Starry Eyes

by Jenn Bennett

  “Oh, Jesus Christ.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “That’s when I lost it.”

  “What happened?”

  “I slugged him.”

  WHAT? I stare at Lennon in disbelief.

  “Yep,” Lennon says, tapping his thigh repeatedly with his knuckles. “Punched him the jaw. Hurt like hell. My knuckles were bruised for days.”

  My mind flashes back to memories from last year. Dad had a swollen cheek and his jaw was bruised. He told us he’d been hit by falling scaffolding when he was walking past a construction site.

  “After I landed the punch,” Lennon continues, “he started to go after me, but one of the hotel employees stepped in. And then Ina ran to get the manager. And . . . to make a long story short, your dad hauled me outside the hotel and said he wouldn’t call the cops and have me arrested for assault and battery if I stayed away from you. No homecoming dance. No visits at home. No talking at school. No phone calls or texts. He said he’d be monitoring your phone.”

  “Jesus,” I say, shocked. Can he monitor my phone? Has he already? My parents have always given me a fair amount of freedom. I never thought in a million years that they would invade my privacy.

  “So that was it, basically,” Lennon says. “I planned on telling you anyway. At least, after I drove around town and stopped freaking out. That’s when I texted Avani and told her to let you know that I’d meet you at the homecoming dance, because our plan for me to show up at your house and tell your parents we were dating was . . . not happening. So I thought I’d just tell you what happened with your dad at the dance and we could figure out what to do. But then Sunny called and said my dad had tried to commit suicide, and we rushed into the city to wait at the hospital, because they didn’t know if he would live or not.”

  He swallows, and his throat bobs. “Dad made it through the weekend. And my moms made sure his girlfriend was prepared to handle him at home—bought groceries for them, and stuff. And anyway, it was draining. And I didn’t get back into town until Sunday night. I was going to try to talk to you at school the next day, to apologize for homecoming and explain what happened. But then my dad made his second suicide attempt, and that time, no one was there to stop him.”

  “Oh, Lennon.”

  “Yeah.” He gives me a tight smile that fades. “That’s when I texted you the last time.”

  I’m sorry.

  I see the text in my mind as clearly as the day I received it. “I thought . . . you were saying that you didn’t want to be in a relationship. That you were chickening out of telling me in person.”

  “I was afraid your dad was monitoring your texts, and I was in the middle of a nightmare. I couldn’t think straight. I just told myself that when I got back after the funeral, we’d sort it out. The last thing I expected was to come back to school and see you with Andre.”

  Oh, Jesus.

  Everything begins to slot together inside my head.

  I remember that Monday with perfect clarity. I’d been crying all weekend, thinking he’d decided that being anything more than friends was too weird, and that he’d bailed on me. I didn’t want to go back to school. Mom forced me to go after I confessed about the Great Experiment. She said I should talk to him and find out what happened. Give him the benefit of the doubt. And—

  “My dad had a long talk with me,” I say, too agitated to sit. I jump off the bench and pace around the plateau. “He said Mom told him I was upset and that I’d be better off not talking to you. To let it go, that all relationships change, and it was better to have pride than be the one begging. He . . .” I stop and put my hands on my hips to steady myself. I think I’m going to be sick. “I thought he was being a concerned father. Why would he care what we did or didn’t do?”

  Lennon throws his hands up. “Right? I never understood it. I mean, I know my parents are way less uptight about sex—”

  Dear God. I feel myself flush.

  “—but it was so weird to me that he blew up like that.”

  “Oh, he blows up, all right,” I say, pacing again. “He’s a keg of dynamite.”

  “He’s petty, too. He kept Mac’s credit card—for leverage, he told me. When she went into a tizzy, trying to find it after my dad’s funeral, I couldn’t stand lying to her. So I confessed to the whole thing. She was furious at me. You know how she is about stealing.”

  “I know.”

