CHAPTER 35
Josh
I walk Leigh out and return to the family room, wishing I was drunk or high like everyone else here. Sarah and Piper are gone, which means they’re probably passed out in her room. Through the sliding glass door, I can see Michelle lying on the grass, staring at the sky. Or sleeping. I can’t tell from here. The gravity bong is abandoned on the coffee table and Damien and Chris are still half-baked, trying to kill each other on the Playstation. Across the room, Tierney is giving Clay a lesson on joint rolling, and I hear him say something about wanting to draw her, which she laughs hysterically at. Drew is on the couch, staring at her. He looks up when he hears me and I can see the disgust take over his face. I don’t need his. I have enough of my own.
“Where is she?” I ask.
“Do you care?” He’s making sure I know I’m an a*shole.
“What?” I’m tired and I want to go home and my tolerance for Drew’s bullshit was running dangerously low hours ago.
“It’s a simple question,” he continues.
My fist is tightening with every word and I force myself to loosen my hand. “Do you care where she is? Did you care when you were in my guest room screwing another girl?” I can’t believe he has the balls to say any of this to me. It’s not like Sunshine and I are together and he obviously knows that better than anyone.
Tierney is completely blitzed and struggling for clarity while she watches this play out.
“Not here, Drew.”
“Fine. Outside then.” He gets up and he’s surprisingly sober and I realize I haven’t seen him touch anything since dinner hours ago. He never did take the shot he made Tierney pour when he refused to tell me whether Sunshine was drunk or not when they had sex.
“Answer my question.” I lean up against the side of my truck and shove my hands in my pockets because I need something to do with them.
“I took her home,” he says. “Now answer mine.” He’s not f*cking around.
He’s pissed.
“That’s not the question I meant.”
“I know. Answer mine first.”
“Yes, I care where she is,” I mock his tone.
“Is that what you were doing in the bedroom
with
Leigh? Caring? ” The
sarcastic condescension is getting on my nerves. I don’t care if I deserve it or not.
“I was ending it,” I tell him, even though I don’t owe him an explanation.
And the whole time I was wondering what the hell I was doing. I sat on the bed and looked at her green eyes and blonde hair and the perfect body that was mine whenever I wanted it, no strings attached.
It was simple, convenient, uncomplicated.
And I didn’t want it anymore. OK, I wanted it, but wanting it had never involved a choice before today.
I leaned over and kissed her, hoping it would make every other thought go away. I closed my eyes, and for the first time since I had been with Leigh, it wasn’t her face I was picturing. I didn’t see blonde hair and green eyes and simple and uncomplicated.
I saw dark hair, dark eyes, dark, complicated,
frustrating,
messed
up
everything. And the moment I broke away and opened my eyes to look at the girl pulling my shirt up over my head, I knew what I would lose if I did this. There was never a price before, but now there was and it wasn’t worth it.
She wasn’t even upset. No drama. No questions or tears. Just the same as I would have been if it had been the other way around. Ending things with Leigh was just like everything else had always been with Leigh – easy.
Even when I walked her out, I kept thinking how simple it would be to change my mind and take it back. And then screw her in the backseat of her car so that it would make it impossible for me to ever take anything back again.
“That changes things.”
I don’t really know what it changes for Drew. I know that I just gave up getting laid because I felt guilty about a girl I don’t even have.
“Why didn’t you tell me you slept with her?” I ask and I still want to know if he waited until she was wasted, because if he did, I’ll seriously hurt him.
“Because I didn’t.” Not the answer I was expecting.
“You said you did.”
“I guess I didn’t take the truth part of truth or dare literally.” He shrugs.
“She didn’t disagree.” I think back to the look exchanged between the two of them. He was asking her for permission but I don’t get why she gave it to him.
“We have an agreement.”
“Break it,” I tell him, even though I have no right.
“Why?”
“Because you’re all over her all the time. You make her look like a whore.”
“First, I hardly think I’m the only thing making her look like a whore.
