The Last Time We Were Us (3 page)

“Yeah, how about letting someone else have a turn?”

The voice is dark and coarse, like the growl of a dog left in the crate too long.

Skip Taylor leans against the wall behind us, his face partially lit by the flat-screen and low lights. His eyes dart to mine, a mix of recognition and surprise. He’s seen me here before, but never when there aren’t other girls around, too. I look down at my hands, imagining all the things he could be thinking—about Lyla, the wedding, how she and I have the same nose, how he and I used to be friends kind of, in that weird way you’re friendly with your older sister’s boyfriend. When I get the nerve to glance up, he’s staring at his brother, waiting for an answer.

“I’m almost done,” Innis says, before turning back to the screen.

Skip crosses his arms but doesn’t move otherwise. From this angle, his nose is strong and sharp, his hair thick and barely waved, his eyes look-at-me blue. Physically speaking, Skip is the ultimate illusion, a cold glass of milk with your cookies before you know it’s gone sour. I can’t
not
stare at him, wait for him to turn his head, remind me what Jason did.

On the screen, Innis shoots a passerby and hops into a new car. Payton turns the volume up, and a hip-hop song blares.

MacKenzie scoots towards me, her voice a whisper. “Did you hear about Jason?”

I flinch at his name, like it’s a bad word in church, something not to be spoken, especially not here. “Hear about him?”

“He’s out, like hanging around town.”

“How do
you
know?”

“Payton texted me. Said he heard from Innis.”

I search her face to see if she knows the whole story, but some of it must have gotten lost in translation. “Can we talk about this later?”

“Whoa,” she says, reading me all too well. “You’ve already seen him.”

“For a second,” I say quickly.

“Oh my God. Where?”

“When we were buying beer.” I lower my voice even further. “For literally three minutes. It’s not a big deal.”

She stares at me like I’ve just said two and two is three. “How is it not a big deal? Why didn’t you tell me?”

I shrug. “Why are you so worried? You didn’t even know him.”

“I know enough.” She scoffs. “In my book, brutally attacking another person is enough to make me want to steer clear.” She leans in closerand speaks so quietly I have to read her lips. “What if he tries to see you again?”

“Geez, Kenzie, you are so paranoid. He didn’t try to see me in the first place, and we weren’t even friends before he left.” Kenzie already knows that it wasn’t Skip or juvie that ended my friendship with Jason. It was so many other things. His instant rise to popularity. My middle-school shyness. The first time he pretended not to know me, right at the end of eighth grade.

“But you were like besties forever before that.”

She’s right. Mom even used to say we were friends as babies. That she’d invite Mrs. Sullivan for coffee, and Jason and I would rock, side by side, in our carriers. I remember us sitting in front of the TV, Wyle E. Coyote’s anvils zipping across the screen, electric orange Cheetos flecks on our fingers, awash in the kind of joy only kids seem to have access to. As soon as the memory comes, I push it back down where it belongs. Bury it deep.

“That was a long time ago,” I say.

“Thank God for that.” Kenzie takes a sip of beer. “Anyway, you promise you won’t do anything stupid? Your capacity for forgiveness is about ten levels too high.” She’s talking about Veronica, about what she refers to as the “Cafeteria Incident,” but I don’t pursue it. Not now.

“I promise.”

There’s a rush of expletives from Innis, then he stomps his foot and throws the controller down. The screen goes black, and we’re back at the beginning of the game. Skip comes forward, taking the back way around the couch so the right side of his face is the only one we see, but when he grabs the controller and sits down, there’s no hiding it.

I used to think Skip might one day be my brother-in-law. I was young, caught up in how in love Lyla was, sure it was going to work out for them.

But that was the
before
Skip. A different Skip than I know now.

I’ve seen his face plenty of times since it happened, but it still manages to shock me. His lips are red and puffed. His cheek is too smooth in parts, then wrinkly and raised, almost bubbling along the edges, dark ridges etched across. The side of his chin is achingly white, and his nostril is wide. But it’s his eye that is the worst, drooping and sad, the lids mottled like candle wax.

