by Viv Daniels
Emily pounced. “Who is he?”
“No one,” I said, and started reading the soup menu. It was too hot for soup. Way too hot for soup.
“He’s someone,” Caitlin said. That girl was entirely too perceptive for her own good. She was the first to realize there was more than I thought between Dylan and Tess last fall, too.
“No one you know,” I said. “And it’s nothing. He’s just some guy I met.”
Emily snorted. “Leave it to you, Hannah, to spend six months traipsing around Europe only to come back to Canton to nail some random.”
“Wait,” said Caitlin, sitting up. “You didn’t sleep with anyone in Europe?”
“You know, Caitlin,” I said, closing my menu and folding my hands primly on top, “I’m a little concerned by your obsession with my love life. Have you ‘nailed’ anyone recently?”
“As a matter of fact, I have,” she answered, her own nose up in the air. “I hooked up with an adorable Beta just last weekend.”
Emily high fived her. “That a girl. Sadly, I have to live vicariously through you two. I haven’t slept with anyone but Dean in five years.”
“Oh, poor Emily, trapped in the bonds of true love,” Caitlin quipped. I thought I might be off the hook, but she whirled back and fixed me with an intense glare. “Now you spill. Who is this guy? He’s not a Canton student?”
“No way,” I said. “He’s just a guy I met. In my neighborhood.”
“In your neighborhood?” Emily asked skeptically. “Is he…old?”
“Oh my God,” gushed Caitlin. “Is he married?”
“No!” I held my hands up in defeat. “He’s just some guy. He’s twenty-two. We were bored, we had a few drinks, one thing led to another…it was nothing.” It was not nothing. “It’s not going to happen again.” There. That was more like it.
“So he’s home for the summer?” Emily said. “Where’d he go to school?”
No, and he didn’t. I sighed. “I really—it was just one time.”
“Fine.” Caitlin nodded satisfied. “I, for one, am glad you’re finally moving past that whole thing with dickhead Dylan.”
“And his slutbitchskank.” Emily nodded.
This was why we couldn’t go to Verde. Even if the slutbitchskank in question was not waiting tables, all her friends were.
I knew my friends were just trying to be supportive, but I hated it when they talked about Tess this way. I had a hard enough time trying not to think of her in horrible terms. Tess was very open about the fact that she was the reason Dylan broke up with me, and that she was very sorry that they’d hurt me. I wondered if that had anything to do with her upbringing. Maybe all those years of keeping her very existence a secret from me and my mom made her less inclined to lie to me now.
Most girls would not own it like that, and maybe that helped me believe her that neither of them had wanted to hurt me at all. It also helped that it was so blatantly obvious that Dylan loved Tess. Like, loved her. Every time he looked at her I half-expected time to stop and stars to start falling from the sky. He’d never looked at me like that. No one had.
Also, trying to forgive Tess was super important if I ever actually wanted my sister to be a sister. And I think she wanted it, too. But my friends didn’t know anything about all that, so I just laughed good-naturedly at their jokes and waved to the waiter to come take our orders.
I was halfway through my plate of noodles when my phone buzzed. I checked the readout and my eyes widened. Boone.
You tore my sleeping bag.
I tore it? Me? That was rich. He’d been the one dragging me all over the back of the truck. I sneaked a peek at my companions, but no one seemed interested in my text. Grinning and blushing again, I texted back:
Good thing it’s summer. You won’t need it.
There. That was plenty flippant. I returned to my lunch. Emily was telling us a story about her father’s new girlfriend, who was about twenty-five and dumb as a rock.
“So then she asks how you get to Paris from France,” she was saying when my phone buzzed again.
I sleep on top of it in the summer. You of all people know how hard the bed of my truck is.
Wait, he slept in that truck? I stared at my phone as if it somehow held the answers.
I do a lot of camping, he’d said last night.
Was Boone homeless? Had I slept with a homeless stranger last night? More to the point, had I let him pay for drinks?
No, that was silly. I’d been the one who suggested the truck. He’d wanted to go back to the yacht club. Except, where would he have been staying at the yacht club? Not in one of the rooms, surely…
“Earth to Hannah!” Caitlin called. “If that’s not a naked picture of Channing Tatum on your phone then I have no idea what has you so captivated.”
“Sorry,” I said, and stuck the phone in my purse. I’d figure this out after lunch. Right now, every flirty thing I’d planned to say to him seemed designed to make me sound like a spoiled, sheltered ditz.
Boone might be homeless. The fact that he had a job and a cellphone didn’t mean he had a place to live. Lots of laborers lived in their cars. Except, he hadn’t had any stuff crowding the truck, just that one toolbox thingy strapped to the bed.
The rest of lunch I was pretty much a lump, since I was so busy reviewing everything I’d said to him last night to see how naive and privileged I must have sounded. Talking about my trips to Europe and my taste for wine…oh, Hannah, you bitch. And I’d let him pay. He’d rescued me twice that afternoon, and I didn’t even buy the man a beer.
