I'll Be Here (23 page)

            “You already have a dress, don’t you?” 

“Hmmph…”    

Her head peeks out from behind the dressing room curtain.  “I’ll take that as a yes.”  She waits for my nod before she moves behind the dark fabric curtain again. 

“And it will be fun.  Maybe we can go together.  Like rent a limo or something cheesy.  I’ll ask Asher and Dizzy what they’re planning on doing.” 

Abruptly, the curtain pulls away and Laney steps out of her dressing room.  She’s left her boots on and the chunky black leather toes peek out from beneath the silky fabric giving her a look all her own.

“Ya think?”  She asks even though I haven’t said a word.

“Yes,” I breathe.  “Definitely.”

“Definitely sounds pretty sure.”  She turns, checking her reflection from a side angle.

I am smiling.  “Laney, you have to get that one.”

“It’s not very Arabian.”

“Who cares?”

Laney sticks out her thin hips.  “Honestly, I don’t get the whole Arabian theme.  Are we supposed to show up on camels or something?”

I laugh. 
My thoughts exactly. 
I am going to say this but my phone buzzes and I leap for it, my heart thumping at the prospect of a text from Alex.

It’s not Alex.

Laney notices my quiet and spins to me.  “What is it?” 

I look up.  Suddenly the light overhead seems too bright and I have to squint to see Laney’s face. 

“It’s from Dustin.”  His name feels weird on my tongue, like when you put on flip flops for the first time after months of wearing closed-toed shoes and your feet feel strange, almost like their afraid of so much freedom.  I stare at my phone.  It stares back but the text on the display screen is the same.

            Dustin: Can we meet up? 

Me:  Why?

Dustin:  I want us to try to be friends.

Um.  What does that even mean?

I hold up my phone so that Laney can read the screen.  She leans forward squinting into the blue light of my phone and then her face clears and she laughs.  It sounds bitter and unlike her.  My stomach hurts.  I think about lying down on the bench and going to sleep.

“It’s just typical,” she says simply.  Her lips pinch together.

“What’s typical?”

“I told you that Dustin would get jealous about you spending time with Alex and now, right on cue, he wants to shove his way back into the picture.”

I wince, my mind wrapping itself around the idea.  “I wanted that before but not now when things with Alex are....”

“Are what?”

Inexplicably I blush.  “Well…
progressing
.”  Progressing seems like a fairly safe word. 

“Ahh,” she says, slipping back behind the dressing room curtain.  “Here’s what I’m thinking… Meet with Dustin anyway and clear the air.  It will give you some closure.”  I hear the fabric of the dress rustling as she pulls it over her head.  “Closure is good.”

I swallow.

Is it?

***

I’ve reasonably started to think that this part of my life is over.  Waiting for Dustin.  That was from before.  That was
then
—when I would sit on an uncomfortable bench outside and wait the three hours it took for track practice to be over so that we could make the ten minute ride to my house together all in the name of sharing a few measly slippery kisses.  Or when we’d study for a calculus test and I would hang back, waiting for him to catch up.  Or when I’d wait on him to be ready to leave a party after I’d told him I needed to be home an hour before. 

            It’s easy enough to think those days are in the past, but here I am, sitting in a corner booth at Pacelli’s.  It’s Thursday and I left Patty’s office fifteen minutes early to meet my ex-boyfriend for pizza.  Diet coke fizzes in a tumbler in front of me—the caramel bubbles scurrying along the inside of the glass like tiny prehistoric one-celled animals.  I lean in and suck the drink through a straw.  It’s cold and sweet and for a moment I forget about the dull throbbing coming from behind my ribs.

            When I sit back, Dustin is standing at the end of the booth, his chin tilted down.  He’s smiling.  He’s looking charming.  His clothes are expensive.   

           
Okay,
I think,
I can do this.

He slides into the other side of the booth.  His knee kisses mine and I scoot left, shifting to avoid anymore skin-to-skin contact. 

The restaurant is practically empty.  It’s early for dinner and the only people here are very young families and a few elderly people.  The interior lights are turned low, but sunshine filters in through the street-facing floor to ceiling windows that line the front wall. 

