I'll Be Here (27 page)

“The game must be over,” I say flatly, giving no hint that my heart is a tightly-balled fist.

            “Looks like it.”  Sarah presses two fingers into my back.  I don’t budge.  She turns and her face is sympathetic.  “Don’t chicken out on me now Willow.”

            I’m going to say that I’m not chickening out.  I’m going to take a step.  I’m going to surge across a lacrosse field of waiting boys and tell Alex exactly what I’m doing here. 

I’m in love with you,
I’ll say and actually, I’ll sing it—belting it out in soprano like a Broadway star.  I’m going to do it.  Honestly.  I’m about to make my move, but then Alex’s gaze flicks, landing hard on mine.  It’s like a snap.  A crackle.  A pop. 

            His mouth falls open in surprise. 

            Beside me, Sarah waves. 

            I think the atmosphere boils over and melts all the remaining polar icecaps.

            The clouds halt in the sky. 

            Then it’s actually happening.  Sarah and I are walking and I can feel the grass kissing the tops of my feet through the cuts of my sandals. 

            We stop maybe seven feet from the bleachers and Sarah’s talking to the other guys like she knows them, and she’s making introductions but I’m not really paying attention.  I’m looking at Alex’s face and I’m trying to figure out what he’s thinking but everything’s moving so fast, like all the molecules around us are heating up.  And I want so badly for him to say something to me.  Anything.  But, instead, there’s an awful, lulling
nothing
coming from his lips. 

            He shakes his head slowly and looks down at the clenched fingers resting on his thighs.  Suddenly, standing exposed in front of these boys with fantastic bodies in this foreign land, I feel all wrong.  Nothing is in its right place—especially not me.

Excuse me sir, I’ve gotten off the train at the wrong stop
. 

I stagger back and spin, the sun hurling far too much brightness in my face.  My feet are moving before my body’s even registered the right direction.  I think that Sarah is shouting behind me.  I hear other voices but they’re coming at me in faraway echoes like we’re underwater. 

I am flying—building up speed across the field, the intersection of thrumming cars, and down the curving sidewalk.  

I know that I parked in Visitor Lot B, but who the hell knows where that is?  I realize too late that I didn’t pay attention as Sarah and I walked over to the lacrosse fields and now I’m completely lost.  I’m going to have to call Jake back and my mom is going to ask how it went with Alex and I’m going to have to explain that I didn’t even get one word out before bailing.

Breathing hard, I slump onto a bench, thankful for tree shade and a deserted campus.  I guess Saturday before lunch is not exactly a bustling time for college students.  Good.  Alone is the perfect way to be miserable. 

I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to calm my hurried blood and keep my tears from falling.

What was I thinking coming here?

Alex is probably still back by the bleachers laughing about me with all of his friends. 
Yeah, she’s still in high school.  It’s pathetic.  She drove all the way up here to throw herself at me. 
    

            He’s right.  I am pathetic. 

            This is Dustin all over again.  I didn’t pick up on the clues and now I’m sitting here, my eyes trilling with watery shame, all sweaty and gross, with the drive home still ahead of me. 

I focus on breathing properly.

In. Out. In.

Good.

I count to ten.

One, two, three, four, five…

Good.

… Eight, nine, ten.

I clench and unclench my hands, forcing my fingers to stretch into the air. 

Good.

By the time I’ve finished this routine, the drumming in my ears has quieted and I can hear the sounds of the air softly filtering through the branches overhead, and voices, and a faraway siren. 

            When I blink and focus in front of me, two stars—clear and blue and soulful, are looking back.

“I… I—”  Actually, I’ve forgotten how to breathe which makes talking sort of a challenge.

 The wide sky blares beyond him, casting a grey shadow over his face.  Alex is crouched low on the sidewalk in front of the bench where I’m sitting.  His shirt is still off and I have to force my eyes up from his muscular stomach.  He lifts his right hand and cradles my head in his palm.  When he leans in and brushes his warm lips against my forehead, my breath hitches and my heart takes off.  It goes up, up, up and away!  Birds start chirping.  I wish that I had an armful of confetti that I could toss into the air.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” he says so quietly that I
almost
don’t hear him, but I do and even though I am biting my bottom lip, I’m also smiling. 

