“Nice try,” I smirked at him, trying to do my best to open up to him a bit. “I’ve thought many things about you. I thought you were a figment of my imagination, I thought you were a ghost, and I thought you were a guardian angel, but alien never really crossed my mind.”
Dryly, he chuckled, “If you’re standoffish, it’s okay. I used to be there before the band happened, too. I had more friends than just them when I was in high school, but people sure knew how to be dicks from time to time. But then, the band took off, and all of a sudden, those same people wanted to know me. So if your hesitation comes from terrible high school students, I get it. I graduated four years ago, but I still remember how god-awful that was sometimes.”
I nodded, sympathizing on a deep level. “Yeah, they’re pretty horrible, but that’s kind of not all. There are layers to all of this.”
When he looked at me with an earnest expression, I felt my ironclad exterior begin to give way. “I get it if you don’t want to talk about whatever’s going on, but just know that I’m down to listen if you’re ever down to talk.”
Danny was something other than what I was used to. He was a complete outsider with no ulterior motives, no reason to care other than the fact that he just did. He seemed to understand what it meant to feel like me, on some level, and the feeling of release that would come from telling someone all my gory details was awfully tempting.
After a minute of deliberation with myself, I finally caved into him and poured all of it out, spilling my guts indiscriminately for the second time that day. It only took me a few minutes to tell him everything – about the bullies, the goings-on at home, Mum’s sickness, Roger being drunk and awful all the time, their ceaseless fighting, and the loneliness that stemmed from it all. Without pause, I brought him to the depths of my soul and back again.
Once he was certain that I was finished, Danny allowed me a moment to catch my breath as he let everything sink in, breaking it apart and digesting it in pieces. The air entered my body in shaky waves, which was the only reason I realized I had begun crying at some point in my lengthy, emotional monologue.
He scooted toward me, leaned in, and wrapped his arms around me as tightly and carefully as he could without making our skin touch, and he held me there for a long time, letting me cry into his t-shirt. Despite how fragile I was in that moment, his ability to stomach it all only served to make me feel closer to him, to make me feel like maybe he was right, and that we’d been paired up for a reason.
I pulled away from him after a minute or two so I could look him in the eye. The sobs had subsided, and although I was still a bit misty-eyed, I managed to smile at him, laughing, somehow, at all of the things that I felt. It took him a second, but he finally grinned back at me.
Again, he fumbled about on the ground, and came back with yet another dead leaf. “I hear they make excellent tissues,” he said softly, extending it to me. Laughing, I took it graciously, blowing my nose and discarding it like he had. “I don’t mean to cut all of this short, but I have to get ready for the show now. I promise I’ll come back again, though; it seems like you might need me here. Stay strong for me until then, Ashley.”
With a final comforting smile, he pressed his lips to my forehead, and when I blinked again, he was gone. And although he himself may have left, the smile his comfort and understanding had given me in the aftermath of my mini-breakdown still, thankfully enough, remained.
Chapter Seven
After waking up from my meltdown, I realized that the sky had begun to darken, and figured I should probably get out of the meadow before too long. As little as I wanted to go home to deal with parents who would surely have something to say about my leaving school, assuming Protoccelli followed procedure and called them to tell them what happened, I had to face the music at some point. Once I got back to the street and had light to guide me, I strolled through my neighborhood with a fair amount of malaise, and eventually made it back to my house, pacing up the driveway with muscles that screamed for me to stop. Thankfully enough, Roger’s car wasn’t in the yard. I considered it the first thing to go my way all day.
The moment I walked in, Mum shot off the sofa and draped herself on me in as tight a hug as she could muster. She was typically pretty spent in the rest periods of her chemo cycles, but she found it in herself to dart over to grab me. “Love,” she cooed to me with a smile like she did when I was little, “I worried my head off about you!”
I hugged her back carefully, always somehow terrified of breaking her fragile body. “You act like I’ve been gone for years.”
