He knew how to play the girls, too, in particular a coven of about four or five who were standing right next to the stage, singing along to every song and positively wiggling. Wiggling. Jesus. Sawyer played the bass and didn’t say much, just grinned occasionally, tapped one sneaker-clad foot on the stage, and sang his songs. He had a pretty voice, all yearning tenor, velvety and sad.
I shifted in my seat, out of sorts and aching; I couldn’t get over the sneaking suspicion that I was sitting exactly where I didn’t want to sit. I’d gotten this far and still all I could manage to do was watch him from across the room and wish there was a way to capture him, to write him down—the girl in the yard at the party, hiding outside the pool of light.
He talked to those girls between songs, the Wiggles, laughing like he knew them, crouched down at the edge of the stage. “Sawyer, take off your shirt,” called one of them from farther back, loud enough for everyone to hear, and probably she was half kidding, but still I almost choked to death.
“You first,” he shot back.
Finally I got up to pee, snaking my way through the crowd and trying to get manhandled as little as possible. When I was finished I pushed out the front door, ignoring the tight knot of people standing around a pickup in the parking lot, glass bottles sweating in their hands. I stared into the pet store window for a while, at the puppies and kitties sleeping in their tiny crates. I pulled out my phone to call Shelby.
“Domino’s,” she answered cheerfully.
“This place is full of skanks.”
“Of course it is.” She sounded amused. I could hear the TV in the background, the grisly crime shows she liked. “It’s nasty.”
“None of them are old enough to be here, though. I mean, I’m not old enough to be here, either, but at least my skirt’s not up my ass in the middle of January.”
“True,” Shelby agreed. “True, you do wait until the summer months to wear your skirt up your ass.”
“Shut up.” I laughed in spite of myself. “I’m serious. Did you know this was, like, a band that people actually come to see?”
“How would I have known that?” she asked. “You’re the one who’s going to write her doctoral dissertation on the life and times of Sawyer LeGrande.”
“I think I need to leave.”
“’Cause of the skanks?”
“I feel like a groupie, Shelby.” I kicked at some loose concrete, a little kid having a tantrum. “I like him so stupidly much.”
“I know you do.” Shelby blew a raspberry on the other end of the phone. Her patience for Sawyer was limited, I knew. For a moment I let myself think about Allie, the way we could spend an entire ninth-grade afternoon deconstructing his new haircut or the way he pronounced the letter L. It was just one more thing I missed about her, like her weird bony ankles and how much she loved corny knock-knock jokes, the shorthand and secret language of a friendship that went back a decade or more. “You want me to come pick you up?”
I sighed, pulled it together. “No, I’ll be okay. I’m a big girl.”
“You are indeed. Call me if you change your mind.”
“Thanks.” I hung up, tapped the pads of my fingers once against the pet store window, and dragged myself back inside. I’d lost my seat, so I got another Coke from Mike and contented myself with watching the rest of the show smushed against the wall, one arm crossed over my chest like a shield. They’d just announced their last song when I felt a hand on my shoulder, heard a singsong kind of lilt in my ear.
“Se-ree-na. What are you doing here?”
I turned around, flinching at the touch, and there was Lauren Werner. Of course. She was wearing designer jeans and a tank top made to look like it was weathered, a delicate amethyst pendant on a skinny chain around her neck. Already I wanted to die. Or, better yet, for her to die.
“Hey. I, um …” Pull it together, Reena, Jesus. I felt caught out, like she’d found me doing something illicit. “Came with Sawyer, actually.”
That surprised her. Her eyes narrowed, cunning and feline. “Really? Are you guys, like …,” she said, an accusation. “Dating?”
“What? No, no,” I said quickly. “We’re just—Our dads own a business together, so …”
So.
“No kidding.” Lauren looked me over. I could smell her perfume, faint and expensive. “He never mentioned that. You have that bewildered, first-time Sawyer LeGrande look, sort of. But I guess you’ve known each other since you were just little grommets?”
I squinted. “Something like that.”
