Falling Into You (5 page)

And we dissolved into laughter. The custodian found us, exactly like that, rolling around on the floor. I think he was probably just happy that we had clothes on, but the look on his face only made us laugh harder.

Australia had been our thing ever since, what we always did when we were sad or had a bad day. His friendship had been the best thing about high school
.
It was the best thing in my life.

I flipped through the messages from the past two weeks silently.

Hallie
, pick up the phone.

Hallie
, get
ur
lazy
butt
out of bed and answer the phone.

Hallie
, what the hell is going on?

One from my mom:
Hallie
, I just spoke with
Ben
. He called to see if you lost your phone. Did something happen between you two? Is this the reason you decided on a New York Christmas? Please call me as soon as you get this.

My
gut twists
.
Our moms had been making wedding plans since the first day I had gone to his house to do a project for Spanish class.
My mom was probably thinking that
all her dreams of her daughter and her best friend’s son walking down the aisle of a small-town church
were
finally going to be
realized.

I
’ve
never had th
e heart to tell her that it wasn’t
going to happen. It wasn’t that I didn’t love
Ben
—I did.
Too much, in fact.
I know he loves me, in his own way. I
practically
kno
w everything about him—the
way the side of his mouth curls when he gets
really angry, his dreams of becoming a writer, his
dislike for girls that travel
in packs to the bathroom.

And he knows
everything
about me—the way my voice turns
to
o high and uber-friendly when I’m
ner
vous or talking to someone I do
n’t particularly like, the way I could never say no to an extra practice, a tutoring session with someone struggling with math, an extra article for a
school newspaper. Worse, he knows
when anything ge
t
s
me off my game in the slightest.

And he knows
about the one thi
ng that no one else did. He had been my savior that night, and the memory or lack of a memory still hung between us.
T
hat’s the moment that I fell irrevocably in love with him.

Unrequited
love is such a pain in the ass.
And
it’s
t
he real reason that I’m in New York and not Ohio.

It all started when I had come home for
Thanksgiving
break.

“
There’s someone I want you to meet,
”
he told me, pulling me aside at a crowded party.
“
Be nice.
”

I looked at him innocently, and said
“
I’m always nice.
”

He
rolled his eyes in response, because
I may have been slightly less than my best self to some of
the others.

“
I’m maintaining that
it
’s all
really
your fault,
”
I had told him.
“
Your
ta
ste in women is beyond suspect
.
”

After swatting at my arm, h
e had brought
Sus
an
over
and introduced her to me. Of course
,
she was a tiny, perky, blond girl,
a cheerleader at their university in Ohio. They had been dating for about a
few months, I gathered from the first part of our conversation
.

It doesn’
t matter. She’s just like all the rest. Five minutes later, as I giggled with her about something or other, it hit me in a flash—
it
was worse than I could hav
e imagined. I liked her. And she was
smart, dedicated, sweet, and obviously devoted to Ben. She was
c
ompletely unlike any of the others.

And
with that,
Ben
’s and my
friendship—the
one thing in the world that meant the most to me—was going to slip away. I
had tried to tell
myself that I was coming to New York because it had been my dream since I was a little girl, that I would be able to see the city like a real New Yorker, that
Sophia
would be the best tour guide I could ask for.

While all of those things were true (except for the tour guide part—
Sophia
was going to make a
lousy
tour guide), the real reason I had come was because I was afraid that I
was going to
lose
Ben completely
. Every year, I looked forward to our traditions—the bonfire at the lake, the gag gifts, and the drive around town while we placed bets on whose family was going to have the worst Christmas lights. Things that would now pass to Susan.

It was coward
ly. He was my best friend a
nd he deserved happiness. But I was pretty sure that I didn’t need to watch it happen right in front of my eyes.

I glance back at the text message and put my phone back into my purse.

I need
out. Now.

I grab my purse and move
as
quietly as I can through the crowd. I see
Sophia
talking with someone
, and I’m hoping that
she didn’t see me
making my escape
.
I manage to sneak out the door, and I press a button on the elevator.

L.

Lobby? Lower level?

Out.

