Wherever Nina Lies (12 page)

S
ean and I are sitting in the car pulled up in front of the Jamies’ apartment building, acting like nothing happened. Or rather, Sean is acting like nothing happened, while I am silently freaking out.

“Riding for twelve hours with the Jamies is definitely going to be funny,” Sean says. He pauses. “Question is will it be the kind of funny that makes a person laugh? Or the kind that makes a person barf a little?” Sean grins. I try and laugh too but it comes out sounding like a cough. I know it didn’t mean anything, Sean was being resourceful, just doing what he needed to do to get the Jamies to come with us, but I can’t stop thinking about the kiss. Lip against lip, the heat from the inside of his mouth entering my own. I know it was just for show, and I know I don’t have much experience to judge it against, but I swear, I
swear
, that kiss felt real.

Sean’s phone starts vibrating. He takes it out, looks at it, presses a button to make it stop. I glance at him, half expecting him to say who it was, but he doesn’t, just shoves the phone back in his pocket.

“Oh!” I say loudly, awkwardly. “I should call Brad. At work. I’m supposed to go in tomorrow.”

“Uh-huh,” Sean says. “Go for it.”

And as I dial Mon Coeur, I hear a buzzing coming from Sean’s pocket. His phone is vibrating again. He reaches into his pocket and makes it stop without even looking at who it was. A thought I don’t want in my head pops in and won’t leave. What if Amanda was right? What if all those “wrong numbers” he’s been getting are actually some poor girl calling to see where her boyfriend is, and all the while he’s off in another state with me, ignoring her calls? I shake my head. I am thinking Amanda’s thoughts here. Not my own. I press
Talk
and hold the phone to my ear.

Brad answers on the second ring with a singsongy, “Bonjooooour, Mon Cooooouer.”

“Hi, Braddy,” I say.

“Ellie-face! Hello! So is he your boyfriend yet? Are you preggo? Are you naming the baby after me?!?”

I laugh. “Um…” I feel myself blushing. I glance at Sean. He’s staring out the window, his expression blank.

“Don’t you ‘um’ me, missy. So how was the ride home? Did you invite him up? Did you smooooooch him?”

“It was good,” I say.

“What was good? The ride
or the smooch
?!”

I don’t say anything.

“Ellie…” Brad says slowly. “You are not answering with
the candor to which I am accustomed…
Are you with him right now?”

“
Yeeeesss,”
I say. “I am.”

“No way! What are you guys doing?”

“We’re in Denver. And we’re on our way to Phoenix.”

Brad pauses. “Hold on,” he says. “I have to go put my head back together because
you just made my brain explode.
Are you serious?” Brad sounds thrilled.

“Yup,” I say.

“What are you doing there?
Is this your honeymoon
?”

I bite my bottom lip. I really don’t like lying to Brad, but I know he kinda shares Amanda’s view that there’s not much I can do about Nina being gone. And he sounds so excited about the idea of me dating Sean, I don’t want to burst his bubble. Then again, omitting some details is not really the same thing as lying, is it? “We’re going to see a band play,” I say. “This band called Monster Hands. Which is part of why I’m calling you, actually. Would it be okay if I didn’t come in to work tomorrow?”

“You’re calling me to say you suddenly, out of nowhere, hopped in a car with a hot stranger and now he’s driving you to Phoenix to see a band and
you want to know if you can have off work
?”

“Um…yeah?”

Brad lets out a loud
WHOOOP
. “Well, of course you can! Hold on!” And then I hear him repeating what I just
told him to a guy in the background. Thomas probably. The guy lets out a cheer, too. “You just have to promise me one thing, Ellie-bean.”

“What’s that?”

“When you and hot skater are sexin’ it up, you’ll videotape the entire thing.”

I laugh. “Okay, I will.”

“No, seriously,” Brad says. “I swear it won’t even be weird or anything if I watch a video of you and Sean doing it because I won’t even
glance
at you I
promise
! I’ve been learning this new video-editing program, we can just blur you out!”

I hear a scuffling sound in the background.

“Hi, Ellie.” It’s Thomas. “Please excuse my el-pervo boyfriend. What he meant to say is that he is so excited for you, and I cannot wait to meet this hot stud-cake you’re with and get back safe.”

More scuffling.

Brad again. “And take a video!”

I’m laughing. “Bye, guys,” I say. “See you when I get back.”

