While You're Away

by Jessa Holbrook

  It was my fault. I’d looked into his eyes and seen what I wanted to see. A guy who looked at me and got excited. A guy who wanted to get closer and didn’t care if it complicated things. So much for all the things I made myself believe. He was just Will Spencer, same as he ever was. Everything else was my own pathetic fantasy.

  Touching the back of my phone to Will’s, I downloaded his contact info and made myself speak. “Okay, cool. That’s what I’ll do. You ready to go, Em?”

  Emmalee nodded and let me sling her arm over my neck. She was dense muscle, and I was wispy musician, so I staggered a little. But I managed to get her walking in the right direction.

  As we ducked through the front doors, I swore to myself I’d never mention this night to Dave. It was a one-time, completely hideous total lapse of sanity. That’s all it was. And for sure, I didn’t need to tell him. It would only hurt him, and what good would it do?

  My head, my heart, wouldn’t let me. For just a few moments, I had reached out for something special. I had been someone different. The girl who made Will Spencer stop and catch his breath. I was the center of the glow for once. I was the special one.

  Except now I realized I wasn’t. I was every other girl that Will had seduced. Except this time, the girl had thrown herself right in his lap. I wasn’t special. I was desperate. My stomach rolled; I felt so small.

  Nope. No need to tell Dave at all. I was going to punish myself for a long, long time.

  ~

  After safely depositing Emmalee at the guesthouse, I plunged back into the party. Deserving every bump and jostle, I waded through a sweaty sea in search of Dave. Turning at the edge of the shuttered pool, I rose on my toes to scan the crowd.

  Everyone seemed to merge together. It was like a cloud of party, one body blending into the next and everyone swaying in time. Straining and searching, I felt ridiculous. With a torch, I could have been the Statue of Liberty in a sea of random deities. When someone dropped a hand on my shoulder, I almost yelped.

  It was Tricia. Raising her voice over the party, she said, “Have you seen Will? He disappeared a while ago and I have no idea where he went.”

  My heart sank. I really was a monster. I’d cheated on Dave so easily, and I’d forgotten all about Tricia’s existence. Drugged by some insane fantasy of a special connection with Will, I’d plundered ahead, hoping to erase my anger over Dave. But now I felt worse than ever. I was still angry, but now I was also a shitty girlfriend and friend.

  As casually as I could, I said, “He’s down at the boathouse with Simon. That’s why I’m looking for Dave, actually. Simon needs a ride home, and Dave usually—”

  “I know!” Tricia interjected. Sincerely. Sweetly. God, she was so sweet. “He’s so nice. And now that you mention it, I think I saw him loading up his Element with a couple of boozers a while back. He’s probably on the return trip now.”

  “Great,” I said.

  And then I stood there, like an idiot. I couldn’t text Will right in front of his girlfriend. Or could I? Was it suspicious for me to have his number? Lots of people probably had it. Thinking twice about everything was exhausting, and it made me look slightly crazed. Tricia patted my shoulder, misreading my expression completely.

  “I’m sure he’s okay. He’ll be back anytime now.”

  Choking on my reply, I nodded. “You’re right. I’m . . . I think I’m going to walk up to the driveway and keep an eye out for him, though.”

  Before I could break away from her, she stopped me. Tossing back her coppery hair, she said, “Wait, Will’s at the boathouse with Simon?”

  Even more lies slipped from my mouth. They came so easily, I was ashamed. With numb lips and a pounding heart, I rolled my shoulders and said, “Yeah. Since the house is locked, Simon went down there to throw up in private. Will was holding him up. As soon as I realized what was going on, I came right back up here to find Dave. I can’t deal with puke, you know?”

  With sympathy I didn’t deserve, Tricia nodded. “Absolutely, totally.”

  Finally escaping, I did exactly what I said I was going to do. I headed up to the driveway. Texting Will as I walked, I felt the blush return. Not a delicious sting of anticipation. This was more like the deep, aching slap of humiliation. Fingers flying, I hit send, then slumped to lean against the garage.

  Dave already on his first shuttle. Will be back soon.

