Jane twirled her cherry through her drink. A guest at the birthday party started to give a toast, but he spoke too quietly for the girls to hear what he was saying.
“I guess you can’t promise something like that,” Jane said finally.
“And anyway, would you really want nothing to have changed?” asked Natalya, elbowing her friend. “Would you want to have not met Jack?”
Victoria blushed as Jane demanded, “Yeah, what’s the deal? One second you’re all, ‘Oh, I don’t even like him anymore’; the next you’re playing hide-the-banana on the cover of the Mirror!”
“Jane! That is disgusting,” said Victoria, laughing.
“Well?” Jane demanded.
“I was going to tell you Friday—” Victoria started, but Natalya cut her off.
“Don’t worry,” she assured Jane. “You’ll hear all about it.” She turned back to Victoria. “My point is, without change—Poof! No Jack.”
“I hate that.” Victoria shook her head sadly. “It scares me.” She shook her finger warningly at Jane. “And if you tell me to face my fears, I’m going to strangle you.”
“Okay, hi! ” said Jane. “Here’s what you’re not going to be hearing from me for a while: Do what you’re scared to do.”
Natalya considered Jane’s words. “That means we need a new toast.”
“To Jane!” Victoria said, lifting her glass. “Our star!” Automatically, Jane and Natalya lifted their glasses.
“To Jane!” echoed Natalya.
“And to us!” said Victoria.
“To us!” repeated Natalya.
“And to Nana!” said Jane.
“And to some things not changing,” said Victoria, touching her necklace.
“Like being the Darlings,” said Jane, touching hers.
“Like being the Darlings,” repeated Natalya, holding hers up so it shimmered in the restaurant’s bright lights.
Finally, they clinked their glasses together. They were ready to face whatever came their way.
As long as they faced it together.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To paraphrase this book’s epigraph, those listed below are people who let me be stupid with them. Some took the time to respond to a panicked e-mail or phone call while others read (and reread) multiple versions of this manuscript; I am forever in their debt. Thanks to: Jennifer Besser, Rachel Cohn, Ben Gantcher, Jodi Kahn, Bernie Kaplan, Rebecca Lieberman, E. Lockhart, Sarah Miller, Helen Perelman, Abby Ranger, JillEllyn Riley, Emily Schultz, and Angie Sheldon.
WITH ITS WALLS covered in black-and-white Ansel Adams landscapes and Richard Avedon portraits, piles of photography reference books, and double bed blanketed with a soft red comforter, Jack’s room was Victoria’s favorite place in the world.
Too bad she almost never got to be in it.
Jack’s mom taught preschool a few blocks away, so she was usually home in the afternoon. If she wasn’t, his father, who played cello with the New York Philharmonic and had morning rehearsals and evening performances, was pretty much guaranteed to be in the apartment from four to six. When he’d been younger, Jack told Victoria, he’d loved that one, and sometimes both, of his parents picked him up from school and spent the afternoon with him. He’d always felt a little bad for kids who had to log after-school hours with babysitters because their moms and dads worked late.
But lately Jack didn’t feel bad for those kids.
He envied them.
Jack’s parents had made it clear: they did not want to walk down the hallway and find Victoria and Jack in Jack’s room with the door closed. And Victoria’s parents had made it equally clear that if neither of them was home, Victoria and Jack couldn’t be at Victoria’s apartment. Since her dad was basically living in Washington, and her mother worked until six or seven every day, they couldn’t be at her apartment in the afternoons at all. (The one time they’d tried to take advantage of no one’s being there, the doorman had inadvertently ratted them out by cheerfully telling Victoria’s mom when she got home from work that she’d “unfortunately just missed” Victoria and her friend Jack.)
All of which made what they were doing right now practically a miracle.
Victoria lay with her head on Jack’s stomach, their bodies forming a T across his bed. One of Jack’s hands was running lazily through Victoria’s hair, and the other was holding hers. The Hastings were spending the afternoon walking along the High Line before getting an early dinner in Chelsea with friends from out of town. When Victoria had turned on her phone that morning, there had been a text from Jack. Who has an apartment all 2 themselves this afternoon? Call me & find out.
It had felt like Christmas in January.
“I love Sweden,” Victoria said.
“Why?” asked Jack, his voice rumbling gently against the back of her head.
“Isn’t that where your parents’ friends are from?”
Jack laughed. “They’re from Denmark, actually.”
Victoria laughed too, then rolled onto her side so she was facing Jack. He curled toward her, his face just inches away. “Denmark, Sweden,” she said. “They’re kind of the same, right?”
“Close enough,” Jack agreed. He kissed her lightly on the nose. She raised her face so his next kiss found her lips. At first their kiss was gentle, but then he put his hands on her face, pulling her toward him, and it became deeper and more intense. Kissing Jack made Victoria feel like she was slipping out of her body, and at the same time, like she was slipping into it, really existing inside herself for the first time in her life.
He gently kissed her closed eyes. “I’m hungry, but I don’t want to stop kissing you.”
“Mmmm,” Victoria sighed dreamily. “That reminds me, I brought cookies.”
“Oh, no,” Jack lamented, “the impossible choice. Your delicious kisses versus your delicious cookies.”
She laughed as he traced the edge of her ear with his lips. “That tickles.”
Victoria’s phone buzzed. “Do you want to answer that?” Jack asked.
She didn’t, really. She just wanted to be here. With Jack.
Instead of reaching for her phone, she pulled his lips back to hers. “I’ll take that as a no,” he mumbled, through their kiss. She slid her arm around his back.
