The Good Goodbye (33 page)

I sit back. Eight years of my life, gone just like that? “You’re giving up.”

He pushes himself up. “Don’t you think it’s time you did, too, Nat?”

I sit there and finish my cigarette. Raindrops tap the pavement. Puddles glisten beneath the bright hospital sign. All these years I’d been so focused on what Vince saw in Gabrielle. I never thought about what I saw in Vince. He was fun. He was charming. But that’s not enough to build on. And it’s not enough to build a friendship on, either. And just like that, in one night, I’d lost both.

Arden

“SOMETHING’S WRONG,”
Aunt Gabrielle says. “Get the nurse, Vincent.”

I don’t want Uncle Vince to leave. I don’t want to be alone with my aunt.

—

“I followed Rory after class,” I tell Hunter. We’re lying on his bed, facing each other. He’s circling his thumb around my tattoo. He loves it. He says it’s sexy and it makes me kind of a badass. He says he never knew I had that side to me. I tell him he doesn’t know me and he tells me he plans to change that. But we’re not just talking anymore. We’re way past talking.

“Okay, crazy,” he says.

“I’m serious. I think there’s something weird going on.”

He swirls his fingertips along my arm, my skin lighting up at each soft pass. Does he touch Rory this way? Does he tell her she’s kind of a badass, because she’s the one who really is? I’m just the one who can’t say no. Not even to myself.

He’s not listening. “Dude,” I say. “Pay attention. Don’t you want to know?”

“Sure, sure. Tell me.”

“She went off campus, like way off campus. She knocked on someone’s door and went inside.” The same house she’d been staring at the other night. “I saw who answered.”

“Hmm.”

“Professor Lee.” Our essay’s due in a of couple of days and I haven’t even started. I should be in my room right this second, writing. Instead I’m here. What is
wrong
with me?

His fingers don’t even stop moving. “So? Maybe she’s tutoring her.”

“I don’t know why we’re even talking about her.”

“You’re the one talking about her.”

It’s true. I’m the one who can’t push Rory out of my mind. I put my head back on the pillow. “What am I doing here? Why are we doing this? I feel horrible.”

“I can fix that.”

“You know what I mean.”

Hunter’s thin cotton T-shirt stretches across his shoulders, the hem curling up over the low waistband of his jeans and I catch a glimpse of tanned skin. “You’re tan all over,” I tell him, sounding almost accusing, which I guess I am. I don’t like the idea of him lying naked on some beach. I don’t like the idea of who he’s been lying naked with. He laughs and pulls me to lie on top of him, our legs all tangled together, and I can feel him rising beneath me. “Say it.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

It does matter, and I can’t understand why he doesn’t get that. Sometimes I wonder if he gets off on Rory and me being cousins. “It matters to me.” This is a risk. He can always roll to his feet and gather his things. We are still new. But his fingers don’t stop tracing across my shoulder blades and down my spine, like he’s drawing words on my skin, as though he has all the time in the world, dancing his fingertips around and down and between. My legs slide apart, I can’t stop them, and I hear my breath moving in my throat.

“It shouldn’t.”

But it does. “Say it,” I say through my teeth. “Say you like me more than Rory.” I’m not as sexy as Rory, but I want to be. I’m not as fun or confident, but he can talk to me. That has to mean something. I can learn to be sexy. I can.

“I’m with you now, Arden. Isn’t that enough?”

“What about later? What about tonight?”

He nips my earlobe, draws it between his teeth, his breath warm and stirring the hairs on the nape of my neck, his fingers still moving, teasing.

“Say it.” I’m panting. I hold on to the part of me I know so well—the part that needs to know—but the part that doesn’t care, that traitorous stranger self, is growing larger and taking over. “Do you
love
me more?”

His touch so light, so certain. The world spins, delicious and within reach. Everything I want is right here, all around me.

“You ready?” he murmurs in my ear. “Ready?” Wanting me to say it. Wanting me to admit it, but I won’t. He’s not in charge. He’s not. But when he takes his hand away, I moan.

He rolls me over and pins me to the mattress, one swift fierce motion, his warm body solid and heavy, his beautiful face just above mine. “Tell me, California Boy,” I whisper
.
Which is a joke on what Rory told her mom about Hunter. Even now, Rory is here, with us. “Say it.” Almost a whimper.

