He sits down on one end of the leather couch, and I sit on the other. Sean hands me a glass. I’ve only had champagne once before, at Amanda’s house, when her parents had a party and Eric stole a bottle for us. Eric and Amanda drank most of it and I only had a little sip.
“To being understood,” Sean says. We clink and I feel a little fluttering in my stomach. The champagne is very cold. I feel like I’m impersonating a much older and more sophisticated person by drinking it. A second later, my glass is empty.
Sean’s is, too. He leans back on the couch and picks up the bottle. “Glasses are for pussies,” he says. He lifts it to his lips and takes a long swig. He’s staring at me, smiling a little, like he’s challenging me. He passes the bottle back, never breaking eye contact.
“To not being pussies,” I say. And I raise the bottle up like I’m toasting and Sean gives a fist bump. I take a gulp and pass it back to him. And we just do this for a while; pass the bottle back and forth and back and forth until finally, all the champagne is almost gone. Sean leans back against the couch and stares at me, really stares.
“What?” I say. I raise my hands up to my face.
Sean reaches out and gently pulls my hand away. “I’m just looking at you,” he says. And he smiles so sweetly that I don’t even blush this time. I just close my eyes for a second and just think how even though there are hard things and scary things in the world, there are also really nice things, like drinking expensive champagne in a fancy hotel room with a guy you’re developing a huge crush on. A guy who maybe, just maybe, could have a crush on you, too.
But then suddenly, I remember something and pop my eyes open. And the champagne has dissolved my filter, so I just open my mouth and say it.
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
He puts the bottle down and stares at me. “What made you ask that?” I’m instantly sorry I did. “Oh, wait, because of what Amanda was talking about on the phone?” He pauses. “Yeah, I wondered when you were going to bring that up.”
“You heard that?” I say. “Oh God.”
“Your speaker volume is up really high,” Sean says, smiling.
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “Amanda’s just…”
“Don’t even worry about it,” Sean says, waving his hand. “Stories tend to get screwed up when they get passed from person to person, and I don’t give a shit what those people think, anyway, but the short version is that there was a girl and I loved her and I knew she loved me.” He looks down. “But things were really complicated and we couldn’t be together, and I tried to fix it so that we could be. But it didn’t work.” Sean frowns for a second, just for a second. Then he looks away. “I think when you find someone you really love, you have to do everything you can to make it work. Because all that shit people say about how love is really the only thing that’s important, it’s cheesy but it’s also true. Only sometimes love makes people do crazy things. And sometimes, no matter what you do, a relationship can’t work. Especially when one of the people in it isn’t even trying.”
Sean gets this really sad look on his face then, and on instinct, I just reach out and put my hand on his knee.
“Whoever that girl was, she made a mistake.”
“You’re a sweetie,” he says. And our eyes meet and I feel my face getting hot, so I take my hand off his knee and grab a fork off the table in front of us and stick it in the slice of cake.
I hear a low hum coming from across the room and I realize that my phone is vibrating again. Oh no. The phone. My conversation with Brad.
“Does that mean you can hear everything that someone on the other end of the phone is saying?” My arm is out in front of me, a bite of cake balanced on top of the silver tines.
“Yup,” Sean says. And then he waggles his eyebrows and winks.
Sean heard Brad making those jokes about the two of us together and he heard me totally going along with them. Oh God.
“I was just trying to be nice to him!” I say frantically. “I didn’t want Brad to have to worry about me and…” But before I can say anything more Sean just says, “Sssshhhh,” and starts leaning toward me. He reaches up and closes his hand over mine. I’m still holding the fork. He’s leaning forward, his arm resting on the back of the couch behind me. His mouth is getting closer. His lips look moist. Is he going to kiss me? He’s going to kiss me!
I tip my head to the side. I open my mouth the tiniest bit and I wait.
And wait.
And wait.
“Dude,” Sean says. I open my eyes. He’s nodding his head and pointing to his mouth. “Now that is some good fucking cake.”
I look over at my fork. It’s empty.
