I literally had his heart in the palm of my hand, and it was pounding hard. My thumb slid up to the base of his throat and caressed the hollow spot there. I hardly knew what I was doing. It was as if my body had rebelled against my brain, and my brain wasn’t putting up much of a fight.
“Len,” I whispered as his lips brushed my jaw. “I . . .”
He inhaled my unspoken words with a kiss so soft and so warm, it made me want to fly. My whole body sighed into his.
When we pulled apart moments later, he smiled at first, his mouth pink from my lip gloss. Then his eyes flickered past me to the party now in full swing, and his body tensed. His hands dropped away from me.
I turned and saw James standing in front of our house, searching the crowd. He was wearing his apron from Bensen’s grocery. I took a step farther into the darkness, but Lennie pushed me back. “Don’t jerk the guy around,” he said. “He doesn’t deserve it any more than I do.”
“But . . .”
“Your prince awaits,” he said as he slipped behind the hedge and disappeared.
FORTY-SIX
I straightened my costume and walked into the midst of the party—friends and strangers dancing and laughing all around. James didn’t notice me until I was standing right in front of him.
“Hey, Ivy.” He took in my costume, his eyes widening. “Wow. Those wings. You’re . . . Juliet, aren’t you? From my drawing.”
I looked back over my own shoulder to the shape of my wings. I hadn’t even thought of it when I’d sketched them for Carla, but they were just like the ones James had drawn. He’d snuck into my subconscious somehow, which made me wonder if a part of me still wanted to be his Juliet. “I . . . uh . . . something like that,” I mumbled.
“And I almost dressed as Romeo,” he said. “That would’ve been perfect.”
What little composure I had pulled together after kissing Lennie was starting to unravel. “We should talk,” I said, pointing toward the playground, away from the noise of the party.
“Lead the way, fair maiden,” said James, bowing like a Shakespearean actor. He was doing everything that had charmed me before, but all I felt now was confusion and hurt bubbling up in my chest. After disappearing without a word, he thought he could just come back and things would be the same? That we could pick up where we’d left off?
James seemed to sense the tension in the air between us, because he didn’t say anything more until we reached the playground. He stood next to the monkey bars while I sat on one of the swings, careful not to knock my wings off.
“I don’t know where to start,” he said.
“Well, your aunt kind of filled me in.”
“I heard.” He looked at his feet, kicking at the dirt around the ladder.
I had imagined the moment of James’s return a hundred times with a hundred different scripts. And none of them started out with us shuffling awkwardly around my neighborhood, mumbling at each other.
It probably didn’t help that Lennie was in my head, the tingle of his kiss still on my lips.
“You got my invitation,” I started.
He smiled. “All twelve of them.”
“Sorry about that. Your aunt said they might not get through.”
“They didn’t,” he said. “Until my mom got your letter.”
I had poured my heart out in that letter, told her how much I liked her son. How he’d taken me to the cemetery that day. How sorry I was . . .
“She showed it to you?”
He nodded. “And we found the other letters. Dad’s assistant had been sorting my mail.” He made air quotes around “sorting” with his fingers.
“Was he reading them?” I tried to remember if I’d written anything I should be embarrassed about.
“No,” he said. “But my mom was pissed. And they had a big fight. Mom convinced Dad to let me come back if I want. Make my own decisions. I’m eighteen now, so . . .”
“You’re coming back?” I shouldn’t have been surprised by the news; it was exactly what I’d been hoping for all this time. But it still caught me off guard. I wasn’t ready.
James shoved his hands in his pockets, teetering backward on his heels. “Do you want me to? Come back?”
I couldn’t believe the answer to that question might be no. But open mic night had changed everything. I didn’t answer, only scuffed my feet beneath the swing.
“When I heard from Reesa,” he continued, “I assumed . . .”
My head snapped up. “You heard from Reesa?”
“She sent me a message through Mrs. Lanahan. To make sure I saw the video of your performance.”
“Oh. So you saw it.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “You didn’t want me to?”
“No, I did. I wanted you to be there. You sent me the flyer and then—”
“What flyer?” he said.
“The flyer about open mic night? ‘Share your talent’?” I motioned circling the words with a pen. “The handwriting on the envelope was just like yours, and . . . I thought . . .”
He shook his head. “It wasn’t me,” he said. “I mean, I knew open mic was that night, and I thought you might do it. I hoped you would. Sing to the tombstones and everything.” He was pacing the grass in front of the swings now. “I really wish I could’ve been there.”
“Why weren’t you?” I asked quietly.
He shrugged. “My dad made me go to some charity thing with him. He funded this women’s shelter—it’s . . . Anyway, I couldn’t get out of it. I’m sorry.”
I sat there in numb silence for a minute. “So Reesa told you about the video?”
“She must’ve run home and posted it right after your performance.”
I stopped the swing from swaying. Reesa took the video? My heart raced. Reesa didn’t hate me. She didn’t hate me! I stood up, my wings snagging the chains of the swing. I wanted to run to the house and call her. I wanted to tell Lennie!
“Reesa said you wrote that song for me,” James was saying.
