Always Something There to Remind Me (13 page)

A moment she hoped would never end.

He pushed her against the brick wall of the house, in the shadows of the side yard, and yanked up her shirt. She yielded to him eagerly, moving only enough to make it easier to free her of her clothing. The brick scraped her shoulder blades but she didn’t care.

With his mouth still hard, but warm, against hers, he reached around and unhooked her bra, his fingertips cold against her skin, and shoved the heel of his palm against her breast. His fingers played roughly against her skin. Then his movement softened, like a mood shifting from anger to love, and he trailed his hand across her chest, her collarbone, and back down to her waist and hips, where he gripped her and pulled her against his hardness.

She gasped at the pressure and her desire skyrocketed. She reached her hand down to the snap of his jeans, flipping them open as she’d done hundreds of times before, and then used both hands to slide them, along with his underwear, down over his hips, where she knelt before him and took him into her mouth.

His breath caught and she smiled against him for a moment before doing all the things he’d taught her, long ago, about what he liked best. She closed her eyes, putting every ounce of herself into what she was doing. It seemed like only moments until she heard him hold his breath and felt his stomach muscles tighten in a way she knew well.

She slowed her movements, and, without looking, reached her hands up and entwined her fingers with his. He clenched his hands around hers, and exhaled, simultaneously releasing a month’s worth of heartache and uncertainty into her.

She waited a moment, still and nurturing, not moving but not releasing him until she was sure he was through, that she’d taken in all of it for him.

She began to leverage herself up with her hold on his hands, but instead he knelt before her and cupped her face in his hands. “I love you,” he said in a ragged voice.

Sorrow choked her. How had she risked this? How in the world had she risked this? “I love you too,” she said, closing her eyes and burying her face in his shoulder. “So much. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t,” he said, again, as if there were just nothing else. “I love you.”

“I hope so.” Tears burned her eyes. She kissed his neck, his ear, his shoulder. “I love
you
,” was all she could say. “I really really do. More than anything. I’m so stupid.”

Then he kissed her, deeply, hot and wet, then lowered her to the cold grass beneath them. They hit the ground and lay clasped together, mouths locked, bodies entwined. They were still for a while. Wordless. But slowly touching each other, lacing and unlacing their fingers together, touching faces, hair, lips, cheeks.

“We should get married.”

He laughed quietly and traced his fingertip across her palm. “Yeah? How do you figure that?”

“Because I know I don’t want anyone else ever, ever again. Why wait?”

“Because you’re sixteen.” He smiled in the dark and put his finger to her lips. “Now, shhh.”

“Okay.” She relaxed against him.

They lay in silence for a few more minutes, but she started thinking about him, and about how stupid she’d been to leave him even for a minute, and she didn’t want to say anything about that—just in case, by some off chance, he
wasn’t
thinking about the same thing—so instead she just kissed him.

Things heated up quickly.

He worked at the button on her jeans and she raised her hips and helped him push them down.

If anyone came around with a flashlight now it would be pretty embarrassing.

But Erin didn’t care. She kicked the jeans away and wrapped her legs around him, warming her cold bare feet on his heat as he moved on top of her and pushed into her. He was reclaiming what was his and she was allowing it with all of her body, heart, and soul.

She had no sense of time, no sense of the outside world at all, while he moved within her, and she clung to him, one single embodiment of love and fulfillment. There was nothing else then. No responsibility. No accountability. They were all emotion and hormones.

And they were good at this by now. She knew from the way he kissed her when he was about to come again, and she tightened her arms around him, instinctively wanting to make him feel protected, to fully feel every sensation he was going to feel.

His kiss deepened, in that way she recognized, and she let it, drinking him in, meeting his movements until he drew out and reached his climax.

He stilled against her.

“Nate,” she said, reaching up and running her hands gently through his hair.

He drew back and looked at her for a moment, then just shushed her and lay his cheek against hers.