Alex treats me to one of his rare full-on grins and moments pass in silence while we stare at each other grinning like fools. 

I let my fingers and thumbs roam the delectable planes of his chest up to his face where I rest all ten pads of my fingers against the stubble that dusts his jaw. 

“God, Alex I am so, so sorry,” I tell him, my eyes brimming with tears and my head moving subtly back and forth.  “What you saw with Dustin wasn’t what you think!  He asked me to meet him and I should never have agreed to it, but I did and I’m sorry.  But, everything with him is over.  Completely.  I only want you.”

I’m talking so fast that all the air has whooshed out of my lungs.  I’m practically shivering with nerves.  Alex is still looking at me like he’s not sure what to do with me and I try not to fall apart.  After what feels like an eternity he lifts his hand and cups it around the back of my neck.  He pulls me to him so that my head is tucked into the space between his chin and his collarbone.  He’s got a twinge of sweaty boy smell to him.  Is it weird that I think it’s sexy? 

“It doesn’t even matter,” he whispers and gently kisses me just below my ear.  I shudder.  “All week I’ve been thinking about how I fucked this up by running away, but I was afraid…”  Alex stiffens and takes a deep breath. 

“I was afraid that you were still using me to get Dustin back and I couldn’t take that.”  When he pulls back and ducks his head so that we are eye level, I see the earnestness in his gaze.  “I can’t take being just some rebound or a means to an end.  I—” 

I cut him off placing my finger over the soft skin of his lips.  “Shhh.  I am
not
using you and you are
not
a rebound guy.  You never could be.”

I quickly squeeze my eyes shut for courage before I continue.  I need to say this.  “Maybe I gave my heart away to you once and I never really got it back in the first place.  It feels like I’ve either been chasing you or running from you for most of my life and when that didn’t work I locked you away into a box because it was safer and easier.  But I’m not trying to do that anymore.”

“I’m not either.”

By now, we’re both smiling so hard and loony that we’re almost laughing and Alex leans closer, resting his forehead against mine.  He reaches for my hands, intertwining our fingers.  “You drove all this way.”

I nod against him. 

“To see me,” he whispers almost accusingly.

I nod again.

Then he rolls back and just looks at me for a minute like he’s figuring something out.  My skin is prickling. 

Alex stands and pulls me to my feet.  “Come with me?” 

This time he doesn’t wait for me to nod; he just starts walking, trailing me behind him.  We make two rights and then a left and we pass a tall building that I recognize as Wyman, and then we go up a flight of cascading stairs that open onto a sunny concrete balcony bordered in sturdy-looking steel rails. 

On one side of the raised courtyard is a modern building of rocketing glass and shiny metal and on the other side is a complex of three smaller buildings that look almost like industrial sheds.  Sandwiched between the sheds and the stairs are a cluster of tables and mismatched chairs buffeted from the sun by drooping trees bursting with a constellation of delicate star-shaped flowers the color of a kitten’s tongue.  

“What is this?” I ask.

“This,” Alex says, taking a step away from me, his hands held outward like he’s pushing the air away from his body, “is where the University’s Art Department is.”

I look around again and now I notice a tall boy with crazy, puffed up hair and ripped jeans carrying a black artist’s portfolio under one arm.  He disappears beyond the double doors of the modern building. 

Alex starts talking and he’s pointing, telling me which shed the kilns are in and what sketching classes are offered.  There’s even a letterpress class being taught in the fall.

I am shaking something off, as if I’m waking up from a lucid dream into a fog of sunshine.  “Wait.  How do you know all this?”

His face turns sheepish.  His bottom lip disappears into his quirked mouth. 

“I got a tour last week and I
may
have talked to a few professors.”

