The moment his lips touched mine, though, everything else faded away and it was like we were in a suite at the Empire Hotel, on a plush bed with violins playing and sunshine streaming in to bathe us in liquid gold. All we did was kiss—a full forty minutes of nothing but lip-lock, until I thought I would explode if we didn’t go any further.
I’d done my share of making out before, but the guys I’d been with had always been in much more of a hurry than I was. I would break up with them when they got too pushy. Unlike some of the girls at school, I was never in a big rush to lose my virginity; I’d always figured I would know when the time was right.
As it turned out, I did know. After a few afternoon make-out sessions with Hence, I absolutely knew. The tingling I’d never felt before with any other boy had become an actual ache, and still his hands hadn’t once left my hips.
I spent the weekend in a state of restlessness. On Saturday, Dad kept Hence so busy he didn’t even get a break, and on Sunday he had rehearsal with Riptide all afternoon and most of the night. By Monday morning, I didn’t think I could stand the wait until we were alone together again.
That afternoon, in the guest room, we kissed and kissed and kissed. When I couldn’t stand it for another second, I pulled away.
“What’s wrong?” Hence asked, his lips as puffy and cherry-red as mine felt. He looked worried as I got to my feet and took a step back from the bed.
In reply, I unbuttoned the top of my school uniform. Underneath it, I’d worn my nicest lacy pink bra. “Don’t you want to go further?”
Hence closed his eyes. “Of course I do.” When his eyes opened again, they seemed bigger and darker than ever—like bottomless pools. “I didn’t want to rush you.”
I unzipped my skirt. Beneath it, I was wearing matching underwear. I let the skirt fall and climbed back onto the bed, leaning over Hence so my hair fell around his face like a curtain. “You’re not rushing me.”
This time when we kissed, his hands explored me, then unhooked my bra. His lips on my skin were softer than I could have imagined. Because my hands were trembling, Hence helped me unzip his pants. Without his clothes, he was even more amazing than I had imagined, his skin smooth and mocha sweet. Seeing him like that—leaning back on his elbows, eager and exposed—made my heart inflate.
I wasn’t exactly sure what to do next, but he took charge. To my surprise, he’d come prepared—he had a condom in his pocket. He was careful not to hurt me, but even so, it did hurt. I couldn’t imagine wanting to feel that pain with anyone else.
Afterward, we held each other for a while longer, though we knew he was taking a chance on being late for work again. I kissed his chin. “That was my first time.”
He nodded.
“Was it yours?”
He shook his head no.
“Never mind,” I said. “I don’t want to know.” For once, I didn’t mind his reticence. I couldn’t bear to think of Hence with anyone else, no matter how casual the encounter had been. As long as I didn’t know the details, I could pretend I was the only one he’d ever touched with that look of wonder on his face.
One day a distributor didn’t make his delivery when he was supposed to, and Frank the assistant manager called in sick, so Hence didn’t get his usual break. I went straight from school to Jackie’s only to find he wasn’t there. So I talked Jackie into putting off her homework and renting a video—one of those romantic comedies she loved so much. We microwaved popcorn and settled in, but of course we had so much to talk about that we hardly watched the movie at all.
“You’re going to tell me everything, right?” she asked. “What it’s like?”
It was a relief to talk about Hence to the only person who knew he and I were together. Sometimes it seemed like I’d stepped into an alternate universe where people walked around on the ceiling and nobody around me even noticed anything was strange. Pretending I wasn’t in love hadn’t been easy. The week before, David Hasmith had asked me to the winter formal and I hadn’t been able to come up with a reason for saying no, but of course I couldn’t say yes. He looked hurt, and soon everybody was looking at me like I was a freak because David was popular and lots of girls would jump at the chance to go anywhere with him. My turning him down confirmed everything they already thought about what a weirdo I was.
Like I cared.
