Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later (8 page)

That’s like when it first happens.

“Hey, guys,” Jim says. “You saw that game Saturday, right? This is the big scorer, Todd Wilkins.”

Lots of hand shaking and happy talk about the win and then Jim says, almost as an aside, “And this is Elizabeth Wakefield.”

Before I can object, they all give me a quick, rather perfunctory hello, and the conversation moves back to Todd’s last game. I’m not even sure Todd hears the mistake. The moment passes, and I feel like it would be awkward and unimportant to correct them. I can see they don’t really care who I am, so I just let it go.

A girl standing next to me asks where I live, and after I answer, introduces me to her boyfriend. “Hank, this is Elizabeth.”

By now Todd has turned back to me and hears the error. He smiles.

“I don’t think so.”

But it doesn’t seem to register with anyone else.

Except me, and I smile, too.

“Elizabeth?” Hank says. “You go to Sweet Valley U, too, don’t you?”

“Yes, but I’m not—”

“Yeah, I’ve seen you around.”

“Lots of times, I’ll bet.” Todd winks at me, and I smile back.

“Yeah,” Hank says. “I see you around all the time. I think we even met before. At the newspaper.”

“Right.” Now like I’m playing along, too.

From there on it just grows. I become Elizabeth and begin to love the fun of it. Todd does, too. Now we’re beginning to get outrageous about it. Holding hands, being affectionate with each other; we become the perfect couple.

As the night wears on we dance, joke around, and make lots of new friends. We’re having a great time. Both of us. And in the process we have a few too many beers. At least I do, but it’s okay because I’m not driving.

For the first time I’m beginning to see why Elizabeth is so crazy about Todd. He is totally sexier than I’d realized and, now that he’s relaxed, is fun and warm. Maybe I hadn’t ever really taken a good look at him. Additionally, it feels good being a couple, even if it is only pretend.

When it comes to committed relationships, I’m a moving target. No boyfriend has ever managed to hold me in his sights for like longer than half a term; and it isn’t because they don’t want to. Sometimes it bothers me that I lose interest so quickly. What seems sexy and exciting in the beginning becomes ordinary and then trying and finally annoying, and I can’t get away fast enough. Will I always feel that way? What about marriage? And I don’t mean that craziness like with Mike McAllery. I still haven’t explained that to myself yet. Annulment closed the book as far as I’m concerned.

I haven’t had a real relationship since I dumped my last boyfriend at the beginning of senior year. And now, with this faux one-night relationship, I’m getting a taste of it again.

Though it can be a little confining, being part of a couple has its own advantages. How good is that, owning some great-looking guy who is obviously crazy about you? Elizabeth is so luckier than she knows. Too bad it has to be Todd.

We are having like such a good time we practically have to drag ourselves away from the party, but it’s getting late and Elizabeth will be waiting.

As soon as we get in the car, reality, like a jolt, shoots through the beer haze and wipes out all our easy pleasure. The very air in the car chills, and the front seat extends, like, two blocks; we are that disconnected.

And silent.

Then Todd breaks it. “That was fun. Incredible how nobody even questioned it at all.”

“It’s like I’m just one double person, not really an individual. Sometimes I hate that. But it was fun tonight.”

“Yeah, it was.”

“I loved when that guy said how much I reminded him of someone. And you said … who’d you say?”

“Jessica Simpson.”

“Yeah. He said, ‘Jessica sounds right.’
”

As we warm to the subject, it becomes easier. At one point in a story, being funny, just as we stop at a light, I poke Todd in the chest and say, “Mr. Basketball!”

Todd takes my hand and holds it for a second against his chest, a second too long. Everything stops. His hand is still covering mine against his chest. And it pulls me in closer, my face inches from his, my eyes on his. Both of us are barely breathing.

That’s where everything gets cloudy, not just from the beer but from the excitement. The thrill. For me, the next few moments like don’t register in my mind, only in my body.

I can feel Todd’s response, and then we’re out of control; our mouths furiously pressing, kissing, sucking, inhaling each other. All the while I feel the weight of his body crushing me and I want more, I want him still closer. I so want him to be part of me. To keep holding me.