By the time I got back to my house in my mother’s borrowed car, the unanswered text was practically burning through my purse. I felt its magnetic pull at every stoplight between the restaurant and my driveway. My eyes went automatically to the Gardners’ driveway, but no pickup truck sat there this time.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Somehow it would be easier to talk to him face to face than through the anonymity of text. But I should just ask him. He’d been blunt and forward enough with me yesterday, both in the bar and…afterward.
I picked up the phone. How could I word this so I didn’t sound rude, or prying, or like a total rich bitch?
Sorry. Was driving. Do you…often sleep in your truck?
I held my breath until his reply came back:
Sometimes when it’s really hot. My place doesn’t have AC.
His words conjured an image in my mind of Boone flat on his back in the bed of the truck, shirt off on a hot summer night, staring up at the stars. If there was ever an excuse not to have air-conditioning, that sight would be it. I felt a bit better, though, just knowing there was a place he called home. Still, I should have paid for the drinks. Maybe I could make it up to him.
Well, I’ll buy you a new sleeping bag, if that was your purpose in texting me.
My phone buzzed a few seconds later.
My purpose in texting you was to see if you’d text me back.
And you did.
Seven
I stole a glance around the yard, as if someone could be looking over my shoulder at what I was doing. This was ridiculous. I got out of the car and practically ran into the house.
Mom was on her computer, shopping, so I merely waved to her and went into my room, cell phone clutched in my hand like it was a bag of drugs. I closed the door behind me, perched on the edge of my bed, took a deep breath, and started typing.
ME: Yes I did. So what would you like to text about?
BOONE: I don’t know. You could send me a picture.
ME: Forget it, buddy. I watch the news. No pictures.
BOONE: I didn’t say a dirty picture.
Fair enough. So what, a selfie? A tossed-hair, pouty-lipped, coyly-tilted-head snapshot? Hmm, I wasn’t crazy about that idea. I glanced around the room, and found a purple teddy bear in a Canton T-shirt. Perfect. I clicked, then sent it along.
BOONE: Cute. I didn’t notice how fuzzy you were last night. And purple.<
br />
ME: Well, the light wasn’t great out on that beach.
For a few minutes, there was no response, and I wondered if I was boring him. The teddy bear was probably the wrong move.
When another minute went by with no response, I tossed the phone to my bed and got up. This was silly. Last night was last night, and we’d decided even before we started that it would only be last night. I was hardly an expert in the art of one-night stands, but I was pretty sure that afternoon-after texting was probably not a standard part of the game.
I opened my laptop and logged onto the blog. I might as well write up my take on Render, though I’d hold off posting for a bit, until whatever that director Sam Rowland’s memory might have been of me faded, and there was no way he’d connect me to The Final Girl. Not that he’d have much to complain about. It was going to be a good review.
I was deep into the third paragraph, which was all about the manipulation of time to emphasize the heroine’s growing awareness of her plight, when I heard the buzzing. I turned around and looked at the phone. The indicator light was blinking white, which meant a new message.
Why was he doing this to me? Or rather, why was I doing this to myself? I could have just not texted him back. He’d basically said as much. I could have ignored him and just let this whole thing go.
My phone buzzed again.
Dammit. I leaned over and grabbed it.
I was just thinking, usually around this time I’m seeing you in your bikini.
Are you wearing it now?
Wow, he didn’t mess around, did he? Even during our game at the bar last night, he’d been perfectly upfront about what he wanted. Sex. With me. Pickup truck optional. I was not used to guys being this forward. Was this what men were like outside the college scene? Or did Boone feel free to put himself so far out there because there was no emotion invested in our relationship? I was a newbie to one-night stands, but also to purely physical affairs, too. I typed:
You’re still trying to get that picture out of me, huh?
A minute later, he replied with a smiley face and then:
BOONE: :-) I want to put it on your contact page so it flashes on my screen when you call me.
ME: What makes you think I’m going to call you?
BOONE: I was there last night, too.
My breath caught in my throat and my fingers froze on the screen. I had no snappy comeback. Another text came through, and then another.
Technically, I’m not supposed to be contacting you so soon.
That’s the rule, right?
Well, screw that. I had a great time. You did, too. We should do it again.
Yes! said my nether regions. No, said my brain. The rest of my body started taking sides. Results were inconclusive, but thrilling. Boone was supposed to be this crazy thing I did that one time. The European fling I didn’t actually manage to have in Europe.
If I didn’t write him back, would that be it? Would he stop texting?
Could I not write him back? I must have stared at the phone for another two minutes before it buzzed again.
It’s cool if you’re not interested. I will never darken that rooftop again.
I ground my teeth together in frustration. Why did he have to be so charming? Don’t do it. Do it. Don’t. Do. Ugh. I took a deep breath, steadied my nerves, and snapped a simple, smiling selfie. Then I typed in a message and pressed send.
For when I call you
For a minute, there was no response. Then:
Hello, gorgeous.
There was that blushing smile again. Someone needed to slap me or something. A picture buzzed through.
Back atcha.