She grabbed my hand and led me back to the couch, pausing her reality show on a less-than-flattering shot of the star for sake of opening the door for conversation. “Time is nothin’ when your baby’s come up missin’. Someday, when you have little ones of your own, you’ll understand a Mum’s panic.”
Rolling my eyes, I eased back into the cushions, dragging my feet underneath myself, eager to unwind. In order to distract her from what would surely be some sort of punishment or lecture about this afternoon, I said, “Well, I’d need a boyfriend to make that happen, and that’s something I lack, so I think my own brood is a ways off.”
“I wouldn’t worry about bein’ single for much longer, ma’am,” she stated as she stared directly into my eyes, smirking like she knew something I didn’t. I had only told her a little bit about Danny before to explain away my painting, but I doubted she’d be casting us as Mister and Missus anytime too soon. “Why didn’t you tell me about your date tomorrow night?”
My mouth fell open a bit, and I pulled my head back in surprise, probably giving myself a million extra chins in the process. “What?”
“That double-date with Eloise!” She shook her head with a smile, a few strands of copper hair dislodging from her ponytail and falling into her withering face. “I know I’m not as present as normal Mums are, but Love, if a girl can’t talk to her Mum, then who can she talk to? Eloise told me about it when she rang earlier lookin’ for you when you left school and didn’t answer your phone – which, by the way, I’d like to talk about after you tell me all about this lucky bloke.”
My face was expressionless, as was my tone when I blandly stated, “I honestly have no idea what you’re on about.”
She grumbled to herself, cursing under her breath in the name of my confusion that she seemed to be mistaking for me playing dumb with her. “Stop bein’ cheeky, Love,” Mum nudged me playfully on the arm. “Eloise wanted to make sure you got back in time for your date at suppertime with her, that boy she dates, and one of his mates from school. She said you’re excited about it.”
If at all physically possible, my face fell even more when I put together a few hints I hadn’t realized I should have been picking up on. Walking to school that morning, Ellie had told me she was taking me to dinner the following night at a Japanese restaurant in the next town over for girls’ night, because, “I’ve been so disconnected in the past few weeks, and she just wanted to make sure I’m okay”. Apparently, her idea of rectifying my seemingly pathetic situation was to trick me into a blind date, and knowing her, she wouldn’t have told me anything about it until a random slime-ball that Josh hung out with showed up at The Arigato in search of my company.
“Are you kidding me right now?” I huffed at Mum, like she knew the answers.
At long last, she seemed to realize that I wasn’t just trying to keep her out of my business, and that I genuinely had no clue what was happening. “Is this news to you, Love?” I nodded firmly. “Oh, dear. Well, I’m sorry I’ve spoiled the surprise. Would you like a moment to talk things over with Eloise?”
“I’d love that,” I replied, anger already seeping into my voice as I rose from the sofa and marched up to my bedroom. To the sound of Mum calling up to remind me to come back and tell her why I left school, I grabbed my cell phone from the dresser where I’d left it that morning. Bringing it to school with me only gave me one more thing to mind during the day, and I
couldn’t be bothered with it. Selecting Ellie’s name from my admittedly sparse contact list, I flubbed down onto my bed and tucked myself into the disheveled blanket.
Finally, on the fourth ring, my scheming best friend picked up. “Well, it’s good to see you’re not dead. Want to explain what the hell your disappearing act today was all about? Everyone is talking about some sort of psychotic break you had in Art.”
I tried to keep myself calm, though my rage was threatening to breech my surface. “I’ll tell you about it, if you promise to tell me something when I’m done.”
“You know I’m an open book; I can’t hide anything from you.” Call me cynical, but I smirked at her flippant lie.
Getting comfortable in my bed, I recounted the whole debacle to Ellie, who listened to me ramble about it without a peep.
