by S. Celi
“Yeah, I’m fine. I just finished a hot yoga class.”
“Hot yoga?”
She laughed. “Yeah, ninety minutes doing yoga in a studio at two hundred degrees. So I don’t get fat.”
“Like I told you before, you don’t need to worry about that.”
When she laughed again, as if she didn’t believe me, I put my hand over my eyes. I needed to get this conversation back on track right away. This wasn’t how I had envisioned it would start.
“Listen, so, um, I thought if you still wanted to hang out that might be kind of fun,” I said after a moment, hoping I didn’t sound too urgent or desperate.
“Yeah, of course I want to,” she replied. “What were you, um, what were you thinking? A movie, or something like that?”
“Well, no.” I paused. “I had something a little different in mind. Do you like Mexican?”
“Yeah.”
“Six?”
“Okay.” She hesitated. “Wait. Geoff?”
“What?”
“What should I wear?”
“Oh, it’s just a casual place. It’s not dressy.” I rushed my words. I didn’t want her to back out now that I had my plan in motion. This had to work. Had to.
“Great,” she said after a minute. “I guess I’ll see you tonight.”
“I’ll pick you up at six. You live on Halloway, right?”
She laughed again. “How do you know so much about me, Geoff?”
I laughed right along with her, and changed the subject as fast as I could.
Laine and her parents lived in a small white colonial on Halloway in the center of Robert Hill. It had a detached two-car garage, a large tree in the front yard, and a red front door.
Halloway was just around the corner from Kentwood Elementary, a tan brick building where I’d spent the first six years of school getting my face shoved in gravel, missing kick balls during gym class, and beating my classmates in geography bees.
She waited for me on the wide front porch, and stood up when I pulled the car in next to the curb. She had on a dressy trench coat and one of those huge puffy skirts that reminded me of a ballerina tutu. I gulped when I saw it. First, because as she walked down the sidewalk, she looked like she was walking the runway for a fashion show. Second, because it made me wonder if she considered this a date.
Of course, I considered it a date.
I did. Before I left the house, I tucked three hundred bucks of my money into my wallet, spritzed some Woodland cologne on my chest, and popped two breath mints, just in case. As she walked toward the car, I wondered if maybe she’d done the same.
That thought made my hands start to shake.
“Hey,” she said, as she pulled open the car door. I would have gotten out to help her in, but she did it so fast it caught me off guard. “You look nice.”
“Yeah,” I replied as she got into the car. “So do you. You really do.” I pulled the car away from the curb, and started down the street. The whole time, I had to focus on my hands to keep them from shaking so badly. She couldn’t see how nervous she made me; it would kill the date before it even began. That is, if this was a date. I wasn’t so sure about that.
“I thought we could go downtown,” I choked out, as I stopped the car at the stop sign on the corner of Halloway. I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye, trying to gauge her reaction to my idea. “How about Nada?”
“Isn’t that place expensive?”
“Nah. It’s not that bad.”
“I’ve heard it is.”
“Trust me, it’s not.”
She gave me a sideways glance. “Don’t we have to have a reservation?”
“We don’t need one,” I said, with a confident glance her way.
“We don’t?”
“Nope. Nathan’s bother works as the sous chef at the place. We’ve got connections, Laine.” I leaned back in the seat, willing myself to relax. So what if this was Laine? We were just hanging out. Two friends headed out on a Saturday night to downtown Cincinnati. That was all.
Laine raised her hand up as we pulled out on to I-471. “What. Wait. What are you listening to?”
“Oh, it’s um . . . nothing . . .” I’d turned down the radio out of instinct when I pulled up to her house. Ever since the kids at school had made a big deal about my Megadeth band T-shirt, conversation about music with the other kids at school had been off-limits. They didn’t need more ammunition to make fun of me.
“No, it’s not nothing, Geoff.” She reached over and turned the dial up on the console. The Silverplate Band’s wailing blared through the speakers. “Is this the Lithium station on XM?”
