s the stupid ones who are busy trying to catch a guy.”

  But now I know that’s risky too. I’ve just spent most of a year trying very hard not to let anyone know how much I care. And here I sit alone, while upstairs someone who loves me waits.

  So I text Jake, asking him to come over.

  He replies immediately, saying he’ll be right down.

  While I wait, I tidy up my room again and light one of Aurora’s candles. My father’s advice to me was to know my heart ahead of time, and to tell Jake my fears. That sounds like a nice lyric for a song. With a little work, we could probably get it to rhyme.

  Hell, it’s probably easier to write a platinum single than to look Jake in the eye and tell him all the things that scare me.

  But here he is already, knocking on our door.

  “It’s open,” I holler.

  A moment later Jake peeks around the bedroom door, his eyes shiny in the candlelight. He walks in. “It’s nice in here.” He sits down on the bed next to me and puts a hand on my lower back. Even that simple gesture fills me with happiness. I’ve missed him so much.

  Turning, I wrap both arms around him. “I’ve been thinking about you all afternoon.” He feels warm and solid against me.

  With one finger, he stretches the neckline of my top aside and kisses my shoulder. “That’s me on a good day. Hopefully I won’t flunk this term.”

  Jake is not the scary thing, I remind myself. Very deliberately, I take his face in both hands and kiss him, picking up where we’d left off on the street corner yesterday morning. He ma
kes a little noise in the back of his throat, and the sound of it sends shivers down my spine.

  His kisses are sweet and slow. But this is not what I’d called him downstairs to do. And if I let it happen, we’ll probably end up taking yet another trip to Awkwardville.

  I force myself to pull back. “Jake,” I say, my heart skittering. “I absolutely can’t get pregnant.”

  With cheeks flushed pink, he raises his hands like a perp on a cop show. “Uh, okay?”

  That sure didn’t come out as smoothly as it could have. “I mean, I know we haven’t…” I clear my throat. “But you probably want to. And that’s why I panic. Because nobody ever lied to me. I was the pregnancy that messed up my mother’s college education. And then her social life. And now I’m messing up Frederick’s, and I think I cost him a million dollars this year alone…” I look up at Jake, whose mouth is hanging open.

  He closes it and reaches for me, folding me into a hug. “Just slow down there for a second, so I can follow you,” he says, rubbing my back.

  “Okay.” He smells like clean T-shirts and soap. I’ve missed this so much.

  “First of all, I’m really glad you messed up your mother’s life and Frederick’s, if that’s really even true,” he says.

  “Oh, it is,” I mumble into the cotton at his collarbone.

  His arms tighten around me. “Either way, I get it,” he says.

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. I wish you’d just said that before. That you feel all this extra pressure not to…”

  “Repeat history,” I supply.

  He gives me a squeeze. “So we won’t.”

  “We won’t what?” I lift my head to look at him.

  The pink spots on his cheekbones deepen. “That’s what you’ll have to tell me. You give me the rules, and I’ll follow them.”

  “Well… There would have to be two, um, methods. In case one of them fails.” I put my chin on Jake’s shoulder so I don’t have to look him in the eye.

  “Perfectly rational,” he whispers.

  “And I haven’t taken care of things on my end. Because…it’s not easy. You have to go to the doctor, where there are tables and stirrups. And put on a paper gown, probably. And then you have to tell the doctor to his face that you want birth control. I’ll probably bring along a copy of my transcript to prove I’m actually a good girl.”

  I feel Jake’s chest begin to shake. “I’ve never been so glad to be a guy.”

  “I’m pretty glad you’re a guy.”

  “No, really,” he says. “They even have self-serve check-out at the pharmacy. I’ll bet those were invented by a dude who wanted to buy condoms without facing down the checkout girl.”

  I giggle into his neck. “You can just order them on the internet. Really, how is that fair?”

  “I get it.” He cups my face and gives me a quick kiss.

  Feeling a rush of gratitude, I kiss him again. And then again and again. I’m so happy to be back in his arms that I kiss him as if I want to eat him for dinner.

  Until Jake pulls back and stares me down. “You forgot something important.”

  “I did?”

  He nods. “What are the rules right now?”

  “Oh. We just can’t have actual sex.” Funny how easy it is to say it now.

  “I heard that part. But I don’t want any more misunderstandings. So what else is off the table?”

  It’s a fair question. “I guess nothing, really.” And then, to prove the point, I reach for the buttons on his flannel shirt. He looks down, watching my fingers with a look of disbelief. Under the flannel I find the Talk Nerdy to Me tee. “You were wearing this on the day I met you.”

  His smile is shy. “It draws the babes like flies.”

  Very gently, I remove his big black glasses, turning them over in my hands. “Jake, why do you try so hard to look nerdy?” I put the glasses on the bedside table. “I mean—some people come by it more naturally. But you have to work pretty hard at it.” Without waiting for an answer, I gather his T-shirt and raise it over his head. Dropping it to the floor, I put my hands on his bare chest. “I mean it as a serious question.”

