by Meg Cabot
Whatever. It wasn’t like things had been going so great with him before I’d left for Washington and points east. My mom had not been, shall we say, thrilled by the fact that her then not-yet seventeen-year-old daughter was dating a guy who had not only already graduated from high school, but was
a) not going to college.
b) working as a mechanic in his uncle’s garage.
c) from the “wrong side of the tracks,” or, in the local vernacular, a “Grit.”
d) on probation for a crime, the nature of which he would never reveal.
She didn’t exactly make it easy on the two of us. The first (and only) night Rob came over for dinner, she pointed out to him how in the great state of Indiana, it is considered statutory rape if a person eighteen years of age or older engages in sexual intercourse with a person sixteen years of age or younger, a crime punishable by a fixed term of ten years with up to ten years added or four subtracted for aggravating and mitigating circumstances.
It didn’t matter how many times I insisted that Rob and I were not engaging in sexual intercourse (much to my everlasting regret and sorrow). Mom just had to say the words “statutory rape” and Rob was gone, with a promise he’d be back when I turned eighteen.
I never even got to go to his uncle’s wedding with him, the one he’d promised to take me to.
And then the war came.
And when I came back, having turned eighteen and lost the one ability I’d had that set me apart from all the other girls in town (besides my refusal to grow my hair out), I found him with Miss Thanks-for-Fixing-My-Carburetor-Here-Getta-Load-of-These-Head-Sized-Boobs.
He didn’t see me. See him with her, I mean. He only found out I was back in town because Douglas told him when he stopped by the comic shop later that day, which, according to Douglas, Rob does periodically, to pick up the latest Spider-Man (which is funny, because I didn’t even know Rob liked comic books) and shoot the breeze if Douglas is working the counter.
So Douglas told him I was home, and Rob came by my house that very afternoon, purring up on the self-same cherried-out Indian on which he’d given me that very first ride, so many years before.
He seemed pretty surprised when I told him to get the hell off my property. Even more surprised when I told him I’d seen him with the blonde.
At first I think he thought I was kidding. Then, when he saw I wasn’t, he got mad. He said I didn’t know what I was talking about. He also said the Jess he’d known wouldn’t have run away just because she saw some girl kissing him. He said the Jess he’d known would have stuck around and knocked his (not to mention the girl’s) block off.
He also said that I didn’t know what it had been like for him, with me gone and him not knowing where I was, if I was getting blown up or what (because of course it wasn’t like they’d let me call and tell people where I was, or anything like that, when I’d been overseas).
I guess it never occurred to Rob that it hadn’t been any big picnic for me, either. You’d think he might have been able to tell, what with all of the newspapers trumpeting my ignominious return home, and return to normalcy (“Spark’s Gone for Lightning Girl” and “Hero Comes Home, Psychic No Longer—Gave All to War Effort”).
I guess it never occurred to Rob that I WASN’T the Jess he’d known, the one who’d have knocked his block off. Not anymore.
I was the one who’d suggested a cooling-off period.
He was the one who said that maybe that would be a good idea.
And then I got the call from Juilliard: my spot on the wait list—I barely remembered auditioning. It had been during one of my leaves home—had come up. Classes started the very next day. Did I still want it?
Did I still want it? A chance to lose myself in music? The opportunity to get away from myself, the nightmares, the blonde with the head-sized boobs, my mother?
Did I ever.
So I left. Without saying good-bye.
And I never saw him again.
Until today.
Well, okay, that’s not quite true. I guess I should confess that I couldn’t resist forcing others (I would never do it myself, for fear that he might see me) to drive by the garage where he worked, so I, sunk low in the backseat, could try and catch a glimpse of him now and then. Like when I came home from school, at Christmas, and spring break, and stuff.
And he always looked as fine as he had that day I’d first met him, in detention, back at Ernie Pyle High—so tall and cool and…just good. Know what I mean?
