Vegan Virgin Valentine (13 page)

I think she was referring to the whole vegan thing, but as she spoke something else was flooding my brain. No, not something. Some
one.
Someone with a chestnut ponytail and an easy smile and a hole in the thigh of his faded jeans. Someone who would not leave my thoughts no matter how many times I tried to evict him.

When V hooked up with Travis in January, I remember being convinced that there was a right and a wrong and you couldn’t cross that line no matter what. Just like how I’d been telling myself that I can’t think about James because he belongs to Claudia and because he’s older and shorter and lives in Brockport and and and…

It suddenly dawned on me. I don’t regret kissing James last weekend. It was oh-so-very wrong. But at the same time, nothing has ever felt more right.

“I hope that makes sense,” my mom said. “Maybe it’s just something everyone has to figure out on their own.”

“No,” I said, “it definitely makes sense.”

Once those words were out of my mouth, I realized that I was willing to cross that line. For whatever reasons, good or bad, I was willing to cross it with James.

I had to talk to him. IMMEDIATELY.

I glanced at the speedometer. My mom had the car on cruise control, two miles below the speed limit. I was tempted to tell her to step on the gas.

My dad and V were still out when we got home, which was a good thing because it meant I didn’t have to go through any paternal Q&A. I grabbed my cell phone and car keys and told my mom that I just remembered I had to pick up some yearbook stuff from a friend’s house. Luckily, she didn’t know that the yearbook pages went to the printers last week. All she asked was whether I wanted to eat before I left, but I told her no, I wasn’t hungry, and then I hurried out the door.

I took the back streets downtown. When I was a block from Common Grounds, I pulled off to the side, shifted into park, and dialed the café. I didn’t think Claudia was scheduled to work tonight, but I figured I’d just hang up if she answered.

“Common Grounds,” James said.

I could hear coffee grinding and milk steaming and voices booming. It sounded like Josh and Randy. They frequently work on Sundays. They’re two of the loudest guys I’ve ever met.

“James?” I asked.

“Mara? Hey there! Are you feeling better?”

“Yeah … much better.”

I could hear Josh bellow, “ONE CHAI, ONE NONFAT LATTE,” and then Randy responded, “COMING RIGHT UP!”

“What’s up?” James asked. “You sound like you’re on your cell phone.”

“I’m in my car.” I paused. “I was just wondering… Can we talk?”

“Of course. When’s good for you?”

I glanced at the clock. It was after nine on a school night, but I just couldn’t wait. I’d waited long enough, and I didn’t want to go to sleep tonight without talking to James.

“How about now?” I asked.

“On the phone?”

“I was thinking more in person … if you can get away.”

“Hold on a second.”

I could hear James saying something in the background. I heard Randy say, “YOU TAKE YOUR TIME!” And then Josh added, “WE’VE GOT EVERYTHING UNDER CONTROL HERE, BOSS-MAN!”

“Where do you want to meet?” James asked.

“I can pick you up in front of Common Grounds.”

“When should I head outside?”

“Right now. I’m a block away.”

James laughed. “I like your style.”

I put the car back into gear and took a left on Main Street. James was already in front of Common Grounds. He was just wearing a wool sweater and jeans, but not the ones with the hole in the thigh, which was probably a good thing because I really
did
want to talk and that hole seemed to obliterate my ability to think.

I slowed down. James ran over to the passenger side and hopped in. We both said these bashful
hello
s to each other, and then he buckled his seat belt and I started driving again. I asked James where he wanted to go, and he said anywhere was fine. I suggested Clarkson Playground because it was in the direction my car was heading, and I doubted anyone else would be there on a chilly March night. James said that sounded fine. He spoke quickly, like he was nervous, and I wanted to tell him not to be nervous, but I was nervous, too, so I just concentrated on the road.

After a few miles, I turned into the playground parking lot. It’s one of those gigantic wooden wonderlands with tire swings and metal slides and plank bridges. A lot of people from my high school come out here to party on warm nights.

I cut the engine and turned off my headlights. James and I stared out at the silhouettes of playground equipment.