Uh-oh. If he sent me anything R-rated, that would kill everything. I mean, I would look and all, but then I’d delete the picture, block his number, and probably get a new phone, just to be safe. Because if anyone found dick pics on the phone of Hannah Swift, I’d die.
I clicked and Boone’s face grinned up at me. Nice, sweet pic. He even had a shirt on.
Darn. He even had a shirt on.
Gotta run. Talk to you soon, Hannah.
I flopped back on my bed and stared up at the ceiling as if I’d find answers there. What the hell was I doing? Had I gone completely mad?
What if I’d told Emily and Caitlin this afternoon? Emily and Caitlin, who seemed more willing to jump to the conclusion that I was sleeping with some middle-aged married dude in my neighborhood than a handyman I’d met next door. Because that’s not what Hannah Swift would do, right? She dated society boys and brilliant college students and guys with good prospects and… What had Boone accused me of yesterday? Guys with good majors, career plans, and bank accounts.
Boone was not those things. Boone was a handyman who sometimes slept in his truck because wherever he lived was so crappy it didn’t have air-conditioning.
But I liked him anyway. He may not have gone to college, but he was obviously smart. Our conversation at the bar had been clever. He didn’t use text-speak, and had messaged me in complete sentences. With punctuation, even. He had a line from a poem tattooed on his stomach.
Of course, that didn’t mean he’d actually read the poem in question. I knew half a dozen girls who had Chinese symbols tattooed on their bodies but didn’t speak a word of Mandarin. I always thought it was kind of silly. I mean—how were they sure that the symbol actually meant “star” or “destiny” or “love” or whatever they’d been told at the tattoo parlor? For all I knew, Boone had picked that line off a wall of designs in a shop.
I sat up. This was not an idle question. I went back to my computer and did a search on “They only live who dare.”
Okay, so it was not a poem. It was apparently a quote from Voltaire. I didn’t know much about Voltaire, since I was only a history major for three weeks, but my understanding was that he was a French philosopher and political writer—not a poet.
Bummer. Well, bummer for Boone, anyway. On the other hand, who cared if it was really from a poem or not? The line obviously spoke to him in some way, even if he had just picked it off a wall. I hoped he never found out. Though the likelihood of him hanging out with people who knew Voltaire was probably slim. If I had that tattoo, some pretentious Canton philosophy major would probably call me out on it in twenty seconds, and give me a hard time about not getting it in the original French.
Speaking of Canton, I supposed I should look at the course catalog. I really needed to pick a major. For real this time. The problem was that every time I chose a department, I found myself surrounded by people who were actually passionate about it, in a way that I wasn’t—about anything. I was a business major and had been baffled by the way the other kids couldn’t wait to get to Wall Street and start wheeling and dealing. I was a marketing major and marveled at how passionate my classmates were about selling stuff—any stuff. I’d been an English major, a history major, a psychology major…none of it stuck.
Maybe Boone had a point yesterday about how pointless college was if you didn’t know what you wanted out of it. But what were my options? I was a Swift. Swifts went to Canton. Even non-Swift Swifts like Tess apparently went to Canton. I didn’t like what it said about me that my sister, who’d been given nothing, knew exactly what she wanted and I, who’d been given everything, had no idea.
I was spoiled. I mean, I’d always known that, and I joked about it, but in the past I just meant it like my parents gave me things. Cars, clothes, money, opportunities. I’d used it to mean “privileged.” But maybe I was actually spoiled, like a fruit that sits in a marble bowl looking pretty while its insides turned to mush.
I was home for practically the whole summer, and it hadn’t even occurred to me to get a job. Tess was working, out in Denver. Of course, she was working at her dream company—some bioengineering firm where she’d be up to her safety goggles in algae—but she worked as a waitress back here in Canton, too. I could be a waitress. Heck, I could be a French tutor, and actually make a little use of my European adventure. I cou
ld do something, even if it was something mundane.
I clicked over to my half-finished review of Render. That writer-director hadn’t cared that his budget was shoestring and some of his actors were wooden and his effects were cheesy. He still had a tight script and good directorial sensibilities and he made the best of what he could out of the things he had. And it worked. The movie had scared me and entertained me and he’d done it. He’d made a movie that people were watching. A movie that scared them.
Maybe doing was the whole point. I chuckled to myself. Yeah, Boone definitely had it right.
They only live who dare.
Eight
The next morning, I stared bleary-eyed into the bottom of my coffee cup and wondered how long it would take for enough caffeine to kick in to give me energy to go get another cup. I’d dropped off to sleep over my keyboard sometime around four a.m., then dragged my idiotic ass to bed fully clothed.
I shuddered to think what I’d actually managed to write in those wee hours. Gibberish, probably. Flat, pointless gibberish. I wasn’t even going to look at it.
“Good morning, sweetheart!” My mother came in from the garden and stripped off her work gloves, leaving her hands and manicure pristine. She even had this little pad she knelt on out there to keep her knees from getting dirty. She’d probably have a stroke if she heard I’d had sex outdoors. In a pickup truck. “Your lights were on pretty late last night.”
