“I’ll call you whatever you want,” she says, “as long as you don’t make me call you Len’s girlfriend.”
“Hey,” I say, “I’m making progress here. Moving on.”
“I don’t think dating Len is progress,” Charlie says. And then she sighs, tossing the bag back over the seat. “But if you insist on doing it, at the very least you better make him cut that hair.”
The house is quiet when I get home, and empty. I drop my bag by the door and wander into the den and, without thinking much about it, settle down at the piano. There was a time when I used to come here every day after school. When my parents would bring me home and I would race inside, plunk myself down, and play. It was like taking a shower. My muscles would relax and my head would clear and the day would wash away.
I choose a piece from memory. It’s something by Tchaikovsky that I’ve always really liked. A love theme. I’m rusty and I start slow, but my fingers remember the way better than I do, and soon I’m flying, gliding over the keys. The thing I always loved about playing was that there was no room for anything else. From the moment my hands touch the keys, it’s just me and the piano. We’re the only thing that exists in the entire universe.
In fact, it’s almost six by the time I tear myself away, which means I’ve spent almost two hours here. When I sit back, I half expect Len to be seated next to me, smiling encouragingly. And then I leap up, because Len is going to be here any minute and I still have to get ready.
The thing about growing up in Southern California is that you kind of wear the same thing all year round. Aside from the possible addition of a cardigan or wrap in the winter, wardrobe is pretty standard.
When I get up to my room, I open my closet. It smells like lavender because of these tiny bags of potpourri my mom keeps in my sock and T-shirt drawers, and I breathe deeply, enjoying the momentary lull. After a moment I feel calmer and I consider the possible wardrobe options for this date.
I pull out a few items and look at my choices. There is the dress I bought and wore for Rob’s mom’s fortieth birthday, the one I took with us to see Phantom of the Opera in New York. There is a summer dress that I wore when we rode bikes together last year, and one that still has an ice cream stain from when he dropped his chocolate cone on me two summers ago. Every dress in here seems to tell some sort of story about Rob.
I look again, determined to do better. There’s a blue dress hidden in the back that my mom and I bought last spring. It’s blue cotton and kind of flowy with little cap sleeves and a hem that hits just above the knee. I’ve never worn it before, and I slip it on. It’s comfortable, and I think it makes me look older somehow. I choose a pair of teardrop earrings Charlie gave me for my sixteenth birthday and put on some blush and mascara. It’s not as amazing as the silver dress I wore to Fall Back, but I think this one makes me look like me.
The doorbell rings exactly at six. I didn’t expect him to be the kind of guy who shows up on the dot, but Len keeps on surprising me. I throw some cash that’s on my dresser into my bag and take one last look in the mirror. I’m excited. Something about knowing that Len is downstairs feels right. Not like a dream, but better. Real.
I can’t wait to hold his hand tonight and to maybe even have him kiss me. I can’t wait to find out what his favorite color is and what he meant about Juilliard, about not being done here. I want to know more about his sister and whether he’s close with his dad. I want to know how he feels about Thai food versus Japanese and what his favorite movie is. The future seems better than the past, bigger and more alive, and as I run down the stairs, the only thing I can think is, I’m excited for what’s to come.
I open the door a tiny bit breathless, but it’s not Len standing on the other side. It’s someone in jeans and a familiar green T-shirt. It’s Rob. His face is red and he’s panting, like he’s been running. His breath comes in short, hollow bursts, and he’s doubled over, his hands on his knees. And he reeks.
“What are you doing?” I blurt out. I keep the door closed just a little, my hand still on the knob.
“Can I come in?” He frowns and glances behind me. “Just for a minute.”
“No. My parents are home,” I lie. “What’s going on?”
He shakes his head. “I had to see you,” he slurs.
“Are you drunk?”
“A little.”
“You’re a mess,” I say.
“My life is a mess.”
He looks at me and his eyes are red, cracked. He’s been crying.
“My mom lied, Juliet lied, my friends are all liars. You’re the only one who ever—” He looks at his feet. “You were the only one who ever made any sense.”
“Rob—”
“I miss you.”
It’s all I’ve wanted to hear. For months I just wanted him to show back up on my doorstep and say it was all a mistake, that I was the one he really wanted. But now, looking at him, drunk and in shambles, I don’t want to fall into his arms. “It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?”
He blinks and looks at me. “I—I dunno,” he stutters. “I think I made a mistake.” He runs a hand through his hair.
“Look, Rob,” I say, “I don’t really know what you want from me.”
“I want you,” he says softly. “I want you back. I miss you. Can’t you see that?”
He’s looking at me with those brown hot chocolate eyes. The eyes that have watched me sleep and seen my piano recitals and that looked on, steadfast, when I first learned how to ride a bike.
“What about Juliet?”
That vein in his neck twitches. “I don’t know. I can’t even trust her.”
What I say next surprises both of us. “It wasn’t her fault, you know. You shouldn’t hold her responsible.”
He looks taken aback, and it takes him a moment to respond. “She still lied,” he manages. He’s leaning against the door frame, his limbs buckling.
