First There Was Forever

by Juliana Romano

  “So what was he supposed to do?” she went on. “Rachel is, like, the love of his life. I’m sure it sucked to meet her when he was already married, but, like, I believe in following your heart. What if he was actually just being true to himself? What if he did the right thing?”

  I looked at Hailey. Was she really asking me, or was this a rhetorical question? I felt certain she knew about me and Nate now. This was all code. My face was burning. My palms were sweating. I knew I was supposed to say something, but I was buried so deep in my own pit of guilt that I felt a million miles away.

  Finally, I managed to speak.

  “What your dad did was not the right thing, Hailey,” I said. “He could have done it differently.”

  “How?” Hailey asked. And then, suddenly, tears spilled out of her eyes.

  To my surprise, I felt hot tears in my eyes, too. “Because of you. Because he made you feel like he was choosing Rachel over you, too.”

  Hailey’s sob caught in her chest. She kind of choked a little and squeezed her eyes shut.

  “I’m so mad,” she said. “I just get sick when I think about their baby. It makes me sick.”

  I was crying now, too. It was a million things. It was the queasy feeling I got thinking about Rachel and Hailey’s dad, and it was how much I loved Hailey, and how immeasurable that kind of love was. It couldn’t be weighed against Nate or anything else in the world. I knew right then, no matter how shitty of a friend Hailey had been, that she never for one second did anything to deserve the pain that she was going to feel when she found out about me and Nate.

  chapter

  forty-seven

  It rained on and off the whole week before spring break. I’d been studying for the big chemistry test every night, but my mind was like a sieve. I felt as if all I thought about anymore was Nate and Hailey.

  I was running flashcards during lunch the day before the test when Lily appeared in front of me. She had on an orange-and-white-checked vintage dress, like something a waitress at a retro diner might wear.

  “Hi,” I said. I almost never saw Lily at school, and we had never spoken in public. We seemed to have an understanding that our friendship was bonded to the twins’ house.

  “Have you talked to Meredith lately?” she asked.

  “Not since the weekend,” I said. “Why?”

  Lily pursed her fire engine red lips, thinking.

  “She hasn’t been at school in a few days,” Lily said, dropping her voice. “And she hasn’t been returning my calls. Can you try and call her?”

  I pulled out my phone and dialed Meredith. She answered after a few rings.

  “Hey, Lima,” she said. “Whatcha doin’?”

  “I’m at school. You know, high school? Like, where we’re all supposed to be right now?”

  Meredith sighed. “Oh right. School. School is so bourgeois.”

  “She’s fine,” I told Lily after I hung up.

  Instead of seeming relieved, Lily just frowned.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Nothing, that’s all. Thanks,” she said, straightening up. She pivoted and left the library, her Mary Jane heels rapping softly on the carpet.

  Rain sloshed against the window of the library and I tried to refocus on my chemistry cards. Tomorrow’s test was the most important one of the year. Due to the fact that there were so many seniors in Honors Chem, the class was going to wind down in intensity after spring break. This was basically our final exam.

  For us non-seniors, it was crucial to do well because it would determine who could take AP Biology next year. I didn’t care about taking AP classes just for the sake of it, but I was dying to take AP Bio because of the trip. Every year, the twelve students in the class went to Costa Rica to watch the sea turtles hatch. People who went said it was the most amazing week of their lives.

  My phone beeped.

  Staying after school for meeting with dean. Can you stay late?

  Nate. I hadn’t been alone with him since the night we kissed. I bit my lip.

  Say no. I looked down at my chemistry cards, but now they looked scrambled, underwater, remote. My thoughts were way too tangled up in images of Nate to focus on anything else.

  chapter

  forty-eight

  Nate said he’d meet me in the computer lab at three forty-five, but it came and went. I tried to study while I waited, but my concentration was terrible. I stopped every two minutes to look at the clock, and kept losing my place in my work.

  When I saw it was already four thirty, I began to worry. I hadn’t memorized a single chemical formula in a whole hour. And on top of that, I’d begged mom to pick me up at five, even though I knew it would to screw up her whole day. And for what? To sit in the cold, damp computer lab, hungry and distracted?

  “Sorry I’m late.”

  I jumped. Nate was standing in the doorway.

  “It’s okay,” I said. His hair was damp.

  He dropped his backpack and shrugged off his jacket. Then he grabbed a wheely chair, swiveled it around, and sat down in front of me. He grabbed the arms of the chair I was in and pulled it closer to him, so close that his knees touched mine.

  “What are you working on?” he asked softly.

  “Science. Chemistry. We have a test tomorrow,” I replied, biting a nail.

  “Are you nervous about it?” Nate asked.

  “Super-nervous,” I replied quickly.

  I let my hand fall to my lap and sighed. And then Nate reached out and picked up my hand. He held it between his own two hands and inspected it carefully, as if it was a seashell he’d found on the beach. I stayed perfectly still on the outside, barely even breathing, but on the inside, my heart was pounding.

  “It’s not raining anymore,” he said after a minute. “Do you want to go up on the roof?”

  I nodded.