For the first time in my life, I don’t care about anything or anyone. I don’t even care about Elizabeth. All I care about is that he never lets go.

“Come back to my room,” he says between breaths.

“Winston,” I whisper.

“San Diego.”

“Right.”

We pull apart. Neither of us looks at the other for the ten minutes it takes to get to Todd’s apartment in downtown Sweet Valley. When we get out of the car, we look straight ahead at the door to the house where Todd and Winston have a rented room.

On the way up the stairs to the second floor, we stop. Todd pulls me to him and we kiss. The depths and longing of that kiss are like no other kiss has ever been for me. Neither of us can pull away. Other than our lips we stay joined together for the rest of the flight, Todd like half carrying me up to his room. Racing.

He unlocks the door, pushes it open with his shoulder, and shoves it closed with his foot, all the while never letting go of me. We tumble onto the bed, ripping at our clothes, flinging them over our heads, kicking off our shoes, and not stopping until we’re both naked and locked in each other’s bodies.

We make love with an otherworldly passion that is so powerful neither of us would hear a knock on the door if there were one. Or any sound when it cracks open a few inches, but I do catch a sliver of light shooting into the room; then it’s gone.

The affair goes on for a month. Todd wants it as much as I do. It’s like a wild, out-of-control time, those thirty days that never touch the ground.

We meet in the middle of the day at the same diner, a banged-up metal imitation bus in a sparsely populated industrial outskirt of Sweet Valley. A safe time in a safe place where it is almost impossible to be lovers; where an unforgiving sun beats down, blaring through the grimy windows, lighting up every mark and tear of the red plastic seats. Unable to compete with a McDonald’s half a mile away, Shirley’s Diner limps along with never more than a handful of customers, none of them likely to be anyone Todd or I would know.

Every day I swear to myself that I won’t go. All through the morning I feel in control; the decision has been made. It will never happen again.

But the longing grows, and by noon no sacrifice is too great. Everything and everyone fall by the wayside, and I’m gasping and my heart is pounding and I think I will stop breathing unless I see him, touch him, feel him next to me.

Jessica wasn’t aware of the sounds she was making, tearing at those excruciating memories, but they were audible enough to wake Todd, who, seeing her pain and knowing exactly what was torturing her, reached out and took her out of her dark thoughts and into his arms.

“I was there again, in that month, destroying my sister.”

“Jess, what can I do to help you?”

“Nothing. Nobody can. I’m going to lose you, Todd. And I so deserve to.” She wept.

“You’ll never lose me,” Todd said. “I’m not going to let that happen.”

But he, too, had his tortures. Starting with that first wild month, torn in a million directions, he’d been filled with shame and misery and passion, and one other torture he remembered too well: every day thinking he had lost her.

I’m always there first, inside the diner, each time certain Jessica won’t show. But then she does, and I watch with relief and excitement as her white Ford sends up a dry cloud of dirt in the parking area. I can see into the car, see her leaning over for a last-minute check in the rearview mirror, fluffing her hair once quickly, then opening the door.

Then comes the best part: the moment before she slides out. First come her feet spiking the air, flip-flops dangling, then the long, naked legs—naked because her skirt, short to begin with, has pulled up around her bottom in the slide out. Last is her slim body and beautiful face. I memorize every move of the ritual and each one thumps a separate beat somewhere in my chest.

I lose sight of her when she walks around to the door and see her again only when she’s inside the diner. That first sight without the dirty windows separating us is raw, sending a rush of heat to my head.

Never once does she look like Elizabeth to me.

It doesn’t matter that we made love only that first night. Each time we see each other after that is the equivalent of making love again, so powerful is our connection.

“I love you, Todd,” Jessica said, and held on to him tightly, burying herself in his body. She’d lost him once and it was nearly unbearable, though she had done it herself. But then that time, caught in the throes of that terrible month, drowning in the agony of guilt, there had been no choice. Even the day she saw A. J. Morgan’s car in the parking lot outside the diner. She gasped and though she had already pulled in, she swooped around without slowing down, hung a U and drove out.

But instead of leaving, getting out of there, her chance to get out of everything, she drove around the block. Twice. On the third time, A.J.’s car was gone.