“Well . . . um . . . yeah.”
She held up her hand, and closed her eyes. “I love this song, Geoff.”
“You do?”
“You say my love . . . can’t buy what you want . . . Girl, I know you need me more . . .” She kept her eyes closed as she sang the second verse. “You think you can keep on going . . . acting like you don’t care . . . but I strongly doubt it . . .”
My eyes widened in shock. She really did know the words. And her voice wasn’t so bad, either.
“Come on, Geoff,” she said during a guitar solo. “You gotta sing with me.”
“Okay,” I said, and then waited for the chorus. “Yyyyyyooooouuuuu . . . never loved meeeeee . . .”
She laughed when I joined in, but then she kept on singing. Together, we belted the lyrics as I drove the car across the bridge and into Ohio. She even tossed in some air guitar. God, this was one confident girl, and she had mad fake music skills.
Sexy.
“So, you like nineties alternative rock,” I said once we turned onto 5th Street, the heart of downtown.
We passed nightclubs just opening up, throngs of people on their way to parties, bachelorettes ready for a night out, and college kids headed to the bars that lined Cincinnati’s Restaurant Row. I always liked the change I felt once I was in the heart of the city and not on the suburban streets of Robert Hill. Something about the bustle of the city made my spirit come alive. If I ever lived in Cincinnati as an adult, I would make sure I lived downtown. I knew that much.
She shrugged. “Who doesn’t?”
“Well, I didn’t think most people did . . . considering we weren’t born for most of it—”
“Who cares?” She laughed. “My brother loves music. He runs a guitar store up in Oxford, and he made me some playlists last year. I liked it, so I listen to it.”
“I just took you for—”
Her laughter cut me off again. “Whatever. When are you going to stop judging people, Geoff?”
“Let’s order, like, five different things, and try them all,” Laine said as we looked over the menus.
We sat at a table near Nada’s large glass windows. From our spot, we had a view of the patio and the street. I also had a view of the rest of the restaurant, if I looked past Laine. Men in business suits mingled with women in short dresses, over cocktails at the bar. Large groups of friends laughed at tables near us. Everyone in this restaurant could have come out of a magazine for pretty people, and most of them treated a stop here as pre-game for something else. We were by far the youngest people in the room. I hid my smile as I wondered if it pissed the waiter off to get a table with two teenagers. Oh well, I had the money. And I’d waited for this.
Laine dipped a large tortilla chip in the small bowl of spicy salsa on the table. “Hmm. I think we should get the guac. I love guac.”
“Okay,” I said. “There’s order number one. What else?”
We settled on the guacamole, Mexican mac ’n’ cheese, chicken taquitos, carnitas tacos, and boca fries. When the food came out, it covered the table so much so that I worried moving one plate might knock something on the floor. The food looked like something a binge-eater would dream about. I knew I was hungry, but was she?
Yep, she was.
She ate the chicken taquitos with gusto, and didn’t wait to dive into the boca fries
and carnitas tacos. We didn’t say much to each other beyond exclamation about how delicious the fries and the Mexican mac ‘n’ cheese tasted. I think this was the best meal I’d ever had. Really. There was something magical about watching the hottest girl in school devour a meal that had a couple of thousand calories in it. Salads, be damned.
“That was amazing.” Laine smiled as a staffer took away the now empty plates. “I haven’t eaten like that in a while.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “I mean, I can eat that way, for sure, but it’s awesome to do it here.”
“No wonder I keep on hearing about this place. I mean, I know there are other places, but this one I always wanted to go to.”
“Yep.” I looked around the room. “Downtown is pretty cool. I like it a lot.”
She leaned back in her chair, and pushed her half empty glass of Diet Coke away from her. “I wonder what it’s going to be like next year, at Xavier.”
“Me, too,” I said. “Charlottesville looks fun, but I just don’t know what to expect.”
She raised an eyebrow, and tilted her head. “Wait a second. You’re not going to Gateway Tech? You’re not following Mr. Henderson’s advice?”
