Unmistakable

“You missed a red spot on your cheek,” he says matter-of-factly as he sets the cup on the grass.

  This time, I don’t bother to wipe it away. It’s been a summer of hungers felt and quenched and then forgotten, and I’m still hungry. For more snowballs, for crawfish and red beans and the sweet soulful sounds of jazz piano, for the touch of his lazy fingers running over and into my skin. Just one more time.

  “I feel like I’m about five years old,” I admit, turning to him quickly.

  He stands up and rumples my hair affectionately. “You’ll always be child-like, Quinn. It’s the thing I love most about you.”

  He says love and means like. He is the adult, and I am the child, the one to be soothed with meaningless words. And he is a condescending jackass.

  “I’m not a child,” I snap.

  “You misunderstand,” he says, with a low chuckle. “I said you were child-like, not childish.”

  I hate his pedantic tone, even though it’s tinged with laughter. I hate his lectures on the precision of language. I hate his genius.

  “Same thing.”

  His eyes harden. “It is not the same thing. I did not call you childish, as in mean, petty, or frivolous. I described you as child-like, and I meant that you are filled with wonder, joy, and laughter. It was a compliment.”

  “Thank you for the compliment, then,” I say flatly, feeling anything but grateful.

  “You’re welcome for the compliment, then.”

  I never wanted it to come to this. This day was his gift to me. I can’t spoil it. I force the muscles of my face into a smile, and I twirl in a circle, my arms outstretched. It takes a minute for my anger to simmer into sadness.

  “Dance with me, Holden.”

  “You know I can’t dance,” he says, looking both disgusted and amused. But then again, he always looks amused. It’s a neat little trick, one that I’ve tried and failed to steal for myself.

  “There’s no one around to see you. Unless you count the big, bad swamp bugs,” I tease. “Dance with me. Just one time.”

  “We’re going to get soaked,” he grumbles.

  “We have a lifetime to be dry.”

  His jaw tightens. I misspoke. Lifetimes. Separate ones, as I know very well. I open my mouth to make the correction, but suddenly, his eyes soften and he pulls me into his arms.

  “I’ll break your toes,” he threatens.

  “I’ll get over it,” I say.

  His movements are clumsy and unschooled, and I feel his muscles rebel against my body as I try to coax him into the dance.

  “I warned you.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I whisper.

  I love that he can’t dance. Even a frivolous chink in his armor is better than none at all. I stop moving and wrap my arms around his neck, clinging to him with every ounce of desperation that I feel. Just one time. The heat simmers between our bodies, and I curve myself against him, needing to touch every last bit of his skin.

  Desire, potent and physical and emotional and all-consuming, hits him first. He slides his fingers up and down my arms, sending the droplets of water flying, before bending his head to lay a dozen perfect kisses across my neck and collarbone. His hand curls around my breast, taunting me with smooth, silvery fingers running over my skin.

  I know that he wants me. Here, in the grass, or in the car, or if we can wait, on the kitchen table and the floor and the garden behind our little subleased shotgun in the Bywater.

  I want him, too. I was a virgin when we met, but I don’t need comparisons to know that it will never be as good as it is between the two of us. “Sometimes, it just works between two people,” he told me once. His later confession was more damning, and more true: “We were made to love each other, kiddo. A joke of the universe, you and me. It will never be like this again, for either of us.”

  He had known even then that he would leave me. Yes, I want him, but the cost is too great. Sex is what got me into the mess of loving him. And it sure as hell isn’t going to get me out of it.

  I yank myself from his arms, before it’s too late, but I can’t avoid raising my eyes to his heated amber pools. He’s confused for a moment, until he realizes that I already know and a slash of pain cuts across his features.

  I take a deep breath and steel my nerves. “Just say it, Holden.”

  “I have to go back to California next week,” he says softly.

  I’ve had a week to prepare my response. He expects histrionics, so ranting is out of the question, even if it might make me feel a tiny bit better. I’ve considered all of the other possibilities. Teasing, cajoling, even getting down on my knees to beg…none of which would accomplish anything. If our positions were reversed, I know exactly how he would respond. So, I go with that.

  “I know.”

  Then, because I can’t help myself: “Why?”

  “It’s time to get back to real life, kiddo.” The gentleness in his voice nearly kills me. “I’m going to miss you.”

  The words he doesn’t say (“It’s over, Quinn”) are just as clear as the ones he does. He reaches out to touch me, but I pull back at the last possible second.

  “Berkeley?”

  He nods. “I’ll drop you off in LA before I head to San Francisco.”

  “I’m not coming with you.”

  He nods quickly, in mistaken understanding. “I know you have goodbyes to say. So, take a few days. I don’t need to be back in California until the end of next week.”

  “You misunderstand me. I’m not going back to California.”

  I raise my chin in calm defiance, but I don’t dare to look at him. I want him to rage and bellow, to mourn my loss, but I know, of course, that he will do none of those things. He is unencumbered by sentimentality.

  “What?”

  “I’m not coming with you,” I repeat. “I’m going to stay for a while. I like it here.”

  “You’re going to stay here? Why?”

  I’m in love with him, and I can’t bear to leave the place where I loved him and where I fooled myself into thinking that he loved me. But I don’t say that. I don’t beg him to stay. I don’t throw myself into his arms, and I don’t tell him that I love him, even though he must know. He has to know.

  I am mature. I am grown-up. And suddenly, I am very much alone.

  He’s staring at me expectantly.

  “Because I want to stay. Because I have friends here. Because there’s nothing for me at home,” I mutter.

  “I can’t leave you here by yourself.”

  “Yes, you can. And you will. But right now, we should get out of the rain before we get soaked. We’ll talk about it later.”

