Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle (Play with Me, Snowfall, and After Midnight) (43 page)

“They’re your friends, Miles. You told me you hadn’t even told them you’re innocent. And do you know why? Because you have absolutely no faith that anyone will believe you. You have no faith in your friends, and you act like you’re guilty. So what gives you the right to be angry with someone who has a five percent margin of doubt about the facts?”

“I have faith.”

“Really? Can you tell me in all seriousness that you think I believe you’re innocent?”

Miles opened his mouth to say it, then closed it.

“Go ahead. Tell me. Do I think you’re innocent or guilty?”

Miles tried to remember whether Owen had ever said one way or the other, but he was pretty sure they’d never talked about it explicitly. Miles hadn’t wanted to—he didn’t want to know.

“Guilty,” Miles admitted. “But I assumed since you have a juvie shoplifting record, you’re okay with it.”

“I rest my case. That is
bullshit
, Miles. I know you’re innocent. I know it in my heart, my soul, my fucking toes. I know you’re innocent. And I bet a lot of the people who work for you do, too, but you’ll never know that if you don’t
talk to them
.”

“What does this have to do with Nora?”

“Have you ever heard the saying that some things have to be seen to be believed?”

“Of course.”

“Well, some things have to be believed to be seen.”

Miles waited. Owen always had a point.

“Start acting like you’re innocent, Miles. See what happens.”

* * *

On the last full day of school before Christmas vacation, Nora broke the kids into teams and asked them to role-play saying no. The idea was to teach them to say no to social pressure so they’d be ready to say no to sexual pressure. They split up around the science lab and practiced the technique she’d taught them, noisy and as agitated as superheated molecules in a beaker.

This was today’s lesson plan, but Nora wished it weren’t, because she was stuck with her own thoughts—of Miles.

Three weeks ago, she’d flown home from Miles’s house, sandwiched between an overweight, talkative college student and a sullen, middle-aged businessman, and she hadn’t heard from him since. Not once.

At first she tried to contact him, partly because the act of dialing his phone number was a paltry kind of comfort—the sound of his voice, gruff on his voice mail, barely him, but fully him. All the Miles she had.

She left him message after message—phone, email, Facebook—but none of the messages contained the words she wanted to say, the words he needed to hear. She couldn’t find them. She didn’t have them.

I know you didn’t do it
.

I believe you
.

I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, you’re innocent
.

But she couldn’t stop wishing for it. For the ability to give him what he wanted. For the ability to make things right, to bring him out of hiding.

She still missed him. It made no sense for her to miss someone she’d barely known, just as it had never made sense for her to love someone she’d just met. From the beginning, what she felt for Miles had defied logic, and yet it was the part of her life that, for the brief time it lasted, had felt the most right.

Being with Miles had been like teaching. It was what she did, what she was meant to do. When she taught, when she was with Miles, she was the most
her
. All the
her
came brimming to the surface, bubbled out.

Of course, with Miles, there was that whole other level of communication that she missed, too. She’d thought things with Henry were pretty good, sex-wise, but Miles had blown away her previous conceptions. He’d woken some sleeping monster, and she was twitchy and miserable, wanting him all the time. She kept going on stupid dates, but on the few dates that had segued into kissing, she had shut it down right away.

Not Miles
.

It scared her, the possibility that she might never be able to kiss someone without thinking,
Not Miles
.

She blamed Henry for what had happened between Miles and her. Henry had stolen her ability to believe the best of people. When he’d said, “You’re too trusting,” he’d cast a kind of curse on her.

Henceforth, you will not trust
.

He’d taken away her ability to be who Miles needed her to be. The timer she’d set for the role-play went off. “Back to your seats!” she called. “So—anyone want to talk about what this was like for them?”

“It was
hard
.”

There were murmurs of agreement. Good. She’d told them to give one another a tough time, to argue as forcefully as they would in a true social situation. Role-plays that didn’t mimic real life didn’t help them when the chips were down. “What made it hard?”