I thought I knew about sex, but I was wrong.

—

Who’s touching me? I try to lift my hand. I try to open my eyes. Firm pressure on my chest, then cool air and the softness of cloth fluttering onto my body, sealing me. “I was hoping to see some improvement by now,” Dr. Morris says. “Rory’s lungs aren’t taking over oxygenating her blood. She’s relying completely on the ECMO machine.”

Not Rory. Me. They’re talking about me. I’m the one relying on a machine.

“Maybe she just needs more time,” Uncle Vince says.

“Unfortunately, that’s not the case. I was hoping that putting her on ECMO would allow her lungs to rejuvenate, but the damage is too extensive.”

My lungs. I try to feel them.

“So now what?” Uncle Vince says, and the panic in his voice scares me. “What do we do?”

“I’m going to put her on the lung-transplant list. With her age and health, she should be near the top.”

Am I dreaming this?

“What if she isn’t?”

—

“What if we never leave?” Rory says. “Let’s stay here forever.”

We’re swaying on the swings by my old apartment, the hems of our long dresses dragging in the dirt, the splintery wooden seats beneath us bumping into each other. It’s after midnight, just a few stars shining above, and we have the place to ourselves. Maybe that’s what she means, because this place is kind of a dump. It used to be so magical when we were little. It used to feel like Disneyland.

Or maybe it’s the vodka talking.

Rory tips the bottle to her mouth. It’s a big bottle and takes two hands—she’s dumped out half the cranberry juice and poured in vodka. She’s right. It’s good that way. So things are starting to look perfect to me, too.

Prom had been a bust. Rory’s date had passed out and she’d ended up driving him home and leaving his car in front of his parents’ house. And then she’d texted me the address. My date had damp palms and a nervous habit of licking his lips, so I was okay dumping him at the after-party and borrowing my dad’s car to drive to Bethesda. We were in the area so we drove around. Past Booeymonger, Red Door, Zorba’s. We’d ended up here.

“People think I don’t remember, but I do,” Rory says.

“Remember what?”

“When I got burned.” Her face is all shadows.

“I don’t remember.” I have the story in my mind, the one my mom told me a long time ago, when I asked about Rory’s burn. “And I was there.”

“You were there
after,
Arden.”

—

“There will be some scarring,” Aunt Gabrielle says. She’s talking low and quiet, and she’s been talking for a while. Is she talking about me? “But we can keep it covered up. Maybe some plastic surgery down the road. So don’t worry, Rory.”

I am not Rory.

Something soft brushes my cheek—a sleeve. Aunt Gabrielle’s reaching for something above me. The light flares on, making me squint. Through a haze of pain, then wonderment, I open my eyes. I see the charm bracelet dangling from her wrist, the pale curve of her palm. I look up, past her hand, and see the shadowy planes of her face bisected by her arm, one rounded cheek, half her mouth painted red, and one beautiful almond-shaped eye. She’s staring down at me.

Rory

CHELSEA OPENS
the door, revealing the burnt-orange hallway behind her, the distant bright yellow of the kitchen walls. It’s like the whole house is smiling hello. “Hey,” she says. “Hey,” I say back.

I glance behind me before I step inside. Two kids Rollerblading, swaying in gentle motion, talking to each other. They don’t even see me. The guy next door’s collecting his mail from the box at the curb, his head bent as he shuffles through his envelopes; across the street, a woman’s walking her pug and texting. Way down at the opposite corner, I see a flash of motion. I pause.

“You in or out?” Chelsea asks.

The motion doesn’t repeat itself. I step over the threshold and she closes the door behind me.

—

It’s almost two o’clock in the morning when Arden lets herself into the room. The doorknob turns and then the hallway light angles in. She comes in and slowly closes the door behind her. She stands there in the dark, waiting for her eyes to adjust, I know.

“Were you following me?”

She lets out a muffled shriek. A thud. “Damn it!”

I reach for the lamp on my nightstand and turn it on. She’s standing there in her bright yellow jacket, arms filled with books. One’s fallen. “Were you?”

“Why would I do that?” She drops the books on her desk, where they go sliding. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

Like deflection’s going to work. I’m the queen of deflection. “What do you think you saw?”

“Nothing.” Pink creeps up her cheeks. She’s realized her mistake.