“HAVE FUN!” they call into the phone together. And then they hang up.

“Everything cool?” Sean asks. He turns toward me and there’s the slightest hint of a smirk on his face, and immediately I start blushing until I realize that he’s not smirking at me, but what’s behind me: Jamie-girl and Jamie-boy emerging
from the front door of their building, red-faced, each hauling one end of an enormous blue duffel bag, like the kind of bag you might have if you were going on a three-month-long sea voyage for which you also needed to pack your own food. Sean leans toward me. “Which do you think is most likely to be in that bag, a month’s worth of clothes? Or the chopped-up bodies of the last two people they hitched a ride with?” But before I can answer, grunting Jamies-boy-and-girl are shoving their bag into Sean’s open trunk and piling themselves into the car.

“Seriously,” Jamie-girl says, as she shuts the door behind them. “You guys are sooooooooooo lucky you met us. A Jamie-Jamie road trip is a special and unique thing. No one who goes on one ever forgets it.”

“Well, that”—Sean turns to me and grins—“That I do not doubt for a second.”

S
ix hours into the trip and the Jamies are in the backseat doing something that sounds an awful lot like sex although I’m not planning on turning around so I cannot say for sure.

All I know is that there’s a rhythmic thumping against the back door; and it’s growing faster. And for some reason that I do not even care to think about, the car is starting to smell like yogurt.

Sean cracks the window and turns the music up. I stare straight ahead.

Truth is, even this might be preferable to what they were doing for the first five and a half hours of the trip, namely singing along loudly (and badly) with the Monster Hands CD, telling us a very, very, very long story about how they met, followed by them fighting about: 1) the details of their meeting (they disagreed on what Jamie-girl was wearing that night), and 2) a joke Jamie-boy made about Jamie-girl being controlling (which, while possibly true, was mean and not very funny).

I glance over at Sean again. He turns the stereo up. The Monster Hands song, “Some Things I’d Rather Not Discuss (About My Face)” is playing:

Stop looking, stop stop looking at this, stop looking at this thing on my faaaaace. On my faaaaaa…

Monster Hands is just about to hit the chorus when the music stops. Just stops, completely.

And then, quite suddenly, a new noise emerges from the backseat, a little
yip yip yip
like a tiny dog yelping in pain.

Yip yip yip. Yip yip yiiiiip.

I feel a laugh starting to bubble up from deep in my stomach.

Yip yip yyyiiiippp.
And then I realize something. These sounds are not coming from Jamie-girl, but from Jamie-boy, which makes the whole thing even funnier

Yip yip yip yip.

I hold my breath and press my lips together, ball my hands into fists, squeeze my nails into my palms, but the
yip-yip-yipping
is faster now, higher pitched.

Yipyipyipyipyipyip.

I turn toward Sean, his face a mirror of my own, lips pressed together, cheeks puffed out, eyes starting to water. My chin starts trembling with pent-up laughs and then…

“
Woof
,” Sean whispers. And then it’s all over. A laughter bomb explodes in the car. The more I hear Sean laughing, the more I laugh, and the more I laugh, the more he laughs,
and really at this point it’s completely out of my control. If someone waved a thousand-dollar bill in front of my face and said I could have it if I stopped laughing that second, I wouldn’t be able to. My stomach hurts, and there are tears trickling down my cheeks.

It’s a full minute and a half before our laughter subsides, both of us gasping for hiccuppy breaths.

And then, finally, the car is quiet except for a soft shuffling and the sound of a zipper being zipped. I turn toward Sean again, and he shrugs and I shrug and then Jamie-girl says, loudly, “We’ve been in the car for like six hours now, and it’s like twelve-thirty, don’t you think it’s about time we stopped for the night?”

And Sean says, “There’s a little place about ten miles from here in New Mexico that I’ve been to before, we’ll stop there.”

And then Jamie-boy says, “Good. I could really use some sleep, I’m exhausted.”

And then I look at Sean and he looks at me, and it turns out we weren’t done laughing after all.

T
wenty minutes later we drive up in front of a fancy stone building. At first I think we’re just turning around because this couldn’t possibly be the “little place” Sean was talking about. This is the kind of hotel people stay at when they have so much money that they just never have to think about the fact that money even exists. Even Amanda’s family doesn’t stay in hotels like this one.

