CHAPTER 25
Or, Meanwhile, Back in the Basement . . .
* * *
I SAT ON THE ARM of the couch in Jesse’s basement, twisting my hands together and reminding myself to breathe. Jesse had texted me, letting me know the side door was open and that I should let myself in, and to text him when I got there.
I smoothed my hands over the silk of my dress, flexed my feet in my heels, then pushed myself up to standing and paced around the room. I was feeling restless, like the energy coursing through me was making it impossible to sit still. I ran my fingers through my hair, hoping that some of the curls had stayed and hadn’t just turned into frizz. It had been raining steadily, and just getting to my car and then getting to Jesse’s had gotten me fairly soaked—I hadn’t had the presence of mind, when I’d been fleeing the house, to grab an umbrella.
I stopped pacing and made myself sit back down on the couch, pretzeling my legs so I couldn’t go jumping up again. I glanced around the basement—it looked the same as it had over Christmas break. The couch was the same, and the table and chairs in the corner, the dented air-hockey table. The garlands and the Santa hat were gone, of course. But aside from that, nothing had really changed. So I couldn’t figure out why the room felt different now.
Whenever I’d played back the events of that night in my head, Jesse’s basement had taken on a grand stature, every detail cataloged in my mind—the feel of the corduroy couch underneath my bare skin, the way Jesse had been framed by the moonlight coming through the windows. It had all seemed perfect and romantic. But now . . .
The longer I was there, taking it in, I realized it was just a basement. There was a stain on the corner of the rug, and I could see where the fabric on the couch arms was worn. There were chip crumbs on the coffee table and a sweating Dr Pepper can slowly leaving a water ring on the wood.
Which was fine, I told myself firmly, running a hand through my hair. This was the reality of Jesse’s basement, same as it had been in December, and I couldn’t be upset because it wasn’t matching up to what I’d remembered in my head. And I was here now, back in his house, and this was going to happen. That’s what I needed to focus on—not my parents or the fight or how everything with my family was wrecked and in pieces. Just this moment, right now.
I heard steps coming down the stairs and quickly ran a hand through my hair again.
“Hey,” Jesse said, taking the last few steps two at a time. He smiled at me. “You made it.”
“I made it,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady and relaxed, like it was just totally normal for me to be back here, like there was nothing unusual about me being alone with Jesse again.
“How was the rest of the wedding?” Jesse asked, sitting next to me on the couch and throwing one arm over the back of it.
“It was good,” I said. This, at least, was true—the wedding had been good. It was just everything that followed that had been awful. All in a rush, I blurted out, “I’m really glad you came home this weekend. It’s really—really good to see you.”
Jesse smiled at that, leaning back against the couch cushions. He looked totally relaxed, which I supposed made sense, since this was his house, but it made me that much more aware of how jumpy I felt, sitting across from him, my pulse beating hard in my throat. “I was glad to have the chance to hang out with Mike. And you,” he added after a pause. “I might actually head out early tomorrow,” he added with a shrug. “Some other friends from Stanwich are around, and we’re talking about maybe going to Mohegan Sun. . . .” I nodded, even though it felt like something was gripping my stomach. Jesse was going to leave? Tomorrow? I’d just assumed I’d see him tonight, and then we’d somehow work things out, and then we’d be together. I wasn’t exactly sure what happened to bridge those two things—I hadn’t gotten that far whenever I’d been dreaming about it—but I was pretty sure none of my fantasies about this had included him going off to a resort-slash-casino. “And then back to school,” he said with a groan. He turned to me, his brow furrowed, and he tilted his head to the side slightly. “Where are you going again?”
I took a breath, about to say Stanwich—but was I still? If everything that would have kept me here was gone? “I was going to go to Stanwich,” I said. “But . . .”
“Staying local,” Jesse said with a nod. “Nothing wrong with that. I know you’ll have a great time.” He gave me a lazy smile. “You’ll be breaking hearts all over campus.”