  He’ll fight me and he’ll use every trick in the book to get me to come back with him, but my decision has been made. A flurry of emotions flicker across his face, but he doesn’t say a word.

  “Let’s go, Holden.”

  I wait for him to catch up, which is ironic, since he’s always been quicker than me. I didn’t know I had the power to surprise him. I didn’t know anyone had the power to surprise him, actually.

  He brushes a hand across my cheek before setting the car into motion. “Some people were never meant to grow old together,” he says softly. “You’ll forget about me. You’ll find someone who wants to dance in the rain with you.”

  “You’re right, of course.” I whisper. “Thank you, Holden, for bringing me with you this summer. It meant so very much to me.”

  He doesn’t respond. I don’t say anything else, not for a long time, because there’s nothing else to say, except goodbye. It’s over.

  And that’s how it ends. Not with a bang, after all, but with a whisper.

  Holden

  2013

  New Orleans, Louisiana

  A few rockets detonate, the lights dim, and blissfully, the faces of fifteen thousand screaming, gyrating, red lipstick-wearing, scantily-clad teenage girls fade away into the spectacle.

  An ominous voice booms over the loudspeaker. “Are you ready for
some...”

  Football?

  “Domination!”

  The girl to my right lets out an enormous shriek that will leave my ears ringing for days. I shoot her a look to ensure that she is not, in fact, some kind of alien.

  Nope. Just a pint-size screaming machine wearing black patent leather.

  Then, the girl on my left explodes. It's a testament to her vocal cords that even the shrieker on my right looks a little impressed.

  A gray-haired woman two seats over gives me a sympathetic look, shrugs, and points to a piece of neon orange in her ear. Earplugs. I should have thought of that.

  The floodlights sweep over the audience. Glitter shoots from hidden cannons. More yelling. More fist pumps.

  Finally, the lights converge on the stage, creating a brilliant glow that’s aided by thousands of flashing cell phone cameras. The brief lull provides a respite from the screeching, but I have a feeling that it's a temporary and fragile peace, the calm before the tornado hits.

  Wires, carrying a figure twisted in ribbons, descend from the uppermost reaches of the stage. A tall, lean figure uncurls herself from the harness and explodes into the center of the light, strutting boldly to the edge of the stage in a piece of lacy fabric and stiletto boots.

  Quinn, the reigning queen of pop, has arrived.

  Sure enough, the preteens' screams increase in both volume and pitch. I could try to block out the cacophony with my hands, but I no longer care about preserving my hearing, since all of my other senses are under attack.

  From my unenviable seat in the nosebleeds, she should be no more than a distant figure, dwarfed by the roars of the audience, the golden sparks, and the erupting fireballs.

  Per usual, she defies logic.

  Her movements are sensual, punctuated with little bursts of ferocious energy as she uncoils her muscles and starts to move her body to the tempo of the music.

  Her throaty voice reverberates through the arena. “Y’all ready for this? Get on your feet. You can’t dance sitting down.”

  “Dance with me, Holden.”

  I don’t dance, but I do draw a thick breath as the close-up version of her face appears on the enormous screen above our heads. Her strange combination of features, the eyes far too large for her face; full, rich lips turned up in a permanent pout; and endless limbs, haven't changed, although they’ve been painted over and teased and shaped into an appearance befitting a pop star. Thick, brassy curls stick out unnaturally from her head. A sexy Medusa. I know, without a doubt, that the resemblance isn't coincidental. She's always been a fan of Greek mythology, and Medusa was her favorite “misunderstood heroine,” as she once put it.

  The fierce creature prancing on the stage bears no resemblance to the gangly girl in a Reading Rainbow t-shirt and a beat-up pair of Chucks.

  Then again, I knew perfectly well what she would look like. That’s the only reason that I trusted myself enough to come here.

  She hawks make-up and designer clothing on billboards, in magazines, and the occasional commercial. Her choices in male companions, a sampling of Hollywood star-boys and basketball players, ensure that the tabloids’ ongoing love affair will continue into the next millennium.

  There are celebrities who are loved for being “just like us,” for pumping their own gas and taking tumbles at award shows and stuffing their faces at fast food restaurants.

  Quinn is not one of those celebrities.

  What was it that Stella had said to me? “She must have been extraordinary.”

  That she most certainly is.

  But she is not, nor has she ever been, beautiful.

  The music thumps again, and I catch a glimmer of a frown on her face as a new track starts. The people want auto-tune, and that's exactly what they get.

  As the preteens move their bodies in clumsy imitations of her grace, I slip into the shadows. I got exactly what I came for—confirmation that I had made the right decision all of those years ago, even though I’ve never quite forgiven myself for it.

  There was a list of reasons a mile long that I should have gathered her up in my arms and forced her to come back to California with me—she was eighteen, a kid, with no money, no sense of reality, and no way of surviving in the real world. And yet, there was only one that mattered, the only way I would leave her behind, and truly, the only way I could make myself leave her at all—she didn’t need me.

  She told me once that I would never be happy without a damsel in distress. I think she actually meant it as a compliment, but it’s one of those things that I’ve never been able to get out of my head. It’s my major malfunction, amongst a host of other insecurities and overconfidences—I need to save helpless females. Quinn never needed saving, and she never will.

  It was only a matter of time before I became a superfluous presence in what was sure to become an extraordinary life.

  About The Author

  Lauren Abrams lives in St. Louis, Missouri with her husband and a small menagerie of four-legged children. She spends most of her days trying to convince her high school students that reading is fun, although she’s still not sure quite what to say about The Scarlet Letter. She is the author of Falling into Forever, Falling into You, and Unmistakable.

  She’s currently finishing up her fourth novel, Beholden, which will be released in the early spring of 2014.