“She didn’t lie. She just kept something from you. She didn’t want to hurt you.” What I don’t tell him is that, regardless of who was responsible at first, we all have a role in this.
“What?” He squints at me, like he’s trying to focus on putting the words together, but he ultimately shakes his head and gives up. “Did you hear me? I said I miss you.”
I cross my arms. I keep expecting my heart rate to speed up, my hands to start sweating, but they don’t. I feel surprisingly calm, actually.
“You already said that.”
“I don’t want Juliet.” He sighs and looks at his shoes. “She’s not you. She’s never been you. I told her I was coming over here tonight, and she didn’t even fight me on it.”
“You told her?”
“Yeah,” he says. He looks guilty.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I say. “You guys should”—I swallow—“figure things out.” Now my heart is racing. I’m suddenly remembering Rob’s words in the auditorium this afternoon. Don’t do anything stupid. Again.
“What? No.” He lunges forward, but I step back. “I want to be with you. We’ve been friends forever, Rosie. I’ve known you my whole life.”
“Things change.”
“We never should have.”
“That’s life,” I say. “Things happen.”
“I messed up,” he says. “I thought she was something she wasn’t, and I lost everything. I want to make it up to you. I’ll do whatever it takes.” He makes a sweeping gesture with his hand, like he’s including the whole world. “It’s you, Rosie. Please.”
In one swift, albeit crooked, motion he takes my hand in his. It’s been so long since we’ve even spoken that I’d forgotten what it’s like to just be with him. “Please,” he says again.
I look at him, his eyes soft and his forehead sweating. It’s Rob. The only Rob there is ever going to be. No one will ever feel so comfortable or remember my life the way he can. Maybe it’s worth another chance. Even to see if we could just be friends again.
But then I think about Len. Ab
out bio and the play and piano and his hands on mine and eating Twizzlers in my room and the way my head feels like it’s humming whenever he’s around.
“I need to think about it,” I say.
He drops my hand. “I understand,” he says, but he looks disappointed. “What now?”
“I think you need to go back to Juliet,” I say. “You need to make things right.”
He nods. “Can’t I just stay with you a little longer? We could watch a movie or something?”
“Not right now,” I say. “You need to go home.”
“I can’t go home,” he says sadly. “I don’t even know where that is anymore.” Rob pinches the bridge of his nose with his thumb and pointer finger. He looks tired, and I notice dark circles under his eyes, the color of charcoal dust.
I reach out and put a hand on his arm, and he pulls me toward him, into a hug. But it doesn’t feel like it used to. It doesn’t make me feel happy or excited or even comforted. It doesn’t really make me feel anything at all.
I slide out of his arms and pull the door closed, sitting down on the floor when I’m back inside. I hear his footsteps down the stairs, and then it’s quiet, so still I can hear myself breathing. When I was younger, I used to dread being alone. I would convince myself that something terrible had happened to my parents, that they had been in some kind of car accident or something and they were never coming back. I would sit in the corner of my kitchen, terrified and white-knuckled, and wait for them to pull up the driveway. But right now I want to be alone. I want all the time in the world to think about what Rob has just said and what I should do. Could there ever be an us again?
The doorbell rings again. I sit up with a start, annoyed. I can’t believe he’s come back. I just told him to give me some space. He has no patience, never has.
I yank the door open, already talking, but of course it’s not Rob. It’s Len. He’s dressed in jeans and a white button-down, and he looks so adorably sexy, I just want to leap into his arms right here.
A bouquet of violets is hanging down by his side, the flowers pointed toward the ground. They’re my favorite flowers. I used to pick them in Famke’s garden and bring them home to my mom. Rob thinks I like roses best, and I’ve never corrected him because it’s so cute when he says “Roses for Rosie.” Except my name isn’t really Rosie, and I don’t like roses. I haven’t liked them since I was pricked by a thorn when I was eight years old.
“Hi,” I start, but Len just shakes his head. He’s looking at me in that way that tells me that whatever I’m about to say, he already knows what it is.
“You have to think about it?” he says.
His car is parked in my driveway, just over to the side of the house. He’s been here the entire time. He heard everything. The realization knocks the wind out of me.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Please understand. It’s complicated.”
I want to tell him how sorry I really am. How Rob is this force in my life, one I can’t turn away from. I want to tell him that it’s confusing, especially now. How it was always supposed to be Rob, but being here, with Len, makes me want to forget about that. To leave the past entirely. The problem is, I’m just not sure how to do it.
“It’s not, actually,” he says. He inhales and looks at me. Sharply. Like his eyes could cut through flesh. “Here’s the deal. I care about you. I always have. I see who you are. This amazing girl who’s smart and beautiful and intelligent and talented and who cares way too much about what other people think. You wrote me off for years, and then this miracle happened this year and you actually paid attention. Do you know why? Because for one damn minute you weren’t thinking about Rob.” His eyes narrow but he doesn’t stop. His voice is loud and strong but not angry, just firm. “I’m a patient person. I’ve waited for you for what seems like forever. But I’m not going to stick around and watch you pick the wrong person again. So the thing is, Rosaline, it’s actually not that complicated. When you think about it, it’s really simple.”
