Just You Read online

  “What is he then?” Ashley asked.

  “Just a guy,” I said, emphasizing each word. Just a hot guy, I thought to myself, a guy I liked to kiss, a lot. And talk to. And be with. And think about. “Nothing serious.”

  “Defensive much?” Erin said as our friend Brooke Smithson sat down at our table across from Ashley.

  “Who’s defensive?” Brooke asked, opening up a small container of blueberry yogurt. We’d known Brooke since seventh grade but she only hung out with us occasionally, like when she wasn’t busy with drama class or a play. Which was rare.

  “Taylor,” Erin said through a mouthful of potato chips.

  I sighed. This was going to be a long lunch.

  “What’s wrong?” Brooke turned to me with her big blue eyes already full of sympathy. In addition to being a tall, graceful, wildly popular Gwyneth Paltrow look-alike and one of the most talented actresses in school, Brooke was also exceptionally nice.

  “Nothing,” I said, smiling at her.

  “She says she doesn’t have a new boyfriend but we don’t believe her,” Ashley said.

  “Oh?” She turned back to me, intrigued now. “Who is he?”

  “Just a guy,” Erin said in that same deep baritone.

  “His name’s Michael,” I told Brooke.

  She tossed her white-blond hair off her face and scooped up a spoonful of yogurt. “And?”

  “And he’s nice. He lives in Redwood Hills.”

  “Cute?”

  “When I asked her that earlier, she practically slobbered all over the table,” Ashley said with a smirk. “So I’m guessing yes.”

  Brooke flashed me her toothpaste-commercial smile. “He sounds perfect.”

  “Yeah,” I said, pushing my tray away. “He kind of is.”

  Out of habit, my gaze zeroed in on Brian and Kara, seated at their customary table over by the windows. As usual they were draped all over each other, nuzzling and cooing over their orange plastic trays and making everyone around them lose their appetites. As I watched the easy affection between them, I waited for the familiar taste of bitterness in my mouth. But for some reason, this time it never came.

  ****

  Since Halloween night, Michael and I had been talking on the phone almost every day. We were getting to know each other, something Brian and I never had to do because we already knew each other so well when we started dating. But everything about Michael was different from what I knew. Or thought I knew. It was exciting, I discovered, getting to know someone this way. Learning about them and their lives.

  And that first week, I learned a lot about Michael. Little things, like that he loved medieval history, James Bond movies, and baseball. That he’d worked at the golf course near his house every summer since he was thirteen. That his father was a workaholic, and his mother was a nurse, like Lynn, only at a different hospital. That his sisters annoyed him a lot, but he’d gladly pound any boy who ever tried to mess with them. That he’d never tried drugs, smoked, or gotten falling-down drunk, even though most of his friends made a regular habit out of each. He also revealed the cinnamon mystery for me—he was hopelessly addicted to cinnamon-flavored mints, sometimes going through five or more packs a week.

  I learned some big things about him too, like how his father expected a lot out of him, wanted him to be a lawyer too someday but dismissed the fact that Michael didn’t want that. His father wasn’t the demonstrative type, Michael told me, but his mother’s warmth and support made up for his dad’s aloofness. And, in spite of being polar opposites, his parents had been married for twenty-two years (though they barely spent any time together).

  The most intriguing thing he told me, however, was that he had an older brother who had been “away” for a while but would be “back soon.” He didn’t elaborate and I wasn’t about to pry, but naturally I was curious. I assumed he’d tell me about his brother when we knew each other a little better.

  I talked about myself too, sticking to innocent little tidbits of info at first. I confessed my love for sugary snacks, eighties movies, and swans. I told him about how I sucked at math but excelled in languages. I said that Emma drove me crazy but had her moments of greatness now and then. I bragged about her incredible art work. I spoke about my father’s job at the university, and how my English teachers always expected me to be the star student when they found out my father taught literature for a living.

  Michael knew my parents were divorced, but I didn’t say why and he never asked. That information, along his older brother’s whereabouts, would best be saved until after we knew each other better.