She didn’t say anything else.

Some time later—she couldn’t have said how much—they regained their composure (and their clothes) and Nate walked her home. Neither of them wanted to take the car. It would have been too fast, too soon to say good night.

So they walked the mile to her house, hand in hand, without speaking a word. The silence was warm between them and there was understanding in their touch. But nothing they could say to each other with words would mean more than what they’d just said to each other without words.

When they got to her front porch, she turned to him and finally asked the thing she’d been dreading. “Are we back together now?”

What if he said no? What if he said all of that had been a good-bye? Or even a fuck-you?

It would be a good one.

But Nate wasn’t like that. He wasn’t cruel. “You’ll always be my little girl,” he said, running his knuckle across her cheek.

“Does that mean okay, you’ll take me back?” she asked, afraid to assume anything.

He smiled. Nodded. But his eyes were tired and sadder than anything she’d ever seen, including the weary-looking and creased ancient tribesmen in
National Geographic
magazine articles.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, feeling it wasn’t enough. But what else could she say? There was no way to fix whatever she’d broken during those weeks he’d waited for her. If she’d been in his position, what would she have done?

Probably not forgiven so easily, that was for sure.

He would never understand the deep feelings that had brought her here tonight. How could he, when she couldn’t possibly come up with the words to express them?

So she shut up. Really, it was all she could do. She shut her mouth and leaned against him on her doorstep and hoped she could transfer all the feelings she had inside to him so, on some very subconscious level, he’d comprehend it.

Even then, she knew that probably wasn’t enough.

But it was all she had.

Chapter 10

Present

It’s weird how life sometimes decides to mirror and amplify your own issues when you have made the decision not to face them. Put off doing your taxes, and suddenly tax lawyer commercials are everywhere; decide to take a little time off between jobs, and suddenly unemployment is all over the news; put off your oil change, and cars are breaking down left and right.

The old saying is true: you just can’t run away from your problems.

Which leads me to this question: You know what’s harder than calling your own boyfriend after he’s dumped you?

Calling someone else’s boyfriend on her behalf, after he’s dumped her. Especially when that girl is someone you don’t really know. And don’t particularly like.

Someone you couldn’t recommend as a girlfriend to your worst enemy.

Like Roxanne.

Now, this seems like a good time to point out that I’m not particularly
wise
. I’ve learned a few things the hard way, but I don’t actually feel very different than I did when I was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. What I know about drugs, I learned from
Go Ask Alice
and
Sarah T.—Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic
, and those were enough to keep me clean. What I know about romance, I learned from terrible seventies sitcoms and overwrought romance novels. What I know about parenting is a combination of real-life experience and
Brady Bunch
or, worse,
Leave It to Beaver
reruns.

In short, I’ve learned from popular culture and my own fuckups.

So Roxanne really could have picked a better advocate. Unfortunately for her, apparently she didn’t have any choices in the matter.

I had to be the one to approach Justin.

Obviously I wasn’t going to plead Roxanne’s case for her; I didn’t even know what her case
was
, though I was fairly sure it wasn’t a really good one, based on what I knew of her.

I dialed the number she’d given me and heard, “Yo! You got me.” I waited a minute, thinking it was a voice-mail message, but then he said, “Hello?”

“Hello, is this Justin?”

“Maybe.” Sullen voice. Affecting some sort of rapperish I-don’t-give-a-shit inflection. “Who wants to know?”

Okay, yeah, I knew who this guy was already. This was going to be a blast.

“My name is Erin Edwards, and I’m the event coordinator for Roxanne Tacelli’s sixteenth birthday party and she asked me to call and”—it wasn’t easy to make this sound like I meant it, but I gave it a shot—“make sure you had gotten the invitation and were saving the date.”

“Hell, no! I’m not going to that!”

“I see.” I did. Of course. This was no surprise. “So you do know about it.”