I push myself up onto my elbow. She saw me go into someone’s house. Does she know whose house it was? She’s busy plugging in her laptop, fiddling with her phone charger. She’s nervous. “Where’ve you been, Arden?”

“At the library. Our art history essays are due Thursday, remember?”

Actually, I’d forgotten. I could probably get Chelsea to let me off the hook for the paper, but it would really mean letting Arden off the hook, and I’m not sure I want to do that. “Did you change your clothes there?”

She glances at me. The guilt on her face is obvious.
Interesting.
“What?”

“Your shirt’s on inside out.” She looks down at herself. “You had it on the right way this afternoon.”

“Oh.” She tugs it off, drops it on the floor. She kicks through the pile of clothes there and unearths her pink nightgown.

There’s only one reason you’d take off your shirt and then put it back on inside out. “What’s his name?”

Her cheeks flame. “Who?”

So it
is
a guy. This is getting more interesting. I throw back my sheet and swing my feet to the floor. It’s stuffy in our room at night, but little air comes through the open window. “That guy at the frat party our first week?”

She’s trying to pull on her bathrobe, but the sleeve’s twisted and her arm’s getting jammed. “What about him?” She sounds a little relieved. So it’s not him, which is good, because he’s a real player.
Hmm.
Maybe it’s some dork she’s embarrassed to admit she likes. “Your manager at the snack bar?” Which would be gross because he’s a pig and no wonder she wouldn’t want to tell me.

“Oh, right. Because he’s so hot. Why are you being weird?”

“I’m not being weird. You’re being weird.” I narrow my eyes at her. “Are you going to tell me who it is or am I going to have to find out on my own?”

“Go ahead. There’s nothing to find out.” She’s got her towel slung over her shoulder and she’s pushing aside clothes to reach her shower caddy hanging in her closet. Which, if you want to know, I hung up for her. I was sick of worrying about her shampoo toppling over and spilling across the floor where I might step in it. Better it spilled across the floor of her closet.

“You are so the worst liar in the world.”

“I’m not lying!”

There’s nothing convincing about the way she says this.

Arden tells me everything, even the stuff I don’t want to know and couldn’t possibly care less about. I have a sick feeling. I have a really sick feeling. “Is it Hunter?” I say, testing. Because it would be ridiculous. Because it would be impossible. She tries to push past me and I grab her arm. She shakes her head, but I know. My whole head empties out. It’s like complete white space.

“Oh, my God,” I whisper. “You’re fucking Hunter?”

“It’s not like that,” she says, but it is. I can tell it is.

Everything’s buzzing in my brain. I give her a shake and her towel slides off. She tries to pull away, but I grip her arm harder. She flinches. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I hiss.

“You treat him like shit.” Her chin’s up and her eyes are bright green, brighter than I’ve ever seen them.

My heart’s yawning wide open. D.D. could have fucked Hunter. Chelsea could have and it wouldn’t have hurt half as much as finding out Arden had. “Today?” I demanded. “Was today the first time?”

She looks away from me.

So more than once. I’m seeing red. I’m seeing black. “How long?”

“A week.” She says it defiantly, like it’s something to be proud of.

A week.
Who knows how many times they’ve screwed in a week. Once I could get over. Once is an accident, a collision, being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But more than that is intentional. More than that is practically a relationship. I drop my hand and she rubs her arm. “Oh, little cousin,” I say in a sickeningly sweet voice. “You think he loves you, don’t you?”

She blinks. I laugh, an icy laugh that spurts right up from the center of me. “You really do. How stupid can you be? He’s fucking you and me, and you think that means he loves you? You’re pathetic.”

“You just don’t get it.”

“Oh, I get it. I really do. Hunter’s pretty good. Better than most guys. At least he cares if you finish.”

“Stop it!”

Her cheeks are flaming. She’s so easily embarrassed. It barely makes it any fun. “He likes to be on top first, right? Then he flips you over.” She tries to step around me, but I block her. “He’s such a good kisser. But he could work on his timing.”

Tears are spilling down her cheeks. “You don’t know. You don’t know.”

“Let’s call him and ask. Make him choose. What do you think he’ll say?” Her pulse is beating rapidly in her throat. Her eyes are wet. She’s not pretty when she cries. “Guys always like to break in virgins, but there’s nothing special about you now. Nothing at all.”