All You Never Wanted (19 page)

“Well, it did. Harassment.” He says it again and the word feels just as terrible. “In fact, I’ve been thinking of placing a call to your stepfather.” With a puff through his nostrils.

And in that puff, somehow, Alex knows. Gussman’s talking about the wrong things. He’s got no interest in Len. None. He’s not going to do it.

“Then I’m sorry we bothered you.” Her armpits are seeping sweat. Her fingers find Xander’s jeans belt loop and hook in. “We won’t anymore.”

“Sir. We didn’t exactly get your answer.” Uh-oh. The Xander factor. She hadn’t counted on it. He’s not going anywhere.

“I think,” says Gussman stiffly, “that my answer is obvious. Goodbye.”

“Are you kidding? You really won’t meet this kid? You know about his bow tie, right? That’s a copy of yours? You really won’t do this one simple thing? That will take less than five minutes out of your life?”

Alex casts Xander a sidelong look. Oh, that smile. She could sneak-watch Xander all day, waiting for the dimple to appear. How’s she been able to resist this guy for so long? Well, of course he’s been the semi-conscious reason she’s been slingshotting herself to Empty Hands week after week. “You’re his idol, Mr. Gussman. A superfan doesn’t happen every day. Even for you, right?”

The pause is painful. Gussman’s eyes on Xander’s arms. Probably looping that same pre-scripted parental belief—that Xander will regret it. All that ink. All that regret.

“Please rethink this one.” Xander, good to his core, can’t believe anyone would be less than decent.

Gussman is animal-still. As if he’s not one person but part of a herd that just sniffed danger in the air. He barely makes eye contact or even moves his lips when he speaks next. “Son, my job is my job. Nothing more. I don’t want to inspire anyone. I’ve never sought the cult of fandom. I apologize that I can’t be more help to you. But it would be against my personal and professional integrity.” Pleased with the way all these words have marched out of his mouth, he moves to shut the door in their faces.

“Oh. Wait!” Alex stops it with one hand. The need has come over her in a freakish impulse.

It’s​all​in​your​head
.

No​I​really​have​to​go
.

It doesn’t matter which is true, because the urge is a shock through her body. “Hang on, I …” She swallows. She’s humiliated that she needs to ask. “Mr. Gussman, may I please use your bathroom?”

She can feel Xander’s surprise—she doesn’t care. Gussman
himself looks stricken—that’s worse. He doesn’t want to open the door, and when he does, with another nostril puff, she bolts past him in a blind fear to get inside.

Oh God, nothing horrible is happening, she’s not peeing or anything, is she? Or maybe the tampon?

Down the carpeted hall in the direction of the disdainful finger that Gussman is using to indicate the door.

Locked safe inside the powder room, she sits on the toilet and presses her palms to her thighs, which are shaking uncontrollably. Of course she hardly needs to pee at all, except for the tiniest, most pitiable trickle. And of course her tampon is right where she left it.

“Stop it,” she whispers. “Stopit stopit.” It’s a psychotic joke that she’s playing on herself, and it makes her feel like crying again. (What is she, five years old? How many times today will she feel like crying again?)

Washing her hands, she studies the mirror. She sees Pip staring out. That awful day. It will never leave her memory.

You really believe that you’re some special snowdrop, don’t you, Alexandra Parrott? What did you think would happen? Even your friendly local weatherman despises you. You should write a hate letter to yourself
.

“Noise,” she mutters. “Pip Arlington is only noise.” She snaps the light on-off-on-off-on to banish her.

It’s the hunger. Another day, not enough energy to sustain it. A few bites of an Early Bird Special in a Cuban restaurant can’t be expected to cure everything. Or even anything.

When she emerges, Xander and Gussman are frozen in the
same places as when she left. Her presence releases the spell. Xander turns away and shoots off, leaving Alex to thank Gussman quickly while barely looking at him, before she follows Xander, who is now motoring down the flagstone path and back to the car.

“Sorry,” she says. “Bad time to need a bathroom.”

“No problem. You looked like you were taking that news harder than me,” he answers.

She has to laugh. “You’re probably right.”

“So maybe Weatherdude will come around,” he says once they’re on the road. “Maybe he’s the kind of guy who needs to snap on his tie and sleep on it.”

“No,” she answers. “He’s too sure that we’re wrong. That we’re bugging him. Making life hard on him. My dad.” She swallows. “My dad was like that. I remember Thea asking him once to come with her to the father-daughter breakfast at school. The look he gave her. Like she was asking for the moon.”