  Outside, the rain had stopped. Swatches of bright blue sky broke through the cloud layer like fault lines in the earth. New, perfect clouds, white and bright as porcelain, hung low across the sky.

  “I love it after it rains,” I said, my teeth chattering in the chilly post-rain air. I shivered and folded my arms around my chest for warmth.

  I turned to Nate. In this light, colors appeared extra vivid. The blue of Nate’s eyes, the lavender circles underneath them, the red of his lips were even more saturated than usual.

  “Sorry it took me so long to get to the computer lab. We had to go over all my progress reports,” he said.

  “How were they?” I asked, but I was detached from my words. All I could think about was that we were alone.

  “They were fine,” he said.

  “That’s good,” I said.

  He took a step toward me so we were less than a foot apart. My eyes rested on the collar of his shirt. I lifted my face up toward him, careful not to knock my nose against his chin, and he looked down at me. We still weren’t touching, not even our sneakers, or our knees. The space between us felt pressurized and heavy. Being this close to Nate made my whole body hum. I felt like if I had to wait another second to kiss him, I was going to literally explode.

  I reached for his hand at the exact same second that he pulled me toward him and then we were kissing. I wrapped my arms around his neck and then moved my hands down his back so that I could actually feel the back of his rib cage through his shirt with my fingertips. I stopped feeling cold as time melted away.

  Suddenly, my phone vibrated in my pocket and I got slammed back to reality: We were on the roof, we were still at school, it wasn’t even dark out yet. The sounds of the world returned. I had gone temporarily deaf while we’d been kissing. Now, I could hear people talking on the patio below. A door slammed. A car horn beeped.

  The text was from Mom.

  10 mins

  When I looked up at Nate, my face must have been full of d
isappointment, because he looked like he understood. His hair was a mess from my hands being in it, and I imagined that mine was, too.

  “It’s my mom.”

  He nodded and shook his head like he was shaking something off, and then he ran his hands over the front of his shirt to smooth it.

  “Do I look okay?” I asked. “I feel like she’s gonna know.”

  “Know what?” he asked.

  I was about to answer him but when I saw the amused flicker in his eyes, I laughed.

  “That’s not helpful,” I said.

  “Stay still,” he said, suppressing a smile. He took a step toward me and combed my hair clumsily with his fingers.

  “You’re probably just making it worse.” I giggled.

  He laughed a little and backed away.

  “So,” I said. “Are you hanging out with Ryan this weekend? Like maybe going to Meredith’s house one night?”

  He blinked. “I’ll probably see Ryan. I don’t know what he’s up to, but I usually see him.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Well, I’m going over there on Friday.”

  Nate’s eyes strayed from mine and he looked out into the space behind me, his face clouding over in thought. I wanted him to promise me that I would see him on Friday night. We hadn’t talked on the phone since Santa Barbara, and I was tired of waiting, of just hoping we’d have a chance to be alone together.

  “So?” I said again. “Friday?”

  Nate snapped back to reality and looked at me. “Right, yeah. I’ll ask Ryan.”

  chapter

  forty-nine

  There were twenty questions on the test. The first three were okay. Composition of the atom and chemical reactions were clear in my mind. I understood the principles so well I felt like I could roll them around like marbles and look at them from all sides.

  But then, after that, it was like gibberish. The blank white of the paper vibrated and pulsed, taunting me. My empty test was like a mirror to own my empty mind. I couldn’t access anything we had learned about stoichiometry last semester. I had never in my whole life failed a test. I wiped sweat from my forehead. I was sinking.

  People started finishing, handing in their tests and leaving around noon. Emily left at twelve ten, flashing me a sympathetic smile as she headed for the door.

  When everyone was gone, and it was just me and Patty, Patty spoke.

  “Time’s up,” she said, from behind her desk. “It’s over.”

  I dragged my test off my desk as if it weighed a thousand pounds, walked up to Patty, and dropped it front of her.

  She took it and looked it over, noting how empty it was. We both knew I had failed.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  I opened my mouth to speak and hot tears stung my eyes. My mouth was full of sand.

  “I love this class,” I blurted. “And I want to take AP Bio so bad. I really think I could handle it.”

  Patty handed me a tissue.

  “I don’t know what happened today. I studied,” I sniffled, looking at my shoes. “But I just have a lot going on.”

  How had I turned into one of those girls who claimed they had a lot going on just because they were hung up on some stupid boy? I had always hated girls like that. I was supposed to be better than that. Humiliation swelled inside of me.

  Patty rearranged the pens on her desk, stalling.

  “Listen,” she finally said. When she looked up at me, disappointment was written all over her usually mild expression.

  “AP Bio is a demanding class, and a popular class, so I can only enroll students who are really up for working that hard.”

  “I know,” I said. “But I really think I can do it.”

  “Well, this is your opportunity to show me.” Patty looked at me thoughtfully for a moment before she spoke. “You can retake the test. The first day back after break. And I’ll average the two grades and that will be your grade.”

  “Really?” I asked, blotting tears away with the sleeve of my sweatshirt.

  “Different questions. Same material,” she said.