“That’s cute!” she said. “He’s great, isn’t he?” I started to reply, but she just kept right on talking. “And I guess you, you know, had Allie in common and everything.”
Oh, wow. I was about half a second away from running for the door again, calling Shelby, hitchhiking if I had to, but Sawyer appeared behind me just then, slipped a hand into my back pocket by way of hello. I turned around; he was warm and damp with sweat. “Hey, Laur,” he said. “You taking good care of this one?”
“Oh, the best,” I answered for her.
“We’re old friends,” she put in.
They chatted a little about some party they’d been to a couple of weekends ago, some people I’d never heard of, before she disappeared back into the crowd, smiling her good-bye in a way that looked, frankly, like a threat. Sawyer didn’t notice. “So what’d you think?” he asked me, once she was gone.
I took a deep breath, put my game face on. “Freaking awesome, clearly.”
He grinned, and then frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said, blinking. “Just a little tired.”
“You want me to take you home?”
I shook my head. “No. Stay if you want. I can call Shelby to pick me up.”
“No, don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t go. Give me a few minutes and we’ll get out of here.”
“Sawyer—”
“It’s totally fine,” he promised.
It was more than a few minutes. It was three more Cokes and two trips to the sketchy bathroom and meeting about thirty exceedingly good-looking and mostly female friends of Sawyer’s, several of whom actually said, “Oh, she’s so cute!” as if I wasn’t there and also was four years old. It was after midnight by the time we made it out the door.
I settled carefully into the passenger side of the Jeep, pressed against the door, as far away from him as that night on the patio at the restaurant months and months ago. He must have been thinking the same thing, because he rolled his eyes at me.
“Oh, stop,” he said, reaching over and picking up my hand. His calluses scraped my palm as he pulled me across the seat, until I was almost sitting in his lap. “I’m sorry we stayed so long. I didn’t realize how late it was.”
I shook my head. “No, it’s not that.”
Sawyer smiled. “You had a shitty time, Reena. You can say it.”
“I wouldn’t call it shitty,” I said.
“Then what would you call it?” He was picking at the seam on my jeans, fingers moving absently up and down my thigh.
I shrugged helplessly. “I really did like your band.”
“Good, but that’s not what I asked.”
“Sawyer …” I sighed. “I’m not your type.”
He raised his eyebrows. “What’s my type?”
Allie. Lauren. The Wiggles. “Not me.”
“What does that even mean?”
“I’m not good at this stuff. I don’t like …” Bars. Girls telling you to get naked. Feeling like a fan. “… big groups of people. I’m not, like, super social. I’m not your type.”
“Who cares? I hate my type. I want you.” He twisted the end of my ponytail between two of his fingers. “Why are you upset?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. I want you, he’d said. “I hate Lauren.” To start with.
His face cracked open into a grin. “No shit.”
“How long have you guys been friends?” I asked, as he put the Jeep i
n drive and pulled out of the lot.
“Since freshman year?” he said, checking behind him. “I don’t know. She dated Iceman for a while.”
“Did you ever …?” I trailed off, regretting even before the words had gotten out.
But he was smiling. “Did we ever what, Reena?”
I looked down, away. “Forget it.”
“Would that bother you?”
“Maybe.”
“No.”
“Good.”
He glanced at the clock on the dash. We were headed for the highway at this point. If Sawyer made a left we’d end up at my house, and his parents’; a right would take us south, toward the street where Sawyer lived now. He stopped the Jeep at a red light. “Do you need to call your dad?” he asked.
I shook my head. Our parents had spent the evening together, at a retirement dinner for one of the restaurant’s longtime regulars. I pictured them in the banquet room, weirdly comforted by the idea of them all in one place. I hadn’t been lying when I told Sawyer I’d miss them when I left home. “I didn’t know how long it would go, the show, so I told him I’d probably just stay at Shelby’s.”
Sawyer nodded, didn’t say anything for a long time. The stereo hummed. “Do you want to come over for a little while?” he asked me, and there was a moment before I answered in which I didn’t breathe at all. My face felt warm. The light turned green.
“Reena?” he asked again.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “I can come over.”
