I'll Be Here (20 page)

We are standing still in the middle of the sidewalk.  A man and woman pass beside us, their feet kicking up water on the rain-stained sidewalk.

“Alex, my mom and I…”  I trail off.  This part is hard to put into words.     

            “You were so close.”  Alex prompts.  “Before.” 

            I don’t need to ask what he means by before.  He means
before
the cancer,
before
the winter solstice debacle,
before
Dustin,
before
I stopped drawing.  Take your pick. 

His blue eyes search mine.  I realize that I want someone to understand and I want that someone to be Alex.  So I do what everyone has been trying to get me to do for almost two years—I open up. 

“There’s this picture of my mom and me on a side table in the living room,” I make a rectangle with my fingers. 

“It’s black and white and framed the way you frame special pictures.  It’s my mom and me a few years ago and even though we don’t look anything alike, we look the same—like mother and daughter.  It’s the way we’re standing, our bodies leaning towards each other, her arms wrapped around me, our heads tilted exactly the same way, you know?”

            He nods.  I don’t know if I’m making any sense but I keep talking.

            “And people would always make comments like ‘you can tell who you belong to,’ or ‘you’re just like your mother,’ and I guess I took them as compliments.  But, when she got diagnosed with cancer I would look at that picture of us and it would feel like it was already a memory—like she’d already died and everything else was just a flashback of what happened before.  Like I was living a life that I already lived and I knew what was going to happen and I didn’t want it to hurt so much,” I sigh. 

“I can’t explain it but it was like I grieved for her or something and when it was over I couldn’t figure out what normal was supposed to be like.  I couldn’t figure out who I belonged to anymore.”

            “Willow, you don’t have to belong to anyone but yourself.”

            “Wise you are indeed,” I say in a stupid imitation of Yoda.

            Alex chuckles.  He raises his pierced eyebrow and says, “You’re scared.”

            I jerk my chin up.  “Do you know the relapse rate for cancer patients?”

            “You’re scared,” he repeats without answering my question.

            “Maybe,” I admit turning away from him without saying anything else. 

All at once I feel exposed on the open street and I don’t want to be where I am.  I start to walk too fast. 

            “Whoa!”  He moves his feet faster to keep up.

I turn to him, my hair whipped in front of my face.  It sticks to my moist mouth and I push it away with my fingers.  “Honestly, I don’t even know where to begin with my mom.  It seems too hard.  Or maybe too late.”

            Alex steps closer. 

He reaches forward and tucks my hair back behind my ear and his fingers linger on the side of my face.  I want them to pull me in.  I want them on every part of my body.  I think that he’s going to kiss me on my lips and I close my eyes and breathe in.  Alex wraps his free arm around my shoulders and places a soft kiss on the top of my head. 

When he speaks into my hair, it is barely a whisper.  “Willow, it’s never too late.  And there’s
always
a way to begin again.”

           
Holy hell. 

How is it that every single thing that he does is so sexy?  I am so far gone that I’m surprised that I can even stand on my own.  I take a big, steeling breath and swallow. 

We don’t say much the rest of the way to the theater and then we’re in the movie and we really can’t talk, but it’s crazy how singularly he occupies my mind.  Just sitting there beside me I can sense every little movement that he makes.  I’m aware of Alex’s arm draped over the armrest between us, and the way his fingers crawl the distance to a bag of popcorn propped on his lap.  I suck in an embarrassing gulp of air when his lips part to meet the straw of his drink.  The creaky sound the theater chair makes and the rhythm of Alex’s breathing in the darkened space are amplified in my mind and I shift nervously.  

A half hour into the movie Alex’s calf brushes up against mine.  It stays parked there, still as a cat that has found a sunny spot to take a nap. 

            If someone were to ask me what the movie was about, I don’t think I’d be able to come up with a coherent response.  All I know is that there’s a girl.  And a guy.  And something happens with someone’s uncle and there’s a scene on a boat and I laugh because everyone else laughs but I’m not following it.  Instead I’m thinking about Alex Faber’s leg touching mine, and Alex Faber’s eyes and then his lips and the way he smells like soap and something else so incredibly masculine that it causes my stomach to clench. 