She’d forgotten all about this till she said it out loud.

“That’s rough,” says Xander.

Neither of them speaks until they’re on the exit bound for Greenwich.

“It’s late,” she remarks. “Who’s, um, driving you to the airport?” She hopes he’ll ask her. She bets he can hear the longing in her voice.

“My mom, probably.”

“Right. Well, it’s after seven. Maybe seven-thirty-ish?”

“Too bad you can’t check your watch.”

She doesn’t answer. So he’d seen. She’d been so positive he wasn’t looking.

Xander laughs. “I mean, I know that the mango salsa rocks everybody’s world. And of course Lucia’s a sweetheart. But holy shit. That was some tip.”

Alex stares at the freedom of her bare wrist. “The watch wasn’t working out. Not my style. Lucia could pawn it. It can do more for her than what it’s doing for me.”

“Hey, I’d drink to that. If I had anything to drink.”

He turns to grin at her. His smile tugs at her heart. There’s too much else to say, but not enough time to say anything meaningful. The rest of the drive is radio music until she pulls up to the front of Xander’s house.

She stares ahead, not trusting herself to look at him. What a day. She’d kissed Xander Heilprin right there, in that field, just this morning. She’d spent nearly eight hours with him. Now she’s saying goodbye to him for eight weeks. Whatever else she does, she won’t let him know that she cares. She can’t. Too proud. The last thing she wants is for Xander to imagine her wallowing through the summer. Pining for him like some drippy, lovesick kid. “Okay, then. Fun day. Safe travels.”

“Thanks.” He gets out and then leans in through the passenger-side window. “Alex, I had better than a fun day. I had an awesome time with you today. It was hot and funny and wild and wacky and I was totally into it. It was perfect.” He laughs. “So much for playing Mr. Cool Guy.”

“Yeah, yeah. Me, too,” she answers, but more casually.
Empty voice
, she thinks.
Empty words. Empty girl
.

“I’ll text you when I get there. Or maybe even before.”

“Sure.”
Say more, Alex. Say something adorable, memorable. Movie tag-line-y. Just say anything
.

“Seriously,” Xander continues. “Today was genius. Even if I wanted to forget it, I couldn’t. It’s imprinted.”

“Ha. Remind me what we did again?” And then she wants to die. Alexandra Parrott, Queen of the Scene, has found the perfect put-down. “JK,” she adds. Hating herself.

He seems unconcerned. Maybe. “Try not to miss me too hard. And don’t pretend you won’t.” He taps the car roof, then turns and breaks into a half-jog toward his house. But she’s hurt him, and she knows it. She watches him go with a clawing pain.

Worse even than the hunger that has diseased her for too long.

Once Xander’s disappeared through his door, she thinks about calling her mom, but she’s not even sure what she needs to tell her. It’s an old wish that feels more like the ache from a near-forgotten injury.

When she puts it out of her mind, it’s almost like it’s not there at all. Except, of course, that it always is.

“Boo.”

Alex said “Boo” like nothing, like “Hey.” Still, I reflex-screamed as I performed what in my fourth-grade ballet class was called an
échappé
.

Except minus the skill. I’d always been pathetic at ballet.

“Eek, sorry.” Alex leaned into my bedroom doorframe. “Who’dja think I was?”

“Oh. Um. I dunno.” My blood was whooshing currents of happy. That’s how glad I was to see her. I wasn’t sure what worst-case scenario had been chewing at me for this past hour. Crazy guilt that Alex had a sixth sense Joshua and I were … whatever we were? Crazy fear that she’d ditched us all for good?

“Were you expecting a psycho?”

“Maybe. Plenty of psychos might be running loose around Round Hill,” I said. “I’m sure there’s an iPhone app by now for how to break into Camelot and rob us blind.”

“I always think Arthur’s war loot—all those swords and masks and pistols—look like junk.” She made a face. “Geeky boy collector.”

“Breaking in and finding stuff you think is junk might be more dangerous. It might make a robber angry. Then he’d stab us in our beds.”

Alex smiled. “Not a positive view of the human condition,
Thee.” She walked deeper in, kicking away shoes and magazines. “Your room is a sty. When I think of how you could balance this space.” She pushed some books off the seat of my comfy armchair and perched there.

“Balance the space? What?” I gave her a look. What was up? What was the difference in her? A brighter bloom in her cheeks? The way her hair was tucked to show her ears? Something was altered. I couldn’t say what.