  Instantly, Will responded. Thx. S passed out. U think he’ll help me carry?

  Y, he’s helpful like that.

  K. Sorry to see you go.

  Fear and uncertainty swirled in my head. I slid down the garage door a little. I felt heavy, and exposed. My phone lay in my hand.

  I reminded myself: this meant nothing to Will. Less than nothing. One more notch in a collection that would have whittled the biggest bedpost into toothpicks.

  In the dark, I considered my options. Then I texted Will again, as subtly as I could. Let’s keep the root beer to ourselves, ok?

  All right. You ok? came his reply.

  No. I wasn’t. I wasn’t okay about one single thing, and it was my own stupid fault. Tears welled in my eyes, and I swiped them away. The whole time, I berated myself. Stop it. This is your fault. You knew better, and you did it anyway. You’re not allowed to feel sorry for yourself.

  I tried to imagine Jane saying it. She could be really unforgiving when she wanted to be. With her asymmetrical bobbed hair and hard-angled clothes—mostly black, with a nice mix of bloody red sometimes—she could be terrifying. I wanted her to terrify me. But instead, thinking about Jane’s reaction only made me want to cry more.

  My phone bleated again, the screen lighting up. It was a spotlight. It refused to let me hide, even in the dark. Dragging a knuckle beneath my damp eyes, I made myself look. A blank avatar stared back—blank because I didn’t know Will. He wasn’t my friend. We were strangers to each other. But something sharp pulled in me, a sudden, piercing tug, when I read his text.

  U there? Won’t say anything if u don’t want me to. Then, another text pushed it up. This one read, Can we meet up later?

  Silken calm slipped over me. I was already replying when Will sent another.

  Was it just me?

  It was a plaintive, perfect question. Headlights skimmed down the long drive. They stole the luxury of a long, thought-out reply. Though a chill pressed around me, I barely noticed it. I still felt guilty, but I wasn’t ashamed anymore.

  Instead, I typed out my response as quickly as I could. I hit send, then put away my phone. It was out there in the ether, floating in the night.

  It wasn’t just you.

  FOUR

  I texted my sister Ellie, and she saved me from the rest of the party. I couldn’t go back in there, not with those texts from Will taunting me. Not knowing that I’d walk in and see Tricia hostessing away, completely unaware she’d been betrayed. Especially not knowing that I’d have to face Dave, even if he was oblivious.

  Sliding my guitar into the backseat, I tried to sound light when I climbed into the front. “Homeward, Jeeves.”

  “It’s early,” Ellie pointed out, ignoring my put-on expression. “Bad gig?”

  Really, I should have known she’d ask. She and I were both pathologically addicted to our arts. That’s probably why we didn’t fight like most sisters. Sure, there was the standard-issue stuff. Closet raiding, special cereal eating, little battles. But never any wars, because we connected on a completely different level.

  We saved the hardcore rivalry for our older sister, Grace. She was off at Loyola. Acing her GREs, getting a degree in financial mathematics that would make her crazy rich. Grace liked to complain that she was the one who’d have to take care of Mom and Dad in their old age.

  Obviously, dancer Ellie and musician Sarah wouldn’t be any help. Grace didn’t believe that success could exist if it wasn’t quantifiable b
y equations and tables and charts. She was the alien in the family. She just didn’t know it.

  But because Ellie and I shared that wavelength, it also meant that Ellie was hyperaware when my artistic schedule changed. Much like I would be shocked if Ellie were home on a Saturday morning—prime matinee time—she knew that I shouldn’t be heading out this early. A gig usually meant that Dave drove me home, sometimes just before my midnight curfew. A round of homework, one last tour of e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter, and then bed—an early morning for me on the weekends was noon.

  Clicking the seat belt into place, I shook my head. “It was good. Short, though, and really crowded.”

  “Oh, good,” she said.

  The other nice thing about Ellie was that she took me at my word. With surgical precision, Grace would dissect every single bit of that sentence to see if there was something more beneath it. Not Ellie. Whether she believed me or not, she didn’t push. She also didn’t pry, and I was glad.