When his phone rang the opening bars of the Lost Leaders’ “All the Stars,” he groaned and pulled reluctantly away from her. “I just have to see if it’s my mom. If I don’t answer, she’ll use her Spidey sense to figure out what we’re doing, and she’ll race home.”
Victoria kissed him once, swiftly, then let him go. He got up and dug his phone out of his bag. “I knew it!” he said triumphantly, holding the screen toward Victoria so she could read the mom.
“Hey, Mom,” he said. Propped up on her arm, Victoria watched as he sat on the window seat and toyed with the shade pull, appreciating how cute he looked in his jeans and soft gray sweater, the same color as his eyes. Sometimes when she saw Jack in the hallway at school, she couldn’t believe he was really hers. It wouldn’t have surprised her if their whole relationship turned out to be just a figment of her imagination, something she’d wanted so fiercely, she’d believed her own dream. Every time he saw her coming toward him down the hall, and she watched his face break into its slow smile of happy recognition, she felt the same glow of joyous surprise.
It’s real, she would think. It’s really real.
“When?” Jack asked. “Oh, yeah?” He stood up and strolled across the room to where his guitar leaned against the wall, then idly plucked at the strings before picking it up by the neck and sitting down in his white desk chair with the guitar across his lap. “Okay, Mom, I’m glad you called, but I gotta go.” He listened for a second, then said, “At my desk.” Something about the way he said it made Victoria’s ears prick up. It was like he was lying or something, even though he really was sitting at his desk.
Jack’s mom must have sensed something too, because whatever she said next, Jack responded, “I’m not l
ying,” but he grinned and shook his head, mouthing to Victoria, I’m a terrible liar. “Yes, Mom, as a matter of fact, she is.” He listened for a second. “Yes, Mom, I am impressed…Yes, you should work for the CIA…Mom, we’re not doing anything untoward. I promise you won’t have any grandchildren in the immediate future.” Victoria felt her face grow bright red, and even Jack blushed at what he’d said. Despite being halfway across the room from the phone, Victoria could hear his mother’s voice grow loud with annoyance. “You’re right, Mother, that was a completely inappropriate thing to say.” He put his hand on his heart. “I sincerely apologize…Yes, I do realize how lucky I am…It’s true, you are much more permissive than most mothers.” Jack rolled his eyes at Victoria, who smiled sympathetically. “Though, let me point out, not as permissive as some…Sorry, sorry,” he added quickly. “No, I don’t want you to come right back uptown this second…Okay, Mom. I love you, too…Yeah, see you soon…Okay. We will. I promise. Bye.” He hung up and gave Victoria a sheepish look. “My mom says hi.”
Victoria raised an eyebrow. “It sounds like she said a lot more than that.”
“As you know, my mother is not one for brevity,” he reminded her. It was true: Victoria liked Jack’s mom a lot, but she definitely was chatty.
Idly, almost like he didn’t realize he was doing it, Jack began picking out a tune. He had never played the guitar for Victoria before; she’d noticed the instrument in the corner and wondered if he played at all, or if the guitar was just something he’d planned on mastering and then given up, the way she had ice skates hanging in her closet, which she’d worn once and never put on again.
But clearly Jack had spent way more time with his guitar than she had with her skates. Victoria watched his agile fingers moving across the strings, then lifted her eyes to his, which were staring at her. She felt the melting feeling she always experienced when Jack looked at her like that.
Still looking into her eyes, he began to sing along to the tune he was playing. Jack’s voice was soft but deep and sure, and he let the song unfold slowly and sweetly. The words were about swimming alone under the night sky, and they described a place so still and perfect and beautiful, Victoria wished she could be there.
Suddenly, Victoria felt her eyes filling with tears. Everything about this moment was just so perfect and beautiful. It was as if her whole self—her very soul—was standing on tiptoe with joy. Why did they call it falling in love? She didn’t feel like she was about to fall. She felt like she was about to fly.
The silence that hung in the room when the song ended felt as significant as the music had. Victoria and Jack stayed perfectly still, staring at each other. Neither of them spoke. They didn’t need to. To Victoria, it felt as if somehow they were communicating on a level deeper than language.
Jack spoke first. “I love you, Victoria.” His voice was serious, his eyes dark and intense as they bored into hers.
Victoria felt her heart pounding in her chest. Jack put the guitar down, stood up, and walked over to where she lay on the bed. He reached his hand down to her.
Victoria let him pull her to her feet, and they stood facing each other.
“I don’t want you to—” Jack began, but before he could finish, Victoria blurted out, “I love you too.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Victoria realized she’d been waiting to say them, like they were a present she’d picked out for Jack months ago and had been carrying around with her as she waited for the right moment to give it to him.
He smiled and took her other hand, intertwining his fingers with hers. “I was going to say that I didn’t want you to think you had to say it back.”
“I know,” Victoria whispered. “I said it because I wanted to say it.” She stood on her toes and tilted her face to his. As his lips came down to meet hers, she felt the familiar soaring feeling she always felt when Jack kissed her, only now, after what they’d just said to each other, it was stronger. She was taking off. She was leaving the world far below.
She was flying in love.
MELISSA KANTOR is the author of the best-selling Confessions of a Not It Girl, a Booklist Best Romance Novel for Youth; If I Have a Wicked Stepmother, Where’s My Prince?, a YALSA Teens Top Ten Pick; The Breakup Bible, a YALSA Best Books for Young Adults nominee; and Girlfriend Material, a Junior Library Guild selection. Melissa is a teacher in Brooklyn, New York, where she lives with her husband, the poet Benjamin Gantcher, and their three children. Visit her online at www.melissakantor.com.
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