by Jay McLean
His eyes snap to mine, his lips pressed tight to stop his smile from forming.
I sigh, half amused, half still confused. “What are you doing, Dylan?”
“I told you,” he says, lifting the bags again. “I got you chocolate, chips, Gatorade, some girly books and DVDs… I wasn’t sure what you’d prefer, and I even got you some stuff to take care of…” he points to my vagina again. “…that.”
“Stop pointing at my vagina.”
“Stop calling it a vagina.”
I cover my mouth to stifle my laugh.
“I guess I’m hoping that by buying your friendship it would help get me back in your bed.” His eyes widen. “Room. Bedroom. I meant bedroom. Not, like—so anyway…” He rocks on his heels and glances up at the sky. “It’s a nice day out. Weatherman says it’s going to be warm but I don’t know. It’s a little chilly at the moment. Kind of wish I had somewhere warm and cozy to hide out.” He looks back at me. “Do you like turtles, Riley? I like turtles. Not the ninja type ones, but the real ones. They’re so slow. So cute. They’re like—”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I burst out laughing. I can’t help it.
Then he smiles and I curse the damn butterflies for defying me.
I grasp his shirt and pull him inside, taking the bags from him at the same time. His smile remains as he walks backward down the hallway toward my room, watching me pull out the block of chocolate from the bag. “Riley?”
“Yeah?”
He stops in my doorway, blocking me from going in. “Are we going to ignore what happened the other day?”
I stop in front of him. “I don’t think I’m ready to deal with it yet. Can we just…” I motion to my room. “…be?”
His smile reaches his eyes. “We can be whatever you want, Hudson. As long as I’m with you.”
I switch on the TV and tell him to pick one of the DVDs he bought while I jump in the shower. When I return, he’s sitting on the edge of my bed, facing the TV. He smiles when he looks over at me.
“I was thinking…” I tell him, unwrapping the towel from my head. I sit down next to him and start drying my hair.
“You were thinking what?” he asks, turning to me with his leg up, knee bent, on the bed.
His knee brushes against mine and I pull away. Having him here is one thing, having him touch me is another. “How long were you in the navy for?”
“Riley,” he deadpans.
“What?” I ask, flipping my hair back and facing him.
“That’s not hot at all,” he mumbles. Then stands up and moves to the corner of the room. Not my corner, but the one where my bookshelf is. He picks up the books he’d bought and places them next to my other ones. “And you smell.”
“I smell?” I drop the towel and sniff my armpits. “I just showered.”
“Not in a bad way.” He shakes his head and turns back to me, but doesn’t close the gap between us. “And Marines, by the way. Not Navy.”
“Oh. Sorry. So how long?”
“Just over two years including basic. Why?”
“Why’d you enlist?”
He stares at me a moment, as if trying to decide what version of a lie he wants to tell me.
I know that look.
I live that look.
He doesn’t respond, just turns back to the shelf and runs his finger across the spines of the books. He stops at a set of blue books. My yearbooks. Then he pulls out the one from my freshman year. When he turns around, he holds it up as if asking for permission. He waits a few seconds for me to answer and when I don’t, he grabs the other three off the shelf and brings them with him back to the bed. He sits down next to me, further than he was before but still close enough that I can feel his warmth against my skin. He starts to flip the pages of my freshman year yearbook, starting at the back. “So when you were a freshman, I was—”
“Junior,” I cut him off. The response is quick. Too quick. Clearly, it’s not the first time I’ve thought about it. I drop my chin to my chest and hope he can’t see my blush. Or worse, call me out on it.
He points to my picture in the book.
“Oh God,” I cover my face to hide my embarrassment.
“You’re prettier now than you were then.”
I scoff and smack his leg. “Thanks, jerk!”
He bursts out laughing. “I didn’t mean it like that. Swear it.”
I take the book from him and flip to the junior pictures. “Let’s see you back in high school.”
He groans and fakes a shiver. “Maybe this was a bad idea.”
I find his profile picture and spend a few seconds taking him in. He hasn’t changed much. His hair’s shorter and his face is a little more masculine now but besides that, he’s still the same Dylan in the picture. We go through the next book, me as a sophomore and him as a senior. I flip to his picture and read his caption out loud. “A man of many words.”
“What?” He leans over me and looks to where I’m pointing on the page. “I didn’t tell them to write that.”
“What did you tell them to write?”
“I don’t recall telling them anything.”
“Maybe they just improvised?”
“I guess.”
“What does it even mean?”
He shrugs. “No idea,” he says, then quickly looks away.
I don’t press on. I just flip the pages, ignoring the turning of my stomach when he moves closer again, his arm touching my back as he leans into me. I stop at the pictures of his senior prom and search the pages for any sign of him. There’s none of him. But there’s one of Heidi—his ex—with a crown on her head next to a guy who isn’t Dylan. “You didn’t win prom king?” I ask, eyeing him sideways.
“Nah.” He shakes his head slowly. “I think that was the year I put my foot down and told Heidi I didn’t care much for any of that shit.”
“That shit?”
“Yeah. You know… the whole arm candy thing and trying to get votes and making posters and pins and whatever.”