  “Okay,” I sniffled. “Thank you so much for giving me a second chance.”

  She nodded, but she didn’t smile or say anything else to me as I packed up my things and left.

  chapter

  fifty

  The next day, Friday, was the start of spring break. I had plans to go straight to the twins’ house from school, and since Meredith was still absent, Walker gave me a ride. We had never really been alone together, and I felt self-conscious sitting in the passenger seat with him driving. He had a manliness that differentiated him from other boys at our school. I remembered how Hailey thought I had liked him, and the thought made me blush.

  “I should eat,” he announced, swerving off Sunset Boulevard into an In-N-Out drive-through. “It’s good to eat something before you start drinking. You want something?”

  “I’m not hungry,” I said, wondering if Walker even knew that I didn’t really drink. After months of hanging out, I’d never once gotten drunk, but I wasn’t sure he’d noticed.

  Walker ordered two cheeseburgers and a milk shake and ate while he drove.

  “Is Meredith okay?” I asked. “She was absent all week.”

  “She’s fine,” he said. “She had a cold for a couple days and then she didn’t feel like coming yesterday or today. The last day before a break is always pointless.”

  He crumpled up his first hamburger wrapper with one hand then reached into the bag for his second.

  “So she just, like, stayed home? She’s not worried about her grades?” I asked.

  This was the longest conversation Walker and I had ever had. He reminded me so much of Meredith, the way that he was surprisingly natural. It occurred to me that when they weren’t drunk or stoned, they were more normal than most people.

  He thought a moment. “We don’t care so much about grades. Did Meredith tell you we’re not going to college?”

  I nodded. “She said you might apply next year. After a year off.”

  “Maybe,” he shrugged. “Personally, I don’t see it happening. There are other things that matter more than college, even if that’s not what people tell you.”

  I smiled. That was such a Meredith thing to say. They both had this amazing way of seeing things that made it seem like everything was always going to be okay.

  Walker turned up the volume of the music in the car, and I checked my phone to see if Nate had called. He still hadn’t told me if he was going to make it to Meredith’s house tonight. No new messages. Each time that I checked my phone and saw that he hadn’t texted, I felt another ounce of happiness drain out of my heart.

  When we arrived, Henry was lying naked on a lounge chair by the pool. He didn’t seem embarrassed to be seen by any of us, not even Walker. Lily and Meredith were wading in the pool.

  “Hey, friends,” he said lazily when he saw us.

  I wasn’t attracted to Henry or anything, but I felt a really strange desire to examine his body. I had never seen a naked guy before, and I was curious. I forced my eyes not to linger on the dark region of his groin.

  Meredith hoisted herself out of the water and sat at the edge of the pool, dangling her legs in the water. The water had made her bra and underwear totally see-through.

  “Mer, where’s the cord that connects the outdoor speakers to the stereo?” Walker asked, unfazed by her nudity. I could see the rosy color of Meredith’s nipples and the dark patch in between her legs, and I wondered why it wasn’t weird for Walker to see her like that, too.

  “I think it’s in the top drawer to the right of the stereo,” she said, seeming as relaxed as her brother, “where you keep the remote control.”

  I borrowed one of Meredith’s bathing suits and swam until my skin was rubbery and raisined. Around me the others drank and smoked po
t, ate chips and store-bought chocolate chip cookies.

  I tried to enjoy myself, but I kept thinking about Nate. It was almost seven. What was he doing tonight instead? Why was he so impossible to pin down? I knew checking my phone every five minutes to see if I had accidentally missed a text wasn’t actually helping the situation, but I couldn’t stop. I told myself to try and be present and enjoy the afternoon with my friends, but it was useless. I kept finding myself hoping that Nate would surprise me by coming over. It was a persistent, buzzing kind of hope, like a fly that hovers around your ear while you’re trying to fall asleep. I just couldn’t make it leave me alone.

  Why was it that nothing felt fun or important anymore unless Nate was involved? Even the twins’ house, with its magic views and pretty music, was dull. It was strange, the way one person could seem so much more vivid and exciting than a whole group of people. It reminded me of something Hailey had said to me once after she made out with the bartender at my parents’ anniversary party last year. For the few days after it happened, she was high on the whole experience, but within a week, she had resumed talking about Nate.

  “Why?” I asked. “How can you just hook up with people and then keep liking Nate? Doesn’t it make you like him less?”

  “You don’t get it,” she had said. “A million people can’t replace the one person you love.”

  • • •

  I got out of the pool before everyone else and went inside, feeling itchy and antisocial. Upstairs, in Meredith’s room, I browsed her bookshelf. She had an archive of vintage Vogue magazines and a large, shiny book of Nan Goldin photographs.

  I took the photography book, lay flat across her bed, and started looking at the pictures. The people in the pictures were flawed, deformed, and completely naked. The pictures weren’t flattering like the pictures in magazines. They were the opposite. They were harsh, even disturbing. It was bizarre, though, because even though their bodies were imperfect and their flaws were exposed, there was an intimacy in them that I had never experienced from a photograph before. I couldn’t look away.