The Secrets of Attraction (5 page)

Hope was snuffed out moments later when she saw me. She stomped her feet onto the padding below the swing and came to an abrupt stop, jerking forward with the momentum. The grin faded. She tried to stand up, but quickly sat back down.

“Ow,” she said, putting a hand to the back of her head.

I trotted over to her. Her hair was wound up in the chain.

“Wait, don't move,” I said, crouching down and trying to get it loose without scalping her.

“Jess . . . be gentle. . . .”

“Don't worry, I've done this before,” I said, chuckling and tugging gently at the strands of her hair until they unwound from the chain. My hand lingered, raking through the bottom of her hair for a moment past friendly. She gathered her hair in a ponytail, pulling it away from me and then letting it drop again. I shoved my hand into my pocket. Her cheeks and nose were pink from the cold.

Did she have to look so damn adorable?

I sat in the swing next to her, facing the opposite direction, and I straightened my legs and pushed back, gripping the chains, but standing still.

“I miss you too, Jess. It doesn't have to be this way, you can say hello to me now and then, it wouldn't kill you.”

“Ah, but it would,” I said, swinging. Big mistake. My head whirled. I dug my feet back into the worn rubber mat under the swing and stopped.

“Jesse.”

“Why him?” I asked.

The question stunned her. She looked down, rocking gently.

“I don't know, it just . . . happened.”

“Things don't just happen, Hannah.”

“You're not being fair, Jesse.”

“Fair? Why am I the one who needs to be fair?”

“Do you want to talk or do you want to fight?” she asked.

I thought of all the times we'd sat, just like this, before we were officially together. Hannah was a friend, a crush, and then the best of both. At the yearly block party on our street, our parents always joked about how we were destined for each other. Her mother had even said once, “They'd make beautiful babies together,” long before either of us even understood what that meant. When we were younger, it was a source of embarrassment. In recent years, not so much. Jesse and Hannah forever. I'd never really thought about it, the “Jesse and Hannah forever” thing, but I never thought of our ending, either. I swung again, this time slowly.

“Did I really treat you that bad?” I asked. Duncan's words had stalked me since our conversation.

“What?”

“Duncan said—”

“You pissed him off the other night, Jess.”

“Is it true?”

She sniffled, reached into her jacket pocket, and pulled out a crumpled tissue. She always needed tissues when the weather got below seventy degrees. If you looked in any of her pockets there'd be one, rumpled and close to disintegrating. Feeling mushy over snot rags. I'd reached a new low.

“The timing of it all sucked, you know?”

“Because I was sick?”

She looked at me and pressed her lips together like she wanted to say more but didn't know how.
Oh, fuck
. This had happened before I got sick over Thanksgiving break. I wasn't sure I wanted to know. But I did, of course, want to know, being a masochist and all.

“It happened before then.”

“Way before?”

“You're okay with this?” she asked.

“Sure,” I lied. “If we're going to do the friends bit, we have to be able to talk, right?”

She looked at me skeptically.

“My birthday, Jess.”

Her birthday. Of course. I'd been a total jackass because I knew how much she'd been looking forward to her party.
I lost track of time
was a lame excuse, even though it had been the truth. It was hard to explain, and probably even harder for anyone to understand what happened to me when I got lost in music. I'd been working on Slash's solo from “Sweet Child O' Mine,” and I was killing it, just wanted to play it
one more time
. Time had no meaning as my fingers moved across the frets, burning the memory of the song into my muscles. I'd only gone into my garage to fool around with it for a little while, but a little while had turned into three hours, and I was late, like
late
-late, to Hannah's sweet sixteen.

“And then the card.”

I dropped my chin to my chest, staring down at my feet. “It was personalized.”

“In crayon,” she laughed.

Hearing it now, I couldn't deny it had been an idiot move. Why hadn't I just stopped at Walgreens on the way? Or why . . . why hadn't I bought one weeks before the party? Hannah loved cards. I knew that. Big, glittery, sparkly ones, ones that played music . . . even the cheap ninety-nine-cents ones for “just because.” I had a shoe box filled with them from her.

“Daisy helped me, cut me a break, huh,” I said, shouldering my swing into hers gently. Our knees brushed against each other.

“It was more than the card,” she whispered, sniffling and swiping again.

“Hannah, I . . .”

“I love that you love music, Jesse. You're good—no, better than good, and I know how you get when you practice but . . . I go to all your band stuff: the fall concert, the block party, the time you guys played at the pool. But how many of my volleyball games have you been to? How many times do I give you a pass for being late to something before I look like a complete door mat?”

“I get it, okay, stop.”

“Do you, really? Remember in the fall when we took a ride over to the city, I kept thinking, ‘Wow, this is it, we're finally doing something,' and we ended up at Sam Ash for two hours. I stared at guitars while you talked to that guy with the dreads about the death of guitar solo and how you wanted to bring it back and—”

“We went for bubble tea after that. Walked around Times Square.”

“It's all about the band. I want something different.”

“But you're dating Duncan. He's in a band.”

“Duncan plays the drums, Jess, he's not a
drummer
. There's a difference.”

“And you'd rather be with someone like that?”

“I'd rather be with someone who wants to spend time with
me
.”

“Hannah, I do.”

She sighed, twisting up the swing again.

“You just think you do, because you can't.” She let go and spun around.

I grabbed the chain of the swing and stopped her, pulled her close to me. Our foreheads touched. I tried to look her in the eyes but it was a distorted, too-close cyclops eye. She didn't pull away; she leaned into me. A sign. I moved my face toward hers, her mouth a few sweet seconds away.