“I’ve heard.” He was trying to play it cool like only a dippy teenager can. I’ve known a few of them in my time—mercifully few, though. When I was in high school, my friends tended to be older than this.

And far cooler.

“Well, listen, just keep the date in mind, okay? It’s going to be a great party. Really big.” Maybe if he thought he could get lost in the crowd he’d reconsider. “Tons of people there that you know.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

What else could either of us say?

“So … okay, then. If you have any questions—”

He hung up.

“Thanks for your time, jackass!” I clicked off my phone and wondered how Roxanne could possibly be pining over such a dud.

Then again, she wasn’t exactly the princess of charm herself. They were actually probably perfect for each other.

At least I’d tried. She couldn’t ask for more than that. I mean, she probably would, but I couldn’t reasonably be expected to do more than call. I couldn’t have this punk kidnapped and brought to the party. I couldn’t have thugs show up at his house and threaten to break his kneecaps if he didn’t show up.

Unbelievably, I had to explain all of this to Jeremy in my office the next day. Not only had he handed off this impossible task to me, but he had very distinct ideas about how it should be executed and whether or not there was any wiggle room for failure.

“It’s
very important
that she get
everything
she wants for this party,” Jeremy told me. He was sitting on the edge of my desk, tapping his Montblanc pen on the surface for emphasis. “Our reputation
depends
on it.”

It was so absurd, I had to laugh. “Jeremy, come off it, our reputation does
not
depend on this brat’s equally bratty ex-boyfriend coming to the party!”

But he remained serious. “This is going to be
broadcast on TV
…”

“Where anyone watching will see how stupid the request was to begin with.”

“… and if this girl isn’t completely happy with the party
we
throw for her, then our reputation as a special events venue will be adversely affected. Specifically”—he was being pointed now, lowering his chin and raising his eyes to mine with Heavy Significance—“our events coordination.”

Whoa. “Are you saying my
job
depends on this?”

“No.” He looked at me. “I’m afraid
mine
does.”

He couldn’t have played it better. If it was my own job I’d be less worried because I knew I could get a new one easily, but Jeremy? His … quirkiness … could be a problem for him in the job marketplace.

“What I’m saying is simply that you need to do everything you can to make Roxanne Tacelli happy,” he went on. “Whether you think she’s a brat or not.”

It was ridiculous, of course. The entire thing was stupid. This idiotic TV show filming, the entire Tacelli family, Jeremy’s personal investment in both of the above … all of it was comical, and yet it might be swinging over his job security like one of those blades in an Indiana Jones movie. The owner of the hotel was an aggressively masculine guy who wasn’t crazy about Jeremy. If Roxanne were to go on national TV and tell the world, in a half hour’s worth of tantrums and tears, that we’d fucked up the most important day of her life so far (because that was how I was sure she’d characterize it), the weight of that would fall on Jeremy’s feeble shoulders.

So maybe thugs threatening Justin’s kneecaps weren’t such a bad idea after all.

Meanwhile, I’d try to talk reason into Roxanne. With great trepidation, I closed the door to my office and dialed.

“Hello?” Her voice was robust and cheerful. That was a good sign.

“Hi, Roxanne, it’s Erin Edwards, from the Farnsworth-Collingswood. How are you doing today?”

I hoped, of course, that the answer would be something along the lines of,
Great! I have a new boyfriend, and he’s sooooo cute, and I just love love love him!

No such luck.

“Did you get Justin to say he’d come to the party?” she asked immediately.

“That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Is he coming?” She was like a child begging to go to the mall and see Santa Claus.

I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. “Well, I
did
call him, but he might have a scheduling conflict that day.”

“Scheduling…?”

“He might have something else to do.”

“That is such a load of shit,” she said, moving from cheerful to spiteful as if she’d flipped a switch. “He’s a liar.”

So I guess it was lucky that she was calling him the liar and not me. “If he’s lying, then why do you want him at your party? Maybe he’s not such a great guy after all.”