He drives, swerves, speeds up, does everything right. He’s clearly better than any of the other boys. Maybe it’s because his fake-o job with his dad leaves him plenty of free time. Maybe it’s because the games don’t know what he looks like.

MacKenzie shakes her head as I take a big gulp of beer.

“I still can’t believe Jason had the nerve to come back.”

I
T’S DARK IN
the basement, the glow of the video-game home screen our only light. I can hear MacKenzie and Payton messing around in the pool, shrieks and splashes, and then the quiet as they inevitably come together.

Innis and I have been making out awhile, when he pulls back midkiss, traces a finger along my jawline. “You’re special, you know?”

My heartbeat quickens, but I try to keep my cool. “Why do you say that?”

He runs a hand through my hair. “You’re not like other girls.”

Does he know this line is straight out of every high school movie ever? Either way, it’s too sweet for me to call him on it.

He looks at me, like I really am different. “You don’t care about the stupid stuff like makeup and shopping and all that.”

“What, are you saying I don’t look pulled together?”

He shakes his head. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

He presses his lips against mine, his tongue darting inside. His hands wander, over my chest, down the curve of my waist, around the back, underneath my bra, onto my bare skin. I feel the chills all the way at the tips of my fingers. I’m one of those coloring book mazes, and he’s got the crayon, and he’s drawing his way to the prize at the end.

Part of me wants to go there. As he kisses me harder, I imagine him pulling off my shirt, unhooking the button of my jean skirt, us doing more than we have before.

And then I think about what Mom used to say—“Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?”—and I worry that, as awful as it is for her to compare girls to cows, our lady bits to dairy milk, is she a little right? What if I’m just something new for him? What if he gets tired of me after this? I always imagined all the sexy times happening
after
I had a boyfriend, not before. I pull back.

“Maybe we should go find Payton and MacKenzie,” I say.

He tries to disguise a groan but then leans back in for a light kiss. “They definitely don’t want to be found,” he says deeply, under his breath. “Neither do we.”

He starts kissing me again, his hands pressed into the small of my back, but I push him again, taking a deep gasp of air as our lips part.

“I don’t think I want to do anything more tonight,” I say.

He groans, louder this time, but he scoots over, gives me space.

I sit up straight, pull down the edges of my skirt, and try to catch my breath.

“What is it?” he asks, his voice kind. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” I say.

“Then why?”

“I’m just not
ready
.” I hate how much I sound like a PSA.

I wonder, briefly, if he’s angry, but then he just shrugs. “All right.”

“We’re good?” I adjust my top awkwardly.

He nods. “Course we’re good.”

Innis never asked me to be his girlfriend, and I never asked to be it, but now I wonder how long this whatever-it-is will go on if we don’t go any further.

But he leans in again, and his voice is soft and smooth, like it is when he wants to please. “We can wait as long as you want.”

And I smile, feel myself blushing, though he won’t be able to see it in the dark.

Innis could have anyone.

But lately, it seems like that anyone is me.

Chapter 3

M
AC
K
ENZIE DRIVES US HOME SO WE CAN GET BACK IN
time for curfew, giving me an extremely detailed play-by-play of her and Payton’s night.

“How’d it go with Innis?” she finally asks, when I know a bit more about both of her and Payton’s anatomies than I’d like to.

“Good,” I say. “Really good.”

“
Really
good? Don’t tell me you did it on the couch and are only now getting around to telling me.”

“Actually, we barely did anything. Just kissed.”

“And that’s
good
news?” she asks.

“You know, sometimes, I think you have a hard time understanding that I’m not you.”

“What can I say?” MacKenzie turns onto our street. “You’re my first repressed Southerner friend.”

“Ha
ha
,” I say as she pulls up to my house.

“Anyway, sleep well. Dream of all the things you didn’t do with Innis.”

“You’re such a jerk.” I laugh. “Talk tomorrow.”

I hear the shuffle of footsteps above as I close the front door behind me, then the creak of the stairs.

Mom patters down, a smile on her sleepy face. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to make it.”

“With minutes to spare,” I say.

She gives me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Good night, dear.”

“Good night.”

But when I’m in bed and the house is silent, when the sounds of my mother doing her cold cream and serums in the bathroom die off, when the cicadas themselves decide it’s time to turn in, when I’ve slogged through two whole chapters of
Heart of Darkness
, my AP English summer reading, I still can’t sleep.

