by Teresa Hill
“I’m fine,” I say, as easily as I can, then head for the door.
She follows me, grabs my arm when we get into the hallway. The touch radiates up my arm and settles deep inside my chest, a little buzz of happiness, even now, when I have so many other things running through my head.
She doesn’t think a thing of touching me this way. After all, she’s my best friend, and I like to think I’m hers. It isn’t what I want, but it’s something, and I’ll take it. I hate the idea of seeing her hurting the way I know she will be because of this news. She shares my opinion of Luc, but she’ll be shocked and heartbroken because this is bound to hurt Grace.
“Peter? What is it? What’s wrong?”
A couple of guys walk down the hall toward us, loud and laughing. I let them be my excuse for saying, “Come outside with me, okay?”
“I will but you’re scaring me.”
“Sorry. Just … come on. The door’s right there.”
The second we clear the front doors, she turns to me and shoots me a look that says my time is up. She isn’t waiting any longer. I look down the walkway to the main drive in front of the school, where Zach stands in front of his classic BMW, still on the phone. Nodding toward him, I tell her, “Zach’s here.”
Her head swings from him back to me. I hear her suck in a breath, watch fear move through her, and I hate that. I need to do something to help.
I want my hands on her. I always want that, and I try to be careful not to let myself touch her too often, because it makes me want more, always more. But this is different. She needs me now. Realizing I still have her coat, and it’s cold out here, I put her backpack down on the sidewalk and hold the coat out for her to put on.
She’s getting more scared by the minute. I end up practically putting her coat on her the way I would have done for Lizzie, Dana’s baby sister, who’s almost three. I put her arm into one sleeve and pull the sleeve up until her hand comes through the end of it, then do the same with the other arm. As I stand in front of her and pull the ends of the coat together, her eyes turn glassy with tears.
“Mom and Dad?” she whispers finally.
“No. They’re fine. Tricia, Jamie and Lizzie are fine. Your grandparents are fine. Julie’s fine. Grace is fine.”
“Promise?” she asks urgently.
“I promise.” But it isn’t enough. I can see that she’s running through the names of everyone she loves, trying to figure out who I left out. I take her arm again and say, “Come on. Zach’s gonna drive us home.”
We get maybe ten feet from where he’s standing, and she runs the last few steps right into his arms. He gives her a big hug, and she’s asking again for someone to tell her what’s happened.
Zach opens the back door to his car for her and tells her to get in. Then he hands her his phone and says, “It’s your mom. She’ll tell you.”
He goes around to get in the driver’s seat. I start to get in the back seat with Dana, but, it seems to scare her even more, and I can tell I’m screwing this all up. I get in the back seat anyway. She’s already scared, and I want to be beside her.
I hear her whisper, “Mom?” and then she just listens.
As I watch, her eyes get big and round, her expression crumbling. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her scared for real. As sweet as she is, she’s a tough girl, raised to be strong and responsible and able to handle anything. She’ll handle this, I tell myself.
Zach starts the car, and she hasn’t put her seatbelt on, so I lean in close to her side, reach across her and grab her seatbelt, fasten it for her while she listens to her mom. She asks about Grace and what she can do to help, finally saying, “Yes, I can do it.”
Take care of her brother and sisters, she means.
Of course, she can. Like I said, she’s a tough girl.
Quietly, she tells her mom goodbye and disconnects the call. I take the phone from her and hand it to Zach, then grab her hand and hold onto it. She squeezes my hand, looking at me with watery eyes and a bottom lip that trembles.
“I’ll stay at your house with you, help you with your brother and sisters,” I tell her.
“Thank you.”
She wants to know everything, but Zach says there isn’t much to it. Luc was driving home from the college where he taught, ran off the side of the road, and he was gone.
Just like that.
Like I said, life can turn ugly in an instant. I was crazy to let myself ever forget that.
