Golden (15 page)

Josh nods slowly but doesn't look at them or say anything and I feel like I've been caught trying to steal something.

“They're beautiful,” I say, watching him closely—for what, I'm not sure. There's a hint of something I can't pin.

He tries for a smile but it just looks tired. And he doesn't even look at the drawings. “Thanks.” There's a pause, and then, “Did you want to order something?”

“Yeah, I—wait.” His
thanks
echoes inside my head. “Are they
yours
?” I ask. “Did you draw those?”

“Yeah.” His eyebrows crash together for a second like he's surprised at his own answer. “Long time ago.” We're quiet a
moment, and then he recovers, focusing on me. “So can I get you something to drink? You look like you have some work to do.” He nods at Julianna's journal, which I realize is clutched tight to my chest.

“This? No, it's not work, it's—” I stop myself and take a deep breath, but a host of questions and suspicions are whirling in my head, fighting to come out of mouth. “Yeah, I'll take a . . .um . . .”

“You want a chai, like normal?”

“Yes. Please.” I force my mouth shut and try to look at the ground, collect myself. But as soon as he turns to grab a mug, my eyes creep back up to the girl on the wall.

“Who is she?” I blurt out. A lot less tactfully than I'd like to.

He turns with the pitcher of tea in his hand and looks at me like he either doesn't know what I mean or doesn't want to answer.

“The girl in the drawing,” I stammer. “Did you know her?”

“I did.” He says it in a way that makes it clear he isn't going to elaborate. And then he glances at the sketch, just barely, before going back to making my drink, and I see it. A flicker of something.
“Such a tiny thing, a glance,”
Julianna wrote. And his glance says something.

Before I can form a response, the door opens, letting in a whoosh of cool air, and Trevor Collins steps in, shaking the rain from his hair. A smile breaks across his face when he sees me. “Hey, Frost. I thought that was your car outside.”

“Hi,” I manage. My mind is spinning a million miles a second with what I think I just saw. With what really has
been right here in front of me this whole time. I'm so close to
something
, I know it. The last thing I need is to complicate it with Trevor Collins, cute as he looks with his hair all damp, and his eyes a vibrant blue against the gray outside. What I need is to keep talking to Josh. Ask him some more questions to be sure.

Trevor looks around at the empty café. “You alone? Where's your partner in crime?”

“I don't know,” I say curtly. “Either sick or ditching. She wasn't at school today.” I turn my back to him and dig out a few dollars to pay, hoping he's not planning on staying.

“Oh,” he says from behind me. “I was gonna head up to the mountain for a few runs, but it's all gonna be slush now.” There's a pause. “You want some company?”

The question zings straight to my stomach, makes my cheeks flame up. There's no joking or pretense to it. I can hear the smile in his voice when he asks, picture it without turning around, and any other day—well, lately at least, I might've actually said okay. But it feels like I'm right on the edge of discovering something that would change everything, and I need to get back there.

I turn around. “Not today.” His smile takes a tumble, and the zing I felt turns into a stab of regret. I soften my tone a little. “I'm sorry—I just have a lot of work to do—my speech. Maybe another time?”

“Here you go,” Josh says before Trevor can answer.

I turn back to the counter and hand him my three dollars, trying to figure out how I can pick our sort-of conversation back up after Trevor leaves. But when Josh reaches out to take
my money, all the thoughts in my head grind to a screeching halt. I only catch a glimpse of it when I put the money in his palm, but it's enough to recognize it. On his forearm, buried in a maze of other tattoos, is a tiny triple spiral.

I gasp. Audibly.

“You okay?” he asks. Josh, Orion, I don't know what to call him right now.

I nod wordlessly and he slides my cup across the counter to me. When I grab it and turn around, I almost run into Trevor. “Some other time then,” he mumbles. He looks through me, at Josh. “I'll take a hot chocolate. To go.”

I wish I could explain that I'm not blowing him off, because I can see on his face that's what he thinks is going on, and I feel awful about it, especially since this time he seemed sincere. Sincerely interested, even. But at the moment, the only thing my brain can do is try to reconcile the fact that Josh is Orion. Or Orion is Josh.

“See you tomorrow?” I ask, a cheery octave higher than normal.

“Sure,” Trevor says, measurably aloof now. I don't blame him, but I don't try to stop him either. He turns without saying anything else, and I do too, and we go our separate ways. With my hands shaking I head to the table in the far corner, where I can pretend to bury myself in work while sorting out the fact that the Orion Julianna wrote about is standing right here in this café, with a different name, and seems to be a whole different person than when she knew him.