“That’s intense,” she muttered when I was done, not the least bit sympathetic. “I mean, I’ve just sort of been rolling with this whole Danny Chatman thing for the past few days, because it’ll be over soon enough. Last year, you were ‘so in love’ with the guy from The Right Wrongs, and the year before that, it was Jake What’s-His-Face from Easy Way Out, and others before them, too. I figured I’d ride out the wave and let you have fun until you got bored and found something else to obsess over. It’s precious, but it’s also sort of weird.” She chuckled, “Girl, you need an actual boyfriend.”
I grimaced, almost snarling into my phone, “And is this why you just sort of forgot to mention that girl’s night tomorrow is actually a double-date, or was that for another reason that I’m missing out on?”
Like something was funny, Ellie laughed again. “Aw, man, Michelle told you about it? I wanted it to be a surprise.”
“Yeah, she told me,” I snipped at her, no longer holding anything back, “and I’m glad she did, because why would you do this to me, Ellie? You know that people make me uncomfortable, so the best thing you could think of to do about it is to surprise me with a random date with a total stranger?”
After a second, she sheepishly offered, “Well, he isn’t a total stranger. Before you say no to going, just know that Joey Attollicci has heard wonderful things about you all week, and he is very excited to meet you.”
My stomach lurched, and all at once, I was nauseous. “Wait, Julian’s son, the super popular kid?” Julian Attollicci, the owner of The Bistro, had a son that was in our grade over in Corsica with Josh. Since plenty of people on this side of the city of Rhodes were familiar with his family through The Bistro, Joey’s network branched throughout the suburbs around ours, and you’d be hard pressed to find someone our age who didn’t know him. I’d seen him around the Bistro working as a waiter sometimes, and he seemed nice enough, but I’d never actually spoken to him. Still, people sung his praises, like he was the creator of the universe and not just a kid with the money and social reach to make a ludicrous amount of friends.
“Ding-ding-ding,” Ellie chirped excitedly. “Gold star for being smart!”
“How the hell do you know him whatsoever, let alone well enough to convince him to go out on a random date with your reclusive, utterly disinterested friend?”
“I don’t,” she confessed, “but Josh does. They’re not best friends, per say, but they talk. Yesterday, they got partnered up in class, and Joey was telling Josh how he gave away a shift on Saturday night to someone who really needed some more hours and now he had nothing to do. Josh and I were texting at the time, and when he told me Joey wasn’t busy, it was like my brilliant plan just fell into place from there.”
I took a moment to mull over my frustration with her, trying to find the nicest possible way to get myself out of having to go. “It’s really sweet of you to set me up, but I’m afraid I can’t make it.”
She sounded genuinely surprised, somehow, by my decision. “But I already put all the pieces in place for this to go well tomorrow night, though, and besides, what about Joey? You can’t just leave him hanging like that; it’s rude. The few times I’ve talked to him, he’s been super sweet. Can’t you just pretend that you’re even remotely interested in giving this a chance, for his sake, for yours, for mine?”
“No,” I replied bluntly, my tone stern.
“You cannot be serious right now. Ashley, you’re my best friend and I love you, and that’s why I think you need to hear this.” She stopped for a second to take a deep breath, dramatically pausing our conversation. “I’m worried about you, like, genuinely. I went along with this Danny stuff because it was kind of interesting, but look at yourself lately – a guy in a dream you had is nice to you, and all of a sudden, you’re painting portraits of him and talking about how he’s ‘what you need to feel okay’ or whatever silliness you spouted off at your class today? This can’t be healthy for you, and I’m going to sound really cruel and I’m sorry for that, but you’re going bananas over something that you can’t confirm the legitimacy of. The only way to be sure this is real would be to ask him while he’s very clearly awake, but you can’t do that because he’s a rock star from another state and you have never met him in real life. For all you know, this could just be some big, drawn-out fantasy that’s all in your head. You just don’t know, Ashley; you can’t know.”
“I do know!” I raised my voice to her, officially enraged enough to shoot up in bed, the covers gathering limply around my waist. “I can’t believe you right now. You’re supposed to be my best friend.”
