I glanced at Cal and tried to smile. “Don’t tell me you believe in wishes.”
Calvin smiled impishly. “No . . . but, okay: What would you wish for?”
“To find Tommy. For my parents to get their shit together, to not know my father is a cheating prick, for someone to tell me what I’m supposed to do with the rest of my life, for Warren to come home safe and intact. I could go on.”
“You miss him a lot, huh?”
“Warren? He’s not even gone yet, but I wouldn’t say I miss him, so much as I don’t want him to die.”
“Tommy,” he said. “I meant Tommy.”
“Oh. Yeah. I really do.”
“I figured.” Calvin sounded disappointed. “We should probably start walking back.”
I looked around. The number of people had doubled since we’d arrived. “You don’t want to wait for the fireworks?”
“Not really.”
We returned to a/s/l with less than five minutes to spare before midnight. Lua found us and planted a sweaty, sloppy kiss on both me and Calvin when the digital clock over the bar turned twelve. He begged us to stay and dance until dawn, but Calvin said he needed to go home, and I wasn’t feeling the loud and drunk crowd that had squeezed into the nearly filled-to-capacity club anymore. Despite what I’d said about missing Tommy, I found the one thing I wanted at that moment was to spend more time alone with Calvin, even though that thought made me feel simultaneously guilty and giddy and a little sick to my stomach. Either way, I was grateful to him for providing me with an excuse to escape.
As I drove, Calvin sat so quietly and so still in the car I thought he might have fallen asleep. I shuffled through one of Lua’s playlists to cover the silence. When we reached Calvin’s house, I parked in his empty driveway.
“I guess my dad got called into work,” he said. “Wanna come inside?”
“I don’t know.” I definitely didn’t want to go home, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend the rest of my New Year’s Eve with Calvin either. I turned off the headlights but left the engine running.
Calvin was looking out the windshield at the sky. In the quiet between the end of one song and the beginning of another, he turned down the stereo and said, “Want to know what I wished for?”
“What?” I turned to Calvin, and he kissed me on the mouth. It happened so fast—all lips and tongue and minty freshness—and ended before I could properly kiss him back.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
But as I stared at his face, his lips, his wild hair—as our arms touched, and I took his hand—I realized I wanted him to kiss me again.
I reached my hand around Calvin’s neck and pulled him toward me. I kissed him, gentler but with more intensity than the first time. Neither of us spoke as we groped each other, and he pulled me over the armrest and emergency brake into his seat, and it seemed like only seconds later that he’d unbuttoned my shirt and I’d pulled his over his head, and we’d tugged our pants down around our ankles.
Calvin kissed my chest and stomach and hips, teasing me, and I thought about how there might have been a million billion other teenage couples having awkward almost-sex in cars on far-off planets if the stars they orbited hadn’t disappeared. But then I pushed those thoughts away and squeezed onto the floor between Calvin’s legs.
Before I went down on him, I looked into his eyes and said, “You okay with this?”
He nodded, unable to even speak it seemed, which made me smile.
Despite the buildup and our playful teasing, we rushed to and through the savage crescendo, and then quickly retreated to our own seats—sweaty and sticky and panting—as the inevitable postorgasm embarrassment crept in.
“Sorry,” I said as I shimmied into my underwear and pants. “It’s been a while and—”
Calvin shook his head. “No, it was good.”
Now that I could think clearly without my head clouded by hormones, Tommy barged in and demanded to know what the hell I thought I was doing. How could I claim to love him and then do what I’d done with Cal? I was a hypocrite for judging my dad and then cheating on Tommy. It didn’t matter that Tommy was gone for everyone else, he wasn’t gone for me. I’d betrayed him, and he wouldn’t want me when I found him because of what I’d done. I wished I could take it back. All of it. Go back to the beginning of the night and tell Calvin he couldn’t come. Except, I was glad he was there. My head and my heart were so full of conflicting feelings that they threatened to overwhelm me.
Calvin startled me when he spoke. “Well, this night certainly didn’t turn out the way I’d expected.” He’d managed to mostly redress, but hadn’t buttoned his jeans, and his shirt was on inside out.
“Understatement of the decade,” I muttered.
I was so confused. Part of me did feel like I’d cheated on Tommy, another part thought I might genuinely like Calvin. Still another part wondered if I only liked Calvin because he seemed to believe me about Tommy. Either way, I needed Calvin to get out of the car so I could go home and think without him sitting beside me all beautiful eyes and gorgeous smile, the smell of sex radiating off his skin.
“That’s obviously not the first time you’ve done that,” Calvin said, breaking the silence.
I rolled my eyes. “The first with someone I hardly know.”
Calvin shrugged. “We know lots about each other. For instance, now I know you’re kind of a slut.”
The words ripped through me, like Calvin had reached into my mind and pulled out the truth I’d been thinking about myself but hadn’t wanted to admit and rammed it down my throat. My guilt would be branded into my skin for Tommy to see when he returned, and how could I face him then? He’d come home and reject me, and I wouldn’t be able to blame anyone else for my inability to keep my stupid dick in my pants.
“Get out.”
Calvin’s smile faded. “Ozzie? I was only joking.”
“Get. Out.” I flipped on my headlights and shifted the car into drive.
Calvin fumbled with the handle and scrambled out of the car. He stood in the grass, the door still open, and said, “Seriously, Ozzie, it was a joke.”
I jammed my foot on the gas and tore down Calvin’s street. The force drove the door partially shut. As soon as I was free of Calvin’s subdivision, I pulled over and went around to the passenger side door. I opened it and slammed it shut. I slammed it over and over and over, but it wasn’t enough.
I drove to the beach and stumbled down the dunes to the edge of the water. I yelled at the sky to give me Tommy back even though I didn’t deserve him. But the sky was empty. The stars, all the stars, were gone. I didn’t even need to check my phone to know that the universe had shrunk again, and the stars had vanished.
No. They hadn’t vanished. I’d given them away to someone who hadn’t deserved them, and I’d never get them back.
TOMMY