I smiled at that, even though it felt like something in my chest had just plunged. Why was he talking about me breaking hearts? Why was he talking about me and other guys at all? Didn’t he realize that he was the guy? “Um,” I started, trying to bring myself back to the moment. Things were still fine. I was here, with Jesse, on his couch, wearing a beautiful dress. Things were fine. He was trying to give me a compliment and just going about it in a weird way. “I guess so.”
“I know it,” he said, giving me another slow-building smile. “I always thought you were cute, Charlie.”
All the confusion I’d been feeling a second earlier was immediately swept away. I felt something warm start to spread through me, radiating out from my stomach. “You did?”
“Of course,” he said easily. “But now—now you’re, like, super cute. I know I’m not supposed to think Mike’s sister is hot, but . . .” He shook his head. I tried to keep from smiling too wide, and I had a feeling I wasn’t doing a great job of it. “What about me?” he asked with a smile that let me know he wasn’t worried about my answer to this question. “Did you think I was cute?”
I had to take a moment before answering him—he might have just asked me if the ocean was blue, or made of water. The answer was so clearly, blindingly obvious. I took a deep breath. “Do you remember Mike’s fourteenth birthday?” Jesse just raised an eyebrow, and I remembered what he’d said yesterday at the Inn, about how this was kids’ stuff. But I needed him to know this. “It was at that laser tag place,” I said, talking more quickly now. “And we ended up on the elevator going up to the second level, just the two of us?”
“Oh right,” Jesse said, even though I could tell he didn’t really remember. “Sure . . .”
“Do you remember when the elevator got stuck? And when I got scared, you reached out and squeezed my hand?” I took a breath and continued, knowing I had to get this out—had to try to tell him how I felt and just how far it went beyond merely thinking he was cute. “Or when you were over senior year doing prom pictures at our house—and you asked me to straighten your bow tie . . .” Even speaking the words brought me back to the moment—standing in the front hall with Jesse, closer than I’d ever been before, reaching up to straighten his black bow tie, breathing in the scent of his cologne as I tried to make the act of straightening a bow tie last absolutely as long as it possibly could, just so I could keep standing next to him.
“Yeah,” Jesse said, still looking a little confused, like he didn’t understand why I’d just suddenly dragged us down memory lane.
“I more than thought you were cute,” I said, feeling my cheeks get hot as I said it but pushing on anyway. “I kind of had this massive crush on you growing up.”
Jesse smiled at that. “Had?” He leaned a little closer to me on the couch, reaching up and moving my hair back over my shoulder. “Past tense?” I shook my head, and Jesse’s smile widened as he leaned closer still, so that he was right there and we were just a breath away. “That’s good,” he said, and took my face in his hands as he kissed me.
I kissed him back, sliding my arms over his shoulders as he eased me back onto the couch again, moving his hands over the silk of my dress. “This is nice,” he said, breaking away from me for a second as he looked down at it, rubbing the silk between his fingers.
“Thanks,” I said a little breathlessly, stretching up to kiss him again, kicking one of my heels to the floor and then trying to kick the other one off, but I felt it get stuck against the couch arm.
“I’ve got this,?
?? Jesse said, pushing himself up slightly and taking off my shoe, then dropping it onto the floor, then sliding his hand up my bare leg, making me shiver as he leaned over and kissed me again.
“Thanks,” I said between kisses. Jesse grinned at me, then bent his head down toward me again. Time seemed to lose all its normal properties as we kissed—I only took a tiny time-out to take off my earrings, which were getting caught in my hair—so I wasn’t sure how long it had been when his hands slid around my back and he fumbled with the zip on my dress. I paused in kissing him and pushed myself to sit up a little more, and Jesse drew back slightly.
“Everything okay?”