I realized in that moment that the song really wasn’t his anymore. Or maybe I knew it even before I sang it. Because Lennie was the one I wanted to run to with my happy news. It was a gut reaction, nothing I could control even if I wanted to.
I walked over to James. “I did write the song for you,” I said. “But . . . everything’s changed.”
His pale eyes searched mine and I wondered what he’d find there. I wasn’t sure myself. “Changed . . . how?
“I . . . I’m just different now. These last couple of weeks have been . . . eye-opening.”
“So you didn’t mean what you said in your letters?” he said. “Were you messing with me?”
“No. I meant every word. I liked you so much. I still do.”
He took my hands in his. “So, be with me. I’m here now. It’ll be just like it was before. I’ll move in with Aunt Ida again. . . .”
I shook my head. “You can’t. That’s not who you are.” I tapped the JIM embroidered on his apron. “Not you.”
“Fine, so I’ll get a different job.” He tore off the apron and threw it to the ground. He wore jeans and a dark shirt, the kind that looked casual and effortless but undoubtedly cost hundreds of dollars. “Would you rather I work at the Save-a-Cent with your friend Larry?”
“Lennie,” I said. “His name is Lennie.”
“Right.” He paused and looked at me. “And he’s not your friend.”
“He’s . . .” My face grew hot. “Actually, he’s . . .”
James’s eyebrows shot up. “Hold on. Lennie? He’s the reason your feelings have changed?”
I lowered my gaze and nodded.
“I thought you said he was a drug dealer.”
“I was wrong about that. About a lot of things.”
James stepped close and looked at me with his pale-blue eyes. Then he leaned in and kissed me softly. Just once.
“Were you wrong about that?” His smile was hopeful.
I missed that smile.
&nbs
p; “I wasn’t wrong about you,” I said. “I like you so much. It’s just . . . this is all make-believe for you, James. It’s not real.”
“My feelings are real.” His voice broke. “You’re more real to me than any girl I’ve ever known.”
“But you’ve been hiding from your real life,” I said. “We both have.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t choose that life any more than you chose this one. So why can’t I pick a different one?”
“Because it’s a lie, James. Pretending to be poor when you’re not? It feels like, I don’t know, an insult to people who don’t have any other choice, who are scraping to get by and would give anything to have what you have.”
“But I don’t want it!” He clawed his fingers through his hair. “My last girlfriend called me ‘twenty-nine’ behind my back. You know why?” His voice was full of anger and hurt.
I shook my head. “No.”
“Because that’s what number my dad is on the Forbes list of the wealthiest Americans.”
“I . . . I didn’t know.”
“Exactly,” he said. “You didn’t know. You didn’t care. I thought you actually liked me for me.”
“I did,” I said. “I do like you for you.”
“But you like him better.” He nodded toward Lennie’s Jeep, parked in front of his house.
“It’s not about liking him better,” I said. “It’s about wanting someone who understands what I’m going through, who isn’t going to disappear the minute I screw up. Because, believe me—I screw up a lot.”
James got very still. “I’m sorry, Ivy. About disappearing. I—”
“You were gone for weeks. Without a word. You listened to Willow and Wynn, but you wouldn’t listen to me.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t want you to know who I was.”
I sighed. It sounded all too familiar. “I just don’t think it’ll work,” I said. “One of us would always be pretending, and I can’t do that anymore.”
He walked over to where he’d thrown his grocery apron and picked it up with a sigh. “I actually liked this job. Being normal . . .” He rolled the apron into a ball. “Walk me to my car?”
I nodded and reached for his hand. As we approached the house, he started swinging our hands between us, like we had that day in the cemetery. The day of Romeo. It reminded me of his Shakespeare book. “Hold on,” I said. “I have something of yours inside.”
I ran in to get it, taking the steps two at a time. I grabbed his Hitchhiker’s Guide, too. He was waiting on the porch when I came down.
“Here,” I said, breathless, handing the books to him. “Your Shakespeare. And your Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I don’t know what happened to The Outsiders.”
James’s eyes opened wide with surprise. He flipped open the cover of the Shakespeare. “I’ve been looking for this everywhere,” he said. “Where did you find it?”
I laughed nervously. “You know where.”
He spotted the note I’d written on the inside and read it aloud. “And what do you read for fun? Did you write that?”
All the air went out of my lungs. I lowered myself to sit on the porch steps. “You didn’t leave that for me, in the little room off the supply closet? The one on the second floor near the girls’ bathroom?”
“Uh . . . no.” He handed the Hitchhikers back to me. “And that one isn’t mine.”
I swallowed. “What about The Outsiders? Dallas Winston?”
He shook his head slowly. “I’ve, uh . . . read it. But . . .”
“You never went into that supply room on the second floor, down from Mr. Eli’s room?”
“Oh!” he said, recognition finally lighting his face. “I did go in there to find paper clips once. Mr. Eli told me there was a box of them on a shelf in there, and . . . is that where I left it?” He smacked his palm to his head. “I’m such an idiot.”
“So you didn’t leave any books for me in there? With notes in them?”
James slowly shook his head.
