While You're Away

by Jessa Holbrook

  Though I hadn’t had a plan when I arrived, one formed almost immediately. I was going to hope that Dave could handle separating the us that was theoretically romantic from the us that was creatively amazing. Music mattered to him as much as it did me; he wouldn’t want to abandon that.

  Squeezing Dave’s hands in mine, I pressed on. “We’re so good together. As partners. As musicians, and I don’t want to give that up.”

  Drawing back, Dave pressed his lips together. “Wait. It’s us?”

  The sheer shock on his face set me back. I guess all along, I had felt like he might know something was going on. Obviously, he knew I was upset at the after-party. But he was clueless as to any larger problem. Everything about him read stunned.

  Sick to my stomach, I pressed on. “Look, you . . . I’ve told you before that it makes me crazy the way you flirt with everybody.”

  “I don’t flirt,” he insisted, furious. “I talk to people. What’s wrong with talking to people?”

  “You talk to girls,” I replied. “Constantly. They cluster around you and hang all over you. And you know, I get it. I mean, we got together freshman year. You never had a chance to see anybody else, and . . .”

  “What the hell?” Dave said shortly. “When did I ever say I wanted to?”

  “You don’t say it. You show it.”

  Slowly, Dave’s eyes narrowed. “Is there somebody else you want to see?”

  It was impossible to hide the surprise and the guilt. This conversation was already off the rails and it hadn’t even started. There was no point bringing Will into it. But I took too long to reply, and Dave hopped to his feet.

  “Who is it?” he demanded.

  Pushing a hand into my hair, I looked up at him in dismay. “I don’t want to do this like this, Dave.”

  He paced away from me. Every step was sharp, precise. When he cut his hands through the air, when he turned on his heel, it was frighteningly angular. This wasn’t bluster, though hurt probably fueled it. This was anger, straight up. “I talk to people. That’s it. If you’re messing around with somebody else, that’s not on me.” He narrowed his eyes. “You should see your face right now.”

  I refused to just sit there and let him berate me. Hopping up, I stood my ground. I’d made some mistakes, yes. But that didn’t mean he had a right to bulldoze me. “Everybody thinks you’re perfect, Dave, and you’re not. I don’t care if you think it’s just talking, it’s a lot more than that. It’s disrespectful, and it’s humiliating.”

  “Then why didn’t you say something before?”

  Throwing up my hands, I exclaimed, “I have! A million times, and you think it’s fine! Well, I don’t. And you know what else? You have no business making fun of my music while you’re flirting. That’s not something a supportive boyfriend does.”

  Dave rolled his eyes broadly. “Now you’re being ridiculous.”

  My voice rose with my anger. “Do you have any idea how small you made me feel?”

  “It was just a joke, Sarah!”

  “Well, it wasn’t funny,” I snapped.

  Stalking over to the wall, Dave punched the button to close the garage door.

  “If you’re so worried about other girls, why do you keep pushing me away?” he finally asked.

  I stared at him incredulously. “What?”

  “Not yet,” Dave repeated—mocked, in my voice. “I’m not ready yet. Can we slow down? I’m not going to pressure you to do something you don’t want to do, but you know what? Maybe I do like the attention. Maybe I like knowing that somebody would sleep with me, even if it’s not my girlfriend.”

  What a low blow. It felt totally unwarranted. The longer he stood there with his calm anger, the more I wanted to explode. He was infuriating. I wanted to scream, and jump up and down, and that was insane. How could he make me so angry, so quickly?

  This definitely wasn’t the right way to break up with somebody. It was messy and horrible. If I could just catch it and hold it with both hands . . .

  Deliberately calming myself, I tried to salvage it. “Maybe I’m not ready for a reason. I’m not going to apologize for that. I mean, maybe we’re not like most couples.”

  “Define ‘most.’”

  “Most regular couples,” I said flatly, “are into each other and can’t stop touching each other and stay up all night thinking about each other. You know, the kind of people we aren’t, but we write songs about!”

  “Whose fault is that?”