23
After
It’s after ten thirty but the humidity is still bearing down by the time I get to Sawyer’s parents’ house, and the weight of the air feels physical, something I’d like to throw off. It rained a couple of hours ago—it rains every single day, world without end—and the grass is slick under my feet.
I ring twice and worry he won’t even be there—or worse, that his parents will be—but when he finally opens the door, the house behind him is quiet save for the low hum of a radio somewhere. A pair of dark-rimmed glasses is perched on his nose. “When did you go blind?” I ask.
“Always have been.” Sawyer shrugs like he’s not even surprised to see me. “Couldn’t admit it.”
“Oh.” I nod once, curtly. “Do you still want to make me dinner?”
That makes him smile. “Yeah,” he says, and steps back to let me through. “Yeah, absolutely. Come in.”
I follow him through the living room, past the multitude of black-and-white family portraits on the dining room walls—Lydia’s work is all up and down the hallways. When I was a little girl she used to let me take pictures with her heavy 35mm, showed me how to develop them in the darkroom she’d set up in the downstairs bathroom. I remember feeling so nervous to screw up around her even then that my hands would shake as I tried to hold the camera, a whole roll full of blurry, focusless shots.
I know the LeGrandes’ house almost as well as I know my own: I’ve sat through a dozen Super Bowls on the leather couch in the den here, eaten king cake on the sun-porch every Fat Tuesday for years and years. I know where they keep the spoons and recycling and extra toilet paper, all the secrets and all the smells.
“You like risotto?” Sawyer asks.
“Um.” That is … not what I expected when he said dinner. I blink. “Sure.”
Sawyer flicks on the light in the kitchen and the room goes clinically bright, all pale-green tile and gleaming stainless-steel appliances. “So,” he says, lifting a pot off the hanging rack above the island, “how’s Aaron?”
I snort a little. “Can you stop saying his name like that?”
“How am I saying it?”
“I don’t know.” The snort turns into a laugh, a little hysterical. I feel like every organ in my body has lodged itself somewhere in the back of my throat. “However you’re saying it.”
“I’m not saying it any way.” Sawyer shrugs. “Aaron’s from the Bible.”
I hop up on the counter. “Aaron works on boats.”
Sawyer nods slowly, like he’s absorbing that information, like there’s an old-fashioned card catalog in his head and he just filed Aaron into the drawer for shit he’s frankly not crazy about but suspects he needs to live with for the time being. “Is he good with the baby?”
“I wouldn’t be with him if he wasn’t,” I say snottily, then: “Can we please not talk about Aaron?”
Sawyer grins like, As you wish. “What do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Whatever normal people talk about. Baseball.”
“You want to talk about baseball?”
“No.” I raise my hands and drop them again, useless. “I don’t actually even know anything about baseball.”
“Me either.” He’s cutting up an onion now, quick and expert like Finch taught us all when we were kids. “Is this weird?” he asks once it’s in the pot, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye. “You have a look on your face like you think this is really, really weird.”
“Well,” I say, shrugging, picking at my ragged cuticles. “It’s a little weird.”
“Yeah,” he echoes. Then, after a beat: “She kept everything the same. Like, my bedroom and stuff.”
“Who?” I ask. “Your mother?” In truth I’m not really listening, instead watching him toast the rice, pour in a ladleful of stock. Clearly he’s comfortable doing it—clearly he’s done it before—but still it’s somehow unnatural, like a tree beginning to speak.
“Uh-huh. What?” he asks when he catches me staring. “This is how you make risotto.”
“I know how to make risotto,” I tell him. My heels kick softly at the cabinets. “I’m just surprised you do.”
“I know how to do lots of things I didn’t used to know how to do,” he answers, and we’re definitely not talking about dinner anymore. The air crackles: too many electrons, like you could reach out and grab them and feel them buzz inside your hand. I look away.
“Anyway,” I say, too loudly. “Your mom. Your bedroom. I guess she just … I don’t know. I guess she knew you’d be back.”
“I guess so.”
“She missed you.”