Dustin moves in, the weight of his upper-body balanced on his forearms.  I move back. 

Before we have to wade through any awkwardness, the waitress is upon us asking to take Dustin’s drink order.  He doesn’t wait.  He just goes ahead and orders a whole pizza at the same time that he orders his soda.  Half green pepper and half salami.  This is what we always used to get here. 

“How have you been?”  He asks once we are alone.

My answer is standard issue.  “I’m fine.”

Dustin barrels through this moment and tells me about things I haven’t asked about—his parents, classes, track.  I let him talk.  I let him have this time and I stay quiet.  When the pizza arrives, rattling around on the waitress’ black tray, I even let him serve me a slice topped with green peppers.

After we eat, as I dab my mouth with a paper napkin, Dustin says that he thinks that we should get back together. 

That’s exactly how he says it. 

I think we should get back together.
 

Like it’s a completely normal thing to say to me. 

I am not surprised.  I have seen this coming since he sat down in the booth and he smiled his sideways smile. 

“Taylor was a mistake,” Dustin tells me and he’s looking straight at me like the words mean something else. 

I just sit there and look back.

“I miss you, Willow.”  His expression sours and it hits me that maybe he does feel a bit of regret. 

I think that I should be happy.  I think that I should be happier when he reaches across the table and takes my hand in his.  It is warm.  I think that I should feel something big.  Is
vindication
the right term? 
Relief
?  I don’t know.  I don’t feel that way.  I don’t feel happy or vindicated, or like I want to start jumping around on the tabletop or running around the streets.   

I don’t know exactly what I feel but it’s not that.  Maybe I’m a little sad.  Not the cry-in-my-room kind of sad but still sad.  Not because I miss Dustin.  No, I consider that and it’s all wrong.  Dustin is my past and that is not shameful, but I don’t miss him.  Not anymore.  I am sad because this feels like an ending.  And this time it’s a real one.

The pad of his thumb runs up and down my palm. 

“I was hoping that you would go to prom with me.”  There’s an edge to his voice.

“Prom?”

He nods slowly and his dusty blonde hair falls forward over one eye.

“What about the campaign posters for King and Queen all over campus for you and Taylor?  Don’t you think it might be a tad awkward when you show up with someone else?”

Dustin winces.  “I don’t care about that.” 

He leans in closer and I can feel his warm breath against my face.  “I miss you Willow.  Trying to make prom court with Taylor was another mistake.  You know how she can be.  She’s obsessed with being Prom Queen and she thinks that I’m a shoo-in for King and honestly, I’m not sure if she ever really liked me like that or if—”  His voice falls off and he’s looking at me so intently I can practically feel his eyes like fingers over my skin. 

“She’s just not you and the past few weeks have been one big disaster that I’m hoping we can help each other forget.  We used to be so good together.”

I sink against the back of the booth.  “Did we Dustin?  I’m not so sure…”

“Willow you can’t mean that.  Tonight I’ll call Taylor and—”

Something clicks in my head and I stop him before he can go on.  “Wait.  Does Taylor even know that you’re here?”

He shakes his head and glances at the waitress as she delivers a tray of steaming plates to the table in the corner.  “No.  I was planning on talking to her after I talked to you.”

“God, Dustin.”

He grips my hand tighter and his eyes plead with me.  “The thing is Willow that I realize now that I should have just been happy with just you.”

Just me?
  I think he means this as a compliment but it feels like a slap in the face. 

Dustin rolls his shoulders slightly and I take the opportunity to pull my hand from his.  His eyes follow my fingers as they disappear under the table into my lap and I can tell that he is not expecting this.  I can see by his furrowed brow and his straight-line mouth that he thought I would respond differently.  I dig around my purse for a ten dollar bill.   

“You’re absolutely right Dustin.  You
should
have been happy with
just
me but you weren’t and you can’t go back in time.  Now it’s too little too late.  Look, I’m sorry that things aren’t going well for you and Taylor,” I say, dropping the money onto the table in front of me.  The bill sticks to a glob of tomato sauce.  Oh well. 