            After the movie lets out, he buys me an ice cream cone from the metal cart in front of the theater.  The vendor is wearing a silly hat embellished with pastel polka dots and a smiling black and white cow.  He hands me a scoop of mint chocolate chip on a sugar cone.  Alex gets strawberry for himself.  I don’t comment on the rainbow sprinkles.

            We scoot along the railing of the pier.  My eyes sting.  They narrow against the salty wind pushing in from the water.  After the rain and the falling black night I expect it to be cooler than it is, but the air that moves against my skin is moist and warm and for the first time in what feels like awhile, I am not cold. 

            Here the sidewalk ends in a half-moon slab of concrete.  Curving metal rails make a perimeter—a guard against small children falling into the water.  Alex presses his forearms against the iron—his body wrapping itself around the smooth hardness of the metal.  I stand straight, licking the last of the green ice cream from the top of the cone before consuming the thing entirely.

            Abruptly, Alex puts an arm around my waist and pulls me close, and when he kisses me hard I have a newfound respect for strawberry ice cream.

In spite of ourselves we’ll end up a’sittin’ on a rainbow

Against all odds, honey, we’re the big door prize

We’re gonna spite our noses right off of our faces

There won’t be nothin’ but big ole hearts dancin’ in our eyes.

~John Prine

“In Spite of Ourselves”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The rain starts early in the morning while it’s still almost yesterday.  I wake up in the dark as the thunderstorm pounds its angry fist on my window demanding to be noticed and I finally fall back to sleep slowly just as soft grey dawn light is washing over the sky.

            Mom wakes me up after ten and as she sits on the side of my bed and lazily brushes the hair from my face she asks me if I can babysit Aaron tonight.  She and Jake were invited to a fancy shindig over at the Royal Palm Resort at the last minute.  Jake thinks it will be a perfect opportunity to schmooze and gain funding for his program.  Myself, I highly doubt that the type of people that socialize at the Royal Palm Resort genuinely care about protecting our reef systems.  But that’s just me. 

            I send Alex a text around noon telling him that I am babysitting my little brother tonight.  We didn’t make plans and I don’t know if he’s staying in town another night since I didn’t ask.  I was afraid to sound presumptive. 

            My phone hasn’t even made it back to my pocket when it chirps alerting me that I have a text message.

            `           Alex: Can I help?

            I wasn’t expecting that and for a few minutes I don’t respond.  I’m thinking.

            The phone sounds again.

                        Alex: I understand if it’s not okay.

                        Me: No, it’s more than ok.  Come over at 6?

                        Alex: Sure. Want me to pick up chinese?

                       
Me: You don’t have to…

                        Alex:  I want to

                        Me: Ok. Veg chow mein for me and cashew chick for Aaron. I’ll give you money when you get here.

                        Alex:  It’s on me

                        Me: I’m giving you money. Period.

                        Alex:  I’m not taking it. Period to infinity.

                        Me:  Lol. We’ll resume negotiations tonight.

                        Alex:  K. See you at 6

                        Me:  Perfect.

            Sometimes time pounces for me.  It whooshes by with the easy gait of a thoroughbred and I’ll look up at the clock and it will be hours later than I think.  Today is not one of those days.  Today plods along with the slow throb of a cold syrup. 

            I paint my toenails.  The color is called “Jazzy Night,” which is a deep purple mottled with silver glitter.

            I catch up on my homework.

            I call Laney.

            I explain to my mother for the second time in under an hour that Alex is just a friend.  She uses phrases like “back in the picture,” and “pleased as punch.”  Soooooo annoying!

            I sketch.

            I change my clothes four times, settling on a pair of dark skinny jeans and a capped-sleeve tee shirt. 

            I engage in a war with my hair.

            I lose the war. 