But he never called. Even when he had to know I was home, like over winter break. He certainly didn’t drive by my house in the middle of the night to see if my light was on or to throw pebbles at my window to get me to come down.
I guessed he’d moved on. And I didn’t blame him. I mean, I didn’t exactly come back from my year away…well, whole. I certainly wasn’t who I’d used to be, as he’d been only too quick to point out.
So I decided he wasn’t who he’d used to be, either. Maybe, I decided, my mom was right. Rob and I were ultimately too different to be compatible. Our backgrounds were too disparate. What Rob wants—well, I don’t know what it is that he wants, since I haven’t seen him in so long. And now that I can’t find people anymore, I don’t know what I want, either.
But I do know Rob and I can’t possibly want the same things. Because nowhere in my future do I envision a tube top.
It seems simplest just to tell myself that I want what Mom tells me I should want: a college degree, a decent career, and a nice steady guy like Skip, who’ll make a hundred thousand dollars a year someday. Skip’s a good sort of person, my mom says, for a classical musician to be married to. Because classical musicians don’t make that much money, unless they’re famous, like Yo-Yo Ma or whoever.
And the truth is, I’m too tired to try to figure out what I want. It’s just easier to decide I want what my mom wants for me.
So that’s why. About Rob, I mean. That’s why I didn’t fight for him, for what we’d once had. I didn’t try to fix it. I was just too tired.
So I moved on.
Except that now here he was, a year later, standing in my doorway. He wasn’t keeping his part of the (unspoken) bargain.
And he definitely looked whole to me. MORE than whole, in fact. He looked every bit as good as he had that day after detention, when he’d offered me that ride home. Same pale blue eyes, so light, they’re almost gray. Same tousled dark hair, a little longer in back than my mom likes guys to wear their hair. Same jeans that fit like a glove, faded in all the right (or wrong, depending on how you want to look at it) places.
Seeing him, looking that good, standing outside my door, was a lot like getting…well, struck by lightning.
A sensation with which I am not unfamiliar, actually.
“Ask him if he can break a fifty,” Skip yelled, thinking it was the pizza guy.
“Make sure he remembered the hot-pepper flakes,” Ruth called from the kitchen, where she was taking down the plates. “They forgot last time.”
I just stood there, staring at him. It had been so long since I’d stood this close to him. And everything was flooding back—the way he’d smelled (like whatever laundry detergent his mom uses, coupled with soap and, more faintly, the stuff mechanics use to get the grease out from beneath their fingernails); the way he used to kiss me…one or two light kisses, not even directly centered on my mouth all the time, then one long, hard one, dead in the middle, that made me feel as if I were exploding; the way his body had felt, pressed up against mine, so long and hard and warm….
“This is a bad time,” Rob said. “You’ve got company. I can come back later.”
“Hey, can you break this?” Skip pushed past me, waving a fifty-dollar bill. He stopped when he saw Rob wasn’t holding a pizza. “Hey, where’s the ’za?” he wanted to know. Then he looked at Rob’s face, and his eyes narrowed.
“Hey,” Skip said in a different tone of voice. “I know you.”
Ruth had
poked her head out from the kitchen doorway. “Did you remember the hot-pepper—” Her voice trailed off as she, too, recognized Rob.
“Oh,” she said in a very different voice. “It’s…it’s…”
“Rob,” Rob said in that deep, no-nonsense voice that had always managed to send my pulse racing—same as, for some time now, the sound of a motorcycle engine had. It’s like those dogs we learned about in Psych. The ones who would only get fed after a bell rang? Whenever they heard a bell ring after that, they’d start drooling. Whenever I hear a motorcycle engine—or Rob’s voice—my heart speeds up. In a good way.
I know. Pathetic, right?
“Right,” Ruth said, darting a worried look in my direction. “Rob. From back home.” She refrained from calling him her private nickname for him: The Jerk. I thought this showed some real maturity and growth. Ruth’s changed a lot since high school.
Well, I guess we all have.
