“Nah,” he says. “Jenkins is cool. And those rumors about
her are total bullshit.” He looks at me, shakes his head in disbelief. “What am I saying? You know that.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Of course.” I suddenly have the intense desire to tell Trevor everything. To spill exactly what happened that night. To tell him how deeply I was hurting—how much I still am. But I know I can’t. I’m not even with him anymore. And if he ran away in the spring, this would send him for the moon.
“So how long have you been here?” He’s dressed in a gray suit, with a pale pink button-down underneath. I bought him that shirt for Valentine’s Day two Februarys ago. We went to Brooks Brothers and picked it out together. I remember I went into the dressing room with him and he pinned me up against the wall. We made out for a while, until some salesman saw us and told us we had to leave. They let us buy the shirt, though, first. “I guess Brooks Brothers is still a business,” Trevor joked, stroking my hand.
I wonder if when he puts it on, he thinks about that. I wonder if the link is as direct in his mind as it is in mine.
I shrug. “Not that long, you?”
“An hour or so. I’ve been outside.” He gestures toward the doors, toward where Abigail & Co. are now watching us, whispering.
“Ah,” I say. “Cool.” I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to talking to him like this—like we’re just acquaintances. Classmates.
We might as well be commenting about the weather.
“I guess some things haven’t changed,” he says. He looks up at me. His blue eyes are soft. Familiar.
“Yeah,” I say. “I guess not.”
We stand there for a moment, just sort of looking at each other. I’m not sure what to say. I don’t think he is either. Then the song changes. It’s so obvious, really. So predictable that a slow song comes on at this moment, and people start to pair off.
“Do you want to dance?” He’s looking at me intently, a small smile on his face.
Astor isn’t here. He’s probably not even showing. I should have listened to what he was really saying on the phone. He was telling me he didn’t want to come tonight. He doesn’t want to be here.
“Okay,” I say.
Trevor takes my hand. Instantly I get a flashback to our first winter formal. It’s like a premonition or something, except from the past. But it’s crystal clear—like we’re there, right now. The roof of the Gansevoort. The way it felt to have his arms around me, exhilarating and safe all at once. Like being on a ride at an amusement park—even a roller coaster—but knowing you’re strapped in. Whatever happens, you’re not going anywhere.
Trevor leads me out onto the dance floor and pulls me
close. I let him. I lean my head on his shoulder. He takes my hand in his.
“You look beautiful,” he says into my ear.
I want to close my eyes against him. I can feel myself slipping back—back to a time where dancing with Trevor was just what I did, what I should have been doing. When the only thing I had to worry about was where we were going to dinner on Friday night, whose house we were going to study at on Sunday.
With my eyes closed, it almost seems like nothing has changed. I can hear Claire’s voice in the background, from a memory: “Hey, lovebirds, Rouge Tomate or Serafina?” The casual way we’d make brunch plans. The ignorant confidence in our forever.
I want to tell him I miss him. I can feel the words bubbling up. Because it’s true: I do miss him. I miss this. I miss feeling safe. When I’m in his arms it’s like anything could happen—the world could end—and it would somehow be okay.
“Trevor . . . ,” I start, and that’s when I see Astor.
He’s on the landing of the stairs, looking at us. I can see the bewilderment in his eyes, the flash of anger. I don’t think; I just tear myself away from Trevor.
“Hey,” Trevor says. He doesn’t let go of my waist. “What’s wrong?”
I’m already trying to move past him, to get to Astor and explain.
“Stop,” I say.
Trevor takes a step back, and I can see how hurt he is. It’s sharp. It stabs. “Caggie, what—” But then he sees Astor. He reaches out to stop me again, and his fingers land on my arm. “No,” he says.
“Let go of me,” I say. It comes out harsher than I mean it to. Or maybe exactly like I intend. All I know is that I have to get away from him.
“Caggie, please,” he says. “Stay with me.”
I look up at him and see the pain in his eyes—the same pain that was there the day he ended things. The day he told me he didn’t want to do this anymore.
But Astor is turning to leave, and I don’t answer Trevor. I just unlock my arm and race toward Astor, leaving Trevor on the dance floor. I can see other students watching us. I’m sure this is making Abigail’s night.