“Yes,” I said immediately. “I just . . .” I looked at him, trying to take in this moment, hold on to it, freeze the picture somehow. “I just still kind of can’t believe that this—that you and me . . .” I shook my head, failing to find the exact words I needed. “That this is really happening.” I smiled at him then and kissed him, and he kissed me back, but it was like I could feel he was hesitating. And a second later, he broke away, propping himself up on the couch arm and letting his head hang down over my shoulder. “Jesse?” I asked after a moment, not sure what was happening.
“Yeah,” he said, lifting his head and rolling slightly off me, to my side, so that I could see him a little more clearly. “I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page here. Because I think you’re great.” He ran his finger down my cheek and then played with a lock of my hair. “But . . .” He gave me a slightly confused smile. “I just don’t want you to think this is something it’s not. We’re just having fun, right? It’s not like this is serious.” He said this in a tone of voice that made it seem like the only response would be to agree with him.
“No,” I said, smiling, trying to act like he hadn’t just hit the dimmer switch on my happiness, like it was slowly starting to fade out, tiny bit by tiny bit. “Not serious like right this minute,” I said with a laugh that was a little more high-pitched than mine normally were. “But—that doesn’t mean that someday . . .” I traced my fingers up his arm as my voice trailed off, giving him a hopeful smile he didn’t return.
“I just . . .” Jesse let out a short breath. “I mean, I’m at school. . . . You’re going to be starting school next year. . . . Let’s not turn this into something it doesn’t need to be, okay? Why put pressure on it, you know what I mean?” He smiled at me like I’d answered him, or agreed, and bent down to kiss me again.
I kissed him back even as my thoughts were swirling. It was almost like I couldn’t get myself to understand what I’d just heard. Because Jesse Foster wasn’t supposed to say things like that—he just wasn’t.
A second later, I realized what was wrong with that logic. Jesse was saying this. He’d just said it. Jesse, the real person in front of me. Not the version of him I’d had in my head all these years, until he’d become this separate thing entirely.
He was a nice guy. He was cute, and he was a great kisser. But that was actually all I really knew about him, Jesse the actual person. I couldn’t have told you his favorite movie, or his roommate’s name, or his greatest fear. He wasn’t who I thought he was all those years, because that person didn’t exist. That Jesse was just a compilation of everything I’d projected onto him, coupled with a handful of real-life interactions that I’d given far too much value to.
And as the realization of this hit me full force, I broke away from him, pushing myself up on my elbows. “Jesse . . .”
“What?” Jesse asked, looking confused. Then he smiled at me, raising one eyebrow. “You want to head up to the guesthouse?”
“No,” I said, maybe a little too quickly, because Jesse’s face fell. “It’s just . . .” I tucked my hair behind my ears and looked over at him. And for the first time in maybe ever, I didn’t see Jesse Foster—the person I’d thought about for years and made far too many birthday wishes about. The guy who had seemed to loom so large in the halls of Stanwich High but now just seemed like . . . a guy. I didn’t see the boy I’d thought about for hours and hours on end, imagining just what it could be like to have him see me, choose me. It was like something had fallen away, some of the aura that had always surrounded him, the one that I was beginning to understand was all my doing. It was like I’d turned him into a character in my mother’s comic strip, a little too polished and perfect—and utterly two-dimensional. I didn’t know the guy sitting on the couch next to me. And he didn’t know me.
“I think . . . maybe I should go,” I said, realizing as I spoke the words that it was what I wanted.
“Oh,” Jesse said, sitting up even more, looking at me. “Is . . . ? Did I do something?”
“No,” I said quickly, because this was the truth. It wasn’t anything Jesse had or hadn’t done. It’s that he wasn’t the person I’d talked myself into believing he was all these years. And that wasn’t his fault. But it did mean that as fun as kissing him had been, I probably needed to go. “I just . . .” I took a breath, then gestured between us. “I’m thinking this might not be the best idea.”
“Oh.” Jesse blinked at me, and I had a feeling he was having trouble understanding what had changed in the last few minutes.
