Everyone We've Been (30 page)

“Do you like the idea or not?” I ask Katy the day after sitting through Lindsay's Thanksgiving production.

“Yes, yes, I love it. I bow to you. The only conceivable way you could be a better girlfriend would be if you cloned another version of yourself and
both
of you banged Zach at the same—”

“Ugh, okay. Stop!” I say. “Help me carry this thing.”

“That looks like one heavy-ass overhead projector,” Katy says, blowing on her newly manicured nails—short, though, so they don't affect her playing—as she steps around me. “I'll bring the popcorn.”

I sigh and carry the projector by myself all the way to the front door of Zach's house. I set it down on the ground and go back for the nine DVDs I picked up at his father's store this afternoon, then shut the door of Katy's car. I enlisted her help to set up, Mrs. Dubois's to borrow the projector that sits in the corner of the music room but nobody ever uses, and Zach's family's to use the basement. Kevin has even put sheets over the furniture, just like the old days. All I have to do is set up the projector, and Zach's perfect night will be a go.

I am doing it partly because, between play rehearsals and performances, I've hardly seen him the past week and a half. It feels longer than that, since we've both been busy the past month with the things we always seem to be busy with that aren't each other. I am also doing it because of my promise to unstick him.

“Eww,” Katy crows when I tell her this.

“Get your head out of the gutter,” I laugh. “I mean inspire, motivate, encourage.”

“Whatever,” Katy says, slurping on the milk shake she insisted we get from Shake Attack on our way here. (I'd snorted when she said, “That's what you get for making me drive. And though all signs point to my being spectacularly lactose intolerant, I need sustenance for all the heavy lifting we'll be doing.”)

It turns out the only person doing heavy lifting is me.

I pull down all the Ciano posters from Zach's room—twelve—and with them line the walls of the basement.

Katy waits with me for Zach to arrive. The performance is supposed to finish at eight, with the cast party going till nine, but Zach told me in his last text that he's exhausted and doesn't plan to stay more than a few minutes or he'd have taken me.

“So, Katherine,” Kevin says, sitting on the couch next to Katy. “If I were to pick up a musical instrument, what would you recommend?”

Katy shoots me a skeptical look. “Um, I don't know. What kind of music do you like?”

“All kinds,” Kevin says, wriggling his eyebrows. “And personally, I think I'd be fantastic at the harmonica.”

“Kevin,” I say in that warning voice I've heard everyone use so often with him, even though I'm not a hundred percent sure where he's going with this.

“Or should I say,” Kevin continues, “the
mouth
organ.” He makes loud kissing sounds, then throws his head back and releases riotous laughter, slapping the arm of the couch.

“My God,” Katy whispers to me. “How old is this kid?”

“I'm fifteen literally in two weeks,” Kevin supplies. “Old enough to date.”

“Good Lord,” Katy says with disgust, and I laugh. I would tell her she's finally met her match, but then Kevin would probably take that the wrong way, and the last thing I want is to encourage his out-of-control flirting.

“Where is
your
boyfriend?” Katy asks after a minute. “There is a world of post-pubescent boys waiting for me.”

I check my phone again. Still no message from Zach. I've sent him a couple of texts, but I don't want to send too many or he'll suspect something is up.

“It's eight-thirty,” I say. “He's probably on his way as we speak.”

“Hey, Raj left his
Dungeon World 2
here. Do you wanna play?” Kevin asks all of a sudden.

“What's
that
a euphemism for?” Katy asks me.

“I don't think anything.”

“Fine,” Katy says to Kevin. “But I don't actually know how to play.”

“I'm more than happy to show you, babe,” Kevin says, and proceeds to explain the game quite patiently. The three of us take turns playing for about half an hour, and then we are all bored again.

“Where
is
he?” I say out loud, and send him another text asking just that. Five minutes and zero responses later, Kevin pulls out a tray of face paint he got recently and convinces Katy it will be hilarious for her to jump out at Zach looking like a zombie when he arrives.

So we sit mixing colors, Kevin relishing the opportunity to touch Katy's pimple-free face, for about another half hour.

And then it is nine-thirty and Katy is stretching and saying, “I love you, Sullivan, but Gilbert has to go. I don't know what convinced me in the first place that it would be
cute
to watch you two suck face when he sees your surprise, anyway. And you know that is what all
this
is an excuse for.”

I scoff. “As if I need an excuse to suck face with my own boyfriend.”

“Ew,” Kevin says, sounding tired, too.

“Thanks for helping me out,” I say, hugging Katy.

I glance at the time again. The plan was for Zach and me to pick a movie and then spend a couple of hours watching it (or not watching, as the case may be) and then come back tomorrow and continue the marathon, but soon
I
will have to leave. My mother is at a dinner party tonight and I've been counting on making it home before her, but I've also been counting on Zach showing up before ten.