“It looks kind of creepy at night,” he said.

“I know.”

“When I was in high school, people used to get drunk here.”

I laughed. “They still do!”

“It’s funny how those kinds of things don’t change in five years,” James said.

Neither of us spoke. It was like having those two words—
five years
—in the air between us brought home the fact that we’d kissed, that we had this big age difference, that we’d come out here to talk.

“Is that what you’ve been thinking about since last Saturday?” James finally asked. “That I’m older than you?”

“Among other things.”

“Me, too.” James unbuckled his seat belt and turned toward me. “You want to go first?”

“With all the things I’ve been thinking about?”

He nodded.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about the fact that I’m leaving Brockport for good in June.”

“Yep,” James said, “less than four months away.”

“And it’s definitely weird on paper.”

“You mean that you’re still in high school and I’m twenty-two and own a café and I’m shorter than you and I didn’t go to college and you’re going to Yale?”

I had to laugh. James was ticking things right off my mental list.

“And it would be weird working together,” I said.

“You mean Claudia?”

My mouth felt dry. “You know about Claudia?”

“I’ve never talked about it with her, but I’ve sensed for a while that she might be…” James squinted out at the playground. “Remember when we were supposed to have a beer a month or so ago?”

I nodded.

“That’s why I canceled. I didn’t want her to get the wrong idea. Especially since I was…” James fiddled with the latch on the glove compartment. “I was wondering what was going on with you.”

My heart went THUMP! and I got this major adrenaline rush, like if I went out to the playground I’d make it all the way across the monkey bars even though I haven’t been able to do that since puberty hit and I grew eleven inches.

“Phew,” James exhaled loudly.

I stared down at my shaking hands.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

“I’m just thinking that this is so weird.”

“I know.”

“But I’m also thinking how…” I paused. “I was wondering what was going on, too.”

“You were?”

I nodded. “But it just feels like… How could it ever work?”

“And what would people think?”

“And what would we do about Claudia?” I was quiet for a moment before adding, “And I’m scared.”

“Of what?”

I shook my head. I was thinking about so many things … my bad experience with Travis, my parents, Claudia, doing the wrong thing, doing the right thing. And especially this sense I had that being with James could quite possibly change my entire life and I wasn’t sure if I was ready for that.

Finally, I turned toward James. “But I still want to try.”

“You do?”

I nodded.

We both reached out and took each other’s hand. We didn’t say anything for a second as we smiled and tilted our heads closer and closer…

And then my cell phone rang.

I grabbed it out of my coat pocket and glanced at the caller ID. It was my dad. I hit the “cancel” button and set it on my lap.

“Sorry,” I said.

“No, that’s fine. Do you have to go home?”

I shook my head.

We leaned toward each other, our lips meeting over the emergency brake. It started out a soft kiss, but after a little while, we opened our lips wider and our tongues began venturing into each other’s mouths.

My phone rang again. I pulled back for a second and glanced down in my lap. Another call from my dad. This time I turned the phone off, dropped it in my coat pocket, and went back to kissing James.

We didn’t leave Clarkson Playground until ten-thirty. I would have stayed even later, but James said he had to close Common Grounds or at least let Josh and Randy go home. When I dropped him off in front of the café, we kissed on the lips and I told him I was sorry it had taken me so long to call. He said that a week isn’t that long.

The whole drive home, I kept thinking how good it felt to kiss James and how I was already counting the minutes until the next time I could see him. But as I turned onto our street, I was jolted out of my dreamy haze.

Practically every light in my house was on.

When I’m working late at Common Grounds, my dad usually just leaves the yard lights on. But now our entire house was illuminated by thousands of watts of parental worry. I pulled into the driveway and nimbly closed my car door in case, for some bizarre reason, my parents had simply forgotten to pull the plug when they went to sleep. But before I could even put my key in the lock, my dad opened the back door.

“Where. Were. You.” His jaw was clenched and his normally windblown hair was hurricane wild, as if he’d spent the past few hours repeatedly running his hands through it.

