I’d turned in early, while Lana was still out. I’d heard her return, though; our door creaked and the bathroom faucet’s gurgle was jarringly noisy. Really, it was impossible to do anything at the Woods without someone else knowing about it. No wonder my mom and Liz had to sneak around when they were teenagers.
Thinking this, I rolled over to face the Bone Breaking window, which was slightly open. Just over a week ago, the idea of my mom slipping out to meet a boy had been impossible to imagine. As likely, really, as me doing the same. I wasn’t that kind of person either. Was I?
I walked over to the window, trying to keep my footsteps silent. Liz hadn’t been kidding. The drop to the ground below was just enough to do damage if you just went for it. Then, as Lana shifted behind me, sighing, I saw the crate.
It was wooden, and clearly ancient. Ivy had grown up around it and wound through the slats. I took another look at Lana before pushing the window the rest of the way open. Despite the house’s constant creaks and thumps, it didn’t make a sound.
I paused, considering possible outcomes. I could I fall and break a bone of my own, rousing my mom and Lana with my subsequent screams of agony. Or successfully make the jump, only to get to the Egg to find no Ben but maybe a serial killer. Shame-reel material, for sure.
Or there was the third option, which was just staying there and doing nothing.
The crate barely budged as my feet hit. Then I was hopping off, starting past the house to the driveway.
I heard the music first. A quiet melody, growing more audible as I rounded the building. Ben was sitting on the dock, holding his guitar. For a moment I watched him from a dark spot just past the thrown light of the Egg’s back door. Then I called out, “Hey. Is that Visceral Pantylines you’re playing?”
He looked up, squinting in my direction. “Good ear,” he said. “You’re a fan?”
“Just their old stuff.”
I came up the ramp. It was so quiet, I was acutely aware of each slap of my shoes. “I wasn’t sure if you’d be here,” I said.
“Whereas I was positive you’d show up.”
“Really?”
“No.” He played a few more chords. “In fact, I was working on a new shame reel just now. Me, in the middle of the night, waiting for a girl who never comes. You appeared just as I was about to splice it in with my highlights.”
“Whereas I,” I told him, “considered the fact that I might go to the trouble of climbing out the window, then walking all the way over here, only to be ghosted.”
“We arereallynot optimists,” he observed.
A car passed by on the road, the sound sudden, then gone. “Now that you are here,” Ben continued, “again I am thinking I should have planned something. I mean, other than discussing worst-case scenarios.”
“You do have a guitar.”
“True.” He strummed for a second. “Although that’s kind of a one-person activity.”
“I could watch you adoringly, like those girls at the Pavilion,” I suggested.
He flushed: I could see it, even in the half dark. “You can’t let that go, can you?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m just fascinated. What does that feel like, being that admired?”
“Like you don’t know,” he replied.
Now I felt my face redden. Good Lord, we were so awkward.
“What I mean,” he added, “is that you just got out of a serious relationship. By definition, that means someone was really, really into you.”
“?‘Was,’?” I repeated, “being the operative word.”
“Still happened.” He strummed again for a moment. “Two years is lot of admiring looks.”
True. In fact, my awe of Colin had been constant, like a fuel that fired us. The more I thought about it, though, I realized I didn’t recall that many times his eyes were on me the same way.
Suddenly, a light snapped on, bright. Like a reflex, we both leaned back into the dark of the overhang, bumping arms in the process. When I looked up, Clark was framed in the screen of an upstairs window.
“Dude, it’s like three in the morning,” he complained, rubbing a hand over his face. “Who the hell are you talking to?”