“Let me walk you out,” Kevin says, rushing ahead of us up the basement stairs.

“That is
quite
okay,” Katy says. “Seriously, kid, hit on people your own age.”

Kevin just snorts and disappears down the hall.

Katy and I continue out the front door and start toward the driveway. Katy is the first one to freeze. She goes completely rigid beside me.

I stop because she has and then follow her gaze, follow her eyes to the driveway, where a car I've never seen before is parked.

And inside it is Zach.

And I can see her hands in his hair, her fingers sifting through it, her fingers all over him. She has his back against the passenger side door, and she is basically in his seat. She is kissing him.

He is kissing her.

There is a frenzy of motions, an urgency. They are never just doing one thing: not just kissing, but kissing and touching each other's hair. Or touching each other's hair and talking, their lips shivering as they say something only they can hear.

I watch them for days.

I drag one of the couches from the basement and fall into it and watch Lindsay kiss Zach. Watch Zach kiss Lindsay.

Watch Katy grab hold of my elbow, like she has to stop me from running, like I am going to move. Like I am going to leave this couch that I've fallen into and am watching them from, two people removed from my world. Strangers.

One I love.

One I love oh God so much.

“Those sluts, those sluts, those sluts,” Katy says under her breath now, or maybe she's screaming it, because Lindsay seems to respond to those words. She jumps away from Zach, her eyes wide, and then he's scrambling out of the car, moving toward me.

Oh God.

I want to close my eyes so I won't see.

See his gray eyes filling, hear him promising he is sorry. She was just giving him a ride because his car wouldn't start.

See my fists pounding his chest, once, twice, over and over again.

“You are un-fucking-believable, Lindsay!” Katy is shouting at her ex-friend, and Lindsay looks startled, terrified, since Katy looks like a zombie. “How are you even a human being?”

Lindsay wraps her arms around herself, safely behind her steering wheel, and stares down at it.

Katy keeps shouting.

Suddenly Lindsay slams on the horn, making us all jump. “Leave me alone!” she yells now. Which just makes Katy start yelling all over again. Which makes Lindsay yell back.

Zach and I stand off to the side of the car, a foot apart, dazed, watching Lindsay and Katy have the altercation we should be having.

My voice is hollow when I finally speak. “You told me you weren't in love with her anymore. You told me it was over. And like an idiot, I actually believed you.”

“Addie,” Zach says taking a step toward me. I take a step back. “I made a mistake. I wasn't thinking. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

His voice is thick and muffled. In the wind, his hair, his
puff,
rattles and dances. Mocks me.

The terrible thing is that I still want to kiss him, even as I want to kill him. I want to scream at him, but I want to do it close to him. I want to tell him I love him.

But what I say is, “I hate you, Zach.”

He shakes his head, pained, willing me to take it back.

I don't. I won't.

The world is blurring around me now and I start to walk toward Katy's car. I can hear her wrapping up her argument with Lindsay, and by that I mean they are still screaming strings of obscenity at each other but without referring back to past events or even current ones. Just “bitch,” “slut,” “ho bag,” “assface.”

Zach is following me toward Katy's car now, still pleading.

Maybe there's an alternate version of this where I take him back, where I hear his remorse, where I forgive him. Maybe it doesn't matter that all his films include her or are about her or that I played a thinly veiled Lindsay in one of them and possibly all along. Maybe I'm so desperate to love someone, to love
Zach
and have him love me back—so desperate to be pried awake by how I feel about him—that I can forget this.

But
no.

I can't.

I whirl around and face him, not caring if tears are streaming down my face, not caring that tears
are
streaming down my face.

“Stay the fuck away from me,” I say, pulling open the door of Katy's car and climbing in.

It doesn't feel like it belongs to me. He tells me the start, the middle, and the end as he remembers it, but it could be the story of any two strangers, two people I don't know and never will.

Even when Zach says, “I'm sorry, Addie. Really sorry,” it feels like it belongs to someone else. I nod vaguely, blankly. “I know you didn't want to hear it before, but I
am.
”

And I nod again.

He mentions in passing a night I spent at his house when his family was away. Though neither of us says it, I know what it means.

We slept together.

Me and Zach.

Really, it's her and Zach. Another Addison. I don't feel different, I haven't noticed anything different, and I would have if it was me and Zach.

I would have.

“I screwed up,” he says now in a soft voice, a voice that forces me to look up at him. His face is red. His eyes squint a little bit, like he's still mad at himself. “But I
did
love you. I hope you know that.”

His gray eyes rest on my face as he says that, and I feel the air vacuum out of my lungs, confirming, I guess, that his words do belong to me. Or I want them to.

I want Zach to have loved me. I want to know that.