  Throughout all this conversation, I found myself liking him more and more, despite my determination to not get too involved. But I couldn’t control the euphoria that burst through me whenever I picked up the phone and heard his voice on the other end, or when I thought about how his lips felt on mine. We had a connection and it didn’t matter if I chose to accept it or not. It was just there.

  My second official date with Michael took place exactly a week after Halloween. This time we went to his friend R.J.’s house, the same place we’d met for the first time over a month ago. Actually, we went separately. Dad was okay with the idea of me dating and I knew he would have liked Michael, but I couldn’t take a chance on him letting something slip to Mom. She definitely wouldn’t approve of me seeing a good-looking, upper-class, seventeen-year-old who had his own car. She’d barely approved of me dating Brian, and she’d known him and his parents for years. I knew if she caught wind of this, she’d ground me for months and probably try to outfit me with a beeper. And a chastity belt.

  So of course I didn’t tell her.

  Michael and I spent most of the night in R.J.’s laundry room, pressed up against the huge front-loader washer and kissing. I left the laundry room that night knowing I’d never smell fabric softener again without blushing.

  Still, despite the nightly phone calls and fooling around, I remained insistent that Michael was not my boyfriend. Because he wasn’t. We’d never touched on the issue of commitment. For all I knew he could be making out with twenty other girls during the week, though I realized by now he wasn’t the player type. Besides, for whatever reason, he liked me.

  Robin was ecstatic that we’d hit it off. It irked me that she turned out to be right, but not enough to bother pretending otherwise. By now I had myself convinced I could be like her: cool and carefree, open to all possibilities. Michael wasn’t Brian. He was different, and when I was with him I was different too, more confident, like I had taken charge of myself and what I wanted. Kissing him that first night had empowered me that way. With Brian I’d always felt so much pressure to be the kind of girlfriend he wanted, to feel things for him I didn’t feel. But with Michael I didn’t even have to try. Like our connection, the feelings were there whether I welcomed them or not. This reassured me that I wasn’t some cold, heartless freak, but at the same time it also scared the hell out of me. Did I even want this, or were my hormones clouding any rational thought?

  “You’re over-thinking again,” Robin said one rainy Saturday in mid-November as we loafed around my room. “God, I’ve never seen someone so scared of boys in my entire life. Chill the fuck out, okay? Here, have an almond.”

  She tossed me a salted almond—one of several handfuls we’d swiped from Dad’s supply—and I popped it into my mouth. “I’m not scared of boys,” I said, chewing. “Not trusting them and being scared of them are two very different things.”

  “You’re scared to trust them, then.” She gave a dismissive hand flip. “Same difference.”

  “You’ve been cheated on before, right?”

  She licked salt off her fingers. “Danny Caldwell cheated on me with that slut who works at the McDonald’s on Centennial Drive…Callie Norton. Douchebag. They deserved each other.”

  “Ever hear the saying ‘Once bitten, twice shy.’?”

  “Ever hear the saying ‘Get over it or else Robin will kick your ass.’?”

&nb
sp; “I am over it.”

  “And I’m a D-cup.” She got up to sift through my magazine collection, which I kept in a messy heap on the dresser. “You know,” she said, digging out the latest copy of People, “if you give out nothing but negative vibes, then negative things are going to happen to you. And if you spend your life just waiting for people to let you down, then they probably will.”

  “Thanks, Dr. Phil.”

  “No, really.” She flopped back down on the bed with the magazine. “The way I see it, life is what you make of it. If you don’t take it too seriously, it can’t really beat you down.”

  I thought about this as I polished off the rest of the almonds. Maybe I did take life too seriously, focused too much on the negative. Maybe I was more like my mother than I cared to admit.

  “Robin,” I said, stretching out beside her on the bed.

  “Mmm?” She was engrossed in an article about some singer’s latest antics.

  “Do you know anything about Michael’s brother?”