* * *
Chapter Two
Peter
In all the years I’ve known Dana, I don’t think anyone in her family has died, so this is hard. Plus, she adores Grace, idolizes her even for the fancy arts education Grace has, including years spent overseas, where she met Luc. Dana was only thirteen when Luc followed Grace home from France and convinced her to marry him.
Dana thought it was like something out of a fairytale, and – no shit – Luc’s ancestors had been some kind of French royalty way back there somewhere. It was the girliest I’ve ever seen her sound and act, and I gave her all kinds of hell about it. I told her she’d read Romeo and Juliet one too many times, and that yes, seeing every movie version of it ever made -- the Leonardo DiCaprio/Claire Danes version at least four times -- was excessive.
But she got to be a bridesmaid, got to wear this beautiful, pale-yellow dress with straps that wrapped around the top of her arms and left all the pretty, soft skin of her shoulders bare. Someone piled her hair on top of her head with some sparkly pin things, gave her high heels and painted her fingernails and toenails.
Suddenly, she looked so grown-up, and I thought, Holy shit, this girl is going to be absolutely beautiful at eighteen or twenty-one or twenty-five. Probably her whole life. All I could do was hope to be around then to see it.
We danced that awkward-as-hell, middle-school box step at the reception, and I never wanted to let her go. She looked around at all the glittery lights in the trees, big bunches of flowers everywhere and expensive champagne in fancy glasses I was scared I was going to break. And she kept talking about how that’s what love is supposed to be like, sparkly and glittery and forever.
I kept thinking, Fucking French royalty chasing Grace across two continents to marry her like this? That’s what Dana thinks falling for someone should be like. How does a guy like me compete with that?
The answer: He doesn’t.
But her first serious girl fantasies about falling in love and all that happily-ever-after crap are so tied up in Grace and that marriage. That’s taking a serious blow today. That and how bad I know she feels for Grace, how scared I’m sure she is to see up close and personal how you can lose somebody so quickly, with no warning. It’s really messing with her head.
Stupid, romantic notions about love and forever look like hell today, much more like what I’ve always thought love would be like, if it even exists. But I hate that Grace is finding that out, and Dana.
Once we get inside, I do everything I can to make it easier for her.
Her youngest sister, Lizzie, will be three next month and is cute as could be. She comes running for me as I walk in the door and takes a flying leap into my arms. I call out, “Lizzie-Bear!” and pick her up and pretend I’m going to eat her up, complete with chomping sound effects, and she shrieks with happiness.
Jamie, who’s eight and never seems to slow down, comes at me next, a big grin on his face. He claims he suffers unfairly in a house with three sisters and no brothers, so he’s always happy to have some guy-time. I give him a fist-bump and suggest a game of hide-and-seek upstairs, me, him and Lizzie. It’s a crazy game the way Lizzie plays, but I know if I can wear the two of them out, they might fall asleep easily, maybe even early, which will make things easier tonight.
Plus Tricia, who’s eleven, looks suspicious that something is wrong, and if Zach or Dana are going to tell her, I want to get the little kids out of the room.
Upstairs, Lizzie and Jamie are under beds and in closets. Lizzie’s so little
she can hide almost anywhere, but she can’t stay still enough or quiet enough to not get caught. Jamie and I spend most of our time chasing her back to the safety of our designated base, and to give her half a chance, she’s allowed to run but Jamie and I have to crawl. We usually end up wrestling on the floor once we catch her. Forty minutes of that, and even I’m tired.
Tricia comes upstairs to tell us the pizza Zach ordered for us has arrived. I put Lizzie on my shoulders and carry her downstairs. She loves that. At the table, I see that Tricia’s eyes are red, and I know she knows what happened, too. So dinner is mostly the three of us trying to pretend nothing is wrong while we mostly stare at the food on our plates and the little ones eat.
Not long after dinner, Lizzie’s fading fast, and she wants me to put her to bed. I help her into her jammies and brush her teeth, read her three stories, and she’s out cold, looking so cute in her tiny big-girl bed, as she calls it.