  “Mine,” I shouted. “Yours! Creatively, we’re perfect, but as a couple . . . we’re not working.”

  Coldly, Dave asked, “Who is it?”

  “Do not change the subject!”

  Repeating himself furiously, Dave raised his voice with each word. “I said, who is it, Sarah?”

  Furious, I spat, “Does it matter?”

  Shaking his head, Dave shot me an ugly smile. There was no joy in it, no pleasure at all. It was all teeth and hurt. A particularly ravaged kind of vindication. He sounded almost snakelike when he said, “It obviously does to you. You’re trying so hard to protect him.”

  The accusation struck like a whip. Was I trying to protect Will? Or was I trying to protect myself? In that moment, I felt so ugly and so ashamed. When I first kissed Will, I was sure I’d seen something there that no one else had seen.

  But now, this far away from him, faced with someone I knew, and loved, and needed to hurt, I had my doubts. I doubted everything. My heart and my feelings. What I thought I wanted, what I believed I needed.

  Standing on the edge of a precipice with Dave, it suddenly seemed too far to fall. But the look on his face, twisted and cold and angry, told me it was much too late to step back.

  I fought away the tears, turning away to press the heels of my hands against my eyes. I didn’t want Dave to think I was trying to manipulate him by crying. It just happened. They just poured out, when I realized how much I had destroyed. Three years came crashing to an end in three minutes. It didn’t seem fair.

  Though I needed to collect myself, Dave didn’t intend to give me the chance.

  “Don’t think sobbing’s going to fix this,” he said.

  That’s right, the perfect boyfriend, the one who really knew me. Zeroing right in, stabbing all the right places.

  “Look,” I said, forcing the tremble out of my voice. “We need a break. Romantically. I don’t think we need a break musically—”

  Barking a laugh, Dave sneered but waved me along. His hands said, No, go on, keep talking, like I was there just to entertain him. Doing my best to ignore all that, all the roiling disaster inside my skin, I pressed on.

  “We have gigs on the calendar. We can still be Dasa without being us.”

  “You think so, Sarah? Do you really?” He punched the garage door. Standing to one side, he hardened himself into a statue. Into pure, untouchable marble with unspeakably sharp edges. “Because I might, I might, you see, have some trouble singing love songs to a lying, cheating—”

  “Don’t you dare call me a whore,” I snapped.

  His smile ever more brittle, Dave said, “I was going to say ‘bitch.’ But that was illuminating, thank you.”

  Grabbing my bag, I made myself walk toward the car. It felt like a walk of shame. Like the whole world’s eyes were on me. Judging me. Without Dave staring me down, I stared myself down instead. I didn’t recognize myself anymore. I wasn’t a good person. I wasn’t a good girlfriend.

  Just then, Dave forgot propriety and yelled down the drive, “And so you know, your C7 sounds like shit!”

  ~

  I slammed my car door and cursed when I dropped my keys. Fumbling for them, I finally lost it and really cried. Hideous gasps wrenched through me. I could hardly breathe. Every time I tried to take a breath, it seared my throat and caught on a new well of sobs. Everything tasted sick
and salted and I hurt. Everywhere.

  How could anything good ever come from something this awful? Shoving the keys in the ignition, I backed out of the driveway without looking. A pickup truck blared its horn at me, and that only made me cry more. I could barely see the road, but I had to get out of there. As far from Dave as I could get.

  The worst part was knowing that it was mostly my fault. But in my head, I’d had this idea that we could break up and it would be bittersweet. Like we could salvage the band, and our memories, and maybe even our friendship. Instead, it came out messy and vicious. Maybe everything hadn’t been perfect with Dave, but it was good. He was good and I still loved him. There wasn’t a switch to turn that off. I hadn’t walked into the garage feeling everything, then out brand-new and feeling nothing.

  It was so confusing; even with Will waiting on the other side, I was shocked at how raw I felt. One part of me wanted to turn around and beg Dave to take me back. We’d shared so much. Three years was such a long time. And yet, in one ugly conversation, it was like we had sandblasted them out of existence.