“Your brain gets all muddled up,” said Jenna, a skinny, slightly geeky brunette who reminded Nora of herself at the same age—a feeling that was both lovely and terrible. “You can’t think, and there’s all this
stuff
coming at you.”

“Anyone else have that experience?”

Hands went up.

“Anyone have strategies for dealing with that? The noise in your head?”

They shook their heads.

“Ask questions,” Nora said. “It slows things down. If your friend says, ‘Let’s sneak downtown during sixth period today,’ ask, ‘What will we do?’ Then name the trouble. Say,
‘That’s shoplifting, and if I do that, I could go to jail or have to pay a big fine.’ Suggest an alternative. ‘Instead of doing that, let’s spend the gift certificate I got for Christmas.’ Then turn and walk toward the alternative, so they have to follow you if they want to continue the conversation.”

“It sounds good, Ms. Hart,” said Jenna thoughtfully, “but in reality it’s much, much harder. You feel like a dork.”

“You’re sometimes going to feel like a dork, but that’s better than doing something that can hurt you.”

They stared back at her, blinking and doubtful.

“A lot of this is about self-trust. You need to trust that the rules that you live by, the decisions you
want
to make, are the right decisions for you. If you don’t want to break laws, or have sex with someone you don’t love, or do drugs, but someone else is trying to convince you to do those things, you have to trust that when you made that clearheaded decision, not in the heat of the moment, you did the right thing. Your gut led you right. And it will lead you right every time if you trust yourself.”

“Is it easier when you’re n-n-not a kid?”

That was Geoff, who rarely spoke in class because of his stutter.

“Saying no?”

He nodded.

He was looking at her with such hope in his eyes. They all were.
Please, Ms. Hart, tell us it gets easier. Better
.

“Saying no gets a little easier. Trusting yourself, though, is always a challenge. And if you listen to the wrong voices, it can be very hard to hear your own.”

The bell rang, punctuating her assertion. The students gathered up their papers and books, shoved them into backpacks. The hurriers hurried; the dawdlers stayed behind to schmooze with friends. “Hope you get what you want for Christmas,” she called to them as they left. “See you next year!”

She wondered what percentage of what she’d said to them would get through. Hopefully, if nothing else, they’d learned some skills in the role-play. That stuff mattered ten times more than all the words she’d said combined, because, for so many of them, the words would go in one ear and out the other.

Your gut will lead you right every time if you trust yourself
.

That’s great, Ms. Hart, but what the hell does that mean in practice? Huh?

Yeah, kids never heard that stuff, or if they did, they didn’t know how to make it work for them in real life. Kids watched the models in their lives—which at this age, sadly, were mostly other eleven-year-olds—and they learned from
doing
. Actions spoke louder than words.

You’re too trusting
.

Fuck you, Henry
.

She was too trusting and not trusting enough. What the hell was she supposed to do with that?

She had no clue.

She’d have to start from what she did know, and maybe, maybe, if she was lucky, the rest would come.

She knew one thing for sure.

If you listen to the wrong voices, it can be very hard to hear your own

“We’re all done here, Henry,” she said aloud. And, for finality’s sake, she picked up her messenger bag and walked out of the classroom, away from him.

* * *

Nora wasn’t here, among the partygoers, among the brushed nickel and rice paper, among the streamers, balloons, relentless eighties’ music. No flash of pale-red hair, no bright smile, no blue eyes. He was quite certain that even if he’d missed one of those aforementioned body parts, he wouldn’t have missed the mind-bending chemistry she exerted over him. She was absolutely, positively,
not here
.

It was after eleven-thirty, and he’d been sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if he flew to Boston and wrangled an invitation to this party through Owen’s Facebook friendship chain, he’d find her.

But that had been foolish and deluded, of course. Why should she be here? He’d behaved badly and she’d moved on, and just because he’d been unable to let go of her, of the idea of starting over with her here, there was no reason to believe she’d nursed any of the same fantasies.