“You remember Rob, Skip,” Ruth said, elbowing her twin. “He went to Ernie Pyle.”
“How could I forget?” Skip said tonelessly.
Okay, well, I guess all of us have changed since high school except for Skip.
“Right,” Ruth said. “Well. Do you, um…do you want to come in, Rob?”
I didn’t blame Ruth for sounding confused and not knowing exactly what to do. I didn’t know what to do, either. I mean, a guy walks out of your life for a year, only to reappear on your doorstep in another state…It’s kind of disorienting.
“What’s the holdup?” Now Mike was crowding into the tiny front hallway. He hadn’t seen Rob yet. “You guys need change or something?”
“It’s not the pizza guy,” Skip said over his shoulder. “It’s Rob Wilkins.”
“Who?” Mike looked as shocked as I felt. “Here?”
“Look,” Rob said, beginning to look a little impatient. I could tell from the way his dark eyebrows were starting to constrict a little in the middle. It was the same expression he used to wear whenever I’d want to rescue some kidnapped kid using some wacky scheme that Rob thought was too dangerous. “If this is a bad time, Jess, I can come back—”
I could feel everyone’s gaze on me—Ruth’s, filled with concern (she was the only one who could even begin to suspect what kind of emotional whirlwind Rob’s sudden appearance had thrown me into); Skip’s, hostile and questioning (I had, after all, been dating him pretty much exclusively all summer…if you can call the occasional pizza and a movie “dating”); Mike’s, also hostile (he’d never liked Rob, primarily because he’d never tried to get to know him) but also sympathetic…Mike knew how hard I was running from my past.
And Rob was a part of that past.
Naturally, under so many people’s scrutiny, I could feel my face heating up. Plus, I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Seriously. My mind was a complete blank. The only thing running through it were the words Rob’s here. Rob’s here in New York.
And he smells really, really good.
Seriously. It truly was like getting struck by lightning all over again. Minus the hair-sticking-up thing. And the star-shaped scar that had since completely faded away.
Ruth was the one who came to my rescue.
“We’ll just go out and let you two have some time alone together,” she said, starting to put the dinner plates down.
“Go out?” Skip echoed, sounding more indignant than ever. “What about the pizza we ordered?”
“You know what?” Rob turned to go. “I’ll come back later.”
It was only when I saw his broad, jean-jacketed back turning away from me that I realized I felt something. Which, for me, was progress. Since I hadn’t been feeling too much of anything for a long time.
And what I felt was that this time, I wasn’t letting him get away. Not that easily. Not without an explanation.
“Wait,” I said.
Rob paused in the hallway and looked back at me. His expression was completely unreadable. And not just because the super still hadn’t changed the burnt-out bulb above Apartment 5A.
Still, I could see his gray eyes glowing, like a cat’s.
“Let me get my keys,” I said. “We can talk while we grab something to eat somewhere.”
I ducked back into the apartment, going to the skinny hall table where we throw our keys every time we come inside. Mike was blocking it.
“Move,” I said.
“Jess,” he said in a low voice. “Do you really think—”
“Move,” I said, more loudly.
I don’t want to give you the impression that I knew what I was doing. I most definitely did not. Maybe my brother sensed this and that was why he was acting like such a total tool.
Or maybe that’s just how big brothers act when the guy who broke their little sister’s heart shows up from out of nowhere.
“It’s just,” Mike said. “You really seem, um, better than you have in a while now, and I don’t want—”
“Move,” I interrupted, “or I will hurt you badly.”
Mike moved. I scooped up my keys.
“I’ll be back in a little while,” I said, slipping out the door past Ruth, who gazed at me sympathetically through her new contact lenses. She’d given up wearing glasses at around the same time she’d given up on low-fat diets and gone high-protein instead.
“I thought we were having pizza,” Skip called after me.
I’d joined Rob in the hallway.
“Save me a slice,” I said to Skip.
Then Rob and I headed for the stairs.
Three
New York isn’t like Indiana.
Well, you probably know that.