In another life, I might have said yes to David. He was cute enough, and less of a self-involved jerk than the rest of the popular guys. I probably would have been thrilled to go shopping with Jackie and her mom for the right dress. But I was glad to be in my life, exactly as it was. No—more than glad. I felt like I had been born for that exact moment, my life opening up the way crocuses do, popping out of the snow just when you can’t stand another minute of winter.
I struggled to find the words to answer Jackie’s question. Even when I wrote in my journal, where I’d always done my best thinking, it was hard to find the right words. I wanted to get down every detail so I’d never forget a single one: Jackie’s footsteps in the room below ours; Hence’s warm, smooth skin; the muscles of his legs and the heat of his lips. How even though we wanted to shout, we had to whisper.
Afterward, we held each other, my hands wound in his damp hair. The afternoon sun rippled on the blanket and he smelled deliciously like himself, and also like the outdoors, the scent of wind and fresh-cut grass clinging to his skin even though he’d walked through exhaust-choked city streets to get to me.
“We fit so perfectly,” I said, and Jackie hid her face in her hands and screeched with laughter. “No, not like that! Or not just like that. Even when we’re standing up, the top of my head comes to just below his chin, so he can rest his chin on my head. And sometimes he knows what I’m thinking without my having to say anything.”
“You’re so lucky,” Jackie said. “I don’t think I’m ever going to fall in love like that.” Over the last week or so, she had mellowed out about my whole situation, and had cut out the musical commentary. It seemed like she’d come to accept my love for Hence as the inevitability it was.
“Of course you will,” I assured her.
“There’s no ‘of course’ about it. I’ve never seen anything like the two of you. The way you look at each other.” She picked at the pilling on her bedspread, making a little pile of fluffballs. “It’s so intense it’s almost scary.”
I couldn’t honestly disagree. Though I was sure Jackie would fall in love someday with someone who would adore her, I doubted any other couple had ever felt the way Hence and I did about each other.
“Besides”—Jackie added a few more pills to her pile—“I don’t even want to think about guys. I’m still recovering from your brother.”
I sighed. Hadn’t Jackie resigned herself to Q’s taste in giraffe-thin exchange students? “He’s not worth your time.”
She looked puzzled, and I realized that as far as she knew, Q was still the handsome, athletic big brother who had protected us from the mean kids in elementary school. Sure, she knew about Bad Quentin, but she’d never seen him in action, and I’d always downplayed that side of him, not wanting to share my brother’s weirdness, even with my very best friend.
I chose my words carefully. “If he can’t see how fabulous you are, he’s an idiot.”
Jackie waved me off, embarrassed. After that, we tried to watch the movie, but before long Jackie’s mom came home from work and started asking about homework, so I figured that was my cue to leave.
I hurried home in the dark, frustrated at not having had my alone time with Hence. It seemed so stupid and unfair that we had to sneak around like our being together was some kind of crime, when it was really the most natural, beautiful thing in our lives. Besides, it was scary being at Q’s mercy, knowing he could rat us out at any moment. Lately he’d been putting in a lot of hours at the club. He said he was saving up for spring break in Cancun, but I couldn’t help thinking he had other motivations. When I did my homework downstairs, I’d overhear him ordering Hence
around in a way that got nastier when Dad wasn’t within earshot. But Hence couldn’t complain without risking the loss of the job he so desperately wanted to hang on to.
To him The Underground was still the Promised Land, and Dad was a hero. A few days earlier I’d gone downstairs to find the two of them immersed in another of their impromptu jam sessions, Dad encouraging Hence to take a solo. From the way Dad smiled, I could tell he was impressed with Hence’s guitarwork. I hid out in the shadows, not wanting to ruin the moment. When the song was over, they laughed together. They played a few more songs before Dad noticed I was listening.
“Why are you lurking in the shadows, Cath?” Dad took a swig from the beer bottle at his feet.
“Just enjoying the music,” I said. “Don’t stop.”
But Dad got to his feet. “I have places to be,” he said. “Thought I’d check out that guitar shop over on Bleecker. Have you ever been there?” That last question was directed at Hence, and for a second I hoped Dad might invite him along. But Dad clapped a hand on Hence’s shoulder and said, “Maybe we’ll check it out together when you’re not on the clock.”