  “But afterward, she was more furious at your dad. All the shit he said about the sex shop . . . That was the first big screaming match between our families, you know. It was about you and me. Mac went over to your parents’ clinic while we were in school and gave him a verbal ass-whipping.”

  It was about us? All of this mess is what started the bad blood between our families?

  He nods his head. “I wanted to talk to you about everything, but after my dad’s funeral, I walked into school, and there you were, kissing Andre in front of your locker.”

  “I thought we were over! I embarrassed myself, crying at homecoming, and he was nice to me. He was there, and you weren’t, and I thought you didn’t . . . I never would have, if I’d known the truth. I didn’t know your dad died—you could have told me!”

  “I thought you’d find out. It was on the news. But you didn’t say anything, and I wasn’t supposed to go near you, or your dad would kill me. The only time I could talk to you without him knowing was at school, but there you were, with Andre. Andre! And you wouldn’t so much as look my way. I felt like a disease. You moved to the courtyard at lunch to sit with Reagan and Andre, and then I saw you guys on a date at Thai Palace. . . .”

  “I thought you hated me. I thought we were finished.”

  He lifts his cap to run a hand through his hair and then settles it back down more tightly, tugging it low on his forehead. “I was messed up about my dad. . . . I didn’t know what to do. Everything was completely screwed up, and I thought you didn’t want anything to do with me anymore. I was shattered, Zorie. Shattered.”

  I hear the hurt in his voice, and it matches what I’m feeling in my heart.

  Overwhelmed, I walk to the edge of the plateau and glance down the twisting steps. They look otherworldly, like ancient steps of a Tibetan mountain temple. Only, it’s just California, and there’s nothing holy here. No monks. No shrine.

  Just the mountain and the sun and the two of us with all this pain in the middle.

  A group of hikers climbs the steps far below. They look like ants. I walk a few steps to the benches circling a short wooden rail and gaze out over the jagged scenery. I wonder if this is one of the spots at which people fall off the mountain. It certainly doesn’t seem like a place people should die. It’s far too beautiful.

  I hear Lennon approaching, but I don’t turn around. I don’t know what to say. I can’t process this. I’m trying, but I’m angry and utterly heartbroken, and everything feels raw.

  Is all of this my fault, for crying on Andre’s shoulder and assuming the worst about Lennon’s motivations?

  Is all of this Lennon’s fault, for assuming the worst about me?

  And then there’s my father. . . .

  “Everything that happened in the hotel . . . ,” I finally manage, talking more to the mountains than to him. “I mean, it’s almost blackmail, what my father did to you.”

  “Actually, it was. See, there was something niggling me. Why was he at that hotel checking in? It was the middle of the day. And who needs a hotel in town when they live twenty minutes away? I didn’t really think about it much after everything went to hell. Not until that package was misdelivered to my parents’ shop last week.”

  My body stills, heart racing erratically. “Why?” I ask, almost a whisper. I’m not even sure I want to know.

  “Because the woman in those photos . . . I realized I’d seen her before. She was in the hotel lobby, standing near the registration desk. And then I saw her again, looking out the rotating doors when your dad dragged me outside.” Lennon pauses, and then says, “When I t
hought about it later, I wondered if maybe he made such a big scene to distract me from seeing her.”

  This is the final blow. I want to hold my hands up in surrender. I’m dead now, so you can stop shooting, please and thank you. Nothing can hurt me anymore. I’m beyond pain. I’m just numb.

  I stride toward our bench and slide into my pack, hoisting it onto my shoulders.

  “What are you doing?” Lennon asks.

  “I need to think,” I tell him. “I just . . . need to think.”

  20

  * * *

  And that’s exactly what I do. Alone with my thoughts, I ponder everything that’s just happened all the way up the last hundred or so steps of the mountain staircase. Wondering if I’ll ever stop being angry with my dad. Wondering if I’m angry with Lennon, too. And I’m so busy being lost in my own self-centered thoughts, it doesn’t quite register that the water is getting louder. And louder. When the steps begin curving sharply to the right, I suddenly see why.

