Other Words for Love (20 page)

I was so disappointed. “Where are you going?”

Blake seemed uncomfortable, and not just from his suit. “Dinner at Delmonico’s. And some bar later on.”

I folded my arms. “What kind of bar?” I asked, imagining a place where cheap, desperate girls in G-strings would grind on his lap for a twenty-dollar bill.

“It’s just business, Ari. I’m not interested in those places. My father always takes his clients there. I have to go. You understand, right?”

I didn’t want to understand. But I nodded and he hugged me. He said that I felt really warm, I should see a doctor, and I couldn’t ride the subway back home all alone. He told the receptionist to call the car service and then we took the elevator to the lobby, where I left him with Mr. Ellis and got into a car that whisked me away from all my beautiful plans.

I fell asleep in homeroom the next day. My teacher tapped my shoulder and I lifted my head to find the entire class staring at me. Then I went to the school nurse and she asked if I was on drugs, which was hilarious. I’d never even smoked a cigarette or been drunk, and I wouldn’t have any idea where to find drugs, unless Evelyn had left a stash of marijuana in the basement with her Jordache jeans.

The nurse called Mom, who took me to my doctor’s office, where a phlebotomist tied a rubber tube above my elbow. I looked away as his needle pricked my arm seven times to find a vein. When I looked back, he had filled so many vials with blood I was surprised to still be alive.

I only felt semi-alive. I was exhausted and my muscles ached, and the doctor said he couldn’t be sure until the tests came back but he was almost certain that I had mono-nucleosis.

“You know where you got this,” Mom said.

We were in her Honda, heading toward Flatbush. “Where?” I asked.

“
Where
? From Blake, where else?”

I should have known she’d say that. I had felt her eyes on me when the doctor was talking, explaining that mono was common in teenagers because
adolescents are typically involved in intimate behavior
.

“Blake isn’t sick,” I said. “I didn’t get it from him.”

“He doesn’t have to be sick, Ariadne. Didn’t you hear the doctor? He said that some people carry the virus but never show symptoms. It’s called the kissing disease. Didn’t you hear the doctor?”

How many times was she going to ask me that? I was fed up with the sound of her voice, but I still had to listen to it when I was in bed later and she called my school from the phone in the kitchen. She told the principal that I had mono and I had to stay home for eight weeks, and that she was very concerned because I was planning to attend the Parsons School of Design next year, so I couldn’t veer off track.

I didn’t want to veer off track. Blake and I had a future together that couldn’t be delayed. So I was glad when Mom came to my room and said that everything had been worked out. She was driving to Manhattan tomorrow to pick up my books. My teachers were going to write down my assignments every week and fax them to Mom at her school, and I could go back to Hollister in November as if nothing had ever happened.

She left me alone after that. I rested in bed, listening to the end-of-summer sounds outside—the Good Humor truck making its final rounds, people setting off firecrackers left over from the Fourth of July. I was inhaling the smell of a neighbor’s barbecue when I decided that this mono thing might not be so terrible. My best friend was history, Leigh was in California, and I didn’t have anyone to sit with in the cafeteria anymore. Now I wouldn’t have to spend the next two months eating lunch in a bathroom stall.

I did have mono. The doctor called a few days later to confirm his diagnosis. But Blake didn’t have it. I insisted he get another blood test to prove Mom wrong.

He came to my house the next week while she was at school and Dad was at work. He surprised me, driving to Brooklyn after his last class on a Thursday afternoon.

I let Blake in, and he followed me upstairs and settled into bed with me. I was on my side, his arm was around my shoulders, and I wanted to fall asleep with him. But Mom would be home in a few hours, so that just couldn’t happen.

“I should teach you to drive,” he said.

“You have to be eighteen to get a license in New York,” I answered.

“You’ll be eighteen in four months, Ari. You can get a permit now. I can give you driving lessons.”

