No More Confessions

by Louise Rozett

  He stops just long enough to say, “I want to touch you, Rose.”

  The only reason I’m sure I heard him correctly is because every nerve in my body is vibrating. He’s actually telling me he wants something from me—I don’t think he’s ever done that before. On the strength of that alone, for the first time, the percentage of me that wants him to touch me is way higher than the percentage that’s nervous about it. I pull back a little so I can see his eyes. “Yes,” I say, holding his gaze.

  He pulls the parking brake and gets out of the car, leaving it running. I have no idea what he’s doing as he comes around to my side, opens my door and reaches for my hand to help me out.

  I step into the winter chill. “Where are we—?”

  He pulls me in, kissing me with both hands on my face. He’s so warm compared to the air—he’s always so, so warm. Then he leans past me to open the back door.

  If I weren’t so nervous, I’d make a comment about us being in a 1950s movie where everybody makes out in the backseat.

  But I am nervous, so I don’t say a thing.

  I climb into the back seat and slide all the way over to make room for him. It’s funny—I’ve never been in Jamie’s backseat before. It’s like being in a different car. He gets in next to me, then reaches down into the well and pulls my legs into his lap. He starts taking off my boots.

  When he gets them off, he drops them and leans back against his door, watching me to see what I’m going to do. I love when he does this, when he studies me, even though he tries to read me without giving anything of himself away. Every once in a while I can figure out what’s going on in his head but not tonight. Tonight, the moonlight shining through the trees falls over his face in strange silver patterns and I can’t read him at all.

  “You sure, Rose?” he asks. I nod. “Then take off your jeans.”

  My skin starts to tingle as I figure out that he’s going to watch me do this. Is there a sexy way to take off your jeans in the backseat of a car? I unzip them and slip out of them as gracefully as I can. When they drop to the floor, I pull my legs up against my chest and wrap my arms around them, more than a little self-conscious about being nearly naked from the waist down when Jamie still has all his clothes on.

  I’m afraid to look and see which underwear I’m wearing.

  “Cold?” he asks from the other side of the car. He seems very far away.

  “A little,” I say. Slowly, he reaches out, his hands sliding up my shins to my knees, pulling my legs toward him, unfurling me on his backseat. Then he lies down, covering my body with his.

  “Better?” he asks, his lips just above mine, the warmth of his fully clothed body against me, his arm sliding under my neck. He kisses me without waiting for an answer, and before I can rethink my decision, his fingertips are sliding up the outside of my thigh.

  I can’t help but wonder what it means that he started this. Does he feel guilty about drinking? Bad about telling me to shut up? Is he upset about Los Angeles but doesn’t know how to say it?

  His fingertips slide higher and the last thought I have about his motives is…maybe he just wants to touch me like he said.

  His hand is hot on my hipbone, where my underwear rests. He hooks a finger over the band and pulls. It slides down just a little, and he pauses in that way that he always does, waiting to see if I’m good with what’s happening. “It’s okay,” I whisper. My voice doesn’t sound like mine—it sounds older somehow.

  Then he sits up so that he’s above me, and pulls my underwear off with both hands, sliding it over my hips and down my legs without taking his eyes off mine.

  When they’re completely off, he takes in the part of me that he’s never seen before. I expect him to lie down with me, to get close to me again, but he doesn’t. He stays where he is, looking at me. His hands move back up my legs and then he starts touching me. Back and forth, slowly, lightly. It amazes me how quickly I want more. I move my legs apart just slightly, without even realizing I’m doing it, and then wonder if that was the right thing to do.

  I have no idea what I’m doing. But it’s okay—he does.

  I’m looking in his eyes when he starts to touch me inside. He’s gentle, but I don’t feel like he’s treating me like glass—he’s treating me like his girlfriend, like someone he desires. I try to figure out whether I’m supposed to move or be still, but the only thing I’m sure of is that what he’s doing feels good.

