“My man?”
“Cut the act. I’ve seen the groping.”
We have not been groping, have we? “There hasn’t been any groping.”
“You know, you’re right. It was nothing compared to what’s going on up there.” He gestures above the courtyard.
“Up there?”
“Look, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
He gives me a little salute with two fingers and then stuffs his hands into his pockets, walking backward and away.
“What are you talking about?”
“He’s a jackass,” Len says, turning. “You heard it from me first.”
“Who?” I mutter stupidly, but he’s off the breezeway already, and if he’s heard me, he doesn’t answer.
I glance around the courtyard. Charlie and Jake are swaying together, although it looks a little like Charlie is leading. Ben and Olivia are completely tangled up in the corner. It’s impossible to see whose limbs are whose. I can’t seem to spot Rob, but I still feel dizzy. It’s making it hard to focus.
I weave in and out of people on the dance floor. Couples, swaying. Matt and Lauren are locked in an embrace, and I wonder, briefly, if they’re together. Stranger things have happened, I guess. It might be good for Lauren since it took her forever to get over that girl from the public school that she’d dated last year.
I’m standing in the middle of the dance floor when instinctively I look up. And as soon as I do, I understand what Len meant.
There’s this little balcony over the breezeway that was part of the old mansion and that the school kept, even though it serves no practical function. It’s small, probably seven feet by four or something, and it’s covered in ivy.
Rob’s up there. His brown hair is falling slightly into his eyes, and the collar of his shirt has come undone. He’s swaying to the music, just like I imagined. He looks handsome and strong and charming all at once, and I want more than I ever have to be in his arms. The problem, though, is that somebody else already is.
He’s holding her. His arms are around her back and her head is on his shoulder, and they’re swaying slowly, so slowly they looklike they’re not even moving. The girl in his arms should be me, but it’s not, not even close. The girl he’s swaying with is none other than Juliet.
There’s something in the way that he’s holding her that makes me stop in my tracks. It’s not friendly and it’s not platonic. He’s holding her like she’s a leaf, like she might just at any moment blow away in the wind. She looks like a ballerina in his arms, so small and delicate and fragile. And then I see him lean over and smell her hair, and it’s like someone has just knocked the wind out of me. I just stand there, gaping. They’re so close together, you couldn’t even fit a feather between them.
I blink, but they’re still there. She doesn’t pick her head up off his shoulder. He doesn’t move his hands from her back. They could be a statue, that’s how still they are standing together.
Is anyone else seeing this? Olivia and Ben are still smothering each other, but I don’t see Charlie. I suddenly desperately don’t want her to know. I don’t want anyone to know. I want to take back the last forty-eight hours, to avoid this humiliation. I want to run as far away as I possibly can from here and never look back. I want to reverse time. I want to do a million things rather than stand here, watching them.
I finally look away from them, and Len’s face comes into view. He’s looking at me, and I expect him to smirk, to roll his eyes, but he doesn’t do anything. He just looks away.
Then Charlie is there. Her red hair has fallen out of its bun, and it’s hanging around her face like braches on a weeping willow tree. She’s seen them too, and she’s looking at me, her expression mirroring mine. She crosses over to me in two paces, and I feel her take my hand in hers. She squeezes it twice, the way she did on our first day of high school in the car when I was nervous. The way she always does when things get to be just a little bit too much. It’s her way of saying, “I’m here.”
And then, still holding my hand, she leads me away. Off the dance floor, through the breezeway, past Cooper House, and out to upper, where she opens the door and helps me inside Big Red. It’s only once we’re pulling out of the parking lot that I start to cry.
Act Three
Scene One
I wake up before myalarm. All night, all weekend, I’m actually not sure I have been sleeping at all. I’ve been in and out of consciousness, hoping for something to change but knowing it won’t. My chest hurts, or is it my heart? It’s hard to tell. People are always throwing around the term “broken heart,” but thisisphysically painful. So much so that as I lie in bed, waiting for the buzzer to sound, I press my hands over my heart, like if I apply enough pressure, I can keep the pieces from drifting apart.
“Charlie’s here,” my mom calls.
Obnoxiously early, again. Except when I glance at my clock, I see that it’s 7:10. We’re already late. I have no idea if my alarm went off. Maybe I never even set it.
“I’ll be right there.” I leap out of bed and throw on yesterday’sjeans. I pull on a white tank top and a blue cardigan that’s dangling over my desk chair.
I’ve been avoiding Charlie’s calls and texts. Olivia’s, too. I don’t really know what to say to them, and I don’t feel like hearing how sorry they are for me. Especially since I haven’t heard it from Rob. He hasn’t called me or come over. Which makes me feel like he isn’t going to apologize, because whatever happened Friday night is just the beginning of something else.
The worst part is, I’m not even sure he was home once this weekend. I stayed up Friday night, almost until morning, just to see if he got in. He never did. No tires on the gravel. No bedroom light. Nothing.