  She looked up at me. “I didn’t even know he had a brother.”

  I related word for word what Michael had told me about this mysterious older brother of his. “I wonder what the story is there.”

  “Maybe he’s away at college.”

  “Why wouldn’t he say that then? Why be so vague?”

  She turned a page in the magazine. “Want me to ask Devon or R.J.?”

  “No,” I said. “I’ll wait until he tells me himself.”

  Her shoulder bumped against mine. “You haven’t had any revealing, tell-all conversations yet? What, are you too busy sucking face to talk?”

  I bumped her back a little too roughly, causing People to slide to the floor. “We talk,” I said, and then added in a softer voice, “On the phone.”

  “Really.” She leaned over the edge of the bed to rescue the magazine, and then flipped back to the page she’d been reading. “But you can’t control yourself in person, is that it?”

  I felt my face redden. “Whatever.”

  “He must like you,” she said, still wearing a teasing smile. “I haven’t seen him so much as talk to another girl since he met you. At Jenna’s party last Friday? Elena Brewster kept trying to get her hooks into him and he wouldn’t even give her the time of day. She’s this gorgeous junior who’s liked him forever.”

  I wasn’t sure how to react to this information. Myriad emotions bubbled up in me—elation, dread, worry, fear, elation, elation.

  “The boy has good taste.” She gave me an affectionate look. “And I can’t say I blame him for being sick of the girls who hang around those parties. They’re barracudas, those chicks.”

  I nodded. “I feel so dorky and immature around those girls. They barely even acknowledged my existence until they realized Michael and I were together. Then they got all phony, acting like we were all best friends or something. But I could tell they were all wondering what the hell I’m doing with him. They probably think he’s lost his mind.”

  Robin made a face. “Screw ‘em. They’re just jealous.”

  “I guess,” I said, even though I knew that wasn’t it.

  At seven-thirty we headed over to Robin’s house. As usual, it was empty. And because empty houses demand to be taken advantage of, Robin came up the bright idea of inviting the guys over. She claimed she was getting sick of crowded, noisy parties, but I didn’t buy it. Robin lived for crowds and noise. Coincidentally, she had dreamed up this plan right after our conversation about the “barracudas” and how uneasy they made me feel. I knew she was trying to be thoughtful; she had no idea the thought of being semi-alone with Michael scared me more than any barracuda girl ever could. Sure, we’d already made out in R.J.’s laundry room (and in Michael’s car, several times), but Robin’s house was different. For one, it had a couch. Second, my father happened to be four houses away. Not that he knew anything about this. I’d told him we’d be hanging out at Robin’s for the evening, watching movies. He assumed her mother would be home, which she hadn’t been since last night, and wouldn’t be until tomorrow afternoon sometime.

  “What’s your mom’s boyfriend like?” I asked Robin as we searched though the kitchen cupboards for snacks. They were pretty bare. It seemed like they subsisted on diet Coke and Triscuits.

  “Some rich dude.” She stood on tiptoe to check the cupboard over the fridge. “I only met him once. My mother is a trophy for him, basically. All she has to do is look pretty on his arm and service him regularly and he lets her use his credit card.”

  “Gross.” I opened the fridge and surveyed the contents: a jug of water, several cans of pop, a half-gone bottle of wine, mustard, cream cheese, and a six-pack of yogurt.

  “I know. He’s short and fat and I’m pretty sure he has hair plugs. Disgusting.”

  We gave up on finding any form of snack food and retreated to the living room, where Robin put on some music. The guys arrived a few minutes later, their jackets wet from the rain that had been falling all day. Their collective height and presence seemed to shrink the entire house. Devon headed directly for the kitchen, and I could tell by the way he navigated the rooms that he had been here before, more than once. Robin followed him while Michael and I stood there near the door, smiling at each other. I wondered if he was inwardly comparing Robin’s ancient, rundown little bungalow, with its outdated fixtures and faded floors, to the mini-mansions in his own neighborhood. But after a minute I realized he wasn’t the least bit interested in his surroundings. His blue-gray eyes stayed locked on me.