But Sean pulls all the way up to the front and stops the car where the valets are. A guy in a navy-blue uniform opens the door and Sean gets out, and meanwhile more people in identical blue suits are opening the Jamies’ doors and my door, too, and I am so confused as to what exactly is going on here that at first I just stare at the guy who just opened my door. He’s this guy in his twenties with blond hair who looks kind of amused at what I’m assuming is the rather shocked look on my face. He holds out his hand, and I finally get the hint and take his hand and get out of the car.

Sean gives the valet his keys and the valet gives him a ticket. And then the valet says he’ll get someone to come out
and take our bags for us and then Sean says thank you and smiles and gives the valet a bill that he has somehow magically procured from his wallet without ever opening his wallet and the valet is all “very good, sir” and “thank you, sir” and none of them seem to think it’s odd that he’s calling Sean “sir” even though Sean’s younger than he is. Then we stand there for a second, the four of us, and Sean reaches up in the air and stretches his arms over his head.

“I think this place might be a little bit out of our price range,” says Jamie-girl.

“Don’t worry about it,” Sean says. “My treat.” Then he raises his arms over his head one last time before he starts walking toward the building.

“So, what, is your boyfriend like some trust-fund baby or something?” Jamie-girl puts her hands on her hips and gives me this weird, almost
accusatory
look, but then instead of waiting for me to answer, she whips her head around and follows Sean toward the tall oak doors. Good thing, because I’m just about as confused by this as she is.

The four of us walk through the doors together, and the moment we’re inside, three of our jaws drop. This is, without question, the fanciest room I have ever been in in my life: There are pure white marble floors flecked with gold, floor-to-ceiling windows draped in yards and yards of cream colored silk, an arched ceiling rising four stories overhead, and what must be the world’s largest crystal
chandelier dangling in the center of the room like a glittering planet.

“And you’re paying for this for real? Like with money?” Jamie-boy asks slowly. “We’re not going to have to jump out the windows in the morning or sneak out in the laundry hamper or some shit?”

Sean laughs and shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it, dude,” he says. “Seriously. I’m paying. With money.” And with that Sean walks up to the counter and starts talking to the receptionist. A minute later, I walk up behind him just as she is saying, “And so the rate for each room will be four hundred fifty for the night, plus tax.” I hear her voice catch for a second when she says the price. I wonder how many of these rooms she rents to teenagers in T-shirts and jeans. I feel my heart pounding. Maybe Sean didn’t realize it was going to cost this much when he offered to pay for all of it. I mean, obviously he didn’t because that is insane, right? I try and calculate how many days of working at Mon Coeur it takes me to earn this much money, how many days it probably takes my own mother working at her job to earn this. The total for the two rooms is about what my mom pays in rent every month for our entire condo.

But Sean just nods casually and hands her a black and gold credit card and a moment later, she hands him the two sets of swipe-card room keys. Two bellhops come to lead the four of us up to our rooms. Jamie and Jamie are completely
silent in the elevator, they just keep exchanging these glances like they think they’ve just won the lottery.

“See you guys tomorrow,” Sean says. A second later we walk into the room and Sean gives the bellhop a couple folded bills. And then a second after that the bellhop’s shutting the door behind him with the faintest of clicks.

A
nd then we’re alone.

“I hope you’re not too disappointed that I put our Jamies in a separate room,” Sean says. “I just thought perhaps they needed some private time.” Sean grins.

And I grin back. “I think they already had their
private
time in the car,” I say.

“Well, maybe
we
needed some private time,” Sean says. He’s joking but I can feel my face getting hot.

I look around the room, which is at least as big as the entire top floor of our condo, and probably bigger. It’s decorated in chocolate browns, crisp whites, and deep reds. There’s a seating area off to one side, a wood-and-glass coffee table surrounded by an enormous brown leather couch. In the center of the table is a thick glass bowl filled with perfect-looking dark red apples. There’s a giant flat screen mounted on one wall, and across from it is an enormous king-size bed covered in a pristine-looking white duvet and about fifty dark red and chocolate brown pillows. The air smells faintly of honey.

“Since it was so last minute, they didn’t have any rooms with two beds. Sorry about that. I’ll crash on the couch.”