“I really am, but you shouldn’t be telling me this kind of stuff.  It doesn’t feel right anymore.”  My eyes are on Dustin.  “I don’t think that we can be friends after all.”

Dustin’s mouth flops open.  “Willow…”  My name sounds like a complaint coming from him.  “What is this?”  He demands.

“
This
,” I say, feeling a little tired, “is me leaving.”

“Leaving?”  He echoes as I stand up.

I look down.  His face is pinched. 

“Dustin, I’m not trying to get back at you or be mean.  Honestly.  But the thing is that you hurt me and you did it in the worst possible way.  And I can forgive you and wish you the best in life and blah, blah, blah,” my fingers make curled quotations in the air, “but I can’t forget it, you know?” 

I pull the strap of my bag onto my shoulder and move out of the booth in a half-sitting, half-standing crouch.

Dustin’s mouth moves soundlessly like he’s working out something to say but I don’t give him the chance.  I turn.  My hair settles around my shoulders. 

“I guess that I should have told you from the start that I have a boyfriend now and I don’t think that he’d want me to be having pizza with you.”

And as I walk away I do feel like a girl in a movie.  My heart is swelling in my chest and my feet are light on the ground.  The waitress and the bar staff applaud as I move past them. Okay.  Not really.  But it sort of feels that way.

EXIT LEFT.

END SCENE.

What we need are more people that specialize in the impossible.

~Theodore Roethke

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

…And I lived happily ever after.

Okay, maybe I’m jumping the gun, but that’s how I feel today—like I’ve vanquished the horned dragon and pushed the evil queen from the highest turret of the stone castle. 

I am invincible.

I am She-Ra, Princess of Power.

I am woman, hear me ROAR.

Today I am new. 

I am standing outside, under the gaze of the yellow sun.  Scraggly, brown-tipped palmettos contrasting the liquid blue sky are the backdrop.  Fresh, musky smelling mulch is my platform.  My hands are on my hips.  My neck is craning. 

Dustin and Taylor pass me as they walk into the main building before first period.  Her arm is tucked between his forearm and his chest, and her mouth is moving rapidly.  She wears her hair in a sideswept bun.  Loose tendrils drip in front of her cat eyes.  Cough syrup pink lipstick coats her lips. 

Dustin’s gaze falls on me and skips away quickly.  Taylor is too preoccupied with herself to notice me, standing in the hollow where the sidewalk turns to ground and students mill about freely on the dewy earth.   

“You could tell her.”  It’s Laney.  She has come up beside me.  Her eyes follow mine.  I called her last night and told her what happened with Dustin at the restaurant.  No one else knows. 

“
Then
you’d have your revenge.”

I look at Laney’s profile: a slightly upturned nose, freckles on a bed of pale peach skin.  Small silver earrings smile from the swell of her earlobes. 

“Maybe,” I say feeling my shoulders rise and fall automatically.  “But, it seems sort of obnoxious, right?”

The sides of Laney’s mouth lift only slightly.  Small lines creep from her eyes to her hairline. 

“A little obnoxious,” she agrees.  “But, she deserves it and so does he.”

“You’re probably right, but I guess I just feel like they aren’t worth it anymore.  Yes.  I
could
tell Taylor that her boyfriend asked me to get back together with him and called her a mistake, but what’s the point?  I might feel good about that for about five minutes but then I’d feel shitty all over again and...” 

The first bell sounds overhead.  We turn north and begin walking towards our classes.

“And you have Alex now,” Laney finishes for me.

I laugh.  “It’s not all about Alex, but
yes,
I have him and the rest of this crap seems like a waste of time.”

Laney grins big.  “Good answer Willow,” she chirps over her shoulder as she turns left toward her first period class. 

I am walking alone, but a few people smile and wave along the way.  Dizzy squeezes my arm as she goes by and Lance twirls me around—up off my feet into the air.  He laughs.  When I am back on the ground Nate comes up beside me to ask me a question about the homework that we are supposed to turn in today.  Francesca, a girl from my English class pauses to tell me that she likes my shoes and asks where I got them. 

I look left and right.  Nobody is whispering my name or giving me weird looks.  Something bubbles inside of me and at first I barely recognize it.  This is called
being happy
.