“Astor, wait.” I run up the first five steps and grab on to the back of his suit jacket. “We were just dancing,” I say.
He spins around. His eyes are dark. They make him look just a little bit scary. “I guess it didn’t matter if I came, after all.”
“No,” I say. I shake my head. “That wasn’t what it looked like. Trevor just asked me to dance. We’re friends.” I’m out
of breath. My chest feels shallow, like it’s too hard to get air. Lies. Lies. Lies.
“It didn’t look too friendly.” He continues to climb. I follow behind him until we’re in the museum lobby.
“You’re wrong,” I say. I try not to think about Trevor’s words:
Stay with me
. Why? He didn’t. “And you weren’t even here. You’re an hour late, Astor.”
This makes him turn around. “I told you I had family stuff,” he says. “Who cares about this stupid dance?”
“I do,” I say, because it’s true. “I care.”
He runs a hand over his forehead. I watch him, as he deflates like a tire. “I’m sorry,” he says finally. He lifts his eyes up to meet mine. “You look incredible, by the way.”
I feel myself exhale. Relief.
“Yeah?”
He tilts his head to the side. “Why do you think I got so mad about Trevor? You’re too hot to be in somebody else’s arms.”
I don’t think; I just reach out and pull him down toward me. Talking to Kristen, seeing Trevor—it’s all just too much. Too real. Right now I want to disappear. I don’t want to think about the past; I want to be here. Astor can help with that. He
does
help with that.
We keep our lips locked. The thing about kissing Astor that I never had with Trevor is this feeling of confidence. Power. I can tell by the way he’s looking at me when we break
apart—running his eyes over my collarbone, and then up to my lips—that he wants me. And it feels good. Intoxicating. It makes me want to do things I haven’t before. It makes me feel like I’m not quite myself. Like I’m slightly different—older, maybe. Not someone who sleeps with a night-light on and still wears a retainer but someone who dates a mystery man from London with a (troubled?) past. It’s better than the alternative.
“Let’s go,” I whisper. I put my lips right up against his ear. “I want to go to your house.”
He draws me close to him. He kisses me, runs his hands across my shoulders and down my back. I reach up and wrap my arms around him. He pulls back after a moment, touches his nose to mine.
“Let’s,” he says.
I realize I’m holding on to him, my hands on his shoulders, my fingers gripping his skin. Even my eyes are tight to him—locked, like they’re keeping him in place.
As we make our way to the doors, I glance back at the stairs. I don’t know why I do it, because I know what I’ll see. Sure enough, Trevor is standing on the top platform, his hands hanging by his sides, staring at us. I don’t permit myself his gaze, though, not even for a moment. Instead I grab Astor’s hand and lead him out through the museum doors.
“Sixty-Eighth and Lex,” Astor tells the cabdriver.
My heart leaps a little, like a kid on a trampoline. That has to be his house.
I’m going to see where he lives.
He leans his face down and touches his lips to mine. Neither of us says anything.
Four minutes later we pull up at a town house. He hands the cabdriver a ten-dollar bill, and we slide out. “Home sweet,” he says. “Come on.”
The nerves I felt in the cab seem to be hot-wired once we step outside. Fired up and ready. I’m not sure what I’m expecting inside, but if he’s had something to hide, aren’t I about to find out what it is? Astor propels me forward.
We climb the stoop steps, and then he punches in a code, 0215, and the door clicks unlocked. February fifteenth. I think it’s his birthday.
The foyer is impressive. Bigger than ours by at least ten feet. It’s more formal, too. It looks a little like those sitting rooms you see on tours of old palaces—the ones that are staged to look like what might have been during the time period. Bedrooms and living rooms for people who died decades ago. Maybe even centuries.
“This way.” He leads me up a wide marble staircase that spills into a long hallway. It looks exactly like a hotel floor. Identical doors marching away in both directions.
“Is anyone home?” I ask. I keep my voice quiet. His house seems like it would carry an echo, and since I’ve never met his
parents, I don’t exactly want to run into them in their house at nine o’clock at night heading into their son’s room.
“No,” he says.
I edge myself closer to him as we move down the hallway. It’s not that the house isn’t well lit, it is, but it feels dark. Almost haunted.