Due to all the rain, the Florida humidity has reached a crescendo and a tube of straightening gel, mousse and pomade are all deemed failures in the face of Mother Nature.  My hair is a nest of writhing snakes.  I end up brushing the bangs out and braiding the rest of it to one side so that a single plait falls over my shoulder.  There doesn’t seem to be anything that I can do about the frizzy baby hairs that have exploded from around my face and seem to glow with haloed light.  

            I stare at the girl in the mirror.  She stares back.  A few weeks ago this girl was getting ready like this for another boy.  This brings an image of Dustin—of his dimple and his laugh.  I realize that the memory doesn’t sting.  Am I over him?  Is Alex really the cure—like some magic panacea?

            Part of me wonders what would happen if Dustin were the one to show up on my doorstep tonight instead of Alex.  I shake my head as if I can discard the residue of the thought like a dog shedding water.  I won’t let myself go down that path.  The nerves in my belly are already snaking themselves into knots and now is not the time to play head games with myself.

While mom and Jake buzz about the house dressing in their formal wear, I attempt to tackle my reading assignment for English but I end up having to start the chapter twice because I haven’t comprehended a word. 

5:50 arrives.  And then 5:51… and then 5:52… When I look up next it’s 5:55 and I hear the doorbell. 

Alex has always been prompt verging on early.  He gets it from his mother.  Two summers ago mom and I went to a modern dance performance with Brooke, who insisted on leaving the house ridiculously early.  We ended up waiting in the hot car for twenty minutes for the box office to open.

The scene in the front hall is almost identical to the one last night.  My mom and Jake are hovering, talking over one another.  Aaron is hopping on one foot, his head bobbing with excitement as he shows Alex the lego-constructed creation clutched in his tiny hand.  Alex’s eyes are moving from Jake to my mom, who is trying to take the bag containing our Chinese food from his hand, to Aaron.  Even Ferdinand has decided to get in the mix and is currently zig zagging in and out of the clustered legs. 

I almost want to giggle at the overwhelmed expression on Alex’s face.  Frankly, it’s a shocker when he doesn’t take a step back and excuse himself out the front door never to be seen or heard from again.

“Oi,” I say, stepping into the fray, “give the man some room to breathe.”

Alex’s blue eyes dart up and my belly does a flip. 

“Hi.”  He sounds a bit breathless.

My mother’s stare is burning a hole in my cheek but I don’t look at her.  I don’t think I can handle her cat-ate-the-canary expression right now. 

“Jules,” Jake says and then jingles the keys. 

Mom springs into action, grabbing her shimmery shawl from the back of the blue upholstered chair in the sun room.  Her heels click against the tiled floor as she lists off things that I already know about my little brother like how much toothpaste he likes on his toothbrush and to make sure to cut his food into small enough pieces. 

“…and if you let him watch that movie with the witches before bed he’ll—”

            “Have nightmares,” I finish the sentence for her. 

 Mom gives me a look and then turns to the hall mirror and wipes her finger over her teeth to remove a smudge of bronzy lipstick.  As she and Jake pass through the front door, her hand touches Alex’s shoulder affectionately. 

“Keep an eye on them,” she says to him, just loudly enough for me to hear and be mortified. 

            “I will,” Alex promises as the door shuts behind my parents.  We stand, perched awkwardly on opposite ends of the hall. 

            Finally, Alex clears his throat and his eyes venture to mine.  There is a question there.  “Chinese?”

***

The root of the problem is that I’m still not sure what’s happening between Alex and me.

The lines are blurred.  I’m balanced on the cleft of this invisible valley and I can feel the wind rushing up from the empty space below me—it whooshes by carrying my breath away with a tug.  Goosebumps ripple across my arms and my heart spasms as I lean out over the infinite depths.  I can’t see a thing.  Just a mass of dense shapes that range from black to blacker and then slip away all together. 

I’ve spent the last hour trying to convince myself that this is completely normal—that Alex Faber and my little brother sprawled out on their stomachs racing remote-controlled cars across the living room floor is my regular Saturday night routine.