“Yeah, okay, and I am, and that’s why I feel like I have to be the one to tell you this, before you go back to school on Monday and everyone thinks you’re insane. You have to stop this, Ashley. It was cute and fun and lighthearted when it began, but you’re getting really carried away with this, really quickly. I don’t want to see you bank everything on this and get your heart broken over an obsession.”
I snorted in protest. “Excuse me?”
However, she took another second to breathe, and her tone had calmed sufficiently when she came back. “Look, I just want you to know my concerns, to hear them from someone who loves you and will put it relatively gently, instead of it coming from the assholes at school who will not hesitate to be as mean to you as is humanly possible. I don’t want to see you set yourself up for disappointment by just assuming this is all for real. I mean, girls around the country probably dream of Danny Chatman, being in love with him and being really romantic with him. Come on – he’s hot.”
Following her example, I gave myself a moment to count to ten, breathe, and calm down. Ellie was my only true friend, and I knew in a clear enough mindset that I didn’t want to lose her to this, to anything. “Okay. I’m sorry I got mad,” I told her, lying down again and snuggling back into my covers. “I just want to believe in this. There’s nothing wrong with you, but it’s just nice to have someone else around who gives a damn about me. I want to believe it’s true.”
“I know that,” she said, trying to be gentle with me. “That’s why I wanted tomorrow night to work out. In all of the stories I’ve ever heard about Joey, never once has someone said anything about him being a dick. I know he’s like, crazy popular, but I figured he was a safe bet because he seems like a genuinely nice person, and I thought it would be fun to get you out of your head for a while. And if it goes poorly, just thank him for a good time, and go home and go to bed, and Danny will be waiting for you or however that whole thing works.” She giggled into the receiver. “Besides, how often when we were little did we dream of being those cool girls we saw on TV with their cute boyfriends who go on double-dates all the time?”
I smirked at the memory from our childhood, of the two of us gabbing about trivial stuff like this all the time. The girls we saw on television shows were so concerned with their friends and their hair and their makeup and their boyfriends, and as kids, it all seemed so ideal. The years felt like they dragged by between then and now, but looking back, it felt like no time at all.
I never really got the chance to partake in any of that. Later on in middle school, when all th
ose things began to become important, was when Mum found out she was sick, and my parents began fighting all the time. She beat the cancer that time around, but the damage it’d done to me socially was already taking its toll, and by the time things began to go back to normal around my house before she got sick again during my junior year of high school, I’d abandoned all hope of ever getting to experience those things. By living largely by myself, though, I wasn’t really living much at all.
“If my kindergarten self could see me right now, she would not be impressed,” I confessed to Ellie, realizing that she had a valid point. “She would hate everything she was damned to become, and I can’t say I blame her, because I hate it even as I live it. I never wanted any of this for myself.”
“Dude, little you would be so stoked right now, though. If I went back in time and told that little girl that you were offered a date with the coolest guy on this side of Rhodes, she might literally pee herself.” With a chuckle and a calm, wise tone of voice, Ellie brought her little spiel to a close, saying, “Everyone has doubts about people when they first start out with someone, romantic or not. It happens with friends, it happens with dates, and it happens with just about everybody every single time they bring someone new into their life. It isn’t like I’m asking you to marry the guy, Ashley; it’s just dinner.”
Considering the possibility, I asked, “And if I don’t like him?”
“Then you just don’t see him again. That, my dear, is how dating in the real world works – if you two don’t hit it off, you thank each other for the night, and you go your separate ways. But, if you two do work out, think of how much fun you could have. Hell, I’d do it just for all the free food you’d get from his parents.”
I chuckled, feeling better about everything now that she had talked me off my ledge, had given me outs in case it went poorly, and had also given me things to look forward to on the off chance that it didn’t. She had a point, though – just because I agreed to have dinner with him didn’t mean I was signing my life away. I said proudly into my cell phone, eager to throw caution to the wind for one night and just be carefree for once, “Fine, I’ll go.”
Lucid Page 5