“No way. He’s just crazy.” I put up one hand.
“You’re not salutatorian yet.” She laughed. “Who knows? Someone might unseat you.” She dropped her eyes down at the table, and a sly smile spread across her face. “Like me, maybe.”
“I hope you do, Laine.”
She looked up again. “I’m just kidding.”
“Seriously. I hope you do.” I broke her gaze and looked at the crowd in the restaurant, but didn’t really see anything or anyone. “Maybe you’ll knock off Nichole Reese, too.” My mouth contorted as I thought about her. “Yeah, I’d like that a lot.””
“All Nichole does is sit at home and study,” Laine pointed out. “Not that she talks to me, or anything. She’s kinda . . . mean.” Her eyes shifted, and I realized that fact bothered her. Now it was my turn to sit back, stunned.
“Wait. You think she’s mean?”
Laine nodded. “Yeah. She’s mean. She acts like my friends are all idiots. You should hear the things she says to Jillian. It’s really horrible.”
I might have agreed with Nichole there. Jillian was kind of an idiot. That girl once told me she didn’t know if hydrogen was on the Periodic Table. Still, it had never occurred to me that the popular kids in school might have been as bothered by bullying and mean kids as the rest of us. “Well, I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks she’s awful.”
“She really is.”
The waiter returned with the check, and I paid the $60 bill with no complaint. As I did, Laine shifted her view to the people outside the restaurant, and a wistful look came over her face. “I can’t wait to get out of Robert Hill.”
“Me too.”
“People put you in boxes there,” she muttered. “They try to make you something you’re not. Like, they have your life decided for you already. Who you’re going to be. What you’re going to do. All of it.”
“Especially if you are someone like me.”
“No, Geoff,” she said. “Especially if you’re someone like me. And some people think they can just . . .” Her phone buzzed and she looked down.. She glanced at it, and then shook her head, as if shutting down whatever the person on the other end wanted. “Whatever. What do you want to do? Do you want to walk around some?”
“Sure, I guess.” I stood up from the table. “Do you want to walk over to Fountain Square, or something?”
She grinned. “Let’s go for a drive.”
About fifteen minutes later, I pulled the car into a parking spot at the Eden Park overlook, a small park with benches that lined a stone walkway and retaining wall. Laine’s directions had taken us through Downtown, and up the winding hills to Mt. Adams, a glamorous and expensive neighborhood full of young professionals and homes sandwiched together in competition for the best view of the hills around Cincinnati, and then finally through the rambling beauty of Eden Park to the overlook. The whole time we drove, we sang more songs from the Lithium station on XM satellite radio. By the time I threw the car into park we’d sung Radiohead, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam. I should have caught it in a video on my iPhone.
“This is my favorite place in the city,” Laine said, as we hopped out of the car and walked across the parking lot to the benches that lined the overlook. She pulled her coat closer to her, to ward off the March chill as we took seats on the cold metal. “My absolute favorite.”
“Why is that?” I sat next to her, but not too close. I didn’t want to overstep any boundaries.
“I like how you can see the bends in the river from this angle.” She gestured to the Ohio River which fanned out on both sides, leaving the tip of Northern Kentucky in front of us. Robert Hill lay in the distance, high on one of the hills, while Dayton, Bellevue, Ft. Thomas and Newport bustled below us, all at the banks of the river and lit up with thousands of streetlights.
“Nice night,” I said, as we both took in the view. She kept her eyes on the city, but mine darted back and forth between the gorgeous city and the gorgeousness of her. “Really nice view.”
She leaned back on the bench, stretched out her legs, and crossed them at the ankles. “I come up here a lot.”
“A lot?”
“Mm-hmm.” Her voice relaxed.. “When I want to think. It’s peaceful.”
“How did you know about this place?”
“My parents brought me up here when I was a kid. Mom really likes flowers, so we’d come up to the park a lot and go to the conservatory. Sometimes we stopped here, so I always knew about it.”