“So you just let another guy stand next to her, get these pictures, wear matching crowns and hold the title of king and queen on a night that was probably important to her?”
He leans back a little. “You make me sound like an asshole.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I guess I just see it differently.”
“How do you see it?”
“It’s just a night of memories, you know? High school isn’t forever.” I pause a moment and swallow the lump in my throat, the memories I speak of flooding my mind. My voice drops to a whisper. “Sometimes high school is as good as it gets.”
He takes the book from me and throws it behind us, then grabs the one from junior year. “I don’t know,” he says, flipping through the pages, most likely looking for me again. “I guess we had different experiences.”
“Oh, I’m sure we did,” I tell him, moving his hand away so I can flip to the page I know is mine. I point to my picture and add, “You and your circle of friends owned the school.”
“We did?” he asks, clearly surprised.
“Don’t act like you didn’t know that.”
“I mean, I guess. It was more my friends and Heidi, though. It wasn’t really me.”
I shrug. “Then you were popular by association. Still valid.”
“Maybe,” he mumbles, his mind elsewhere. “How do you even remember this?”
I roll my eyes. “Please. You and those guys you hung out with. All the girls knew you.”
He tears his gaze away from my picture and slowly looks up at me. “What?” he says, a half smirk pulling his lips. “Did you crush on Jake or something?”
“No. Not Jake. Logan though….”
He pushes on my arm until I fall to my side, losing it in a fit of laughter. “What? Are you offended?” I joke.
“Offended? No.” He drops his gaze back to my picture. “Jealous? Maybe.”
Butterflies are stupid.
He taps on the book. �
�You were on the swim team?”
“Yeah. All four years.”
He starts flipping the pages again. “Is there a picture of you in your swim gear?” His hand stops mid-movement as he looks from the book and straight ahead. “Wait. This is a little skeezy.” He throws the book over his shoulder and picks up the one from senior year. “You were eighteen at some point in this one, right?”
I try to take it from him but he won’t let go. His finger skims across the page of H’s until he comes across my picture. Then he stops. I watch his face as his eyes narrow and he chews the corner of his lip, just for a moment before he faces me. His throat bobs with his swallow. “Future Mrs. Walters,” he murmurs. It’s neither a statement nor a question and I don’t know how to respond so I don’t. I just keep looking at him. And when his body tenses and his eyes drift shut, I know he’s found it. “You were prom queen?” he whispers.
“Yes.”
“Now I really feel like an asshole.”
“It’s fine.”
He’s silent a moment before tapping the book and saying, “And this Jeremy guy… he’s…”
“My boyfriend,” I whisper.
He drops the yearbook onto the floor and slowly stands up. Facing me, he rubs the back of his neck. “Was your boyfriend? Or is?”
“It’s irrelevant.”
He shakes his head. “How is it—”
“Because he’s dead, Dylan,” I cut in. I ignore the dropping of his jaw when I pick up the yearbook from the floor, along with the others on the bed and place them back in their spot on the shelf. “He died the summer after senior year, the day before we were meant to leave for college together.” I feel the lump rise to my throat, feel my heart drop to my stomach, killing the butterflies that were once so prominent. My eyes fill with tears—tears that I let slide across my cheek and over my jaw. Then I face him, giving him everything I am. Because what’s a little truth amongst the chaos we’ve created? “He’s dead, and that’s why it’s irrelevant.”
He licks his lips—his sad, dry eyes on my wet ones. “I’m sorry,” he says, taking a step forward, and I take a step back because I hate that look in his eyes—the one that warns me of what’s coming next.
So I beat him to it. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay.”
“Okay? Just okay?”
He shrugs and sits back down on the bed, his head lowered. Then, after a long moment of silence, he speaks. “I enlisted because I wanted more out of my life. I followed a girl I loved, who I thought loved me back, all the way to college because it’s what she wanted. I wanted her. And there was no either/or for us. Then things started to fall apart, things she was oblivious to—which I guess is a sign of what our relationship was like. I wasn’t happy. Not happy enough, anyway. I wanted to make a difference, serve a purpose, you know?” He looks up and my legs lead me—as if on their own—until I’m standing in front of him. “I ran away. I ran because I wanted to avoid the truth, and you—you’re doing the opposite. You’re facing it head on. Every day. And if drinking is how you do that, then I can’t tell you it’s wrong, or that you shouldn’t be doing it.” He tugs on my hand until I’m standing between his legs. “I got shot by a kid, Riley. A kid no more than twelve. And now he’s dead because of it. He’ll never go to high school, never dance with a girl he thinks he’s in love with, never follow his heart and learn from the mistakes of doing so.” Then he looks up, his eyes right on mine, and he says something that brings a sense of peace to my once fear-filled chaos. “You got to stand with a boy you love on a night you’ll never forget. You were his queen and he was your king and no one can take that away from you.”
I wipe my eyes, my tears flowing faster and freer than ever.
“But it is relevant. Because is and was is the difference between time standing still, and time moving forward.”
Thirteen
Riley
I can feel his eyes on me. Not that he’s trying to hide it, though I really wish he would. I look up from my blank page and glare at him. “What?”