I open up her journal to where I left off and get a pen out of my purse like I'm going to write something down. Trevor
pays for his hot chocolate and glances over at me one more time just before he pushes out the door. I smile briefly and drop my eyes to the page in front of me, but I don't read the words. I hardly even breathe. Trevor walks out the door and Josh busies himself with unloading the box of coffee bags, and I take a good long look at him from the safety of my corner.

For a second I think I can see him there. Orion. Not as he is now—barely thirty but already weighed down with life. But as he was with her. I can see him standing on the balcony under the stars, diving into the freezing lake, falling in love with a girl he could never have. I wonder what happened after. Who she chose before—

“Hey, I gotta go finish up in the back,” he says, breaking down the empty box in his hands. “Just yell if you need a refill.”

“Thanks,” I answer. And I leave it at that for now. Before I can ask him anything else, I have to know how it ended. The pages of the journal are a little damp from the rain, but the ink hasn't smeared or bled. I take a deep breath, a sip of the too-hot chai, and brace myself for what comes next. For where the story ends.

“I have been one acquainted with the night.”

—“ACQUAINTED WITH THE NIGHT,” 1928

June 8

I woke up afraid today. Afraid of what I've done, of what it means, of what I feel, and of what I could lose because of it all. Shane has been my constant every day for the past four years of my life, and until now I thought he was my future, too. And it was safe, that thought, and known, and seemed like how it should be. I don't want to lose the comfort of his hand sliding into mine or the smile on his face when he talks about what that future together will look like. The thing I can't stand more than the thought of losing him is the thought of hurting him. I don't want
to know what his face will look like if I tell him what I've done. What I chose. I don't think I could look him in the eye. But I don't know if I have a choice in that anymore. I think I have to tell him that I stepped off the edge I've been balancing on since the night I met Orion. Because I don't think there's any coming back from that.

What I'm most afraid of, though, is that I don't know if I want to come back from it. I'm afraid of wanting to sink deeper into it. Shane is all of the things I thought I wanted. Orion is freedom and possibility, and so many other things that feel like what I need. When I close my eyes I can still feel the warmth of his mouth on mine, and the heat of the water, and the cold of the night, all wrapped around us like we belonged to it, and I don't want to let that go because it was the most intense thing I've ever felt.

But I couldn't look at him right now either, because that night when he brought me home, I lied. I told him it was a mistake, that it never should have happened, and that I didn't want to see him again.

“That's what you really want?” he asked. Hurt washed over his face, pooled in his eyes, and I knew he didn't believe me.

I closed mine a second so he wouldn't see me waver. When I opened them again, I looked at him in the dark, and I
said, “That's what I need. I need to not see you again.” It was the last thing I said to him. And then I went into my house and I cried, because of the look on his face and the awful taste of my own words. It wasn't what I wanted or needed.

I tried to fix it today. I called his house, but it just rang and rang until finally his uncle picked up. He said Orion had packed his bags first thing in the morning, told him he was going home, and that he wasn't coming back. Maybe I should be relieved, but I only feel empty now.

Tomorrow I'll seal this journal up and turn it in to Mr. Kinney to pack away for ten years. The day after, I'll put on my graduation gown, walk down the aisle, and get my diploma. After that it's blank, like the rest of the pages in this book. Empty. I was supposed to answer the question about what it is I plan to do with my life, and it was supposed to be something beautiful and filled with hope. Something I could look back on ten years from now to be reminded not to give up on the things I want most in life. What I'm afraid of now is that I'll look back, and I'll see that's exactly what I've just done.

I sit there stunned. Angry, almost. That
is
what she did. She let the wrong one go. She lied to him and to herself about how she felt, and he left before she had a chance to tell
him any different. He left, and she died, and that really was the last thing she said to him. I wonder what the last thing she said to Shane was. For all I know they died in the middle of a fight.

I hate it. This can't be how it ends. When I took Julianna's journal, I thought it was going to be the real words of a girl who was more like a myth in my mind. And it has been. But I also thought it would be the perfect love story of the perfect couple that disappeared together, which, as far as endings go, is tragic. But there was even something romantic about that too—them perishing together, like Romeo and Juliet, or Tristan and Isolde. I sometimes used to imagine that none of those couples really died, because they were together. That somehow, leaving the world with one's true love allowed them a different kind of ending, where they lived on together in their own paradise, far from the real world that ended in tragedy. It was my way of making a happy ending, I guess. But there isn't one here. The story I've always known was based on a different perception altogether. One that never accounted for Orion.

He comes out from the back just then, and I watch him from behind the journal. There are so many things I want to say. To ask. Why he didn't fight for her. Didn't even argue when she told him to leave. Wouldn't he have? If he felt like she did? When did he come back to town, and why did he stay, even after she was gone?