  He lowers himself down next to me, watching my face. His touch is so sure, so confident—the opposite of how I’m feeling. I should have known when I saw him dance for the first time on Valentine’s Day last year—when he pulled me in and got me to move with him just so—that he’d make this feel right.

  I wonder if there’s something I should be doing so that it…works. Or maybe something I should be doing for him? I want to stop worrying about what’s supposed to happen next, but worrying about what happens next is how I get through life, so it’s sort of hard to stop doing it. Especially right now.

  “Jamie, how do I…I don’t know if I know…” I can’t figure out what to ask or how to ask it.

  “Do you like what I’m doing?”

  “Uh-huh,” is all I can manage.

  “Then nothing else has to happen, Rose.”

  As soon as he says that, all the worry—about whether I’m doing it right and if I look okay and shaved my legs and chose the right underwear—fades away and I just feel what it’s like to be touched like this. By him.

  For a moment, it’s perfect.

  And then, even though I just got here for the first time, I want more, like I did after I touched him. More closeness, more of him telling me what he wants, more feeling like I turn him on, more more more…

  Everything is suddenly super intense. And it’s too much.

  I stop him, but not because it doesn’t feel good. I need the world to be still for minute, I need to go back to being just me, separate from him, from his beautiful hands. As we lie there together, I listen to my breathing, and his, too.

  He’s watching me with his half-smile.

  I reach up and touch his face. Nothing else about this Valentine’s Day matters. Not the label guy, not the band, not the messages from Angelo, not moving to LA…

  It’s just Jamie and me, together, getting closer and closer.

  Somehow, tonight I went from the unluckiest girl in Union to the luckiest girl in the world.

  SPRING

  “I Want to Sing That Rock and Roll,”

  Time (The Revelator), Gillian Welch

  _______________________

  Chapter 14

  “If you want to write a great song, dig into the things you don’t want to feel.”

  Carlos has sleeve tattoos and more piercings than I can count and I think he might be wearing eyeliner, although maybe he just naturally looks like that. His long, dark hair gleams, and his eyes are almost black. He is my songwriting teacher, and two minutes into class, I already think he’s the greatest thing ever.

  I don’t know anything about songwriting—like, literally nothing. But everything he’s saying makes sense to me.

  Maybe I’m not the total hack that the record label guy said I was after all.

  Although, when I think back on it, he didn’t exactly say I was a hack. He said he could tell I could sing.

  A few days after Valentine’s Day, I finally answered the phone and talked to Angelo. He met with the label guy and got the publishing deal, but not the demo with Steph. I almost fell over when he said that. He said he told the guy that Steph doesn’t sound right singing his stuff—she’s got a musical theatre voice that is great for backup, not lead. The guy didn’t believe him, until he and Steph did a song for him.

  Steph’s the kind of girl who might have been a little more musical theatre than normal out of loyalty to me, and also because she’d pegged the guy as a sleaze.

  Angelo and I apologized to each other and agreed that we shouldn’t be in the band together—it just i
sn’t a good match right now. I didn’t have any answers for him about why I never practiced—which I still feel bad about—but it was Angelo who told me about Carlos’ workshop. “Keep goin’, Sweater. Don’t let some record-label guy freak you out. Go see Carlos.”

  So I did.

  I’ve been thinking about writing a lot lately—writing songs, writing lyrics, writing music. Camber just assigned our final project, which is to interview someone who has had a “profoundly negative” effect on us, and then write something about what we learned from talking to them. I wonder if I can do my assignment in song.

  “How do you dig into the things you don’t want to feel?” Carlos continues. “Figure out what you don’t want to talk about. You have two minutes to come up with three things. Then you’re going to read your lists out loud.” The girl across the circle gasps. “Yeah, you can’t hide in here. But what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas—no talking outside these four walls about what people say or write in here today. So be honest, be clear, and be real. Those are my rules of songwriting, and my rules for this workshop. Okay. Go.”

  It takes me about 30 seconds to come up with three things I don’t want to talk about. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not, but it gives me time to look over the other three students in the class while they finish.