I didn’t want driving lessons. Driving lessons were dangerous. I could skid on an icy road and Blake could hit his chest on the dashboard. I shrugged and he turned my face toward his, trying to kiss me. I pulled away and jammed my lips into my pillow. “You can’t, Blake. I’m diseased.”

He laughed. “You are not.”

“I am too. I don’t want you to get sick—you’ll miss school. Your father would be mad.”

“Let him be mad, then,” Blake said. “So what?”

So what
? I smiled into my pillow, thinking I’d been right a few weeks ago when I decided it was okay for me and Blake to sleep together. If he was willing to risk catching mono and missing school and letting his father down, then he meant it when he said he loved me.

But I still didn’t want him to get sick—I couldn’t be responsible for him feeling as tired and achy as I felt. “You can’t kiss me, Blake,” I said when he tried again, even though I was dying to kiss him. “I have germs in my mouth.”

He laughed, moved my hair, and kissed my bare neck. He ran his tongue from the base of my skull to the tip of my spine. It sent waves of electricity through me. “You don’t have any germs right here, do you?”

“No,” I said. But even if I did have germs, I couldn’t have told him to stop.

He came back the next Thursday, and he brought gifts—books and magazines, so I wouldn’t go stir crazy. He came to visit me every Thursday, and each time he brought presents, like boxes of dark chocolate from a fancy candy store in the city.

We’d stay in bed for hours. He’d put his arms around me and kiss the back of my neck, and sometimes I wondered if he’d try to do more than that. My parents weren’t home and I wouldn’t have objected, even though I was sick and contagious. I knew that most guys would see an empty house and a willing girl as an easy opportunity, but Blake didn’t. And that made me love him even more.

“How are you feeling?” he asked one day. I was on my side in bed; he snuggled up next to me and draped his arm across my shoulders.

“Not good,” I said, hearing early-October rain tap my window. “My whole body’s sore … especially my back. It feels better if I lie on my stomach.”

“Then lie on your stomach.”

I shifted on the bed and pressed my face into my pillow, listening to the rain. It was getting heavier now and sounded like rocks hitting the roof. I also heard Blake moving, and then he was straddling me, massaging my back through my shirt, gently kneading his fingers into my skin and my aching muscles. His thighs felt warm and strong as they squeezed my hips. I thought I might melt into the sheets.

“Is that better?” he whispered into my ear as his cheek skimmed mine.

“Much better,” I mumbled. I was falling asleep.

Blake touched my face and spoke in a louder voice that snapped me out of my trance. “You’re really warm,” he said, reaching over to my night table. He picked up a bottle of Tylenol and shook it. “This is empty, Ari. Do you have any more?”

I blinked and turned around. His eyebrows knitted together like he was worried.

“I don’t know,” I said, stretching and yawning, flattered that he was worried.

He went across the hall to the bathroom and I heard him riffling through the medicine cabinet. When he came back, he grabbed his leather jacket, which he’d chucked across my bed earlier.

“Where are you going?” I asked, sitting up halfway.

Now he was next to my desk, picking up his wallet. “To the drugstore to buy Tylenol. You need to get rid of that fever.”

I looked outside. I saw water spilling down the window, and a tree across the street. Its leaves were deep orange and bright yellow, and they were sagging beneath the steady rain.

“You can’t go out, Blake. It’s pouring.” I didn’t want him to go anywhere, not even just down the street. I wanted him to get under the covers with me and massage my back again. So I sat up all the way and moved to the end of the bed, kneeling on the mattress. “Stay here,” I said, feeling cold all of a sudden. I glanced at the mirror above my dresser; I saw pasty skin and dark circles around my eyes. I was so gory-looking lately. “My mother can pick up the Tylenol when she gets home from work.”

He shook his head. “She shouldn’t have to go out again in this weather.”

That was a considerate observation. He was more considerate of Mom than I was. Then my teeth started to chatter. Mono was crazy—broiling one minute, freezing the next.

“I hate it when you leave,” I admitted.