  “Want to sit?” I asked, suddenly nervous again. It amazed me that even after several dates, I could still feel so jittery around him.

  “Sure.”

  We sat close together on the couch. Robin’s tinkling laughter drifted out from the kitchen, followed by Devon’s slow, rumbling drawl.

  “Did the rain let up at all?” I asked, and then mentally kicked myself for asking about the stupid weather like we were making small talk in an elevator or something.

  “Not really,” Michael said. “It’s still coming down pretty hard.”

  “Oh.”

  We fell silent again. We weren’t used to much conversation on our dates. We saved that for the phone. When we were together like this, in person, talking became a waste of precious time. It probably would have been different had we gone to the same school and saw each other every day, but as it stood now we only had the weekends.

  Robin poked her head around the kitchen doorway. “Want something to drink, guys?”

  We both shook our heads and she disappeared again. Michael let go of my hand to sweep some hair off my forehead, and as usual I felt shaken by the intense physical attraction I had for him. Brian, in comparison, may as well have been my sibling for the lack of sparks between us. I never had to worry about forgetting myself around him. Keeping my clothes on had never been a problem. I knew it wouldn’t be so easy with Michael.

  As it turned out, we did end up watching a movie, some action/sci-fi/comedy thing that failed to hold my attention. Partly because it was dumb but mostly because Michael was lightly caressing the back of my neck through the whole thing, giving me goose bumps the size of glaciers. Robin and Devon started making out about halfway through the movie, and by the end they had slipped away into her bedroom, closing the door behind them. I kissed Michael as the movie credits rolled, all the while reminding myself that he was almost two years older than me and surely a lot more experienced. And now, alone in the dark, I wondered what he expected of me, and if we should talk about it.

  But my worry turned out to be for nothing. Michael’s hands stayed on my hair or on my waist the entire time. We kissed until Robin and Devon surfaced from the bedroom, looking dazed and disheveled. I didn’t even want to guess what they’d been doing in there. I knew Robin was still a virgin, in the technical sense, but looking at her now, I wondered if her status had been upgraded.

  The boys left a little before midnight, but I stuck around for a minute to hel
p clean up and get the scoop. No, Robin said, they had not done it. No, she wouldn’t dish out any details. Yes, she was definitely still a virgin. For now.

  “How ‘bout you?” she said, snickering.

  I refused to dignify that with an answer. I left her to her empty house and rushed home, sprinting across the neighbors’ yards in my rush to get out of the wet cold. Leo was waiting up for me, like always, but to my surprise, so were Dad and Lynn. They were curled up on the couch together under a big quilt, watching TV.

  “Oh,” I said, passing by the living room on my way to the stairs. “Hi.”

  They turned their heads toward me in unison. Dad’s hair was sticking up like he’d just slept on it. “Hi, sweet pea,” he said, peering closely at me, like he was searching for signs of something. “How was your evening?”

  “Fine.” I paused by the door frame, confused as to why they were still awake. They usually went to bed early, unless they were out with friends or at a movie or whatever. “Well, good night,” I said, moving toward the stairs again.

  “I think we’ll go to bed too,” Lynn said, yawning. “This movie doesn’t look promising.”

  They disentangled themselves from the quilt and headed toward their room while I went upstairs and ducked into the bathroom. As I washed my face, I noticed a gleaming brightness in my eyes, a flush in my cheeks. I looked different. Happier.

  In my room, I changed into my pajama pants and T-shirt and climbed into bed. I felt sleepy, like I was crashing from an adrenaline rush. When I closed my eyes I felt this strange falling sensation, kind of like what happens in dreams sometimes, when you fall and fall and fall but never hit the ground.

  Chapter 9

  A week later, Dad showed up at my bedroom door. “May I come in?” he asked, sticking his head in the room.

  I was standing in front of the full-length mirror, applying mascara. “Be my guest.”