  I still didn’t understand what had happened with Will. Or more importantly, why it had happened. Was I only trying to get even with Dave? Was I just another one of Will’s endless conquests? Or was it possible that I hadn’t imagined anything, and Will and I shared some inexplicable pull? I felt split in pieces, and none of them matched. It turned out that it was possible to feel guilty and elated at the same time. To be ashamed and emboldened at once. Though it had been wrong to even try it, I wanted another taste of Will.

  The quiet in the car gave me too much time to think. I wanted to get home, because there I could burrow in my own bed and welcome sleep. In the morning, things would be clearer. Emotion would give way to reason. That’s what I needed, a good night’s sleep. A return to normalcy.

  Reaching over, I grabbed Ellie’s hand and squeezed it. “Thanks for picking me up.”

  “Anytime,” she said and drove on home.

  ~

  I was wrong. In the morning, everything felt more scattered than ever. I wasn’t ashamed to admit I couldn’t figure it out on my own. That’s why I grabbed my keys and headed straight for my best friend’s house.

  “Morning, Westlake,” Jane said. “Somebody beat you with the hangover stick?”

  With a groan, I replied, “You suck, I hate you.”

  Because Jane was my best friend, I muscled past her and right inside. We had fridge privileges at each other’s houses, so I never felt bad about busting into Chez Dubinsky. But instead of taking my usual route to the kitchen, I headed to Jane’s bedroom and flopped facedown in her bed.

  A moment later, Jane tossed a pillow onto my head. I heard her drop into her desk chair. It squeaked in F minor, and she refused to fix it. I felt her sling her feet on the edge of the bed. Every move she made added another squeak; it was maddening.

  “Are you seriously hungover?” she asked.

  “No. Not even. I had, like, half a beer last night.” Sighing, I rolled onto my back. My head felt stuffed full of cotton. My heart kept beating weird, random patterns. Was it possible to die of guilt? Maybe the deathblow would be unconfessed guilt. With that possibility in mind, I looked to Jane. “And maybe also a taste of Will Spencer.”

  The chair squealed when Jane all but threw herself out of it. “What?!”

  “Yeah . . . I know . . .” I moaned. The judgment was coming. I was waiting for it. Practically anticipating it.

  Instead, Jane knocked me even more off-balance when she said, “Whoa. Okay, lay it on me. How was he, with one being I’m permanently traumatized and ten being I think I saw the face of God?”

  Pushing up on my elbows, I stared at her. “Jane! I cheated on Dave!”

  “Oh, I’ll get to that,” she assured me. “But, well? I’m intrigued! I want to know if the rumors are accurate. Or if they’re the most carefully orchestrated PR campaign since Gwyneth Paltrow morphed into macrobiotic Martha Stewart.”

  I shrugged, unsure of where to start. “I don’t know.”

  “Sarah!”

  “Eight? Point five?”

  Jane clapped her hands together, rubbing them like some cartoon villain. “So he’s not perfect! I knew it!”

  “It probably would have been more like nine, nine and a half if we hadn’t been in a rowboat. And if we hadn’t been interrupted. And, you know, if I hadn’t been cheating on my boyfriend with someone who has a girlfriend.”

  Bouncing from her chair, Jane sprung onto the bed. The headboard thumped the wall, but Jane didn’t care. Her house was chaotic on the best day. Her dad was a life coach, and her mom specialized in DIY carpentry.

  If Jane didn’t have a cause to shout about, her dad had top-of-the-lungs advice or was yelling because her mom was ripping apart an armoire to distress it. Frankly, a little headboard thumping was the quietest it got around there.

  Jane looked down at my face. She blotted out the entire ceiling; she was nothing but brown eyes and orange juice breath. “Explain yourself, Jezebel.”

  With a roll of my eyes, I plastered my whole hand across her face. “I feel bad, okay?”

  “I said explain, not defend.”

  Ugh. I sat the rest of the way up, then slumped against Jane’s shoulder. She was going to give me a hard time because that was just her way. But I knew she had my back, no matter what. And the truth was, I didn’t know if I could explain. Not completely. Dave had flirted with the entire world for as long as I’d known him. Never before had I ever considered going behind his back. But Will had happened so naturally.