Second, if she asks me to stop, I’ll stop.
Otherwise, why should I?”
“Because I’m asking you to stop.”
“She and I have a mutually beneficial relationship. Kind of like you and Leigh but we don’t have sex. It works. Why would I give that up?” He’s not hiding the subtext.
“Because it doesn’t mean anything to you.”
“Why does it mean anything to you?”
“Because she’s mine and I don’t want you touching her.” I’m a five year-old fighting over a toy. I feel like an idiot as soon as I say it, but it’s said and it’s true.
And I don’t want it to be.
“I know,” he says arrogantly.
“You know?”
“I’m not stupid Josh. The two of you have been eye-f*cking each other since the beginning of school. I wasn’t going to do anything with her and she was never going to do anything with me.”
“Then why all the bullshit tonight?”
“Just wanted to hear you say it.” He smiles and heads back toward the house.
I’m too relieved to be pissed at him.
“What’s with you and Tierney?” I ask when he gets to the porch.
“Trying not to screw each other.
Trying not to kill each other. Same thing that’s always with me and Tierney.”
***
I’m at Sunshine’s house at nine o’clock the next morning. We’re supposed to have plans, but after last night I’m not sure if we still do. I wait in the driveway because Margot probably just went to bed and I don’t want to knock and wake her up.
When the door opens, Nastya comes out wearing a pink, flowered sundress and flat white sandals and I wonder who she is today. She gets in the truck and shuts the door.
“Shut up. It was a birthday present,” she says before I can even comment.
“Doesn’t mean you had to wear it.” But I’m glad you did.
“I figured I should get something out of the intervention since I didn’t take the phone. Besides, I spend so much time doing your laundry that I haven’t gotten to any of mine.” She buckles her seat belt and we’re off without a word about last night.
We hit three antique stores by noon and I still haven’t found anything remotely like the console table I’m looking for. If she’s true to form, Sunshine will start complaining around store number five.
That’s where her antiquing patience tends to run out. Store number four is a high end one, two towns west of us, and I have to promise her ice cream after this one to get her to leave the truck.
“Wouldn’t it be easier to just find what you’re looking for on the internet?”
“Where’s the fun in that?” I ask. She’s right. It would be much easier, but I like the looking.
“Where’s the fun in this?” She pulls open the door and exaggeratedly drags her feet inside.
“You know you like it.”
“I do?”
“You do.”
“And you know this, how?”
“Because I know you, and no one makes you do anything you don’t want to do. If you didn’t want to come, you wouldn’t come. And if you didn’t come, you wouldn’t be here. So it follows that if you didn’t want to come, you would not be here right now. But you are here, so by the transitive property of Sunshine, you want to be here.”
“I hate you.”
“I know that, too.” I say nonchalantly and one side of her mouth turns up in response.
“It was worth coming just to hear that many words leave your mouth at one time.
That may never happen again.”
“Probably not.”
“So remind me again why you can’t join modern society and use the internet.” I shrug because it’ll probably sound stupid. “I like finding things no one else is looking for. Things that got lost or forgotten, shoved in a corner. Stuff I never knew existed. I don’t even need to buy it. I just like to find it and know that it’s there.
That’s the part I like.”
“Is any of this stuff even worth what they’re charging for it?” She looks at the price tag on an ornate mahogany sideboard.
“Depends on how badly you want it.
It’s worth whatever you’re willing to pay for it.”
“Can you even afford any of it?”
“Yes.”
“You sell that much furniture?” She looks impressed.
“No.” I do okay with selling the furniture but not even close to this well. I don’t have enough time.
“Oh.” She doesn’t ask anything else, but I tell her anyway, even though it’s the thing I hate mentioning the most.
“I have a lot of money.”
“How much is a lot?”
“Millions.”
I
watch
her
face.
Millions. It sounds absurd. I’ve never told anyone before. The only people who know are the ones who have always known. It feels weird to even say it out loud. I don’t talk about the money. I try not to even think about the money. I have a lawyer, two accountants and a financial adviser who worry about it for me. If they handed it all over to me tomorrow, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. I’d probably end up hiding it under the bed.