He hadn’t called her or texted her or let her know he was coming. He hadn’t wanted her to tell him no, to turn him away. He’d wanted to use every persuasive power at his disposal when he finally got the chance to talk to her. And if sex was part of that persuasion toolbox—okay, that would be no hardship.

He pulled out his phone and dialed her number, but he got her voice mail. He didn’t leave her a message. Instead, he wrote her a text.
View’s nice up here
.

He put his phone back in his pocket, but a minute later he pulled it out to make sure a text hadn’t come in and failed to vibrate. Nothing.

He didn’t know her address, and there was little point in trying to go to her on New Year’s Eve, anyway. She was probably at a party somewhere. Smiling at another man across the room. Dancing.

He was torturing himself.

His phone buzzed in his pocket and his heart pounded madly, so hard it hurt. He pulled it out.

Owen.
She there?

No
.

Oh, man. Sorry
.

Dumb to think that because he wanted so badly for her to be here, she somehow would. As if he could conjure her through will alone.

His festive surroundings had begun to oppress. The Mylar balloons with their Happy New Year’s message were mocking him again.

He headed for the elevator, took it down.

He saw her again in his mind’s eye, at another New Year’s Eve party. Smiling. Dancing. Leaning close to whisper. And, later, tilting her face up as the countdown receded toward zero.

The thought of it made his chest hurt so much that he flattened his palm against the wall of the elevator to steady himself.

Because of course anyone who saw her across the room, as he had, would want her. Would want her so much—

Miles’s teeth hurt and his hands clenched into fists, remembering.

He knew there was no one else for him. All the women who’d come before her were ghost versions of what he wanted. Her, naked, in those red lace boy shorts, gesturing and
laughing and making him laugh. Down on her knees, draping herself over his shoulder while he knelt at her feet, standing with her legs apart and her hands braced against the shower wall. Telling him about her job, her day, her reasons for things. Smiling, laughing, teasing, remaking the world in her image: Luminous. Glorious.

He stepped into the lobby and headed for the revolving doors.

He’d seen her, a year ago tonight, and there was no way to unsee her. No way to unravel her from his own fibers, no way to forget the whisper of her voice in his ear, the curves of her body under his hands, the feel of her as he moved in her, through her. There was the world, vivid with her presence, and then there was this. One foot in front of the other. While that imaginary other man at that other party watched her across the room and
coveted
and
schemed
.

Because Miles had screwed up and needed too much and confided too little and waited too long. And being here was too little, too late.

He was going to make himself sick.

His phone buzzed in his pocket.
Owen
, he thought, and he almost let it go.

Only he didn’t. He pulled out his phone.

Nora.
View’s not bad from down here, either
.

He looked up and she stepped out of the revolving door, toward him.

* * *

She wore a loose, short bright-blue dress with chunky blue patent-leather shoes. She had a matching shawl wrapped around her shoulders and draped over her arms. The blue of the dress made her eyes bluer, and the drape of the dress made her breasts higher and rounder, and he—he stuck both his hands in his pockets so he wouldn’t try to slide them under the flippy little hem of that dress, which had a ruffle all the way around it.

“Nora,” he said.

“I was already on my way when I got your text.” She said it so defiantly that it would have made him laugh, except that all he wanted to do was grab her and hold her and brand her in every way he knew how.

“Nora, I—”

“No. Listen.”

She looked fierce. For a moment he was afraid again. She was here, but that didn’t mean she was his.

“I almost didn’t come here tonight,” she said.

He started to say he was glad she had, but she talked right through the half-formed words.

“Because I couldn’t do it. I tried and tried—I practiced in front of the goddamned mirror—but no matter how many times I tried, I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t tell you I was a hundred percent sure you were innocent.”

He shook his head and started to speak, but she shook hers, too, hard.
Don’t interrupt me
.

“I didn’t think you’d want to see me if I couldn’t say that.”

“Oh, God, Nora, I’m so sorry—”