He wasn’t going in for the kiss, he was going in for the cake.
“Your face is red,” Sean says. “Are you okay?”
My champagne buzz is completely gone.
“Oh, did you think I was about to…” Sean says. He points back and forth between our mouths.
I shake my head. I am suddenly dying of embarrassment. I’m going to go into the bathroom now. I’m going to go into the bathroom and hide and not come out until Sean is asleep. I start to stand. But Sean has wrapped his fingers around my wrist again. And he’s pulling me in slow motion toward him. “Ellie, don’t go,” he says. And I do not have any cake on my fork this time. I close my eyes.
Twenty-two
I wake up and the events of last night come back in flashes, the way dreams do:
Lip against lip, mouths opening. Time slowing down, speeding up, slowing down. We are on the couch. We are on the bed. We are on the f loor. We are magnets. We are melting. We are drunk. We are ordering more champagne. We are drinking from each other’s mouths. We are drinking from each other’s skin. We are breathing heavy. We are yip yip yipping. We are cracking up. We are playing strip poker with fries as cards. We are winning. We are losing. We are naked. We are covered in sweat. We are licking it off. We are pressed together. We are going faster. We aren’t stopping. We are going too fast. We are slowing down. We are curling ourselves together into a ball. We are comparing our scars: white lines on my shin from slipping on wet rocks, tiny white circle of an ancient chicken pockmark on my hip, scratches on his arms from a lifetime of dogs, scraped up knees from falling off a bike, that tangle of jagged white lines on the inside of his arm for reasons he can’t say. We are breathing together. We are heartbeating together. We are starting all over again. We are not sure where his body stops and mine begins. We are drifting off into something like sleep.
I lie here now, on this beautiful bed in this beautiful hotel room. Silk eye pillow wrapped around my wrist like a bracelet. One sock on, one sock off. My head pressed against the pillow, my face stuck in a smile. I reach out for Sean. But the bed is empty. I’m alone.
Alone.
Alone?
I sit up. There’s a glass of water next to the bed. I don’t know how it got there. I pick it up and drain it. My head aches, like my skull is slightly too small to hold my brain. My tongue feels fuzzy. My lips are sore. I get out of bed. I am naked except for the sock, and suddenly embarrassed. I pull the sheet off the bed and wrap it around myself.
“Hello?” I say. My voice isn’t working right. “Sean?” He’s not here. My whole body feels fragile, like I’m made of glass. I walk around the room, the sheet dragging behind me. Every bit of evidence from the night before has been cleared away. No champagne bottles, no room service cart. Even the balled-up napkins we used in the napkin war have magically disappeared.
My cell phone is on the table. It’s flashing. I have two text messages: stop ignoring me, from Amanda, and also I’m worried about you. And four missed calls. All from her. But nothing from Sean. And I realize I can’t even call him. Because, ha-ha, I do not know his phone number.
I walk to the enormous bathroom. The door’s halfway open. No Sean.
I lean against the wall.
My heart is suddenly pounding. I squeeze my eyes shut.
What if I imagine
d everything that happened last night? Or I changed it all around in my head to make it what I wanted it to be?
A new picture starts to present itself. Me, drunk, falling all over the place. Talking too much. Laughing too loud. Spilling my whole soul to poor Sean who just wanted to eat some dinner and go to sleep.
I go into the bathroom and look at myself in the giant mirror over the sink. There are bags under my eyes and my hair is sticking out in all directions, there are pillow creases on my face and dried drool on my cheek. I turn the shower on steaming hot. I get in and let the water run over me. There’s a basket in the shower, containing tiny bottles of fifteen different types of shampoo, conditioner, and bath gel. I close my eyes and tip my head back. I wash my hair with basil mint shampoo. Brush my teeth, hard. Floss. I remind myself that what happened last night doesn’t even matter. This trip isn’t about Sean. I was just drunk. I thought we had a connection. I was wrong. This is about Nina. This is about finding Nina. But what if he’s gone now? Then what will I do?