I want to think about Innis, to indulge in his sweet words, but when I close my eyes, all I see is Jason, Jason and his whole family, knock-knock-knocking, just like they used to do when they lived next door.

I flip back the sheets, climb out of bed, and kneel down at the foot of it. I push aside the clothes that didn’t make it to the hamper, and navigate the stacks of old art projects and overdue library books and an unused yoga mat until my fingers hit the smooth edge of a shoebox. I pull it out with two hands.

It’s my very own Pandora’s box. Mom doesn’t know about it, just like she doesn’t know that I used to go over to Jason’s empty house sometimes, something I’ve promised myself I won’t do anymore. If she did, she’d probably burn the contents and seriously reconsider her stance against therapy.

The photos are on the top, which is good because I don’t think I can stand to see the news clippings right now. I flip through five or so before I find the one I was thinking of. It’s me and Jason and his parents, his gorgeous mom and his always-pulled-together dad on either side of us. It was Jason’s eighth birthday, and the two of us have chocolate cake on our faces. Our arms are wrapped around each other’s shoulders, and it’s so dang cute it makes me angry. My hair is white blond, his long and shaggy, and the birthday hats sit crookedly on our heads.

I stare at the photo, wondering what his condo looks like, how much his dad has aged; if he wishes his mom were closer, more of a mom. She left only a couple weeks after that birthday, went back to Connecticut without warning. Jason used to visit her twice a year. I wonder if she visited him at all when he was in juvie.

I return the photo, shut the box, and push it all under the bed. No matter what Jason went through, no matter how much her leaving messed him up, it doesn’t excuse what happened.

Nothing does.

I
DON’T KNOW
when I finally managed to fall asleep, but I wake up feeling groggy. I smell coffee brewing, so I stumble downstairs and into the kitchen, where Mom is stirring a pot of grits, her Sunday morning ritual. She looks up and smiles. “Hey there, sleepyhead.”

I rub at my eyes. “I couldn’t sleep. What time is it?”

“Almost eleven.” She wipes her hands on an old dishtowel. “Sit. I’ll pour you a cup of coffee.”

I follow her orders and try to get my bearings, as she delivers first a piping hot cup and then a plate of grits and eggs. Then she sits down next to me, opening a magazine.

I can’t remember what I dreamed about, but flashes of Jason and Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan are there, hanging around in the back of my mind as if I invited them over for breakfast. I finish my plate and take it up to the sink, but I can’t shake it, this burning desire to see him, one more time. I hesitate, Innis filling my mind, the way he wavered from typical boy to sweet boy
(friend?)
—how mad he would be if he knew I was even thinking of going back there. MacKenzie, too.

But it’s not about Innis or Kenzie or Mom or even Lyla.

Jason was my friend once. Beyond everything else, he was my friend.

So many years of history, and we can’t come down to a fake ID and a case of Natty Light. Dad asks where I’m headed as I pass him on the porch. He’s wearing an embarrassing fishing hat and a T-shirt that’s hung around from his college days, despite my mother’s steady threatening to take it to Goodwill. He’s tinkering with the newel post, which seems to wobble no matter what he does. During the week, Dad is as clean and trim as a marketing manager should be, but on the weekends, he lets stubble show, avoids combing his salt-and-pepper hair, and works on the house. Greg Grant, modern-day Jekyll and Hyde.

“I’m going shopping with MacKenzie,” I say, instantly feeling bad. Lying about who I’m seeing feels worse than just lying about buying beer. Maybe I’ll swing by Kenzie’s house, zip up the stairs and tell her I hate everything in my closet and we need to go to the mall,
stat
. She’d do it, I know she would.

“Have fun,” he says. “You need any money?”

“No,” I say, his generosity only making me feel worse. “Mrs. Ellison just paid me on Thursday.”

“I hope you’re saving some of it.”

“I am.” Dad’s been lecturing me on the importance of saving money since I kept quarters in a piggy bank. It’s one way, at least, I can outdo Lyla, who’s terrible with money—not that it matters, now that she’s got Benny.