When You Were Mine (14 page)

Sure?
As in
yes?
I can’t have heard him right. I need some kind of clarification. Someone to tell me that, no, Rob did not just agree to escort my cousin, Juliet, to Fall Back. My cousin, Juliet, who thinks he has a hot body. My cousin, Juliet, who couldn’t care less about me, or the fact that Rob and I are kinda, sorta together.

“Great,” Juliet says. “Then it’s all settled. I gotta run.” She picks up her tray. She hasn’t touched a thing on it. “Ciao,” she
says to the table. I have a feeling that’s her standard departure. And we’re going to be hearing it a lot.

Charlie gives her a backhanded wave. She’s still yelling at Jake.

“See you later,” Juliet says to me. And then, a little lower, “I’m glad I’m back. I think it’s going to be a great year.”

Charlie said the same thing yesterday, and it already feels like forever ago. Even though I have Rob and should be psyched, I can’t help but fear that they both might be wrong.

“I seriously cannot believe you’re okay with this,”
Charlie is saying.

We’re all at Olivia’s house getting ready for Fall Back. We’re in her room, clothes strewn everywhere, and torn-out pages of
InStyle
and
Glamour
on the floor, from which we are trying to get ideas. It’s a mess, but it doesn’t matter. Ten minutes after we leave, everything will have been cleaned up.

Olivia’s is more like a hotel than a house. She has her own suite complete with marble bathroom, walk-in closet, and lounge. You could seriously spend a year in her house and never have to leave. We tried to do that for the weekend, once, but Matt Lester ended up having a party Saturday night, so we didn’t make it all the way through.

The lounge off her bedroom is always stocked with our favorite snacks (Twizzlers, lollipops, and Swedish Fish), and she has every single channel on On Demand so you can get any movie you want anytime you want. We don’t have that at our house. We don’t even have HBO. My parents have never been into TV. It took them until I was fifteen to even get cable.

Tonight there isn’t time to indulge in Twizzlers, though. We’re late. We were supposed to be there to set up a half hour ago, and I’m experiencing some serious guilt about abandoning Lauren. I can imagine her standing in the courtyard holding up lights to string, looking around for some help. Charlie’s never-be-late rule doesn’t apply to functions, but tonight I really wish it did. It’s upsetting me, and, ignoring Charlie’s comment, I ask, again, if anyone has texted her.

“I thought you did?” Olivia says. She’s at her vanity, blotting her lips and looking in the mirror. Her blond hair is curled, the product of about seventy-five minutes of serious quality time with her curling iron. Charlie is standing next to her, trying to hip bump her out of the way. Charlie’s hair is up, and a few perfect spiral strands loop gracefully down onto her face. Stuck into the edges of the mirror are pictures of us since freshman year. There is one of us making a human pyramid in Charlie’s backyard the time we tried to get San Bellaro to start a cheerleading squad. We ditched the idea after about a week, though, when
Charlie refused to accept any new members. There are a few pictures from Malibu, and one of Olivia and Ben eating Popsicles. It must be new. I wonder who took it.

I take my phone and send an apologetic text to Lauren:
We r so late. Sry. B there asap.

I toss the phone down and then immediately pick it up to see if she’s responded. She hasn’t.

“It’s true, though,” Olivia says. “You’re handling this really well.”

I shrug and tell them the same thing Rob told me yesterday. “She’s my cousin. He’s just doing me a favor.”

“Some favor,” Charlie says, shimmying into her red dress.

“They used to be friends too. Plus, she didn’t know,” I say.

“Whatever,” Charlie says. “It’s not cool.”

“He’s not even picking her up,” I argue. “And besides, he’s not my boyfriend.” I want to add
Not yet, anyway,
but I don’t.

“I sort of thought tonight might be the night,” Charlie says.

“What night?”

“That you and Rob, you know.”

“Ooooo,” Olivia says. “Really?”