  Flapping my hands uselessly, I finally dropped them in my lap. “I don’t know. Heatherly was all over Dave after the set we played . . .”

  “Loved the T.I. cover, bee tee dubs,” Jane interrupted.

  “Thanks, I arranged that,” I said and slipped right back to the topic. “But it was Heatherly, and then it was Olivia . . . and look, I know I’m not the main draw when it comes to Dasa, but come on. They both know Dave’s my boyfriend. Also? I was up there, too. He wasn’t harmonizing all by himself, you know?”

  Sagely, Jane nodded. “Double jealousy whammy, okay. Now please explain. How does this end with you sampling Will Spencer’s unlucky charms?”

  I played it back in my head. Was the talk about my costume relevant? Would anything in the boathouse have happened without it? I thought of him trailing his finger along my back. The way he looked at me and seemed to really see me. I didn’t know what to put in and what to leave out. It was easier to purge everything and let Jane sort it out.

  Well, almost everything. The texts afterward, those I kept to myself. They were mine, and they were secret. I wasn’t ready to let them out of my grasp.

  After I told Jane the almost-entire story, I sat back and watched her curiously. What would she say?

  Jane seemed to struggle with her own reaction. Her face contorted, three different times. Like she started to say something, then changed her mind. Finally she landed somewhere between amused and concerned. “I mean, it’s not cool, right? You know that.”

  “Oh yeah, trust me. I know.”

  “And that magical connection was probably just party and hormones,” she continued.

  I wasn’t ready to concede that. It had felt like more. It still felt like more, even the morning after. Even feeling as badly as I did for what I had done, I had this spark, the faintest glow deep inside that insisted there had been something more there. The secret texts, the ones I wasn’t ready to reveal—they proved that Will had felt it, too.

  But Jane needed a narrative, so I nodded. “Okay.”

  “So don’t do it again,” Jane said resolutely. “And don’t beat yourself up over it. Everybody makes mistakes. What’s important is how you recover from it.”

  Eyeing her curiously, I wondered what she would have said if I hadn’t been her best friend. If I’d brought the situation to her as gossip about somebody else. Somehow, I had a feeling Jane would have be
en a lot less understanding. Was she secretly judging me? Nudging her, I said, “But I was so wrong. And Dave doesn’t deserve that.”

  “Okay, look, I don’t want you to think I’m all down on Dave or anything—he’s fine. He’s a nice guy. But I’m not, and I never have been, a real big fan of the whole rock star thing he does after shows. I don’t care if it means anything, it makes you feel bad. And he knows it makes you feel bad . . .”

  Suddenly defensive of Dave, I said, “I never told him to stop.”

  Jane crystallized, hard and unyielding. “Yes, you have. And you know what? You shouldn’t have to tell your boyfriend to stop paying attention to everybody in the room but you. So yes, you did a bad, bad thing with a bad, bad boy. Bad Sarah. No gelato. But it’s not that easy. You would be absolutely furious if Dave did this to you. You’d never speak to him again. You’ve never thought about cheating on him before. Why last night? Why Will?”

  If Dave had hopped off stage and danced with me, I never would have talked to Will in the first place. If he hadn’t been working the party without so much as a look toward me, I never would have gone to the boathouse. Or if I had, it would have been with him.

  I had done a terrible thing, and I felt more confused than ever. Because while it was true I wouldn’t have ended up in that boat with Will if Dave had been at my side . . . I was secretly the smallest bit glad that he hadn’t been.

  FIVE

  Sunday mornings in Dave’s garage studio were a tradition.

  Or a long-standing date. Or a commitment. I don’t know; they were something permanent, anyway. Each time I looked at him, I shrank a little. Could he see it on me? Didn’t he realize what I had done?

  Sinking into the threadbare plaid couch, I tried to keep my guitar level in my lap. Fingers trailing the fret board, I mapped out a C7 chord, then played it. A faint, flat buzz emanated from the strings.

  “Is that off?” I asked Dave.