  We’re all sitting in a circle, our guitars leaning against a blackboard with permanent staff lines on it for writing music. The guy next to me looks like he belongs in a science lab—button-down shirt, khakis, nerd glasses that may or may not be ironic—it’s too early to tell. The girl across from me has a carefully cultivated Taylor Swift thing going on, right down to the red lipstick. And the guy next to her looks like Lenny Kravitz in his pre-Cinna days, on the cover of his greatest hits album—big, awesome hair; jeans; a white linen shirt that is barely staying on in that way that clothes never seem to stay on Lenny Kravitz; and sunglasses.

  I’m not sure who I am, or who the nerd-chic guy is, but that’s okay. We’ll figure it out.

  Taylor is trying really hard not to look at Lenny while she’s supposed to be thinking of three things she doesn’t want to talk about.

  Maybe her crush on him should be first on the list.

  Carlos calls time. “Who’s up?” he asks.

  My hand goes up.

  “Blue hair. Go. Wait, wait, wait—sorry. I shouldn’t call you ‘Blue Hair.’ What’s your name?”

  “Rose.”

  “Rose. Blue hair, blue eyes. Got it. Read your list. Three things you don’t want to talk about.”

  I jump right into the deep end of full-disclosure. “My dad got killed in Iraq, I got kicked out of my band by a record-label guy, and I’m worried my boyfriend is an—drinking too much.”

  “Uh-uh,” Carlos says, shaking his head. “Say what you were going to say. Don’t edit—not yet, anyway. Do that last one again.”

  It feels very strange to say this out loud, especially since I don’t know if I’m right. “I’m worried my boyfriend is an alcoholic…question mark?”

  “There it is. The question mark makes it interesting. Let’s go with that one. Next?”

  I find his lack of reaction to the first two things on my list refreshing.

  No one else volunteers so Carlos points at nerd-chic guy. “You. Whatcha got? Wait,” he says again. “Name?”

  “Ethan.”

  “Ethan. Glasses. Yup. Go.”

  “Um, well, I have one thing.”

  “Okay, we’ll take it. Start with that.”

  “My stepfather.”

  We wait for more. There isn’t any.

  “I’m coming back to you, Ethan. Get more specific. You,” he says pointing to the other girl in the class.

  She helps him out. “Mara.”

  “Mara,” he repeats. “Red lipstick. Don’t change that color on me or I’ll be screwed. Whaddya got?”

  “Applying to college, the end of the world, and infinity.”

  “Okay,” he nods slowly. “We’ll come back to you, too. Clifton.”

  We’re collectively surprised that he already knows Lenny Kravitz—maybe even a little jealous.

  “I’m cool, man, I’ll talk about anything. You know that.”

  “Anything?” Carlos says. “I know one thing you don’t want to talk about.” Carlos looks at the rest of us. “Clifton’s a music student at the high school here. He’s taking this workshop with me because he’s a glutton for punishment.” He turns back to Clifton and waits.

  “I’ll say it, man, it’s no big thing. My pops is not cool with the fact that I am a gay man.”

  Mara’s disappointment is palpable.

  “And that affects you how?” Carlos asks.

  Clifton looks at Carlos over the top of his sunglasses. “It makes me want to be gayer.”

  Everybody busts out laughing, and Clifton smiles as he folds his arms.

  Carlos turns to Ethan. “Now that was specific.”

  I’m fascinated by the way Carlos is doing this. I thought this class would be like therapy but it’s not. Carlos isn’t really asking us about the things we’re bringing up, or saying he’s concerned, or even that he’s sorry we’re going through whatever we’re going through. He’s just trying to help us see how our individual responses to intense things can be a source for inspiration.

  “Ethan, can you get as specific as Clifton just did?”

  “My stepfather is not cool with the fact that I exist,” Ethan says. Carlos motions for more. “And that makes me hate my mother.”