And I just nod. An image of Sean and I in that bed together tries to work itself into my brain but I do not let it. There’s a little basket on top of each nightstand filled with beautiful things—a silk eye pillow, lavender-scented pillow spray, a little vial of something, a little jar of something else, and on top of it a card on thick card stock.
With our compliments.
I pick up the eye pillow.

“This place is amazing,” I say. I hold the eye pillow up against my cheek. The fabric is cool and smooth.

Sean turns toward me and taps his bottom lip. And then he grins. “Yeah, it’s nice. Sometimes these places can be a little ridiculous.” He reaches into the bowl and takes out an apple, wipes it off on his shirt, and takes a bite.

“We didn’t have to stay somewhere like this, though.”

“I know,” Sean says. “But it’s fun, right? I mean, I love me a shit-box as much as the next guy, but sometimes you just need to go deluxe.”

“But it’s crazy expensive…”

“Oh.” Sean waves his hand in front of his face. “
That
you don’t need to worry about. Like at all. My family is…comfortable.” He looks up at me and shrugs.

“How comfortable exactly?” I clamp my hand over my mouth. “Sorry, I take it back. That was rude.”

Sean laughs. “You can ask me anything you want.”

“Okay, then I take back my taking back. How rich are we talking here?”

“Let’s just say I once stayed in a hotel like this for six weeks straight, and I doubt my father ever even noticed when he got the bill.”

“Damn,” I say.

“Yeah,” Sean says. “It’s not even my dad’s money. It’s my mom’s money, but she’s not around, so I feel it’s like my duty to spend it before the stepbitch does.”

“Your mom is…” I stop. I feel a pain in my chest, an actual pain.

“Not dead,” Sean says. Shaking his head quickly. “Just not around.”

“Where is she?”

Sean shrugs. “She lives in a ‘therapeutic living community’ which is basically the rich-person’s version of a mental hospital.”

“Why is she in there?”

“Because she enjoys their healthful ‘spa cuisine.’ ” He grins. “Well, that and she’s batshit crazy.”

“Do you miss her?”

“I miss the
idea
of her,” Sean says. “Y’know, the idea of a mom. But I don’t remember her well enough to miss the actual her. She went there for a ‘break’ when I was about six, and then never came back. Less than a year after, my stepmom and my stepbrother moved in. My stepbrother is the
one who…y’know. Anyway, even though he’s remarried now, my father still has power of attorney over her because she’s been deemed ‘unfit,’ which basically means he can spend as much of her money as he wants.”

“That’s crazy,” I say.

“Yeah,” Sean says. “All I need is an evil identical twin to come and toss me down a well and my family could star on daytime TV.” He walks over to the shiny mahogany desk. “But what are you gonna do? It’s why I don’t feel bad spending the money.”

“Do you ever see her?”

“Not really,” Sean says. “I went to visit her once when I was seven, the Thanksgiving after she left. It was just too weird, though. She didn’t recognize me at first because they had her on so many drugs.” He finishes the apple and tosses the core across the room into a black wood trash bin where it lands with a
thunk.

“That’s horrible.”

“It is what it is, I guess.” Sean shakes his head and smiles. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be a downer. I don’t usually talk about this stuff, to anyone, I just feel like I can with you, I guess, which is kind of a relief.”

“You can,” I say. And I feel a squeezing in my chest. It’s strange to be the listener for once, to be able to be there for someone else. “You can talk about anything.”

Sean sits down on the leather couch and looks up at me, “Well, let’s talk about room service then. I don’t know about
you but spending a bunch of hours in the car listening to strangers have sex always puts me in the mood for cheeseburgers and champagne.”

“Funny,” I say. “I was just thinking the exact same thing.”

A few minutes later a bellhop comes in pushing a rolling silver cart bearing two cheeseburgers, an oversized bottle of champagne in a silver bucket, and a giant slice of chocolate cake. The waiter stops pushing the cart near the couch, opens the champagne, and pours two glasses. He looks at Sean’s black Converse and his floppy skater hair, at my cutoff shorts and black tank top. He shakes his head slightly, to no one. Sean signs the bill. He leaves a minute later and Sean and I are alone again.

He sits down on one end of the leather couch, and I sit on the other. Sean hands me a glass. I’ve only had champagne once before, at Amanda’s house, when her parents had a party and Eric stole a bottle for us. Eric and Amanda drank most of it and I only had a little sip.