  He looks down at my hands, as if trying to figure out where they’d come from. “Well, the nerd thing made me something that Asshat was not. But also…” He breaks off, reaching for me. He presses a kiss to my cheekbone so tenderly that a chill runs up my spine. “Also,” he whispers, “if the pretty girl on the third floor doesn’t want to touch me, then at least I’ll have a good reason why.”

  Now there’s a little stab to my heart. I pull Jake’s handsome face toward me, kissing him in a way that I hope lets him know exactly how much I appreciate him. And when he gives a happy sigh, I feel it all the way to my toes.

  Then, with all the wariness of a man diffusing a bomb, Jake lifts my top over my head, and fumbles with the back of my bra. But that isn’t going to get him anywhere, because the clasp is in front.

  “And you say you’re so good with technology,” I whisper, flicking it apart with my own hand.

  His face registers surprise, but he isn’t too bashful to push the straps off my shoulders. “God, I love your body.”

  I never do know how to take a compliment. So I go for his belt instead. Jake’s reaction is a sharp intake of air. High on my own bravery, I plunge onward, unzipping his jeans. He pulls back, surprise on his face. But then he stands up and shucks them off. His boxer shorts have little terrier dogs on them.

  I stand too. Gingerly, I skim the front of his boxers, causing Jake to take a deep, shuddering breath. I touch my lips to his ear. “The girl on the third floor would like to touch you,” I whisper. “If she could get out of her own way.”

  He closes his eyes. Then he runs his hands down my shoulders, his kisses soft. A single finger slips across my belly underneath the waistband of my jeans, and his touch sends a charge of electricity through me.

  But Jake takes his hand away. “This is where I always get into trouble,” he says quietly.

  Sad, but true. So I slide my zipper down myself, dropping my jeans to the floor. Reverently, Jake skims my hips with warm hands. When he pulls my body against his, my heart begins to pound.

  Breathe, I order myself.

  I must have tensed up, because Jake puts his chin on my shoulder, bringing his arms around me in a protective hug. “Rachel,” he whispers, easing me down to sit beside him on the bed. “Just rest here with me for a while.”

  What an excellent idea.

  We lay down together, and I put my head on his chest, willing myself to relax. The candlelight dances on the wall, and Jake’s thumb strokes my shoulder absently. My thoughts quiet as I listen to the sound of his heart. “Jake? Why did you say that I made you feel like Asshat?”

  His chest rises and falls with a sigh. “He hits his girlfriends.”

  I raise my head quickly. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah.” He eases my head back down onto his chest, smoothing my hair away from my face. “Well, I think he does. He was even arrested once. Later, the girl changed her story.”

  “But you think he did it?”

  “I think…if he didn’t do it, he should really stop the smack talk. The way he brags when he’s drunk is truly disgusting. And this is a small town. Let’s just say I’m not the only person who thinks he’s capable of it. The football coach is always having to step in to make excuses for him.”

  Yikes. “Jake?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re not like that. Not even a little.” I snuggle closer to him, and he kisses the top of my head.

  At close range, I admire his smooth skin, the curve of his chest, and the brawny arm that reaches across his body to rest on my back. He’s beautiful and strong, and I’m lucky to know him.

  “You know.” I clear my throat. “I never had a boyfriend before you.”

  He tilts his chin to look down at me. “Really? How is that even possible?”

  “I may have out-nerded you at my old school.”


  “See?” He runs a hand over my hair. “I knew you were special.”

  “Did you have a girlfriend last year?”

  “Yeah, for two years. She graduated last year. And—get this.” He chuckles. “She dumped me at the after-prom party. Total disaster. Claiborne has this event where the seniors are shut in together until dawn, to keep everyone from going out to get hammered. So this genius dumps me right as we’re literally locked into the same room for six hours.”

  “Ouch!”

  “I know! I wish I hadn’t rented the stupid tux. Did your old school make a big deal about prom?”

  “Yeah.” My throat tightens. “I couldn’t go last year.”

  Jake rolls so he can see my face. “Why not?”

  My vision clouds, the candlelight becoming shiny. “That’s the night my mother died.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Jake whispers, pulling me in. “I’m sorry,” he says.

  He has me in such a tight embrace I have trouble wiggling an arm free so that I can wipe my eyes. “I don’t want to be that anymore,” I say, my voice shaky.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t want to be the girl with all the issues. A downer. Tonight especially.”

  He kisses me on the eyebrow and loosens his grip. “You know that’s not how I think of you.”

  “It isn’t?”

  He shakes his head. “I think of you as the hot girl who sings.” His hand caresses my stomach. “Even when you have your clothes on.” His smile becomes shy. “Let’s just say you’re never…a downer.”

  Even though I can still feel the sting of tears on my face, I laugh. There’s something so honest about Jake. He isn’t one to flatter, but his compliments always ring with sincerity.

  His smile comes closer, and his lips find mine.

  We come together, and I lose myself in his hungry kiss. My pulse kicks up a notch—but in a good way. As our kisses linger and deepen, I feel myself getting drunk on Jake. In the past, that feeling always freaked me out. But now it doesn’t, because we’d already had the conversation that will prevent a nasty hangover.