  “Because…”

  Ethan starts to look a little frustrated. He slides to the edge of his chair like he might stand up. “Because she married a guy who hates her son…”

  “And why does that make you mad?”

  Ethan’s ears turn bright red. “Well, because I was here first!”

  “Bam!” Carlos puts his hand up for a high-five, and Ethan, looking kind of frazzled, gives it to him. “That’s it. Good.” He turns back to Mara, “Okay, Mara, let’s zero in on one of yours. The end of the world and infinity aren’t that personal but I can see how they would make you feel things you don’t want to feel. What’s the deal with applying to college?”

  “I don’t think I’m going to get in anywhere.”

  “Why would that matter?” he asks.

  “People would think I’m a loser.”

  “And?”

  “I’d have to face the fact that maybe I am,” she says.

  He points at her. “There you go—that’s the feeling you don’t want to feel.” As I’m looking around the circle and seeing varying degrees of terror on people’s face, Carlos turns to me. “Blue, let’s come back to you for a second. What does your boyfriend’s drinking make you feel that you don’t want to feel?”

  This should be an easy question to answer, but it’s not. I finally come up with, “Hopeless.”

  “About what?”

  “His future.”

  “Anything else?”

  There is something else, but I can’t get at it.

  “Bring it back to you, how it affects you,” Carlos prompts.

  “My future,” is what comes out of my mouth next.

  “Good. The heart of songwriting is bringing your experience—what makes you you—to your music. All right, five-minute break. When we come back, you’re going to write one line of your first song.”

  We all push back our chairs and stand. I can’t believe an entire hour has already gone by. I think Angelo was right—I think this class will help me get my confidence back. I haven’t even sung a note and already I feel better.

  Even though we’ve just shared a lot of personal information, my classmates and I are shy with each other. We don’t talk as we stand and head out into the hallway.

  “Well, look what the cat dragged in.”

  I glance up to see Conrad Deladdo, last year’s Frenemy #1. He’s the younger brother of Jamie’s ex Regina—the Deladdos and I have a long history, obviously. Conrad and Regina eac
h have their own long history with Jamie, starting with the fact that they were both in love with him. Conrad was miserable at Union High, thanks to his homophobic teammates on the swim team, until he discovered acting. Over the summer, he transferred to the arts high school.

  He looks good—he’s taller, his smile seems genuine, and although he greeted me with something that sounded like a putdown, for once, I don’t think he actually meant it.

  Clifton comes up next to us. “Hey,” he says to Conrad. And then he blows my mind by kissing him.

  Conrad has a boyfriend. And not just any boyfriend, but Lenny Kravitz from my class.

  “Don’t tell me Rose Zarelli is taking Carlos’ workshop,” Conrad says.

  “You mean Blue?” He smiles at me. “What’s up with you two?”

  “We knew each other at Union. She stole my sister’s boyfriend.”

  “Ooh, you do not seem like that type,” Clifton says to me.

  “It wasn’t like that. Conrad just likes to make it seem dramatic.”

  “Yeah, that sounds about right.” Clifton takes his cigarettes out of his pocket and puts one in his mouth. “I’m going outside for a minute. I’ll be back.”

  “Don’t expect me to kiss you after you smoke that,” Conrad calls after him.

  “Do what you gotta do.” Clifton chuckles as we watch him leave.

  “Wow, that guy is…”

  Conrad just grins at me. “So what are you doing down here? Did Union High finally break you? Because I know what that feels like.”

  I shake my head. “I heard about this workshop and wanted to try it.” I consider telling Conrad the whole story, but even though he’s being nice to me, my instincts say not to give him any ammunition. You just never know with the Deladdos.

  “I hear you’ve been seeing a lot of Jamie. Like, a lot a lot.”

  “Who do you hear that from?” I ask, though I don’t need to.

  “My beloved bitch of a sister. She says Jamie’s turning into a drinker.” My instant response is to defend Jamie, to deny it. “Not that anyone in my family is surprised. We’ve had a front row seat for his dad’s drunken lunacy for years.”