I had no idea where I was going
.
Sophia
’s dad
had picked us up from the airport, and except for my
limited knowledge of New York
gleaned from some rom coms where
a
guy is on the motorcycle, trying to catch up with the girl
he is desperately in love with
, I had absolutely no idea where I was.
I was pretty sure that the café where the boy and girl
shared a long kiss at after
as the motorcycle ran out of gas didn’t even exist.

Well,
if I was ever going to be a real New Yorker, part of the initiation ritual
included a
moment
where the small town girl gets lost in the big city, right?

So, this was it.

I look around me
. I see
a glowing neon sign across
the
street that read
s
, “Late Night Food,
”
which is t
he same
sign
I’ve seen in countless
sitcom
s
set in New York. Fine. That
would do for now. I walk
across the street and slid
e
into a booth, trying to seem like I fit there, that this was my hometown and that I went alone to diners every single day.

“Can I have
a black coffee please?” I ask
, when the waitress
drops by the table
.

“Ten dollar minimum.”

Apparently, diners in New York had a cover charge.

“Um, ok.
I’ll take the cof
fee. J
ust g
ive me a second
to figure else what I want to order
.
Thank you.
”

She returns with the coffee but leaves before I can meet the stupid minimum charge. I take
a long sip. I had maybe three beers
at the party
—enough to make me slightly fuzzy-feeling
and nostalgic
. I
pull my phone back out of my purse and the message is still open on my phone, and the word Australia stares back at me. I type
back the only response
I can
manage
.

In NY w
ith
Sophia
. Grabbing coffee
right now
.
Talk soon, I promise.

I click
send, and
th
en, thinking better of it, add
another quickly.

Miss u.

I look at the “u.” I
t seems appropriate. “Miss you” seems
too needy.
“
Miss u
”
had the perfect ring to it, the “I’m looking forward to seeing you but it doesn’t mean that much to me.”
While that wasn’t exactly true, he really didn’t need to know that.

It was only a couple of seconds before
his reply pops
on
to
the screen.

Call me tomorrow.
If u don’t, I’ll have to get to NY to see
u
.
Make sure
ur
still alive.

Ben
could absolutely not come here.
One of two things was
bound
to happen. First, h
e would take one look at
Sophia
and fall madly in love with her
. Although I was actually pretty tolerant of his parade of girlfriends,
and Sophia might be better than Susan in some ways, the thought of seeing Ben with Sophia made my stomach turn.

That one
was not ever
going to be okay with me.

T
he second potential reaction
was far more worrisome. Before I left for
school
, we had a conversation about Greenview, a small private school where the students
are
, on the whole, rich and spoiled. Basically,
they’re
the Ivy League rejects who partied too hard in high school.

“
Tell me if I ended up becoming one of those snobby girls that we both hate,
”
I said to him
.

Or, as
I
had
thought
silently in my head, one of those snotty girls that you tell me that you hate and you end up screwing and complaining to me about.

“
You would never,
”
he
had replied
, kissing my cheek. 

It
was certainly possible that
he would
see the beautiful apartment and the beautiful people who were so not my kind of people and he would
get his big-brother voice out to tell me that I was losing myself, that I was becoming everything I never wanted to be.
He had almost no tolerance for bullshit. It was probably my fav
orite thing about him, but I have to admit that I was a little bit afraid that he would come here and
call me out on mine.

So, objective number one was to prevent a Ben visit.

I’ll call. I can’t tomorrow, but I will call soon. Be home in 3 weeks and see you then.

Fine. See u.

It was curt, even for
Ben
. Yep, he was definitely
mad. He wasn’t one to abuse words or to w
rite long messages
, but there was usually something that resembled a bad joke stuck in there
, something that would make me smile
.
I was going to need to fix that. But fixing that would make me face all of the things that I had been avoiding
since Thanksgiving
, and I just wasn’t ready. So,
Ben
would have to wait.

Words were coming from somewhere and I figured it was the waitress. Only after I had looked up did I realize that the words were not coming from the middle-aged woman with yellowed teeth who had delivered the coffee.

“From the party, right? The terrace? Mind if I take a seat?”

Chapter 4

CHRIS

Of all the gin joints…

I knew it was flip-flop girl from the back of her head, although the foot peek
ing out from underneath the booth
definitely would have helped. She was by herself, another party refugee, although I still had no idea who she was or what she was doing in my part of town.