Jamie stays downstairs to do some homework at first, then comes upstairs and wants to talk basketball, about my team and the end-of-the-season tournament coming up. We’re good, but not that good. I hope we can win two tournament games, but don’t hold out much chance for anything more. I’m not bad, but I’m not good enough to play high school ball anywhere except at a small school where there isn’t much competition for a spot on the team. Same with football. I play mostly because Zach and Julie wanted me to, as a way to maybe keep me out of trouble and get a good workout. Plus, I can get physical with people, plow into them, take them down, without making Zach and Julie mad. It’s not a bad deal.
After I turn out the light in Jamie’s room and close the door nearly all the way, I pass Tricia’s room and hear her and Dana talking. I leave them to it, head downstairs and sit on the couch in the family room, knowing I have reading to do for my chem class, but I don’t think I’ll be able to remember anything I read right now. We all helped clean up after dinner. Nothing left to do there.
So I think about Grace, who’s nice to everyone and seemed to have her life figured out, everything going along just fine. Then today, in the blink of an eye, it was all torn apart.
I lived with that feeling for years, that disaster could be around the next corner, could come at you in the next minute. The feeling stopped at some point. In the last year? Maybe a little longer? I hadn’t even realized how much I’d come to count on my life going on the way it has been since Zack and Julie took me in.
But the feeling’s back now, and it sucks. It’s a jittery, uneasy buzz of energy deep inside me. It makes it hard to sit still, hard to think, hard to believe good things might happen, too, not just bad things.
Dana finally comes downstairs, and -- ahh, damn -- the look on her face just slays me. Sometimes, just looking at her, hearing her voice, thinking about her, can dig down deep inside of me and grab hold of my heart and squeeze the hell out of it.
Right now, she’s curling her top and bottom lips over her teeth and squeezing them together, like she’s trying to make them stop trembling or to keep herself from making a sound. As she stands there in front of me, she looks so defeated, her shoulders curling forward, eyes watery.
“It’s not fair,” she says finally.
Damned right, it isn’t. Life isn’t fair. I’ve always known that, but I like that it comes as a surprise to her. I like that she has this life with two parents who adore her and take good care of her and probably never yell at each other or their kids, never hit them, never pass out drunk or just don’t come home for a couple of days. I don’t want anything like that to ever touch her life.
“Have you heard anything else from anybody?” she asks.
“No. You?”
“No. Do you think Aunt Grace … I mean, I know she’s not okay. Of course, she’s not okay, but … I keep wondering if there’s anything we could do, anything to say … I don’t think there’s anything anybody can say.”
“Probably not,” I agree.
“Still, I wonder if I should go over there. Lizzie and Jamie are asleep. I looked in on both of them before I came downstairs, and I don’t think Tricia will be back down tonight. Maybe I should go--”
“Dana, your parents are there, your grandparents, Zach and Julie. They’ll take care of her.”
“I know. There just … there should be something someone can do.”
She says it like a person who believes there are answers, somewhere, to any sort of bad thing that happens, and there aren’t. There just aren’t. She wants to do something. She needs to, because that’s who she is. If something’s wrong, she wants to fix it. She thinks she can fix anything.
She’s done so much to fix me, as much as I can be fixed.
She’s gonna cry in a minute. Really let loose, no holding back, and I don’t know what I’ll do then. I’ve never wanted to fix things for anyone the way I want to fix them for her. Fix everything. Make life all smiley faces and Lizzie’s happy shrieks, sunshine and stupid, mushy songs and nothing but absolute joy. That’s what I want to give her.
Can anybody do that for someone else? I don’t know.
I don’t have time to figure it out before her tears start to fall, silently at first, a surprised look on her face, as if she can’t believe she can’t stop them. I take her hand and tug her down to the couch beside me, then put my arm around her and pull her close.
