Forget Me Not (20 page)

“
But you still… I mean,
the physical part was still there.”

“
Not at first.” Alana
stomps out her cigarette and leans back on the bench, looking at
the sky. “It was actually really bad at first. I started seeing
Dave. I didn’t really even like Dave, but he liked me and I wanted
to piss off Jack. I was angry about how easily things fell apart
between us. And it worked, but not how I wanted. Jack wasn’t just
mad; now he hated me. We weren’t even friends anymore.”

“
So how did you fix
it?”

“
It was a mess. Prom came
around and I thought we could all go together, even if it was
stupid and lame. I tried to talk Jack into going, into starting
over as friends. When Dave and I were together, Jack was alone, and
I hated that most of all. Dave still wanted the three of us to be
what we were, and I stupidly thought the answer was
Prom.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Prom seems like
the worst possible thing for either of you.”

Alana laughs. “No kidding. I thought
it was a joke, though. Like we’d all go and make fun of everyone.
That was what we did and where better to hate your peers than Prom?
Dave wanted to go. He thought it would be fun and a part of him
still wanted to be normal, you know? So I tried to convince Jack,
but he just told me that he would lose all respect for me if I
went. He thought it was like my approval of everyone else or
something if I went.”

“
Did you go?”

“
I did. Dave was so
excited about it. All of our lives are shitty and stupid. It was
nothing, but it made him happy. It was the only high school thing
he did that didn’t end up fucked up.”

“
Jack told me Dave’s dad
made a scene at graduation.”

She nods. “Yeah. That’s how things
were with all of us. We were all fucked up, living lives with other
people who were fucked up. Definitely too fucked up to do anything
but make our lives far more difficult. So, how could I say no? Dave
needed something else. He talked about nothing but Prom for weeks.
I figured Jack would get over it.”

“
He did, though, because
you’re still friends.”

“
Yeah, he did. Three
months later. He wouldn’t look at me for three months and then, one
day that summer, he just showed up at my house. As if nothing had
happened. I tried to talk about it with him, but he wouldn’t
address it. He just kind of expected it to fix itself. I didn’t
want to fight about it, so I let it go. He wanted to have sex, to
pretend things were still exactly the same. Of course, I was still
with Dave, so I wouldn’t mess around with Jack. He was hurt, but we
managed to stay friends after that.”

“
Then what? Jack told me
you guys mess around sometimes.”

She sighs. “We do. Or we did. Before
he left for the military, Dave broke up with me. He has this sense
of honor, like he needed to leave without ties, in case something
happens. He’s only written once since he left. I’ve never stopped
missing him, though. I won’t pretend I felt for him what I felt for
Jack. Maybe that makes me an asshole, to have been with someone who
wasn’t my first choice, but Dave still matters to me. Anyway, he
left me and didn’t look back and it didn’t take long before Jack
and I got back to the physical stuff.”

“
Hormones?”

Alana shakes her head. “It’s need.
Physical need. Something in each of us is broken. We cling to each
other like it will hold us together.”

She finishes the cigarette she’s been
smoking and looks blankly at the club entrance. I don’t know what
to say. Anything I say will feel like a lie; I want to make her
feel better, but I want to believe Jack and I can work even when
they couldn’t.

“
It’s hard,” she says.
“When your first love is so important to you, when he’s someone you
still see, it’s hard to let go. But I let go of hoping when I
started seeing Dave. I love Jack. I really do. And at the end of it
all, Jack is my best friend. I can’t let go of him, but I have no
claim to him, either. I want you to work. I want you to be what
he’s missing. There are so many things wrong in his life, Lily. He
deserves something right.”

“
I love him,” I confess to
her. “I just wanted to be sure I did.”

“
You know, I told you he
can’t be someone’s boyfriend. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he just
can’t be mine.”

“
I don’t need him to be my
boyfriend. I just need him to be in my life.”

She smiles. “When he called me that
night, the night you told him to leave you alone, he was destroyed.
I went over to see him and it was the first time that he didn’t try
to hide his feelings in mindless fucking.”

“
Have you slept with him?
Since that night?” I want to know, but I also don’t want to know. I
don’t really have the right to know, either. As far as Jack was
concerned, I had a boyfriend. I haven’t talked to him in a month
and we weren’t even in a relationship before it fell apart.
However, I need to know if Jack is in the same place as I am. I
haven’t been with anyone or even thought about anyone but
him.

“
No. He wouldn’t even let
me touch him. He just couldn’t stop saying that he wanted to be
whole, that he wanted to be worth it to someone.”

The tears fall slowly from
me. It breaks me apart to hear that. “He
is
. He is worth it.”

“
I know. He’s always been
worth it to me, too. But it was you he meant. You’re that
someone.”

“
What about you? About you
and Jack?”

She looks at me. “We’ve had so much
fun since we met and, as you know, Jack aims to please. But it’s
been years, Lily. If there was a way, if we were meant to be
together… well, it wouldn’t be so hard, would it?”

“
I don’t think so. I broke
up with the guy I thought was the love of my life for the same
reason.”

“
And with
Jack?”

“
Something changed in me
with Jack. With Derek, I’d started to feel like I was fighting to
save the past. With Jack, I could only look ahead of us and the
path seemed wide open.”

“
Sometimes, letting go is
the only way to move forward, Lily. It sounds like we both learned
that this year.” She takes my hand. “Come on. They’re gonna be on
soon.”