  Waterfalls. Two of them. Not the small, tranquil cascade of Mackenzie Falls. If that was a roar, this is God herself speaking. And she is fierce.

  Blue water plummets off a sharp-angled cliff many stories down into raging white foam. It’s flowing so savagely, a good third of the falls are nothing but gauzy mist. I even can feel mist on my legs—and the base of the falls must be a good quarter mile or more away.

  I hike the last few steps to a large lookout area on a plateau twice the size of the one below. No one’s up here. How is that possible? I spy another set of stone steps at the end of the lookout leading to the topmost point. There appears to be a trail all the way around the falls, and at the top of the falls is where several tourists are taking photos and looking through viewfinders. If I’m not mistaken, there is a tram and a couple of toilets up there. Guess most people choose to ride up there instead of climbing the world’s most dangerous steps.

  I walk toward the edge of the lookout, dump my pack on a section of dry rock, and peer across the gap to watch the waterfalls.

  “Emperor and Empress Falls,” Lennon says loudly from my side, ditching his pack next to mine. “They’re actually part of the same river, but that bumpy rock formation that sticks out between them is what splits the flow. Three hundred fifty feet tall.”

  They are beautiful. I’m truly stunned. By the view, and by the entire conversation we just had. I wonder if I can just keep looking at the falls, just pretend it never happened until I come up with a plan—

  “Zorie,” he pleads from behind me. “Say something. Please.”

  I have to speak louder than normal to be heard over the roar of the falls, and it sort of turns into yelling. “If you confessed everything to your parents, then my dad didn’t have anything to hold over you as leverage.” I swing around to face him, bitterness in my voice. “Why didn’t you tell me then?”

  “You weren’t speaking to me.”

  “Because I was under the assumption that you hated me!”

  “I never hated you. I was angry that you shut me out, and I damn sure was furious about Andre. Seeing you with him in front of your locker was one of the worst days of my life—and believe me, I had a lot of bad days last year.”

  “I was only with Andre because I was trying to get over you.” I’m crying now—half in anger, half in grief—and I feel as if my chest is going to explode and I’m going to fall over the edge of the lookout and die in the waterfall mist. Because not only am I thinking about what I did with Andre, but I’m also thinking about Lennon doing the same thing with Jovana Ramirez. And I don’t know which image is worse.

  “And then,” he yells, “I had to listen to Brett—fucking Brett, of all people—brag about how close he was to ‘hitting that.’ ”

  Ugh! What did I see in him?

  “It was just a kiss!” I tell Lennon. “One kiss, and it wasn’t even that good. It wasn’t good with Andre, and it was less than nothing with Brett. Is that want you want to hear?”

  “I don’t mind hearing that, honestly,” he says, cheeks dark with indignation.

  “And what about Jovana? Andre and I had sex one time. Once! You probably screwed Jovana’s brains out for months.”

  “I’m not going to dignify that. She’s a nice person.”

  “Aha!” I say. “You avoided the question.”

  “There was a question? Because all I heard was an implication. And yeah, we had sex. But I wasn’t in love with her.”

  “Does that make it better?”

  “You’re not hearing me. I wasn’t in love with her.”

  “I heard you.”

  “She left me because I was hung up on you.”

  “Then why didn’t you talk to me?” I say.

  “Because you made it clear that you didn’t want me to. Because you were busy making out with Brett at parties. Because you made new friends and avoided me at school. Because your father was always watching me.”

  “You should have fought for me!” I shout. “Why didn’t you fight for me?”

  “You gave up on me!” he yells back. “How can I fight for someone who pretends I don’t exist?”

  “I was trying to protect myself. You hurt me. My entire world fell apart.”

  “So. Did. Mine.”

  I’m shaking now. At least the angry crying has stopped.

  “It’s not supposed to be like this!” I tell him.

  “What isn’t?”

  I gesture angrily from him to me. “This! If this were meant to be, it would be easier. Maybe the universe is trying to tell us something.”