“What—” 

But Alex cuts me off, encircling my arms with his hands, his face an earnest canvas.  “I still want you to apply to whatever art school you end up settling on—whether it’s in Rhode Island, or New York, or the Antarctic,” he insists. 

“And I’m there, right beside you.  I can promise you that. I just figured that with next year already a done deal, you should at least be as happy here as you can be.  And one of the professors that I talked to assured me that you still have time to get them to look at your portfolio before you have to register for classes.  And if you can get at least one recommendation from a past teacher, it shouldn’t be a problem for you to get into any of the classes.”

Whoa.  My brain is lagging seconds behind.  “You got a tour
last
week?   But that was while you were still mad at me.”

“Yeah, well....  You may have beaten me to the main event by showing up here today, but I told you that I had already decided that I’d messed things up royally.”  He laughs.  “I was just so crazy—so crazy about you that I wasn’t thinking right.”

My face must show all of the wonder I feel.  He pulls me to him with one hand on my lower back and the other cupping my waist.  His thumb plays against my ribs and his fingers make a small repeating pattern on my skin.  My body is flaming and I want to attack his mouth, but I also want to hear the words that are coming out of it.

“Willow, I was just waiting for your finals to be over then I figured that I’d come and sweep you off your feet and we’d have the entire summer to you know—figure things out.” 

I cock my head to one side.  “You mean that you’d climb a trellis up to my window?”

“Something like that.”  Alex takes a deep breath and squeezes his eyes shut.  When they open again, his pupils refigure as if they are two inflated black balls bobbing on a watery surface.  “I’m done running.”

I smile.  “Me too.” 

Alex reaches between us for my left hand and places it on his naked chest just over his heart.  His voice is softer now.  “Do you feel how fast my heart is beating?”

This time my nod is barely perceptible.  Alex’s heart is insistent under my hand like a racehorse pounding it’s hooves on the red earth impatient to be released from the paddock. 

Alex sucks in another long, steeling breath, flexing the muscles of his jaw.  I shiver. 

“I love you,” he says quickly, his blue eyes spilling light over me all at once.

There is a silence.  A breath passes.  Then five.  Then twelve. 

I am taking too long to answer and his beautiful face dims.  He looks down at the octagonal pattern etched into the pavement. 

“I’m sorry.  That was too much too fast.  You don’t have to say it back.  Honestly.  I don’t know what I was thinking laying that on you so soon.  I’ve just been thinking it for so long,” he says, his teeth sinking into the words.

Now it is my turn.  I pick up his hand and place it over my chest. 

“Do you feel how fast my heart is beating?”  I ask.

Alex looks up.  His nod is wary.

“I love you too,” I say.

Now we really are kissing and maybe the sun blows up and maybe the universe is reborn.  And maybe we actually do take off into the air this time. 

All I feel is Alex all above me, below me—everywhere.  His fingers grip me tighter, grazing half-forgotten places, edging up the pale skin on the inside of my arms and winding into my hair.  I can barely breathe but I think that his lips might be better than oxygen at the moment.

Alex’s mouth stills against the scorched skin of my neck and he mumbles in a funny voice that we should head back to his dorm so that he can put his shirt on.  I pull his face back to mine and tell him that if he thinks I’m going to let him put more clothes on he’s out of his mind. 

He laughs and kisses me again.

The sky is everywhere—open and wide all around us. 

It’s infinite.

Anything can happen.

And I’ll be here.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I always wonder if anyone but me takes the time to read this part.  You know, the part where the author gushes about how many people have helped him or her get to this point and blah, blah, blah.  Well, it’s sometimes my favorite part of a book and I always dreamed that one day I’d get to write an acknowledgements page that was all my own.

I would like to thank:

My beta readers.  Also known as “friends.”  Especially Sarah—my very first reader, who excels so completely at being human that I wasn’t afraid to put myself and my words in her hands.  And my Aunt Susan and my book buddy Stephanie, who devours cheesy lit almost as fast as me.

My husband, Dave, who amazes me each and every day with his incredibly high threshold for crazy.  And who gave me two perfectly imperfect girls that are my favorite part about the world.