I’m out of the shower. I dry off with a thick white towel, wrap myself in it.
I open the bathroom door and watch the steam escape. I pad out into the bedroom, I smell something. It smells salty and familiar and before I even realize what it is, my stomach starts grumbling.
“Greasy bacon, egg, and cheese?” Sean’s back, standing in front of the couch, a grease-stained brown paper bag clutched in his hand. My heart thumps painfully in my chest. I’m suddenly very aware that I’m in my towel.
“When you’re hungover, you need grease,” he says, staring into the bag. “Scientists, they’ve done studies.” He pulls out a tinfoil-wrapped sandwich. “I found a diner a couple miles away. The Jamies are still sleeping, I think.” He tosses the sandwich toward me, barely glancing in my direction. I reach out awkwardly with one hand. The egg and cheese falls to the floor at my feet. Sean goes over to the couch, sits down, and starts unwrapping his sandwich. “We should hurry up,” he says. “Get on the road as soon as possible.” He takes a bite of his egg sandwich, staring straight ahead. “It’s already past noon and we have about six hours more driving to do.”
“I’m just going to get dressed,” I say, pointing to the bathroom. “Then I’ll be ready to go.”
Sean doesn’t even look up, just nods to his sandwich.
I’m standing here in a towel and he’s staring at a sandwich.
This is worse than I thought.
Twenty-three
The four of us are in the car again.
“Do you want me to turn the air down?” Sean asks. He’s not looking at me.
“That’s okay,” I say.
“What?”
“This is fine.”
“Okay,” Sean says.
“Okay,” I say. “Thanks for asking.”
“No problem,” says Sean. This is how it’s been since he came back with the sandwiches: horrible, awkward, weird. Like we have no idea how to talk to each other.
“Look how polite they are!” Jamie-girl says. “That’s so sweeeeeet. He treats her like she’s this lady? Why don’t you ever treat me like a lady?”
“Well, maybe I’ll treat you like a lady when you start acting like one,” Jamie-boy says. In the rearview mirror I see him grab her boob. She squeals and starts giggling.
More images from last night pop into my head—I shut my eyes. Sean stroking my hair. Sean kissing my neck. Sean’s hands on my…I turn toward him, he’s watching the road. He doesn’t turn toward me and smirk, or make a funny face, or roll his eyes about the Jamies. I feel my heart squeezing and a wave of loneliness sucking at my insides. How are we the same two people that did all that stuff together just last night? It feels like it happened a hundred years ago or that maybe I imagined the entire thing. I think back to Saturday afternoon when he showed up at the store, and Friday when he was staring at me at the party. We feel more like strangers now than we did the very first time we met. My eyes ache with tears trying to get out. I swallow hard, try and remind myself that I’m just here to find Nina, that things with Sean don’t really matter.
But I can’t help feeling like they do.
I bet Nina never had a morning after like this. She never seemed to feel awkward, always felt comfortable, no matter who she was with or what the situation. It’s probably one of the things that made her so attractive to people, her constant ease. I want to say Why can’t we just be normal to each other? I want to say Don’t you like me anymore? But instead all I do is force a cough, because this is the most appropriate conversation starter I can think of.
“You okay?” Sean says.
“Yeah, I just had a tickle in my throat.”
Pause.
“I hate that,” he says.
Pause.
“Me, too,” I say.
Then silence again. If we actually do find Nina, I’ll definitely need to ask her what the hell a person is supposed to say in a situation like this. But for now, all I can think to do is lean my head against the window and stare out.
Twenty-four
It’s like another planet out here: giant green tubes topped with spiky red and yellow balls sit next to cabbage-size flowers with inch-thick petals and delicate ten-foot stalks curve their graceful limbs up toward the sky. The sun is setting now, all brilliant pinks and oranges, somehow different than any sunset I’ve ever seen. The colors are brighter maybe, or the light is different somehow. I don’t know. But my brain has decided we’re no longer on earth, a fact it supports with the strange plants, the hair-dryer hot air, and the red mountains off in the distance. This is, I guess, why people travel in the first place. Surrounded by all this, I am having trouble holding on to my own sadness. It no longer seems to make sense. Nothing does.