Could she see the change in me, too? Could she tell that I knew what it was to have Joshua Gunner’s mouth against mine? The cage of his forearms locking me in?

“Come here,” she said, as I swept past to claim my roller brush from where I’d left it on my bookshelf. I stopped. “You smell different,” she told me. “Not like yourself.” Her nostrils were flaring exaggeratedly. “You don’t have on that body-care product you use. You know, with the koala bear on it.”

“That lotion’s hypoallergenic.” I flipped over from the waist and started brushing. Lulette swore that if you brushed your hair three hundred strokes a day, it would grow in stronger from the roots. “It doesn’t even have a scent.”

“Yeah, it does, kind of. And now you don’t smell like it. You smell like Mom.”

“I ran out. I borrowed some of her stuff.” What else could Alex’s sense of smell detect on me? It was like my skin was betraying me. Whispering secret messages to her. Or maybe not betraying. Maybe just confessing. Could she also tell I’d sampled other things from Mom? Her makeup and powders and oils and perfume?

I’d daubed and brushed and buffed myself under the violet
lights. Scavenging Mom’s stuff was the closest thing to being with her. To being with both of them, when we all used to get ready in front of the mirror. “Hey, where’ve you been, anyhow?” I asked. “It’s past eight. People’ll be showing up here soon. You said you’d be home at lunchtime.”

“I got tied up. I’m here now.”

Not good enough. My relief had morphed into something else. It wasn’t as if I was exactly mad at her. But I was uneasy that Alex wasn’t more fixated on details—like if Brandon was okay on the roof, or where we should put the kegs, or if we should hide more vases and breakables. She seemed really checked out of the whole thing. “Alex, you didn’t even call. You chucked the responsibility for this whole entire party onto me.”

At that, Alex laughed. But her laugh was nothing. Like “Boo,” like “Hey.” She didn’t care anything about this party. “Thanks a lot, if that’s the only reason you were worried—” Her eyes went skinny. “Wait—what the … are you wearing Mom’s
wedding dress
, Thea?”

“It’s a mini, it works. We’re all dressing up tonight.”

“ ‘We’? Who’s ‘we’?”

“Me. And. My. Friends.”

She bird-tilted her head. I stood tall but didn’t offer more. It wasn’t poaching. It really and truly was not. This afternoon was proof. The Blondes could just as easy hang out with me as with Alex. Same difference. Eventually, I’d bet they’d even get to like me more than Alex, if she kept blowing them off.

But that’s not where Alex’s head was at. “Did you ask her?”

“Who?”

“Mom! About borrowing her wedding dress.”

“Oh. Yeah. Of course I did.”

“No, no way. You didn’t ask her.” And then Alex sprang up from the chair and came at me. “Take it off.”

“You’re not the boss of me.” I sidestepped, leaping past her onto my bed. Dismounting nimbly on the other side. She grabbed for my arm, catching air.

“You sound like a second grader. It doesn’t belong to you, Thee. And you know perfectly well that Mom is holding on to that dress in case one of us wants it for our own wedding.”

“What kind of doomsday crazy would inspire you to wear Mom’s no-luck, marriage-to-a-loser-deadbeat-husband wedding dress to
your own wedding
?”

“Don’t talk about Dad that way. You remember what our family counselor said. Dad’s got a disease. That craving was in him like a bomb. And good things happened from that marriage. We happened. So
I’d
want to wear the dress, okay? And that’s why I don’t want
you
doing beer stands in it tonight.”

“I’ll respect the dress, Alex. God.”

But Alex had whisked around the bed for another swipe. “We’re talking about more than a dress. This is a symbol.”

“My point exactly. A symbol of fail.” I leapt onto my bed again, landing in a semi-crouch. Both arms extended for balance, surfer-style. “You should consider that I’m entitled to some pleasure out of something that never brought Mom anything. Karma is a boomerang, remember.” I’d read that last off a coffeehouse tip jar. It didn’t work in this context, but at least Alex was paying me some attention. “You better not ruin this party,” I continued.
“Especially when I just spent the afternoon with your so-called core best friends. They invited me over, and they were happy to see me. Genuinely happy.”

“Oh, Thea. Listen to yourself. I’m embarrassed for you.”

Except my sister looked furious. I’d pushed too far. Her eyes weren’t the usual expression I’d come to know lately—foggy indifference with panic buzzing just beneath. She was on the attack. She was listening, really listening to me. She’d sparked to every word I’d spoken.