“So that was it?” I ask after I trust myself to speak again. I mean, it isn't hard to see how I might have been crazy about him, how much he'd meant to me before. I could see myself being upset at the breakup, but according to my family and Katy, I'd been devastated.

Was it because we had sex? Was I even more in love with him than I can comprehend? Or was I just too weak to move on?

“That was it,” Zach says.

He was right. I am a coward.

To erase my memory over a breakup?

I frown, staring at the dashboard and wishing I could find some way to claim the things Zach has told me, to make whatever I felt before—love, betrayal, sadness—belong to me again.

“I'm really sorry. I can't imagine being in your shoes,” Zach says.

I stare at my hands in my lap, suddenly embarrassed to think this boy has seen me naked. He's the only boy who has. And once upon a time, I bet, I could trace the contours of his body.

How is it possible to forget all that?

“So when did you start working at Real New Delhi?” I ask, changing the subject to ward off the heaviness, the hopelessness, settling over my whole body.

Even if how it ended was awful, I just want it to feel familiar. I want
him
to feel familiar.

Zach grins at me now, and my stomach tickles. It might only have been familiar from the invisible Zach, Memory Zach, but I still like recognizing it. And
oh my.

“A whopping five days ago,” he says with a laugh. “Could you tell?”

“Not really,” I say. “I saw that the restaurant was new.”

I'm captivated by his smile, the way his lips tilt up, and my face gets hot as the thought of having kissed those lips—having done more and more—fills my mind.

“Yeah. My parents closed the store months ago, and I quit at the Cineplex not long after we broke up. The owner is kind of a hard-ass, so pretty much everyone I worked with there has left. Then Raj's mom asked if I'd work for her restaurant. Free food. No way was I turning that down.”

I laugh, and he smiles but doesn't laugh this time.

When his eyes get this faraway look, I wonder if he's thinking about a version of me I have no memory of. I fiddle with the partly open little ashtray of his car because I feel restless, feel like I need my viola, but also I'm still trying to find something I know in this car.

“Oh, I haven't used that in ages,” Zach says, looking into the tray. “Ever since I quit smoking.”

“You quit?”

And when I face Zach, he is nodding and beaming, the car getting at least five shades brighter.

“That's so great!” I say.

He laughs. “I knew you'd be impressed, still.” He feels me keep watching him, so he adds, “You weren't a fan of the smoking.”

“Well, there's one thing that sounds like me. Finally.”

Zach gives me a sad smile.

His phone suddenly vibrates in his pocket, and when he pulls it out, he says, “Shoot. My break was over ten minutes ago!”

“Oh,” I say, feeling myself deflate. The car is no longer warm, but I don't mind the idea of sitting in this car with Zach for hours.

We climb out anyway and he comes around to my side. “If you ever need me,” Zach says, “you know where I am.”

I nod, a lump the size of a house growing in my throat. And I blink rapidly to keep my eyes clear.

“Hey,” Zach says, gently wrapping his arms around me. And that,
that,
feels familiar. The tips of my ears burn and not from the cold.

I let my head rest on his chest, hear his heart beating steadily through his T-shirt, and I'm already dreading the moment he'll let go.

It comes too soon.

And I realize as we step back that it didn't come hurtling back—the memories, what it felt like to be with him. Secretly, I hoped it would. That being in his presence, touching the real Zach, would bring it all back.

“I hoped seeing you would jog something, but…” My voice fades. “I guess I'll just have to take your word for it that that's how it happened.” I'm half laughing, even though it's not funny. Even though a tear has escaped down my cheek.

Zach frowns, at least a foot between us again, and looks sad for me.

“I'm okay. I promise,” I say, swiping at my cheek with my hand.

He nods, keeps watching me, then glances back at the restaurant. Finally he starts to walk in that direction.

And then I feel something, a realization, like a forceful kick to the chest. I loved this boy. Memory Zach isn't real; if I rest my head against his chest, it's my own heartbeat I'm hearing. When he speaks, it's my voice, my own mind, I'm hearing.

But here is the real Zach. He still gives me butterflies. And if I let him walk away…

“Zach!” I call. He stops and turns around.

I take a couple steps toward him. “Do you want to…” I swallow. “When your shift is over or something, maybe we could hang out?”

I watch the blood drain from Zach's face. He glances quickly at his fingers, then back at me, and I feel my heart plummeting.

“Or we could
not,
” I say, trying to make my voice light, trying to save face.

“No, it's just…,” Zach says, glancing down, glancing back at me again. “Just that…Lindsay and I are still together.”

All the air falls out of my body.

Oh.

“Oh God,” I say, my whole face burning now. “I'm sorry. God. I swear I didn't know.”

“I'm sorry, Addie,” Zach says, not for the first time today, and I nod, even though I don't know for which part he's apologizing. For breaking my heart in the first place. For me not remembering any of it. For still being in love with Lindsay, after all this time.