“I’m sorry,” I said, pushing myself off the couch and picking up my bag, knowing that if I looked at him lying on the couch, his shirt slightly rumpled where I’d been running my hands over it, I’d find myself back on the couch, kissing him again. I stopped by the side door, already extracting my keys so that I wouldn’t be tempted to return to the couch. “Um . . . I’ll see you around?”
“Yeah,” Jesse said, giving me a smile that was still slightly confused but was amiable enough. I saw that he was already reaching for the remote—like he was just going to transition his night, so easily, to watching TV. And seeing that was maybe all the proof I needed that I was doing the right thing. “Take care, Charlie.”
“You too.” I gave him a smile, but he was leaning back against the couch, not looking at me. And after a moment, I turned and left the basement, stepping outside into the cool night air and taking a deep breath. Since I’d been in there, it had stopped raining.
I had just gotten into my car when my phone rang. I pulled it out of my bag and saw that it was J.J. calling. I hesitated for only a second before sliding my finger across the screen. “J.J.?”
“Hey, Charlie,” J.J. said, speaking fast. “So. Um. We kind of got arrested?”
CHAPTER 26
Or, Give Me a Sign
* * *
I BARRELED DOWN THE ROAD, holding my phone with one hand and gripping the steering wheel with the other. J.J. hadn’t been very forthcoming with where he was. I’d assumed the police station on Stanwich Avenue, but when he tried to tell me where they were, he started using J.J.-style directions, which never used street names and always involved way too many descriptions of trees that resembled celebrities in profile. Finally, Mike had wrested the phone away from him, sent me a dropped pin, and after that, the line had gone dead.
If it had been J.J. alone, I might have been doubtful of what was actually happening—after years of exaggerations, I’d learned not to take him at his word. But the fact that Mike and Danny were with him—and that Danny hadn’t gotten on the phone to reassure me that everything was okay—was making me more nervous than I wanted to admit. And there was also the expression on Danny’s face when he’d left the family room—like he’d been looking for trouble. It certainly seemed like they’d found it.
I put the dropped pin into my map and followed the directions to it, my brights on against the pitch-black night. I’d been driving for only a few minutes when I realized I should not be the only person coming to help and that I probably shouldn’t have headed straight for my brothers, but should have let someone else know what was happening—like my parents.
Even as the thought entered my head, though, I dismissed it. That just wasn’t how the five of us did things—even when I was three and still getting the hang of complex sentences and runnin
g without falling over, I knew not to tattle if one of my siblings was tormenting me. We settled things on our own and only brought in a higher authority when it was absolutely necessary.
But even so, it seemed like I should not be the only cavalry who was coming. When I reached a stop sign, I paused for a little longer than usual—not that it mattered, there was nobody behind me—and called Rodney. I figured it couldn’t hurt to call the one lawyer whose number was saved in my phone. As I waited for the call to connect, I just hoped it wouldn’t matter that he hadn’t passed the bar yet. His phone went straight to voice mail—not surprising, considering that I’d called him on his wedding night. So I left him a message, conveying the little I knew about the situation, then texted him the dropped pin J.J. had sent me.
I was following the directions, making the turns that the automated voice on my map app (I’d changed it to an Australian guy I always called Hugh) told me to make, and it wasn’t until I was nearly there that I realized, my stomach sinking, where I was actually heading.
This was certainly not the police station. It was, of all places, Grant Avenue. There, on the side of the road, was Danny’s rental SUV, parked at an angle. There was a Stanwich Police car up the street from it, the sirens off but the lights on, the whirling blue and red lights against the darkness looking somehow out of place and cheerful—like they belonged at a carnival and not at the site of someone’s arrest.
My brothers were all standing by the curb, in a line, and there was a police officer in front of them, a flashlight in his hand that was pointing down at the ground, a small circle of light shining on the pavement. I pulled up behind the police car, then killed my engine and got out of the car, my heart beating fast. This looked serious, and it did not look good.
“Hold up there,” the police officer’s voice said sharply, and I stopped in my tracks immediately. He raised his flashlight toward me, and I squinted against it, but the whole world had just become washed out.