A smile spread across his lips. It was a lazy, sensual smile. “You hate it when I leave?” he said, like he wanted to hear it again. I nodded, and then he gathered up my bedspread and wrapped it around me as I looked into his eyes and absorbed his smell—leather and aftershave and toothpaste.

He gently pushed me back down to the pillows and kissed my entire face. He kissed me everywhere—my forehead, my cheeks, my mouth, my jaw, my chin, the space between my eyes. I was flattered again. I had thought I was too hideous and clammy to be kissed.

“Get some rest,” he said afterward. “I’ll be back soon.”

I couldn’t argue with him anymore, because I needed the Tylenol. The chills were the worst. So I put my head on my pillow and listened to his footsteps on the stairs, his car pulling away from the curb, and the rain beating against my house. It was so nice to be taken care of, especially by him.

Mom wasn’t impressed by Blake’s presents. She saw me eating the chocolate and accused me of deliberately slowing my recovery. She wanted me to drink milk and eat meat so I’d regain my strength. She was particularly skeptical of my favorite gift—a pure white teddy bear covered with velvety soft fur. She shoved the bear aside one night when I was filling out an application for Parsons and she was dusting my dresser.

“Blake gives you cheap gifts,” she said. “Especially for a rich boy.”

I scoffed. “That bear isn’t cheap, Mom. It’s from FAO Schwarz. Besides, I thought you weren’t impressed by money.”

Touché. I got her good on that one. She rolled her eyes and changed the subject, telling me for the tenth time to request applications from a few other schools.

“You’ll get into Parsons,” she said. “But it’s smart to have some backups just in case.”

I nodded and returned to my application, but I had no intention of requesting anything from other schools. I knew I didn’t need backups because I had something better: connections.

It seemed to take forever for me to recover from mono. The truth was, I wasn’t sure I
wanted
to recover, because it was nice to do my schoolwork at home and to lie in bed with Blake’s arms around me every Thursday. It was Halloween when my doctor said that I was healed, that I should rest for another week and then get back into my normal routine.

Mom was happy, but I wasn’t. I tried to think of pleasant things, like Blake’s twenty-first birthday party, which was scheduled for the following Friday at the Waldorf Astoria. Mr. Ellis had invited two hundred people and the party was black tie optional. I was excited, but Mom was worried because the party was the night before the SAT.

“You’d better come home early, Ariadne. And don’t even think about asking me to buy another dress. You have a perfectly good dress in your closet that you’ve only worn once.”

I didn’t ask for another dress. I wasn’t going to have it on for long, anyway. I had decided that I was going to give Blake a very special birthday gift, something I’d been saving for what felt like forever.

“Can we get a room here tonight?” I asked.

The party had just started. Blake and I stood inside a reception hall at the Waldorf among lots of men in suits and women in dresses. Blake was sipping a Heineken and his forehead crinkled.

“Why?” he said.

I whispered into his ear, “Because I love you.”

He got it. He smiled. I wanted to kiss him but I couldn’t because Mr. Ellis came by. He took Blake away and led him around the room, smacking his shoulder and tousling his hair, introducing him to people as “my boy Blake” while I sat alone.

I watched them move through the crowd. After a few minutes I saw two familiar faces. I should have expected that Tina and Summer would be here—it seemed as if Mr. Ellis’s guest list included every single person he and Blake knew, and everybody but Rachel and Leigh had accepted.

“Having fun?” Del said, sitting down next to me.

He was in a suit, wearing his pinkie ring, and he smelled of tobacco and cologne. We started talking and he got me feeling the way I had at the Christmas party last year—excited and nervous. I had to stop feeling like that and I had to stop trying to figure out what color his eyes were, because Blake was my boyfriend, Del wasn’t nearly as handsome, and I was going to be his sister-in-law someday.

But Del was seated at table three for dinner, like me. I walked with him to a room with ornate chandeliers and flower arrangements. He sat on my left and Blake sat on my right. Other people joined us—women escorted by men who Blake told me were his father’s partners at the firm—and then Mr. Ellis was there, and suddenly the two seats next to him were filled with Tina and Summer.