“Did she?” he asks. He stirs the rice one more time before he abandons the stove, and, oh God. He stops when he’s standing right between my knees.
“Yeah,” I tell him slowly, glancing down. His hands have landed on my thighs. “I think she kind of did.” When I look up at him we’re face-to-face like commuters on a packed train at rush hour, and I really need half a second to … “Just,” I say, “hold on.”
“Reena—” he begins, but I cut him off.
“Stop.” I shake my head. “Just don’t … I just need to—” and I’m going to say think a minute but instead there is the sudden press of lips and faces, tongues in each other’s mouths like every stunted love you is hidden in the wet darkness there. I could act surprised, but this is why I came here, isn’t it? This is what I’ve wanted since the morning he turned up. I get my arms around his neck, hard and clutching. After a moment, I hear him say my name.
24
Before
It didn’t take long to get from the Prime Meridian to the crumbling stucco house where Sawyer was living with a bunch of his buddies. He clicked the radio off as he coasted up the driveway, took me by the hand and led me up the stairs of a small deck, through the unlocked back door. The kitchen was illuminated by a coiled fluorescent bulb affixed to the ceiling that cast a greenish tinge over the speckled linoleum, the ancient appliances: pretty much what I’d expected, save for—I noted with a little smile—a plastic bowl of pomegranates on the table.
“So who exactly lives here?” I asked finally. He hadn’t spoken since inviting me over, but as he shrugged out of his hoodie he answered easily, like there hadn’t even been a pause.
“Well, me and Iceman, plus Animal’s brother Lou, and Lou’s friend Charlie, all the time. But usually there are some other people staying over.” Sawyer paused, moved toward the fridge. “I think
everybody’s probably gone for the night, though. You hungry?”
I shook my head.
“Me neither,” he agreed and kissed me, pressing me back against the fridge and tracing the line of my jaw. It felt like my entire body was liquefying. Goosebumps popped up on my arms, and I couldn’t get over the notion that the floor wasn’t quite even. The blood, I thought vaguely, was having a hard time getting to the places it needed to be.
“You cold?” he asked, when my frigid hands grazed the back of his neck, the tag at the collar of his T-shirt.
“No.”
“Okay.” Then, in my ear, though there was no one around to hear him even if he yelled: “Do you want to get out of this kitchen?”
“Um.” Just for one second, I let go of him to brace one arm behind me, against the handle on the refrigerator door. I felt like the cats I’d sometimes see stopped cold in the middle of the road late at night as I drove home from Shelby’s. Like I’d gotten to the top of the high dive and suddenly remembered that I didn’t know how to swim.
It wasn’t the God thing. I was a habitual Catholic, not a devout one; my religion was incidental to whatever was going on here. I was just—afraid. Not in a bad way, necessarily, but the way I’d been brought up to fear hurricanes: something powerful coming, better board up the glass.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” he said, gently prying my hand off the door, linking our fingers together. Just—of course he would know. “We can stay right here.”
“No.” I shook my head, stubborn. “Let’s go.”
Sawyer looked at me closely, one hand cupping the side of my face. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Reena—”
“Sawyer. You’ve done it before, right?”
“Yeah, Reena.” He smiled in that half-bashful way he had sometimes, glancing down. “I’ve done it before.”
“Well, then,” I said. “Show me how.”
He nodded, bit his bottom lip. “Okay.”
Sawyer’s bedroom smelled lemony, Pledge layered on top of pot. He didn’t bother with a light—in fact, I wasn’t even sure if there was one—but I could see in the glow of the fixture in the hallway that his room was neat and orderly and sparse. I glanced around: a freestanding bookshelf, an expensive-looking stereo sitting on the floor, a mattress with no box spring. The closet was a little bit open, and inside was an enormous pile of junk—sneakers, books, other teenage-boy refuse I couldn’t see clearly in the half-light. I smiled. Cade was famous for that at home, dumping all his crap into his closet or shoving it under his bed on the occasions when Soledad forbade him to come downstairs until his room was clean—holidays, mostly, or when we were having company.