  There was nothing left now. Everything was in ashes, and I didn’t know what to do. I could run to Will, and I would. Maybe the awful mess I’d made of my heart would be healed.

  ~

  I had no idea how I got across town without crashing into something. Everything was a blur of tears, but I made it to Jane’s all right. When I rolled out of the car, Jane must have spotted me from the window. In a burst of speed she usually saved for grabbing the last slice of pizza, she bolted down the walk.

  “What happened?” she demanded, throwing an arm around my shoulders. She sounded ready to go into battle. I only wished there were something she could slay. It would make her feel better, and me, too. But there was nothing. Nothing but the disaster I’d engineered myself.

  Trying to wipe my face, I managed to croak, “I finally made up my mind. I broke up with Dave.”

  Steely, she asked, “Did he hurt you?”

  Oh God, it was just like Jane to jump to the worst possible conclusion. Shaking my head, I swore. “No. No. He didn’t touch me.”

  “Good.” Wrapping an arm around me, she led me into the house and straight to her bedroom.

  In the garage, a circular saw whined. The sound came again and again, screaming punctuation for the storm inside my head. While Jane mopped me up, I sat miserably on her bed, listening to the saw scream, then silence.

  Throwing away a handful of tissues, Jane offered me the box and sat heavily beside me. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  My throat closed. Apparently, my body wanted to shut down completely. My head disagreed, rolling the breakup like a movie reel, over and over, the worst parts playing the slowest. With a hiccupping sob, I said, “He hates me. I didn’t want that.”

  A soothing hand on my back, Jane looked over at me. “You can’t control how other people feel, Sare. But maybe this is for the best.”

  “I don’t see how.” My sinuses pounded, my head, too. The saw cried out again, and I fought the quivering in my lower lip.

  “It’s a clean break. None of that messy let’s-be-friends crap. Nobody said that, right?”

  With a miserable laugh, I shook my head. “Not even.”

  “Then good. You made up your mind. And now there’s no room for you to back up on it. It’s over with Dave. Now you move on.”

  “I didn’t expect it to be like this. I thought I would feel better after I did it.” Though I hadn’t been keeping her in the loop, I did have to admit—just so it made sense: “I had a talk with Will the other day.”

  In response, Jane raised an eyebrow.

  “There’s something there,” I told her. “I know you think he’s not capable of that, but I’m telling you, he is. And he’s going away in the fall, Jane. If I don’t find out what that is now, I’ll never know.”

  For a moment, Jane said nothing. She rubbed my back, gentle circles that gave her time to think and, at the very least, continued to soothe my upset. Dark eyes darting away, she took a deep breath, then sighed. “This is what I’m afraid of.”

  Knotting my hands together, I said, “Okay?”

  “The one thing that worries me is this.” Jane had never sounded more serious, and it made me uneasy. “You had one major issue with Dave. After every show, he walked away from you to flirt with everything that moved. If a girl came up to him to talk about quote unquote music, you just didn’t exist.”

  I was confused. Both of those things were true. But where was she going with this? “I know.”

  Jane widened her eyes. “Will Spencer is a verified manwhore. It’s not just flirting with him, and you know it.”

  “You think I should get back together with Dave?” I asked her, stunned.

  With one last pat on my back, Jane stood up. Her voice was gentle, not usually her strong suit. I could tell she was trying to be careful with me.

  But as she trashed a handful of tissues, she looked me over and said, “No. Of course not. What’s wrong with your relationship with Dave has always been wrong with it. And maybe Will is the perfect rebound.”

  “There’s a ‘but’ in there.”

  Nodding, she said, “Yep. And the but is, you need to put yourself first. You’re smart. And you’re talented. So fucking talented, Sarah. You don’t need anybody to make music with you. You don’t need a guy to make you special. Running back and forth from guy to guy isn’t going to solve anything.

  “If you want a boyfriend, that’s great. But it’s time for you to realize that anybody that you’re with is lucky to have you, and they need to step it up accordingly.”