“Hannah,” I whispered.

She turned her head, my lips stranded there in midair.

“Please, don't.”

I leaned away, staring at my feet again.

“So is this what we needed to talk about?”

“No, Jesse, I wanted to ask you for a favor.”

This was getting better and better. I gripped the chains on the swing and pulled myself back to standing. It was fucking freezing out, but suddenly my pits were damp. I put my hood up and turned to her. Waiting.

“Please, give Duncan the song. He's really put—”

“WHAT?” I yelled, arms outstretched. A lady pushing a jogger stroller along the sidewalk in front of the park startled and eyed us through the chain-link face. I shoved my hands into my pockets. “This is what you meant by ‘We need to talk.'”

“No. Yes. Not exactly. . . . Look, what I just said about Duncan playing the drums . . . this Battle of the Bands thing, it's important to him. . . . Just, reconsider. You could probably write another song in your sleep.”

“Did he ask you to do this?”

“No.”

Somehow that made me feel worse.

“I have to go do a few things before work. I'll catch you around,” I said, walking away.

“Jesse, the song? Please.”

I turned toward her. She hopped off the swing.

“I just—I know this is a mess and I hurt you and I'm sorry,” she said, coming closer, “but I really hope we can be friends. That we all can be friends. He makes me happy.”

This was it. The end. In a crazy, backward movie reel, our relationship swirled through my head. I'd never be the one to make her laugh so hard, soda shot out of her nose. Or pry her hands from her eyes during
The Blair Witch Project
. We'd never go on the Zipper at the St. Mary's carnival so many times in a row we'd want to hurl. Memories. Packed up tight in a little box, shoved away like the cards. Done.

“I want you to be happy, Hannah. I just don't want to see it,” I said, backing away. I saw in her eyes this was a direct hit. They sharpened, lost just a bit of their light.

I resisted the urge to apologize, and left.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

YEARBOOK WAS MOSTLY PAINLESS, EXCEPT WHEN
we had our bi-monthly deadline meetings. Piper Murray, editor in chief, liked to call them “socials” to make them sound more fun, but they were really just deadline check-ins with Chips Ahoy! and Red Bull. The yearbook office was a forgotten room in the basement of Sacred Heart. On any given day, the heat either blasted or was nonexistent and the awful fluorescent lighting made everyone look like zombie apocalypse survivors. At least we didn't have to share it with another club.

We sat around a long table, noshing on cookies and waiting for Piper, who was busy staring at her bulletin board of multicolored Post-its with the same concentration you would expect from a warlord devising a plan of attack. I entertained myself by continuing a mehndi-inspired floral design I'd started earlier in the day on my back of my hand with a dark brown Koh-I-Noor pen.

I was officially on design staff and didn't need to be at both monthly editorial meetings, but it was cool hanging out with Jazz and Wren. The three of us were in the running for editor positions next year when we were seniors. Aside from looking excellent on my college app, being in charge of design was something I couldn't wait to sink my teeth into. I figured an interest in every facet of production would help my cause.

Piper grabbed a neon-blue Post-it and planted it on the desk next to me.

It had
Sadie Hawkins Dance
written in bold letters.

“What's this?” I finished the vine on my hand with a spiral and looked up.

“Marissa Teller was originally supposed to handle the Sadie Hawkins Dance section, but she's going on a ski trip with her family. I need you to take photos for the layout.”

Wren covered her mouth but failed to conceal a quickly growing grin.

“This is your doing,” I said, pointing at her. She had already tried to rally both Jazz and me to go to the dance since she was working it for Spirit Club.

“No, swear,” she said, raising her right hand. “I'm writing the copy for the section. Although, I thought Jazz could help too—there should be a sidebar with the history of the dance, don't you think?”

Jazz glared at Wren over her laptop. Once something was said in front of Piper, there was no turning back.

“When is this?” I asked.

“Next Friday.” A chorus of voices around the table answered.

“I don't get the whole Sadie Hawkins thing; I mean, technically, since we're an all-girls school, isn't every dance a Sadie Hawkins dance?” Jazz asked.

“True, but still—we need this. Between winter and midterms, this dance is the only social event until prom. It's way better than some Valentine's BS with balloon hearts,” Piper said. “Maybe you could somehow work that angle in the copy. Wren, how were you thinking of incorporating the theme?”

Wren shuffled through a couple of the pages in her notebook, stopped at one and put her finger on the page. “I was thinking ‘On the Edge of . . . Romance'?”

“Too banal,” Piper said, waving her hand. “Dig deeper, what were you going to write about? I want it to be more than just the basic ‘There was a band and cupcakes.'”

“Of course . . . I planned on interviewing couples to see how they felt about the dance . . . if a girl asking a guy to a dance was even that big of a core-shaker anymore. And I know some girls are making it a girls' night, so that would be interesting to include too.”

Core-shaker?
I mouthed to her across the table. Wren pretended not to notice so she wouldn't lose face with Piper, who took the yearbook's theme, “On the Edge,” seriously. The faculty had given us some trouble, thinking it sounded neurotic or like some veiled drug reference. Piper assured them “On the Edge” was positive and meant being on the forefront. I didn't always understand Piper's vision, but the challenge of figuring it out was kind of fun.

“Cool. I like it. Have it to me the following Wednesday after the dance, right? Jazz, where are we on the Fathers' Club layout?”