Chapter 15

It’s hard to make it to the front now
that even more people have arrived, but once the opener finishes,
the crowd disperses a little. Alana pushes me up to the edge of the
stage and I think it’ll all be okay until he comes out with the
band. Suddenly, Jack is standing inches from me and I realize that
I am taking a huge risk with him. I look up and I feel my stomach
knotting, until his eyes meet mine. In the soft blue, there are so
many words he hasn’t been able to say yet, but it’s okay. Nothing
has changed since he walked away from me on the quad. I see it in
the way he looks at me; I’m where I should be now and I can wait
for everything else.

The show is fabulous and
everyone’s bursting with energy after it ends. I don’t want to
bother Jack so I stand by the stage. Alana gives me a hug and, when
she’s this close, I remember being with her in bed. There’s a
complex sexual urgency that’s still ever present in me, but I have
to fight it if I want to make this work with Jack. With Derek, the
relationship already existed before the sex. With Jack, however,
this is navigating a new relationship and the foundation can’t be
nothing but physical attraction. As much as I want to hook up with
Alana again, I need to prove to Jack that I’m committed to him
entirely. And not just sexually. I need him to know that he’s more
than just a fuck when I’m sad because of my boyfriend. I need to
prove to him that
he
is what I want in a boyfriend.

It takes a while before the band comes
back out and I get nervous again, but when Jack finally approaches
me, it disappears. It’s as if an hour has passed, not a month. I
feel my body go into overdrive when I look at him. This is going to
be tough, because I want to show him how I feel rather than tell
him. I think about the sex we had and try to put it out of my mind;
there will be time for that later. Tonight is about something
else.

“
I didn’t expect to see
you. It’s been a while.” There is sorrow heavy in his
voice.

“
It’s been too long. But I
needed to know.”

“
And do you?”

“
I do. I’m sorry it took
this long, but I owed you that. I wanted to stand here and tell you
that I was sure.”

“
I don’t know what to say.
I…” He trails off and looks around the club. “Can you give me a few
minutes to pack up and then we can go for a ride?”

“
Take as long as you
need,” I reply.

He smiles. “I’ll be right
back.”

He comes back ten minutes later and we
take off on his bike. I’m hoping we won’t go back to the dorm,
because I’m worried that we won’t end up talking. I can’t deny that
I’m incredibly attracted to him and I know that all of my
convictions will disappear if we go to his room. I know he’s mad at
me, but I also know what happens when we’re alone. I’m relieved
when he pulls up to an old playground on the edge of
town.

He helps me down off the bike and we
go to the swings. They look like they haven’t been used in years
and Jack brushes off a clump of leaves so I can sit. He joins me on
the swing next to mine and digs the toes of his shoes into the dirt
below him.

“
I’m really glad you came
tonight,” he says. “You look beautiful.” The shyness is endearing,
but also scary. I can deal with Jack when he’s moody and I can
handle his mockery, but the sweetness and shyness are more
intimidating than anything in his past. They remind me that he’s
still just a guy and that he’s still breakable. I don’t want to be
the one to break him any more than he has already been damaged. I
sigh, remembering that I’ve been over this. Jack is worth the risk.
I need him to know that.

“
I want you,” I say,
unable to hold it in any longer. “If you’ll have me.”

“
What about you? You said
you needed to figure yourself out.”

“
I did. I probably still
do. I’m not definitely sure who I am or what I want, but I care for
you. In just a few days, I knew that I cared for you.”

“
When did you break up
with your boyfriend?”

“
That night after I asked
you to leave me alone.”

He looks up. “Really?”

“
Really. I almost went to
your room after Derek left, but I wanted to come back to you like
this instead. I wanted you to know that you weren’t a backup plan.
You’re my choice.”

“
No one has ever chosen
me, princess.”

I reach out and take his hand. “Until
now.”

“
You didn’t tell me,
though. You had a boyfriend, and you mentioned him before, but you
didn’t tell me. We did all that and you never told me.”

“
I didn’t know. Well,
actually, that’s not totally true, but we got in a fight and I
thought it was over. At least the first night, I thought it might
be and I wanted to forget it all. Once you and I had been together,
I didn’t intend to fix things with Derek. It wasn’t right, even if
you meant nothing. But that first night, I didn’t know what was
going to happen.”

“
That night at the
bar.”

“
Yeah.”

“
And after? What happened
after?”

“
I don’t know. It’s just…
He was the world to me. I adored him since I was old enough to feel
anything for another person like that. We were together a year, but
it just wasn’t working. Not since I started school. And that night,
the first night… Derek was supposed to come see me for my birthday,
but he made other plans and forgot about me and I thought he was
seeing someone else and-”

“
Was he?”

I shake my head. “No. He wasn’t. He
told me he had never been unfaithful and I believe him.”

“
You still care about him.
I can hear it when you say his name.”

“
I do. You’re right. I
thought he was my future. That night, I was watching my future slip
away and I felt helpless. It was like staring into an endless
eternity and knowing that it was all darkness. Because Derek was my
first real boyfriend and my first love, as well as the first guy I
was with, I couldn’t accept that he wouldn’t be the only one.
Suddenly, though, the world looked bleak.”

“
Which led you to me. I
was as hopeless as your future.”

“
The truth?”

He nods. “From now on? Nothing
but.”

“
Yeah. I saw you as
everything that he wasn’t. You were the perfect escape. But only
for that night. And only for a part of it. In the alley, I wasn’t
thinking about Derek. And slowly, over the next few days, things
started to reshape themselves and, after I went to your
house…”

“
Princess, you’re not
going to put me back together and make me right again. You know
that, don’t you?”

“
You know, maybe at first
I thought I could. I probably even thought I
should
. However, then I got to know
you. Your story, your sadness, your joys. It was just a week, but
by the end of it, Jack, I realized something that you never
have.”