He hands me the flowers and walks away to his car. I want to call after him, to tell him to stay, but my feet are cemented to the spot. Instead I just stand on my front steps, holding his violets, my violets, thinking about what he just said as I watch him leave. It’s not until he’s gone and I’m alone that I realize that this time, it’s not what I want at all.
Act Five
Scene One
“Wait up!” I call. I’m flapping my arms and legs wildly, but he’s so much faster than I am, it feels like I’m not even moving, just staying afloat.
“Hurry up, slowpoke,” he calls, flipping over onto his back and doing the high kicks like those synchronized swimmers in the Olympics.
“No fair,” I say. “You got a head start.”
“Early bird gets the worm!” he says, but it comes out as “worrrr” because he’s flipped over and has a mouthful of water. He’s coughing and choking, and I paddle over, a little alarmed, but when I get there, his cheeks are wide and he spits at me, sending water into my eyes and all over my face.
“Stop!” I yell, and then he’s making a beeline away from me, kicking so forcefully I am lost in his splashes.
“Come and find me,” Rob says, and then disappears beneath the water.
I’ve heard people say that when something really big happens, the whole world stops and you become frozen in time, but that’s not how it happens for me. Instead I’m being catapulted through time, yanked by my navel, back, back, back to before any of this began. The only thing I can think of is that summer at Camp Kwebec. Of Rob and me splashing around in our bathing suits. Of the sun and the promise of lemonade and his voice under the water. Come and find me.
I know before my parents tell me. I know the second they walk into my room to wake me. Maybe I dreamed it. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Rob was here last night, asking to be with me, and when I said I didn’t know, I changed the course of things. Whatever it is, I’m not surprised. I don’t fight them on it the way they expected me to. I don’t even scream “No” or “Why” or any of the things people usually do in movies. Instead I just lie there quietly. I’m already being pulled back to the pool. So far, in fact, that their words sound muffled and their faces look distorted. Like I’m watching them from underneath the water.
Rob is gone, they tell me. But not the way he was yesterday. Not at all. This time he’s gone for good.
Car crash. Alcohol. The Cliffs. The words come at me like tiny flashlights piercing the darkness, blinding and brilliant.
I don’t look at my mother’s tear-streaked face or my father’s somber expression. Instead I look up at my ceiling.
It’s littered with stars, the stick-on kind that glow in the dark, and because it’s five a.m., and therefore not light out, they are shining up there. Rob and I used to collect them when we were little from the vending machines outside our local grocery store. My ceiling isn’t extraordinarily high or anything, but we couldn’t reach it just by standing on the bed back then, so we used to jump, with the star sticky side up in our palms. We got them all up there that way. There must be hundreds.
Images of Rob come to me in crystal detail. My memory is perfectly clear; it’s the present I’m having trouble with.
I see Rob standing in my driveway, yelling at me to take the training wheels off my bike. Rob and me on our back porch, making s’mores. Rob and me standing in line at the Macy’s counter, trying to sneak fake jewelry into my mom’s purchase.
“We’re going to go over to the Montegs’, to be with his parents,” my mother says. All of a sudden I snap up and awake. Juliet. Who called her? How is she taking this?
“Where is Juliet?” I finally ask. But then I see the way my mother is looking at me, and I realize—she’s gone too. Juliet was in the car with Rob. They’re both dead.
For some reason the force of this sends me sitting up, straight up. My mom’s sitting there, and my dad’s standing over us. The clock reads 5:25. I was born at 5:25, and my mom says
that for the first ten years of my life it was the time I would always wake up, like it was the time I was meant to reenter the world.
Neither Rob nor Juliet will ever reenter my world. He will never show up on my front steps. He’ll never watch a movie with me or hold me close to him. She’ll never be my friend again. She’ll never forgive me.
I remember thinking in September, at Olivia’s party, that it was like he might as well have died, that death would be easier, because at least I wouldn’t have to see him. I was wrong. Death is completely different, final in a way I can’t fully grasp. Rob is nowhere on this planet. Not in Italy with his parents or gone at summer camp or even with Juliet. He doesn’t exist anymore, and he’s never coming back.
“Do you want to come with us?” I hear my mom ask.
“Can I call Charlie?” I feel like a little kid, asking my parents’ permission to buy an ice cream, but I’m not sure what to do. What is the proper protocol on this? When your best friend and your cousin die, what are you supposed to do?
“Of course,” my mom says. “Whatever you want.”
But this isn’t what I want. What I want is for today to unfold the way it was supposed to. For us to be at school. Today we are supposed to be having a dress rehearsal for the play. Rob and Juliet are supposed to be on the stage, and Len and I are supposed to be up there, adjusting lightbulbs.
Len.
I can feel something slashing through the grief, gnawing its way closer and closer until it’s right at my chest, reaching for my heart. It’s guilt, so much of it that it catches in my throat and makes it difficult to breathe.
I should never have agreed to that date with Len. I should have said yes to Rob. I should have pulled him straight inside and made him get into the shower and comforted him and told him I was there. He was drunk and hurting. How could I have turned my back on him?
I grope for the phone on my nightstand and furiously punch in Charlie’s number. She picks up on the first ring.
When You Were Mine Page 19