“No,” I say. “Come on. We’ve just kissed.” The memory of Rob’s lips on mine makes me blush. He was supposed to come over last night, but he got caught up helping his dad repair a car. His dad is obsessed with old cars, and he and Rob have been
fixing them up together since Rob was a kid. It’s kind of sweet, this thing they do together, just the two of them. His dad sells them afterward. Sometimes we’ll see someone driving one around town, and Rob will say, “There’s another Monteg.” Anyway, by the time they finished, it was already nine and he had homework to do. I know this doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Rob never ditches out on plans with his dad. It’s something I really respect about him. But I would like to know a little more of what to expect tonight. Especially because we’re not going to this dance together and we’ve still just had those few kisses by the Cliffs.

Even so, I can’t help but think about what Charlie’s saying. So maybe it won’t be tonight, but what if Rob and I are headed for a real relationship? Sex would be involved, I guess. Sometimes I picture Rob and me lying in bed together, but he’s usually just holding me, his hand in my hair.

“Do you think Ben would like the blue or the yellow?” Olivia asks. She’s moved to the full-length mirror and is holding up two dresses, alternating them in front of her body.

“Blue,” Charlie says. “He has a thing for blue. Have you seen his bedroom? Even his sheets are . . .”

She stops talking and turns back to the mirror. Olivia looks away, and I can see she’s blushing.

“I like the blue,” I volunteer.

“What are you wearing?” Charlie asks.

I gesture to Olivia’s bed, where I’ve put my dress. It’s silver, something I picked out with my mom this summer at one of those shops by the water that always smell like potpourri.

“You need to own this,” my mother had said, grabbing it off the display and thrusting it at me.

My mom is always picking things out for me that are, well, a little trampy. It’s not that she wants me to dress slutty, I don’t think. She just always says things like “You’re only young once” or “That sweater looks way too old for you.” Charlie says I’m lucky. She used to have to change her outfits at school, in the bathrooms. But that was before her mom got sick. Now she can wear whatever she wants.

“I dunno,” I’d told my mom. “It’s kind of . . . flashy.”

“Exactly,” she had said, and pushed me into the dressing room.

I knew we would buy it even before I put it on. It’s a halter top that’s completely backless. It’s short but not too short and a very sparkly shade of silver. I felt out of place in it—silly, even—but the more the saleslady and my mother oohed and aahed, the more I felt like maybe I didn’t look completely ridiculous. After I took it home that night, I tried it on with a pair of light blue heels, and I felt, I don’t know,
pretty
. Like I was someone else. Someone in a movie, or a magazine. Even Charlie or Olivia. When I put it on, I felt like the kind of person who belongs in a
dress like that. I’m secretly hoping it has the same effect tonight. And that Rob notices.

I slide it on, and Charlie starts hooting.

“You look totally hot!” Olivia squeals. “Rob is going to lose his mind.” I roll my eyes, but inside I’m buzzing. I feel full of possibility. Tonight stretches out before me like an ocean. It feels expansive, limitless. Like I could float in it forever.

“We gotta go,” I say. I glance at my watch. We’re already forty-five minutes late, which means by the time we get there, the dance will have already begun.

“We know, we know,” Olivia says. She’s running around her room with a tiny clutch, tossing things inside. Charlie is just standing there, smiling at me.

“What?” I say. “What are you looking at?”

“Nothing,” she says, mock choking up. “I’m just so proud.”

“Done,” Olivia calls, snapping her bag closed. “Let’s rock.”

We leave her room and file out into the hallway. Olivia’s staircase is gigantic with an enormous crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling right smack in the middle of the foyer. It’s the kind of staircase you imagine descending from on your wedding day. Charlie makes a fuss of gliding down, and then we follow Olivia into the kitchen, our heels clicking on the marble floors.

“I hear the troops,” her stepdad calls. He and Olivia’s mom are chasing Olivia’s two little brothers around the table. Her mom
looks up to give us a frazzled smile. One of Olivia’s little brothers, Josh, charges her.

“If you touch me, I will murder you!” Olivia yells, but she’s already bending down to hug him back. “Just keep your hands where I can see them,” she says, tousling his hair.