“No wonder you didn’t have a problem getting emancipated,” she says dryly.
“No wonder.”
Her eyes narrow. “You’re not lying.” She studies my face and I shake my head.
“You don’t spend any of it.” It’s not a question.
“My dad never wanted to touch it so I try not to as much as possible. I use what I have to for paying the bills because I can’t make enough to live on while I’m in school.” I can’t say I hate that it’s there, because I do need it. But I hate what it means, and I’ll never let myself be happy about it.
“Did you buy anything with it?”
“I bought my truck last year when my dad’s old one finally kicked it. And I bought an antique table.”
“Which one?”
“The dark one on the far wall of the living room near the sliding glass door.”
“The dark one? That’s it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Usually you get all flowery and descriptive and talking about the curves of the wood and the symmetry of the lines and the marriage of form and function.” She puts on a pretentious tone and waves her hand around in the air.
“I talk like that?”
“When you talk about wood and furniture you do.”
“I sound like a pompous ass.”
“If the shoe fits.”
She moves on to the back of the store where they keep the shelves with all of the ceramics and vases and lamps. “I have to be home by five,” she says, turning over the three-thousand dollar price tag on a hideous lamp with a base that looks like a harlequin. “I need this,” she adds sarcastically.
“Why five?”
“I have to meet Drew to do debate research. There’s another tournament coming up. State possession of nuclear weapons. Exciting stuff.”
I haven’t thought about Drew since this morning and I don’t really want to bring him into this now; but knowing him, he’s probably going to say something to her tonight and I have to do pre-emptive damage control.
“About last night,” I start, and I realize how cliché that sounds. Now I know why. She doesn’t stop her intense examination of an ugly ass vase but I know she’s listening. She’s always listening. “I told Drew to keep his hands off of you.”
“Why would you do that?” This must interest her more than the vase because she turns around.
“Because everyone talks shit about you because of it.” And I’m jealous, which is the real reason, because neither of us really cares about the crap people say.
“But it’s not my business so I’m sorry.”
“And he agreed?” She looks a combination of shocked and amused.
“Not without persuasion.”
“What kind of methods do you have that would work on Drew?” she laughs.
“I lied,” I say, even though I’m lying now. “I told him you were mine.” No response, so I keep talking.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to act like you were an action figure or something.”
I wait for some sort of reaction, but there is none. She turns the price tag around on a jewelry box so it’s facing the right way and puts it back.
“As long as it’s Lara Croft, we’re good.”
“Of course,” I smile, but it’s weak.
“Anatomically correct, too.”
“Come on,” she says, heading back up to the front of the store. “If you’re not going to buy me the three-thousand dollar clown lamp, we need to get going. You promised me ice cream.”
After the ice cream, I drag her to one more hole in the wall antique store in the old part of town and then we head back.
The iridescent painted cat she insisted I buy her is between us on the seat and I can’t wait to get home because it’s scaring the crap out of me. I think she saw the fear in my eyes when she picked it up at the store, and after that, there was no way she was walking out without it. I told her I’d rather buy her a bracelet to replace the one she lost on her birthday, because I really did feel shitty about that, but she said no.
She said it would be inappropriate, whatever that means. I guess nightmarish ceramic cats are acceptable because that’s what she’s got. Every time she looks at it she smiles and it’s worth ten times what I paid for it.
“Thanks for coming,” I say, just to have something to say while she’s digging her keys out of her purse.
“Thanks for the cat.” She smiles again, picking it up and holding it up to her face. “I named him Voldemort.” She puts it in her lap like it’s a real cat and for a minute I’m afraid it might actually bite her.
“My pleasure,” I say, and I mean it, even if it sounds dumb.
She cradles the cat under her arm and reaches for the door handle, stopping to look at me before she jumps out.
“Just so you know,” she says, her smile fading as her eyes lock onto mine.
“You didn’t lie.”