“Nothing,” he says, sitting on the edge of my bed with his elbows on his knees. Days have passed since I’ve told him about Jeremy and he hasn’t brought it up since. He shifts in his spot. “Do you always drink the same stuff?”
I pick up the bottle sitting next to me and take a sip, cringing slightly when the foul taste of it hits my tongue. “It’s the cheapest stuff they have that’ll give me a buzz,” I tell him.
“A buzz? You’re more than buzzed.”
“Not yet.”
He shrugs. “It’s early.”
I pick up a cushion and threaten to throw it. “You can leave if you plan on judging me some more.”
He laughs and sits down next to me. “Give me some.”
“No.” I hold the bottle to my chest.
“Dependent much?”
I roll the back of my head against the wall and turn to him. “The door’s right there.”
“You’re so cranky when you’re on your lady business.” He starts to get up but I stop him.
“Where are you going?”
“Liquor store.”
“Why?”
“To buy my own shit.”
“Don’t,” I tell him, the plea in my voice evident.
“Don’t what?”
“Drink.”
He chuckles from deep in his throat. “Seriously?”
“It’s not good for you,” I tell him, my gaze dropping as soon as the words leave my mouth and I realize how pathetic I sound.
“That’s a little rich coming from you.”
“I know,” I say through a sigh. “I just don’t want you to drop down to my level.”
“You’re so cute when you’re pouty and needy.”
“Shut up.” I scribble across the page and tilt it so Dylan can’t see.
He’s just kidding, Jeremy.
Then I close the notebook and face him.
“Hi,” he says.
I laugh. “Hi.”
“You’re real pretty, Riley.”
I hide my smile. “Shut up, Dylan.”
He rolls his eyes and scoots closer to me, his arm against mine. “Tell me something, Riley.”
“Like what?”
He runs his hand over the top of his head, his short hair shifting beneath his touch. “Anything you feel comfortable telling me. Like…”
I hold my breath, waiting for him to continue.
“…Where’s your dad?”
I can totally answer that. “My mom and him split when I was super young. Like, three or something. I don’t really know much about him and I guess he doesn’t care to know much about me.”
“Yeah?” he asks after a moment. “You think maybe your mom has something to do with that?”
“What do you mean?”
“I think I hate your mom.”
I don’t respond.
“I’m sorry if that’s out of line but what kind of mom supplies their underage daughter with enough alcohol to keep her in a permanent stage of semi-awareness and thinks it’s okay.”
“It is out of line,” I tell him. “There’s a lot of shit you don’t know about, Dylan, and she does it because she cares. Because she doesn’t know any other way to show me that and because it’s what we both want so—”
“If you want to believe that bullshit lie she feeds you then you’re weaker than I thought.”
“Fuck you.” He’s so fucking good at pushing the wrong buttons. “And where the hell’s your mom, by the way?”
“Dead.”
I drop my head in my hands. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he tells me, rubbing my back. “She died during childbirth… with me, obviously.”
“Jesus Christ, Dylan…”
He laughs, which is such a strange reaction given the conversation. “We suck at talking.”
“I know.”
“Want to make out instead?”
I pause a beat, either
from shock or… no. Just shock. “No.”
“It was a joke, Riley. Relax.”
Relieved, I try to come up with something lighter to talk about. “I was looking through the yearbooks after you left last night.”
“Yeah?” He shifts next to me until he’s lying across the floor, his head on my lap. “Find anything interesting?” He looks up, the blue of his eyes brighter than I’d seen them.
I lose my breath, along with my train of thought. And as much as I’d like to blame it on the alcohol, my mind is clear when my hand reaches out, my fingers brushing his hair. “Kind of.”
His eyes drift shut, his hands resting on his stomach as he releases one long, drawn out breath. “What did you find?” he murmurs.
I pull my hand away.
“Don’t stop,” he pleads, his eyes open and on mine. “It’s nice. You touching me like that.”
I continue to stroke his hair, even though it’s wrong, and I glance at the notebook quickly before pushing down the guilt. I grab the bottle and drink as if my life depended on it. “You and Jeremy,” I begin, my stomach turning at the mention of their names together. I fight through it, just enough to say, “You guys played a few games together.”
“Really?” he tilts his head up, as if getting more comfortable, but his eyes don’t leave mine. “Walters, right?”
I nod.
“I remember him. He was a good ball player. He filled in for varsity a few times. Holy shit…” He rolls his head to the side and faces my stomach, grabbing my hand to make sure I don’t stop stroking his hair. “I totally remember him now. He was a good kid.”
“Don’t do that,” I mumble.
“Do what?” he asks, his eyebrows raised.
“It’s just annoying for me to have to listen to people who didn’t really know him talk as if they do and drop lines like, ‘he was a good kid’ and ‘he was gone way too soon’ and ‘he was really going places.’”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“I know,” I cut in. “It’s nothing personal against you. It’s just annoying, you know? Like you didn’t know him, would’ve probably never thought about him again if it weren’t for me and now you remember him but your memories are generic and mine aren’t and it’s just frustrating. That’s all.”