“To being understood,” Sean says. We clink and I feel a little fluttering in my stomach. The champagne is very cold. I feel like I’m impersonating a much older and more sophisticated person by drinking it. A second later, my glass is empty.

Sean’s is, too. He leans back on the couch and picks up the bottle. “Glasses are for pussies,” he says. He lifts it to his lips and takes a long swig. He’s staring at me, smiling a little,
like he’s challenging me. He passes the bottle back, never breaking eye contact.

“To not being pussies,” I say. And I raise the bottle up like I’m toasting and Sean gives a fist bump. I take a gulp and pass it back to him. And we just do this for a while; pass the bottle back and forth and back and forth until finally, all the champagne is almost gone. Sean leans back against the couch and stares at me,
really stares.

“What?” I say. I raise my hands up to my face.

Sean reaches out and gently pulls my hand away. “I’m just looking at you,” he says. And he smiles so sweetly that I don’t even blush this time. I just close my eyes for a second and just think how even though there are hard things and scary things in the world, there are also really nice things, like drinking expensive champagne in a fancy hotel room with a guy you’re developing a huge crush on. A guy who maybe, just maybe, could have a crush on you, too.

But then suddenly, I remember something and pop my eyes open. And the champagne has dissolved my filter, so I just open my mouth and say it.

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

He puts the bottle down and stares at me. “What made you ask that?” I’m instantly sorry I did. “Oh, wait, because of what Amanda was talking about on the phone?” He pauses. “Yeah, I wondered when you were going to bring that up.”

“You heard that?” I say. “Oh God.”

“Your speaker volume is up really high,” Sean says, smiling.

“I’m so sorry,” I say. “Amanda’s just…”

“Don’t even worry about it,” Sean says, waving his hand. “Stories tend to get screwed up when they get passed from person to person, and I don’t give a shit what those people think, anyway, but the short version is that there was a girl and I loved her and I knew she loved me.” He looks down. “But things were really complicated and we couldn’t be together, and I tried to fix it so that we could be. But it didn’t work.” Sean frowns for a second, just for a second. Then he looks away. “I think when you find someone you really love, you have to do everything you can to make it work. Because all that shit people say about how love is really the only thing that’s important, it’s cheesy but it’s also true. Only sometimes love makes people do crazy things. And sometimes, no matter what you do, a relationship can’t work. Especially when one of the people in it isn’t even trying.”

Sean gets this really sad look on his face then, and on instinct, I just reach out and put my hand on his knee.

“Whoever that girl was, she made a mistake.”

“You’re a sweetie,” he says. And our eyes meet and I feel my face getting hot, so I take my hand off his knee and grab a fork off the table in front of us and stick it in the slice of cake.

I hear a low hum coming from across the room and I realize that my phone is vibrating again.
Oh no.
The phone. My conversation with Brad.

“Does that mean you can hear
everything
that someone on the other end of the phone is saying?” My arm is out in front of me, a bite of cake balanced on top of the silver tines.

“Yup,” Sean says. And then he waggles his eyebrows and winks.

Sean heard Brad making those jokes about the two of us together and he heard me totally going along with them. Oh God.

“I was just trying to be nice to him!” I say frantically. “I didn’t want Brad to have to worry about me and…” But before I can say anything more Sean just says, “Sssshhhh,” and starts leaning toward me. He reaches up and closes his hand over mine. I’m still holding the fork. He’s leaning forward, his arm resting on the back of the couch behind me. His mouth is getting closer. His lips look moist. Is he going to kiss me?
He’s going to kiss me!

I tip my head to the side. I open my mouth the tiniest bit and I wait.

And wait.

And wait.

“Dude,” Sean says. I open my eyes. He’s nodding his head and pointing to his mouth. “Now
that
is some good fucking cake.”

I look over at my fork. It’s empty.

He wasn’t going in for the kiss, he was going in for the cake.

“Your face is red,” Sean says. “Are you okay?”

My champagne buzz is completely gone.

“Oh, did you think I was about to…” Sean says. He points back and forth between our mouths.

I shake my head. I am suddenly dying of embarrassment. I’m going to go into the bathroom now. I’m going to go into the bathroom and hide and not come out until Sean is asleep. I start to stand. But Sean has wrapped his fingers around my wrist again. And he’s pulling me in slow motion toward him. “Ellie, don’t go,” he says. And I do not have any cake on my fork this time. I close my eyes.