“You girls look amazing,” Olivia’s mother says. “Gabe, where did you put the camera?” Olivia’s stepdad grabs it off the kitchen counter and waves for us to follow him out of the kitchen.

Olivia’s mom positions us at the front door. “One, two, three,” she says. “Smile!” She’s holding her leg out to prevent Drew from storming us, and her other arm is positioned on Olivia’s stepdad’s shoulder. It’s an impressive balancing act.

Charlie locks her hand on her hip and juts her arm out, Olivia wiggles her shoulders, and I, per usual, stand in the middle of them, not sure exactly what to do. Unlike them, I don’t have a signature picture pose.

“If you put your hand on your hip, it takes off five pounds,” Olivia says through her teeth.

I barely have time to register what she’s saying before Charlie is dragging me out the door and we’re all piling into Big Red, Olivia’s mom calling, “Have fun! Be safe!” behind us.

Everyone is already in the courtyard by the time we get to campus. Lauren didn’t respond to my text, but she waves at
us, looking unconcerned. She’s dressed in a periwinkle slip dress that shows off her slim shoulders. Her sandy-blond hair is pulled up in a knot.

“I’m so sorry,” I say. “What can we do?”

She waves me off with her hand. “Nothing,” she says. “Seriously, no biggie. We’re all set.”

She’s done a great job. The courtyard is strung with twinkle lights and paper lanterns. The trees are sprinkled with silver and gold tinsel, and flower garlands hang down from the breezeway. It reminds me of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, a play I saw once with my mom in LA. I was ten then, and I didn’t really understand much of it, but I remember the set looked like a kind of fairyland. Like magic.

Students are milling around sipping apple cider out of champagne flutes. It doesn’t feel like just another school dance. It feels enchanted, important, like maybe something special is happening here tonight.

I spot Jake, Ben, and Rob by the punch table with Charlie and Olivia. Rob is wearing a suit jacket, which he never does. He keeps tugging down the sleeves. It’s sort of adorable, actually, how uncomfortable he looks. I can’t see Juliet anywhere. She must not be here yet.

In the time it’s taken me to talk to Lauren, Charlie and Jake have already started arguing and Ben and Olivia are on the cusp
of making out. She’s giving him her power move—chest out, stretching—and he’s got his arms around her back.

I look at Rob again. He’s so cute in his suit jacket and gray pants. He has on a pink-and-white-checkered shirt underneath. It’s one of my favorites, and he never wears it.

I want to go over and put my arms around him, but then I remember that, technically, he isn’t even here with me. I haven’t really let myself think too much about it. I just keep hoping she just won’t show up.

As I cross the courtyard, “Kokomo” by the Beach Boys starts playing.

“You know, I think I’ve been to all of the places in this song,” Olivia says. She’s holding out her fingers and counting along with the lyrics. “Yep, all seven.”

“You are such a snob,” Charlie says. Ben seems to have found this comment endearing, though, because he takes Olivia’s hand in his and kisses the back of it. She giggles.

I can feel Rob’s eyes on me, and I will myself not to look at him. Not yet. I know as soon as I open my mouth, I’ll just be Rosie, and I’m enjoying having the dress speak for me, just for a moment.

“Wow,” he says. He comes up next to me and runs a hand down my arm. “You’re stunning.”

“You like it?” I drop my hands by my sides and play with some of the material. I’m feeling just a little bit tipsy from Rob’s
hand on my arm. Like I’ve had a drink or something, even though I’m dead sober.

“You look great,” he says.

“So where’s Juliet?” I ask it casually, but I can see him grimace.

“I dunno,” he says. “Haven’t spoken to her.”

“Oh.”

“Rosie, I told you it’s no big deal. I’m just doing this for you.” He draws me close to him the way he did by the Cliffs. It feels nice, safe. It makes me start to relax. “We’re okay, right?”

“Yeah,” I say, angling closer to him.

“Good, because regardless of who my technical date tonight is, I want to dance with you.”