We hug sometimes, quick, little things. Not like this. Not one that lasts any amount of time. I know better, know I can’t let myself do that, but right now ... Damn. Right now, I just have to hold her.
She just turned sixteen, young to be a high school junior. She skipped third grade. She thinks she’s thinks she’s skinny and plain-looking, but she’s not. I don’t know how she can’t see that she’s so pretty, and that guys want her. They really want her. It drives me crazy, listening to guys talk about her and what they’d like to do to her.
We sit on the couch together, her in my arms, me telling myself I’m not going to do anything but hold her. That’s it. But soon, her head’s on my shoulder while she cries her eyes out and hangs onto me like she needs me. I think she really does need me right now, and I wish so much that I could do more.
I press the side of my face to the top of her head and feel her body tremble. I can’t help but think that she’s so soft, and she smells so good, her hair, her skin, everything about her, and she seems so small and slight in my arms. I’ve never been this close to her. It’s like she’s my whole world, like she fills up all the dark, angry, lonely places inside of me, wipes away the fears, the regrets, the pain. Like there’s no room in my head for anything else, just her and how amazing it feels to have her in my arms.
I stroke her silky hair and tell her everything is going to be okay -- an absolute lie, because this is not okay. It isn’t going to be okay. Nothing about this will get better, but I can’t tell her that. I just can’t.
So I hold her and tell her little lies, wishing I could make them come true for her, wishing I could do for her just a fraction of what she’s done for me.
I’m not quite sure how, but eventually, we end up lying on the couch, me on my back and her curled up against my side. At one point, she lifts her head and stares down at me with tear-spiked lashes, and I want to kiss her so bad I can’t stand it. Not some sweet, little first-kiss thing, either. I want to really taste her, to have my tongue in her mouth, the breasts she thinks are way too small pressed against my chest and my hands on her ass, pulling her as close to me as we can get. I want a lot more than that, but a kiss like that will do to start.
I get so caught up in that idea that I forget to try not to let it show in my face, and I swear, I see her pupils get so big, feel a hitch in her breath and see a pretty flush on her cheeks. For a second that feels like an eternity, I think I can do it. I can have that moment with her, that crazy, give-up-every-secret-I-have-about-her kiss.
It would be amazing, mind-blowing, even. I know, because I’ve been fantasizing about this girl forever. My whole life, it seems, it’s always
been her. Since I knew what it was to fantasize about a girl, it’s been her. Just her.
And yeah, I know that’s crazy. If I ever try to tell people, they probably won’t believe me, because I’m only seventeen. But it’s true.
For me, it’s all her, all the time. She’s everything I want.
In my mind, we’ve been together a million times already, and it’s still not enough.
I want to kiss her for real, more than I want to breathe.
But what next?
What comes after that?
As I see it, we have no place to go from there. If I blow what we have now, things might never be the same between us. It might always be awkward and embarrassing and even more difficult than it is now. I’d still see her. Our lives are too tied together for that not to happen. But seeing her could be even harder than it is now.
And who am I kidding? Me and her?
I’m dreaming. I must be.
I look into her eyes, and the moment is gone. She looks confused, maybe a little embarrassed, and she starts to pull away from me, but I don’t let her. I can’t. At least I can hold her for a while. She needs me tonight. I want to always be here for her when she needs me.
“Go to sleep, Dana,” I say, my hand in her hair as I push her face back down to that hollow between my shoulder and my jaw. After a while, I think she’s sleep. I pull an afghan off the back of the couch and cover as much of her as I can reach. I don’t want her to get cold.
I feel like a dick, but I can’t help thinking about how good this feels, to have her this close and to be able to hold her this way. With every exhale, her warm breath skims across my neck. One of her hands is pressed flat against my chest, the softness of her breasts is against my side, her legs are wrapped around one of mine. Her body is warm and boneless, draped against me, and I’m trying hard not to think about why this has happened -- how upset everyone in her whole family is -- so I can just lie here thinking, Holy shit, I get to hold her!