“In here.” He opens one of the matching doors and holds it while I step inside his bedroom.
The contrast is drastic between his room and the rest of the house. While the hallway is bold—all reds and golds and grays—his bedroom is a soft blue. It’s also fairly small. Four walls, a closet on one side, and a desk on the other. There is something old about the room—it feels like it’s been worn in. The curtains look like they haven’t been replaced since he was a baby, and the lampshade is yellowed at the base. I pick up a pad of paper on his dresser and run my hand over the embossed letters.
C WA.
“So this is it,” he says. “You know everything about me now.”
I laugh. “This is everything?”
“I already told you about the
Annie
thing, okay?” Astor confided that when he was younger, he used to watch
Annie
on repeat. I’ve already promised to take him to see it on Broadway. He sits down on his bed, and I hear the springs creak under him. “You’re tough to please.”
I make my way around the room. I walk gingerly, like
if I step too hard or move my hands too quickly I’ll upset the air molecules, and things will appear different than they really are.
I note his bed: pressed white cotton, the expensive kind my mother buys. Probably Pratesi or Frette. His desk: rolltop, light wood. The top is up, and there is a picture inside of him and a woman. I move closer and pick the frame up.
“Come here,” he says at the same time as I ask, “Who is this?”
He’s quiet behind me, and I turn around, the photo in my hands. It’s clearly him, but he’s young, maybe four or five years younger than he is now. He’s smiling up at the woman, his arms around her middle.
He looks at the photo, then at me.
“Your mother?” I say. I know just by asking that the real question is something else. Maybe I’ve known all along; I’ve just been too scared to say it out loud.
He looks up at me and smiles. “Yeah,” he says. And then: “Well, it was.”
There is a code among people who have lost someone close to them. You don’t have to watch your words. If you screw up, if you say the wrong thing, it’s okay, because you’ve lost someone too. You’ve had someone die on you. You know there are no right answers. Just worse and worse. But you have the right to ask, if you want to. I don’t know why, but you do.
I go over to him, sit right down on the edge of the bed and take his hand in mine.
“She died,” he says. “Cancer. It was five years ago.” I keep still and quiet, like he’s a deer I don’t want to run. He shakes his head. “It was a long disease; she was sick for a year, even longer.” He squeezes my hand. “It’s strange, isn’t it? I still sometimes expect her to walk through the door.”
This is why he hasn’t made me talk about Hayley. He knows what it feels like to experience grief, the kind that kills.
“Yes,” I say. “It is.”
“It changes you,” he says. “I mean, I’m not the same person that I was before. Nothing is the same. I tried to explain that to people. To my dad, even—”
All at once, I take his face in my hands. I just put my palms right on his cheeks and search his eyes with mine. “I’m so sorry,” I say. Because I am, and I know—all of it. The blame. The guilt. The longing. The distance that death creates between the people who are still here.
He covers my hands with his. “Thank you.”
“Is that why you moved to London?”
He nods. “Yeah. We left right after. My dad wanted to stay in New York, but it . . . didn’t work.” He looks at the floor, then back up at me.
I run my thumb across his cheek. I don’t know what to say, and I understand, slowly, that I don’t actually have to
say anything. I understand him. In a way I’ve never been understood. The reality of this loss, of what it means, is like a string that ties us together. The grief weaving its way from my heart to his.
It’s like we’re connected by this black core, this ground zero of humanity that’s raw and human and strong and fragile all at once. It’s life itself—the promise of death, just a heartbeat away, folded into every moment.
“Hey,” he says into my ear. He places his hands on either side of my face and brushes my hair back. “Can I tell you something?”
“Please.”
He keeps his head down so I can’t see his lips, just feel them. “I think I’m in love with you.”
I swear, my heart stops. Like a car slamming on the brakes at a red light. “You think?” I manage.
He pulls back. Smiles. “What do you think?”
I told Trevor I loved him immediately. After six days. And then we said it all the time. Constantly. At night on the phone, at school, in the mornings when we saw each other across the park. I meant it too. I did. I loved him. I loved how safe he made me feel, and how well he knew me. I loved that he could anticipate things. Like whether I wanted chocolate ice cream after school or movie tickets to a chick flick I’d never admit I wanted to see.