  “Oh?” He stalks closer, getting in my face. Towering above me. “Is that so?”

  “Yes,” I say, less sure.

  “I really want to know, Zorie. What do you think the universe is trying to tell us?”

  “That we . . .” My mouth hangs open, and I can’t finish the thought. He’s too close. Inches away. My head is empty; the words on my tongue have vanished. I don’t know what I’m trying to say. What I’m feeling. I just have the sense that we’ve come to a decisive moment and something is about to snap. It’s as if the energy between us has suddenly spiked and is now vibrating. Like the sign behind me warns: STAY CLEAR OF THE EDGE. ROCKS ARE SLIPPERY.

  “You want to know what I think?” Lennon says, head dipping lower as he tries to get level with my eyes. “I think that if the universe were trying to keep us apart, it’s doing a shitty job. Because otherwise, we wouldn’t be out here together.”

  “I wish we weren’t!”

  “No, you don’t,” he says firmly.

  “Yes, I do. I wish I’d never come on this trip. I wish I didn’t know any of this, and I wish—”

  Without warning, his mouth is on mine. He kisses me roughly. Completely unyielding. His hands are on the back of my head, holding me in place. And for a long, suspended moment, I’m frozen, unsure of whether I want to push him away. Then, all at once, heat spreads through me, and I thaw.

  I kiss him back.

  And, oh, it is good.

  His hands relax, fingers tangling in my hair, soft tongue rolling against mine. And when I run out of air and have to pull back, he kisses the corner of my mouth. My cheek. My forehead. A trail of kisses on my jaw. All over my neck. My earlobe—and now I’m close to passing out with pleasure. He even tugs back the collar of my shirt to kiss the hidden skin beneath it. His mouth is hot, and his stubble is rough in the best way possible. The kisses are long and slow and deliberate, and they are very, very confident. And it feels as if he’s drawing a map on my body, following a path of landmarks that he’s plotted in his head.

  He’s relentless with all of his exploration, and I’m making weird groaning noises that are halfway embarrassing. But I just can’t stop. And now I’m struggling to get my mouth back on his skin, any skin I can reach, and my arms are around him, pulling him closer, and I’ve found my way back to his mouth, and GOD, IT’S GOOD.

  How could I have forgotten?

  Did he get better at this? Did I? />
  Because my God.

  Waterfall mist covers my legs, and my knees are giving out. My bones don’t work anymore. It’s as if he’s pressed some sort of secret on switch, and I’m at the mercy of my body—which likes his body quite a lot and desperately wants to drop to the ground and let Lennon have his wicked way with me, right here in front of God’s Voice. I absolutely would, too. In this moment, I’m a trollop. An unrepentant floozy. I’m a raging wildfire of feelings and sensations, and I can’t put them out.

  Oh, wow. I seriously can’t breathe. I think I need to learn how to pace my trollop-y ways. Or at least learn how to breathe through my nostrils while kissing.

  I try to steady myself, and that’s when the voices in my head start whispering. He abandoned you. He hurt you.

  The sound of approaching hikers intensifies my uneasy feelings.

  I pull away from Lennon.

  He pulls me back.

  “People coming,” I warn.

  “Zorie,” Lennon says, his hand roaming down my back. “I want to try again. I don’t want to be enemies. Or friends. I want . . . everything. You and me. I don’t care about your father anymore. I will fight for us, if that’s what it takes. We’ll figure something out together. Tell me you want that too.”

  And for a moment, I almost give in and agree, but then one of the hikers laughs—they are way closer than I expected—and it fractures the moment, a proverbial bucket of icy water over all our shared warmth. And with a jolt of clarity, I remember Lennon saying a lot of the same sentiments to me before homecoming, when we decided to take the Great Experiment public.

  Can we be together again?

  Do I want to?

  Has what he’s revealed changed how I feel about last fall?

  Why can’t I make an easy decision?

  And finally: What is wrong with me?

  “I need to think about things,” I tell him.

  The anguish on his face is unmistakable.