It is hours later now and we are in the desert in Arizona.
“Two more miles on this road,” Jamie-boy says, reading from a computer printout. “And then one more left and then it should be right there on our right.” We keep driving and a few minutes later, we see a long line of people standing on the side of the road, next to a long line of cars pulled off on the shoulder.
“Looks like this must be it,” Sean says.
Jamie-girl claps her hands together. “Yeee!”
Sean parks his car at the end of the row and then we all get out, the Jamies dragging their giant duffel bag behind them.
“You can just leave that in the car,” Sean says. “I mean, you don’t want to carry it around for the whole show do you?”
“Ah,” Jamie-boy says. “But we do!” He puts the bag down on the dusty ground, bends over, and unzips it halfway. He removes two black T-shirts, hands one to Jamie-girl. They put them on, then turn around. Monster Hands Monstrosity Tour Staff is silk-screened in green on the back.
“Okay, so they’re not the most professional T-shirts, but they get the job done,” Jamie-girl says, winking. “We make them ourselves, you know!”
Jamie-boy hoists the bag back up onto his shoulder and pats it like it’s his pet.
“Thanks for the ride, guys,” Jamie-girl says. She gets next to the bag, unzips a side pocket, and removes a piece of fabric, which she unfolds and pins to the side of the duffel bag. Official Monster Hands Merch is silk-screened on it in the same green ink. “And for the hotel room and everything.”
“But wait!” I say. I hear the franticness rising in my voice. Reality is suddenly catching up with me, and it does not look good. “What about the concert and you helping us get in and everything? What about us meeting the band?”
“Oh, yeah, that,” Jamie-girl says. She frowns for a second. “Well, I mean, you’ll be fine. Just buy a ticket. I’m sure there’s some left, they have a cult following but they hardly ever sell out a show. The ticket line’s right there.” She motions with her head. “As for meeting the band, well, you’re on your own with that one, sweetie. We’ve been trying to meet the band for years and the closest we’ve ever gotten is the time their manager kicked us out of their show for selling unofficial merch
andise.” Then she grins. “Anyway, we gotta run, this bag o’ Monsty isn’t going to sell itself! Oh, and don’t worry about us getting back, we’ll figure it out. As you might have noticed, we’re really quite resourceful!” Jamie-boy gives me a final up-down look and then the two of them walk off, calling “Official Monster Hands T-shirts, twenty-five dollars! Official posters of the new Monster Hands album cover, fifteen dollars! Monster Hands monster hands, twenty dollars! Official bottles of Monster Hands monster water, five dollars.”
And Sean and I are both left standing there in the warm Arizona sunset staring at their backs, watching them go.
“Whoa,” Sean says. “What just happened there?” But he’s more talking to himself than to me. “I think we’ve just been Jamie’d.”
We stand at the end of the line, behind a girl in black flip-flops, a denim miniskirt, and a gray T-shirt with the neck cutout that keeps drifting down exposing one smooth tan shoulder. She has a pair of large gray rubber hands strapped over her real ones like gloves.
“I have no idea,” I say. “I really have no idea.” The girl in front of us turns around, she’s beautiful—heart-shaped face, perfectly arched eyebrows, long dark hair. When she sees Sean, she smiles a big gorgeous grin. “You know those guys?” She motions with her monster hands to where Jamie and Jamie are working their way down the line.
“Not really,” Sean says. “Although we did just spend the last like thirty-six hours with them.”
“Oh my, my, my,” the girl glances at me, then back at Sean, then glances at me again. She’s trying to figure out if I’m his girlfriend. “Ah yes, the Creepy-Jamies infamous in the Monsty scene for being total scammers and also…being rather, um, open about their private activities. Did you happen to notice that during your thirty-six hours of Jamie?”
Wherever Nina Lies Page 12