“I’ve never been up here before. Not that I can remember.”
“Really?” She turned to me with a small smile on her lips. “It’s a great place to think about things. Like what I want to do with my life.”
“What do you want to do? I mean, besides the fashion thing.”
Forget the view. All my attention was on her now, and I couldn’t think of a better place for it to be. God, this gorgeous girl made my head spin, but I didn’t want to stop it. I wanted the ride to never, ever end.
“Get out of Robert Hill.” She chuckled.
“But you’re the princess of Robert Hill.” It came out with a sarcastic tone, so I softened my words. “Everyone loves you at school. They’ll always love you.”
“Not everyone loves me. And Princess. I hate how people call me that.” She wrinkled her nose, then broke her gaze with me and looked at the view of the river. “It’s a stupid nickname.”
I sat back, surprised. She’d had that nickname for as long as I’d known her. “You hate it?”
“Yeah. It’s not me. It’s like, people just say it because they think I have some kind of easy life, and I don’t. Stuff bothers me, too.” She giggled, as if she knew the punch line to a joke no one else had heard. “And I think some kids just say that because they kinda hate me.”
“Well, they call me Geoff Megadeth.”
She laughed. “Creative, right?”
I shook my head, disgusted. “Just because I wore a Megadeth T-shirt a couple of times in the fifth grade. I mean, really.”
“Whatever. They are so small-minded.” A pause. “Have you ever noticed how people in Robert Hill grow up and go off to college, and the come right back here and never leave?” She popped one shoulder. “My cousin did that, and I’m just like, why?”
“Yep. That’s how it is. Everyone’s like that. I’m sure Blake and Bruce will be that way, too.”
“Blake and Bruce. Do you like them?”
I threw up one hand. “Sure I do. Everything about them is great. Best stepbrothers a guy could ask for.”
“Whatever.” She grinned at me. “I know you hate them.”
“Hate is a really strong word. I wouldn’t want . . .” I thought about it. “Okay, maybe you’re right.”
“Blake and Bruce aren’t really all that great of guys, trust m
e. Earlier in the year, Monica had a crush on Blake, and she tried to do what she could to get with him. And they weren’t...they’re very—”
The sound of her phone cut off her words. She fished around in the front pocket of her purple purse, and when she looked at the screen, she frowned. I knew right then who it was: Evan. It had be Evan. Damn it. She stood up, and walked away from the bench, but I still heard her end of the conversation.
“Hello? Hi . . . yes . . . no . . . I’m out right now . . . You did? . . . Listen, I don’t want to talk about that . . . well . . . I mean . . . Look, I’m sorry . . . Okay . . . I know . . . Please . . . Yep. I’ll be there. Half hour.”
When she turned back to me and threw her phone in her pocket, I stood up from the bench. Even in the winter darkness, I saw the change in her body language: hunched shoulders, an averted gaze, and the nervous way her fingers pulled on the hem of her skirt. I didn’t need to ask my next question, but I did anyway.
“Let me guess. Evan?’
“I need to go home,” she said, sounding urgent and unsettled. “Yeah, like right now. Is that okay?”
“I guess,” I said, not bothering to hide my sadness as I walked to the car. “No problem.” The magic of our night had disappeared fast, like an early morning mist on the Ohio River. Nothing was the same now, and we couldn’t get those few stolen moments back. She followed me, and we got into the car without another word to each other. The spell had broken, and I knew it.
MONDAY, MARCH 4TH
SHE DIDN’T HAVE to tell me anything. I heard it in the hallway right after I walked through the door front doors of Heritage that morning. Underclassmen whispered it in conversations by their lockers, and shot me pitiful looks, as if they’d sized me up and decided that I’d been the biggest fool to ever grace the halls of our suburban school. I caught a couple of kids mid-laugh, as if they didn’t realize I’d walk right by them, and then felt embarrassed that I did. When I strode up to Nathan and Josh just before first period, they wouldn’t look me in the eye.