It all came into focus. Lennie, hanging out at the end of the hallway that day. He must’ve seen me go into the supply room. “That’s where I left the note,” I said, talking as much to myself now as I was to James. “To meet me at the King that Friday. On the shelf.”
“I thought you meant the shelves in the library,” said James. “The periodical shelf.”
I shook my head. Had I been trading notes with Lennie all that time? Which meant the handwriting on the flyer, it was his handwriting. And the girl he was looking for at the King that night—that was me.
“I am sooo stupid,” I said.
He gave a breathy snort. “It seems to be going around.”
I stood and James took my hand again, and when we got to the car I kissed him on the cheek. He slid into the driver’s seat and started the car.
When I lifted my hand to wave good-bye, he rolled down the window. “I knew you’d win it,” he said.
I leaned closer. “Win what?”
“Open mic,” he said. “I knew the judges would love you. Nobody sings like you do.”
I stepped back and he drove off, a secret sort of smile on his face. And as I watched him go, I thought, How did he even know there were judges? Because there never were, normally. It wasn’t meant to be a contest. It was only because of the anonymous donor. . . .
I sank down and sat on the grass. Had my prize money come from James? I didn’t want it to be so. But something told me it had to be. I knew then I’d made the right decision, because I couldn’t be with someone who would always be resisting the urge to pay my way. Or to solve my problems with money. I wanted someone who was there for me—but not like that.
I wanted Lennie.
FORTY-SEVEN
Lennie was precisely where I expected him to be: in his shed, wiping the grease off some parts with a shop rag. His face was washed clean of my lipstick, and he’d changed back into his flannel shirt.
He didn’t look up when I entered.
“Come to say good-bye?” he said.
I walked straight to his little collection of books and tipped the top edge of The Outsiders down. “Not just yet,” I said, snatching the book off the shelf and flipping the cover open.
Lennie spun around in his chair. “What . . . ?”
“‘Greaser or Soc,’ huh?” I read from the exchange we’d written. “You wanted to know if I think Dally is sexy or rude? I should’ve known it was you.”
He scratched his head. “I thought you did.”
“No, you didn’t.”
The party music pulsed on the other side of his shed door, accented by occasional bursts of laughter and conversation.
“At first I did.” Lennie leaned back in his chair. “I thought you were messing with me or maybe liked me but didn’t want anybody to know. So I played along. Until I showed up to meet you at the King that Friday and, yeah . . .”
“I wasn’t playing with you. I thought I was leaving notes for—”
He held up his hand to stop me. “James. I know.”
“Why didn’t you say something?” I paced angrily around his workshop. “Why did you let me keep thinking it was him?”
“Because that’s who you wanted it to be.”
“But if I’d known . . . if you had told me . . .”
“Ivy, I gave you a bike helmet,” he said. “I picked you up off the side of the fucking road. You still acted like I was a leper.”
“I was scared!” I sucked in a shuddery breath. “I didn’t know you!”
He twisted and untwisted the greasy rag he was holding. “You didn’t want to know me.”
Maybe I didn’t at first, but everything had changed. I had changed. Why couldn’t he see that? “I just wish people would tell me the truth for a change.”
He looked up. “Fine. The truth is you never thought I was good enough for you.”
“That’s not true.”
“Come on, Ivy. At least admit that much.”
“It�
�s just . . . we came from two different places and . . .”
“And yours was way better than mine,” he finished. “You never would’ve talked to me if you hadn’t been forced into this situation. And don’t give me this crap about being scared of what your friends would think. It’s what you thought that mattered. And you thought I was the scum of the earth. Not because I was scary or had a tattoo. Because I live here.”
I inhaled a sharp breath, wanting to deny it. But the truth of his words stung me. I stumbled to the door, my wings knocking something off the shelf. It clattered to the floor. Lennie stepped over it, reaching me in a single stride. He leaned his arm against the door so I couldn’t open it.
“Don’t go,” he said.
I pulled at the handle. “Let me out, Lennie. Please.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean it.”
“No. You’re absolutely right. I don’t belong here. I don’t belong anywhere.” I could feel the tears starting and didn’t want Lennie to see me cry again. I grabbed the door handle again, looking down at my hands on it. “Please.”
He paused for a moment, then dropped his arm and I flew out, diving through the sea of costumed bodies bouncing to the music. Thank God Molly had the volume way too loud. Nobody had heard our fight, though a few people turned and watched the crying girl run by, butterfly wings askew.
The back stairs to our apartment were full of people coming and going to the bathroom, so I ran to the front porch. I stumbled up the steps and past a girl in a dog costume. She grabbed my arm and spun me around.
“Oh, my God. Ivy. What’s the matter?” she said.
“Reesa?”
She nodded.
“Reesa!” I threw my arms around her, squeezing her so tight. “I’m so glad you’re here.” I held on to her, sobbing and laughing at the same time.
“Hey, it’s okay,” she said, patting my back as I clung to her. When we finally pulled apart, she lifted one of her fuzzy paws and wiped my face with it. “I leave you alone for a few weeks and look at you. You’re a mess.”
I nodded. “And you’re . . . a dog?”
“Female dog.” She smirked. “A bitch. That’s what I am.”
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