If Hence was disappointed the moment had passed, he didn’t let it show. Minutes after Dad left the building, Q barged into the room and ordered Hence to scrub out the dishwasher. Hence gave me a quick, meaningful look. Then he was gone.
Chelsea
As it turned out, I didn’t need Cooper’s help—or anyone else’s—to find Jackie’s studio. And that was a good thing, because when the elevator deposited me on the first floor of The Underground the next morning, the lights were out and the club was silent. I called Coop’s name a couple of times, and when there was no answer, I went down the creaky stairs into the basement, where light trickled in through the high windows. Coop’s cot was made and he was gone; there was no way of knowing when he might come back. Something about the echoing quiet of the building felt like a reproach. It was easy to believe he’d gone out early to teach me a lesson.
The thought of navigating the subway alone made me sick to my stomach, but it also made me queasy to know I’d said something to hurt Cooper’s feelings. I felt a twinge when the words came back to me: Hooking up with him is the last thing on my mind. Okay, it hadn’t been a nice thing to say. But he didn’t seem interested in me in that way, either. So why had he stormed out and deserted me?
I considered my options. I could leave a note on Cooper’s nightstand, but what would it say? You’d think I’d be better at apologizing, considering this wasn’t the first time I’d lost a friend by blurting out the first thing that popped into my head. As I searched for a scrap of paper and a pen, I struggled with the right wording. I tried I’m sorry you took what I said the wrong way, but I could hear my dad’s voice in my head, calling that a non-apology. But if I wrote that I hadn’t meant what I’d said, would he take it to mean that I did want to hook up with him? That would make things even more complicated.
I’m sorry, I finally scrawled on a scrap of paper ripped out of the previous day’s Times. I left it on Cooper’s pillow. Not much—but the best I could manage.
Before I could lose my resolve, I let myself out of The Underground and headed for the subway, arms swinging, chin up, trying to look like someone who knew where she was going. Someone who shouldn’t be messed with. And it worked: Nobody messed with me. I followed the directions I’d gotten from the Internet, and it didn’t even take me all that long to get to East Williamsburg.
I rang the buzzer to Jackie Gray’s redbrick warehouse-style building, thinking how depressing it would be if I’d traveled all this way only to find she wasn’t in. To my relief, a woman’s voice came over the intercom. “Hello?”
I hadn’t given any thought to how I would introduce myself. “Chelsea Price. Catherine Eversole’s daughter.” I blurted the words out. There was a long silence, then a buzz. Before Jackie could change her mind, I slipped inside and climbed the narrow staircase to the third floor.
Shorter than she looked in her photo and dressed in a turquoise tunic over a floaty black skirt, Jackie Gray waited in the hallway, her back pressed to the door of apartment 5E. “I don’t believe it,” she said when she saw me. And again, “I don’t believe it.” She threw her arms around me. “You don’t mind if I hug you? I know I’m a stranger….”
“You’re not,” I said, because after reading about her in my mom’s journal, I felt like she was a long-lost friend. We clung to each other for a moment, and then I followed her into a huge loft with shimmering swaths of cloth hung from the ceiling to mark out rooms. Sunshine fell in wide bars through the tall glass windows and onto the gleaming wood floor. I noticed a scattering of children’s toys in the corner of the room—a city built out of blocks and Matchbox cars.
“My husband’s at work, and my kids are at kindergarten,” Jackie explained. “Twins, Zach and Zoe. I wish Cathy could have met them.” She invited me to sit on a long mauve couch and started bombarding me with questions: Where was I living? How was my father? What was I doing in New York? I filled her in, leaving out the part about my being a runaway, trying—without actually lying—to make it sound like my dad knew I was on a solo jaunt to Manhattan. It seemed to work, though when I mentioned Hence, and how I was staying above The Underground, I saw her eyes narrow. She didn’t say anything, so I continued my tale, ending with the purpose for my visit to her loft.