But I mean, it’s REALLY not like Indiana. In the town where I’m from, you don’t walk anywhere. Well, unless you’re my best friend, Ruth, and you want to lose weight. Then maybe you’ll walk someplace.
In New York, you walk everywhere. Nobody has a car—or, if they do, they don’t use it, except for trips out of the city. That’s because traffic is unbelievable. Every street is clogged with taxis and delivery trucks and limos.
Plus, there’s nowhere you’d want to go that the subway can’t take you. And all that stuff about the subway being unsafe…it’s not true. You just have to stay alert, and not look too much like a stupid tourist with your head buried in a map, or whatever.
But even if you are—a tourist, I mean—people will stop and try to help you. It’s not true what they say about New Yorkers being mean. They aren’t. They’re just busy and impatient.
But if you’re genuinely lost, nine times out of ten a New Yorker will go out of his way to help you.
Especially if you’re a girl. And you’re polite.
Walking out onto Thirty-seventh Street with Rob, it hit me: you know, that we really weren’t in Indiana anymore. I had never walked down a street with Rob before. Ridden down streets with him plenty of times. But strolled down a sunny, tree-lined street, with delis and pizza-by-the-slice places on either side, people out walking their dogs, bike-riding Chinese delivery-food guys trying to keep from hitting people?
Never.
He didn’t say anything. He’d been silent down five flights of stairs (Ruth and I couldn’t afford an apartment in a building with an elevator, let alone a doorman to announce our guests. And of course the intercom is broken, as is the lock on the door to the vestibule).
Now, in the busy after-work, trying-to-get-home-in-time-for-dinner crowd on the sidewalk, I realized someone had to say something. I mean, we couldn’t just walk around in dead silence the whole night.
So I said, “There’s a decent Mexican place around the corner.”
But he just nodded. Sighing, I led the way. This was going to be even worse than I’d thought it would.
Inside the restaurant, I headed to my favorite table, the one Ruth and I share most Saturday nights, while I chow down on the free chips, and she plows through the guacamole (Ruth had finally managed to shed those extra forty pounds she’d been carrying around since sixth grade
by avoiding anything with flour or sugar in it). The table is by the window, so you can watch all the weirdos who walked by. They don’t call it Hell’s Kitchen for nothing.
“Hey, Jess,” said Ann, our favorite waitress, as Rob and I sat down. “The usual?”
“Yes, please,” I said, and Ann looked questioningly down at Rob. I knew what Ann would say next time I saw her, and Rob wasn’t around: “Who was the hottie?”
“Just a beer,” Rob said, and after Ann had rattled off the restaurant’s extensive list of brands, he picked one, and she went away to get the drinks. And the tortilla chips.
We sat for a minute in silence. It was still early for dinner—people in New York don’t generally even start thinking about dinner until eight or even nine o’clock—so we were the only people there, besides the wait staff. I tried to concentrate on what was happening outside the window, as opposed to what was across the table from me. It was a little overwhelming to be in this place I’d been to so many times, with someone I’d never in a million years pictured being there with me.
Rob was nervous. I could tell by the way he kept rearranging the silverware in front of him. In a second, he would begin to shred his paper napkin. He was looking around, taking in the sombreros on the wall, the chili-pepper lights around the bar, and the people walking by outside. He was looking at everything, in fact, except me.
“So,” I said. Because someone had to say something. “How’s your mom?”
He seemed startled by the question.
“My mom? She’s fine. Fine.”
“Good,” I said. I had always really liked Mrs. Wilkins. “My dad says she quit a while back.”
Then I wanted to kick myself. Because, of course, the only way I could have known that Rob’s mom had quit working in our family’s restaurant was if I’d asked about her. And I didn’t want Rob thinking I cared enough about him to ask my dad how Mrs. Wilkins was doing. Even though that’s exactly what I’d done.
“Yeah,” Rob said. “Well, what happened was, she moved to Florida.”
I blinked at him. “She did? Florida?”