  She was so passionate. So sincere. Was she right? I didn’t know. Not yet.

  But I was about to find out.

  THIRTEEN

  That night, I sat on the edge of my tub and ran the water as hot as I could stand it. With my pajama pants rolled up, and steam swirling around me, I slowly dipped my feet into the tub.

  Hissing, I waited for my skin to adjust to the burn, then finally relaxed. Soaking my feet was something I usually shared with Ellie. She was the one who started it. After grueling dance classes, she liked to sear away the ache. Tonight, though, she had an extra performance, and I needed some quiet time.

  My fingers skated across the screen of my phone. I hesitated, then touched the messaging icon. Heart thrumming madly, I typed my message slowly. And then I thought long and hard about whether I wanted to send it. I felt like Jane was standing right behind me, arms crossed, eyebrow raised. I heard her voice clearly, reminding me that I needed to make myself happy. So what did I want? What did I actually, truly want?

  It was like standing on the edge of a cliff. I could back away from the edge. I could make up with Dave. If he apologized, I could, too. Things would be the same kind of normal they’d ever been. I could hide in the sweet, steady warmth of his arms and never come out again.

  No, I told myself. I couldn’t.

  I could stand here all alone. Or I could decide that it was time to jump. So I hit send.

  Tag, you’re it.

  No last time I checked u were figuring stuff out, Will replied.

  Last chance. Last chance to abandon the intoxicating, terrifying possibility of Will Spencer. My fingers flew, and I hit send without shame. I know. And I did. Broke up w/ Dave this morning.

  Srsly?

  I’d never lie about that. So tag. You’re it.

  Swirling my feet in the water, I watched the screen with dread and anticipation. What if this had all been a game for him? What if he’d played it with other girls? My heart swore he hadn’t. I wanted to believe it, but now I needed proof.

  The heat from the water crept through me. Sweat gathered on my brow and beneath my shirt.

  The seconds ticked by, and my murmuring echoed in the bathroom. It wasn’t praying, not exactly. It was mor
e like an incantation. Please, please don’t let me be wrong about this. Please don’t.

  A chime announced Will’s reply. I’ll talk to Trish.

  When? I asked.

  Soon, he said. Very soon.

  ~

  When I got back to school on Monday morning, Will and Tricia still looked very much together.

  I refused to let myself hate Tricia, because out of all of us, she was the most innocent party. That didn’t mean it didn’t feel like a deep swallow of acid to watch her lay her head on Will’s shoulder. It was a knife through the heart to see her nuzzling close to him at his locker. She had exactly what I wanted. And she seemed to fit against him almost as perfectly as I did.

  A couple of times, I turned around to see Will watching me. Because I didn’t want to believe I was out on a limb by myself, I convinced myself that he didn’t look happy. In fact, he looked like he was starving—he had a wide, wounded expression that I couldn’t forget, even when I tried.

  I’d looked at the edge of the cliff, and I’d jumped. But now I felt like I was freefalling, unsure if anyone would be there to catch my fall. And it felt more and more likely that Will wasn’t going to. So he deserved to be miserable, I thought. I tried to comfort myself with a dark sense of victory. Will had never been the guy who pined, who cared, who thought twice about a girl. I had to move on. I had to put myself first, as commanded.

  I walked as far away from Will and Tricia as I possibly could. I found a nice, quiet corner down by the wood shop where I could eat my lunch in peace. It was the last place anyone expected to find me. I learned to enjoy the rich cologne of sawdust and mechanical heat. If I never saw Will, I never had to suffer.

  In avoiding Will, I avoided Dave, too. And it appeared he was avoiding me right back. There wasn’t even a ghost of our relationship lurking in any of our old spots. We were just gone.

  The only good thing to come from misery was songwriting. “Scrambled Eggs” became a ballad titled “Everything.” It got harder and richer. When I disappeared into it, it was the perfect escape. For the first time, I felt like I was completely naked in my lyrics. I spilled everything out, so honestly and so relentlessly that just singing through it to adjust the key could make me cry all over again.