“Oh, Chelsea.” Jackie put a hand on my arm. “I’ve been trying to figure out for years what could have happened to your mom.” Then she started talking. She had a deep, actressy voice and long hands that fluttered as she spoke. I struggled to burn each detail into my memory.
Mom and Jackie had met in fourth grade. Jackie had come to Idlewild Prep on scholarship, and when Francesca Pasquale, the school’s queen bee, had picked on her, my mom had threatened to punch Francesca out. “Not that Cathy knew the first thing about fighting, but she wouldn’t have let a little detail like that stop her.” Jackie told me how normal Mom had been for the daughter of someone rich and important, how eagerly she’d lent Jackie her nice clothes—even the diamond earrings she’d been given for her thirteenth birthday. How when Mom left to tour Italy the summer she was fifteen she’d sent Jackie daily postcards, promising that the two of them would travel together someday.
“Where did she go?” I prodded her. “What were her favorite places?”
The list was dauntingly long: Florence, Venice, Siena, Sorrento. It wasn’t as though I could track her all over Italy. Absently fingering the beads of her orange necklace, Jackie reminisced about high school, and before long she got around to talking about Hence, and how his appearance on Mom’s doorstep had changed everything.
“After that, we weren’t as close. Cathy and Hence were attached at the lips most of the time. It wasn’t the two of us anymore; it was the three of us, with me tagging along, feeling resentful. It’s an old story, I guess.”
“You didn’t like Hence?”
“I was jealous. I wanted a boyfriend of my own, for one thing. But mostly I missed having Cathy’s undivided attention.” Jackie’s cat, an elegant Siamese, had been watching me warily from the doorway; now it rubbed against her legs, and she reached down to scratch between its ears. “Hence was okay. He was very earnest—about his music, and about Cathy.”
“Did she break up with him?” After seeing Hence’s bedroom shrine, I figured my mom must have dumped him, but I was eager for the details.
“It was complicated,” Jackie said.
“Complicated?” I stretched out a hand toward the cat, but it hissed at me and bolted from her lap and out of sight.
“Oh, you know. They grew up. Figured out they wanted different things. Had a few misunderstandings. I don’t recall the details, to tell the truth. It was so long ago.” She sighed. “She wanted to go to college, and he wanted to go on tour with that band of his, and neither of them would back down. Then he got involved with some woman he met at a club. I don’t remember her name.”
?
??Nina Bevilaqua?” I guessed.
“That sounds about right. If you ask me, I think he started seeing her to make your mother jealous. And she did the same to him.” Jackie hesitated. “I don’t mean to imply she didn’t love your father, Chelsea.”
“I wouldn’t call it love. She ditched him. And me.”
She leaned in like she might hug me again. “I’m so sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter.” If she started going all kind and motherly on me, I might lose it. “Did she tell you why she left us when she did? I mean, she’d been apart from Hence for years, and then all of a sudden she couldn’t stand her life with us for another minute?”
“She called me when she got into town. She said Hence was flying in from England and she had to be at The Underground when he got there.” Jackie looked down into her cupped hands. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished I’d told her to go home to you and your father. No—I did tell her that. I wish I’d worded it more strongly.”
“Would she have listened?”
“Probably not. But I still should have spoken my mind. Her thing with Hence… it wasn’t healthy. Too intense, the pair of them. Cathy needed somebody like your dad—steady and mild-tempered.”
“I guess she didn’t think so.”
“Your mom… she was pretty impulsive. It got her in trouble sometimes.”
So maybe I did inherit some of my mother’s personality after all. Figures it would be her worst trait. “So she wasn’t perfect,” I said, more to myself than to Jackie.
Jackie chuckled. “No, honey,” she said gently. “She wasn’t. Who is?”
I wanted to let those words sink in, to hear about the ways in which my mom had been an ordinary girl, like me. But my first priority had to be tracking her down. “Where do you think she went?” I asked. “After she came to New York that last time. She came to see you, right?”