“I was at Bethany Madison’s,” I said. I used to spend a lot of late evenings at her house in early high school. “I’m sorry I got home so—”

“Mom said you were picking up something for the yearbook. Since when has Bethany been on the yearbook staff?”

SHIT!
So much had happened in the past few hours, I’d completely forgotten about the yearbook excuse. And I was totally being haunted by the fact that I used to tell my parents
waaaaay
too much about my life. I mean, my dad knows who’s on the yearbook staff?!

“Since this year,” I lied.

My dad nodded skeptically. “What did you pick up?”

I didn’t feel like digging myself deeper into the deception, so I just said, “Nothing after all.”

My dad paced across the kitchen. I could see V sitting on the couch in the living room.

“Where’s Mom?” I asked.

“She went to bed. She wasn’t as worried as I was.”

“Why were you so worried? I’ve stayed out later than this before.”

The muscles in my dad’s jaw were twitching. “I was worried because you didn’t answer your phone. Didn’t you get my calls?”

“My phone was in the car.” That was the truth, actually. I just didn’t mention that
I
was in the car, too.

“Why would you leave your phone in the car?”

I raised and lowered my shoulders.

“The whole reason you have a cell phone is so we can reach you if we’re worried. So we can make sure you’re okay.”

“But I was fine.”

“I didn’t know that. I didn’t know where you were or what you were doing, and it was after eleven on a school night.”

I glanced at the clock. It was only two minutes after eleven, but I wasn’t about to tell that to my dad. Nor was I about to tell him the other thing I was thinking, which is that when I’m away at college, he can’t expect to tuck me in every night. That he needs to start letting me go, so the empty-nest thing doesn’t come as a huge shock.

“Mara,” my dad said, “you have to keep your cell phone on you when you are away from the house. We need to be able to reach you.”

I did
not
want to be having this conversation right now. All I wanted to do was go into my room and be alone and think about what had just happened with James.

“Okay,” I said, sighing. “From now on I will surgically attach my phone to my bellybutton.”

“Your bellybutton?”

“You know, like an umbilical cord. From you to me and me to you.”

“I’m not being cute,” my dad said. “What’s gotten into you?”

I shook my head. “Nothing. I’m just tired. Can I go to sleep now?”

My dad nodded. I dashed into my room. I was only there for about thirty seconds when V approached my doorway.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.”

“I’ve never seen G-pa like that. He was pacing all over the house before you got here.”

“What did my mom say?”

“She told him to relax. She said she trusted you. He said he did, too, but it was the rest of the world he didn’t trust. They didn’t exactly get into an argument, but she definitely looked like she was losing her patience with him.”

“Did she happen to mention anything about college classes?”

V shook her head. “No … why?”

“Never mind.”

I was definitely relieved that, on top of everything, my mom hadn’t told him I’d dropped improv dance. It’s weird. I’ve always thought of my parents as this single-brained, two-bodied unit, where one is an extension of the other. But recently they’ve been seeming more and more different. I feel like my mom is giving me the space I need, while my dad is holding on so tight he’s smothering me.

“I think I know what’s gotten into you,” V said.

“What are you talking about?”

“When G-pa asked what’s gotten into you … I think I know. I think you’re falling in love.”

“No, I’m not! I was at Bethany Madison’s house.”

V smiled. “Very interesting … so now you’re a lesbian.”

I had to laugh. “Do you think that’s why my dad was freaking out?”

“Definitely. He’s already picturing himself marching in gay-pride parades.”

“Very funny.”

After V said good night, I glanced in my mirror. My lips were a little puffy from all the kissing. I gathered my hair back and fastened it with a rubber band. For the first time in years, it’s almost long enough to put into a ponytail without any pieces falling out.

I suddenly realized I was famished. I hadn’t eaten since before Letchworth. There’d been so many other things on my mind, I’d been ignoring my empty stomach.

I tiptoed through the now-dark house and into the kitchen. I didn’t even turn on the light as I leaned against the counter, tearing off pieces of pita and dipping them into the plastic container of hummus. Okay, I’ll admit it, I was double-dipping. But no one else really eats the hummus, so I figured it was not
that
sinful.