Why Can't I Be You (14 page)

Robbie watched me, slack-jawed and shocked. I worried that I wasn’t nearly as good of a singer as Jessie, but when my first part was over, he gave me the thumbs-up. I kept my eyes strictly on him or the screen and pretended no one else even existed. The words took over, and it was like I was singing to Deagan, asking him to love me forever, knowing that he wouldn’t.

I danced with Robbie. I stole the scarf and then wrapped it around his neck. I sang into the mic with the kind of rock-star moves I’d practiced with my hairbrush in front of the mirror as a kid. By the end of the song I was just letting it all out and I didn’t care who heard me. I looked at the audience. I didn’t know them. I didn’t care if they judged me. It didn’t matter. I jumped up and down and sang as loud as I possibly could. And when it was over, there was this awful, horrible silence in the room, like I had quite possibly just embarrassed myself worse than all the tiny humiliations of my life balled up together, and I realized I didn’t even care. And then Robbie gave me a big sweaty hug, and everyone was clapping and cheering. Heather threw her strapless bra up on stage, and Robbie caught it. Even Fish was clapping.

When I jumped off the stage, they crowded around me.

“God, Jess,” Robbie said, handing me another shot. “When did you learn to sing? In high school, you couldn’t carry a tune if your life depended on it.”

“But you and I did karaoke all the time.”

“When you were tanked,” he said, laughing. “Good God! You were awful!”

“Yeah,” I said, forcing a laugh. I thought of Yarah and sketching in the hallway outside the practice rooms at Ithaca. “I took voice lessons in college.”

“Whatever your teacher got paid, it wasn’t nearly enough,” he said. He planted a big sloppy kiss on my forehead. “That was so much fun.” He clinked his shot glass with mine. “Cheers, Jesseroo.”

“Cheers, Robbers,” I said, and we threw the shots back in unison.

Apparently once the karaoke floodgates have been opened, they cannot be closed. A group of girls who had probably been the cheerleading squad got up on stage to sing “Man! I Feel Like a Woman.” I’m guessing they’d also done the number in the senior talent show or something, because they had vaguely coordinated dance moves.

“Oh my God,” Myra said, when she worked her way through the crowd with her clipboard and her drink. “You guys were awesome.” She gave me a big hug. “Sorry to put you on the spot.”

“No, thank you,” I said. “I don’t do stuff like that . . . anymore.” I felt like if I could do that, I could do anything. I wanted to do all the things I’d always been afraid to. I wanted to talk to strangers and dance like no one was watching and all those other clichéd, greeting card, inspirational things.

“I can’t believe you can sing so well when you aren’t trashed! Who knew?” Myra said, smiling. And then she froze. I turned around and saw a gorgeous man in a suit walk in with a woman wearing a short silver-sequined dress.

“Holy shit,” Myra said, trying to put her drink down on the edge of a cocktail table. She missed and the glass crashed to the floor, splattering soda on our legs. “Crap!” she said, reaching frantically for a stack of cocktail napkins. She looked like she was going to cry.

“What?”

“John’s here.”

“It’s okay, My. It’ll be fine. You can handle this.”

“His wife is wearing one of my dresses.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Nancy must have sold it to her. I don’t remember seeing her.” She shook her head. “It’s such a weird feeling.”

“Come on,” I said, grabbing her hand.

“What?”

“We’re going to dance.” I took her clipboard and handed it to Fish. “Can you tell the bar back that a glass broke over there?”

He stared at me.

“Please,” I said. “For Myra.”

He nodded.

I dragged Myra out on the dance floor, and we danced to off-key former cheerleaders singing Shania Twain like it was the best music we’d ever heard.

“Do you think he did it on purpose?” she yelled over the music.

“The dress?”

She nodded.

“You know what I think?” I shouted. I grabbed her hand and held it up to twirl her around. “I think we should dance like we don’t give a fuck.”

She clasped her hand to mine, and we did a sloppy tango across the dance floor. When Heather returned from the bathroom, bra back in place, we made a Myra sandwich and tangoed across the floor the other way, all three of our hands knotted together. Fish sat at a table, nursing a beer and twisting a piece of streamer around his fingers. Robbie tied Heather’s scarf around his forehead like a warrior and joined us on the dance floor, doing the running man with his tongue hanging out of his mouth and his eyes crossed. We danced our way through the football players singing “Livin’ on a Prayer” and a couple of really drunk girls stumbling through the words to
“Tubthumping.” We were sweaty and breathless and laughing, and I didn’t care if we looked stupid. I was having fun.

Then the DJ came back and played “Name” by the Goo Goo Dolls. Heather went to get us more drinks. Robbie asked Myra to dance.

“Come on, Fish,” I said, running over and grabbing his arm. “Dance with me.”

He stood up and followed me for a second, but then he pulled his arm away. I figured he must be one of those guys who didn’t dance under any circumstances. But I also figured Jessie Morgan wasn’t the kind of girl who took no for an answer, so I tried to put my arms around his neck.

He raised his hands to break my arms away.

“Come on, grumpy. Dance!” I said, trying to reach for his hand again.

“You know what? Don’t even touch me,” he said. “Don’t even.”

“Oh my God!” I blurted out. “What is your problem?”

“You!” he yelled. “You are my problem, Jessie.” And even though the music was loud, everyone heard. People stopped talking to watch us. “You disappear completely for thirteen years. And then you just come back like nothing happened and act like you always did. Like we’re the most important people, until something better comes along. That’s my problem, Jess. You left. You don’t have a right to come back anymore. Everyone else might be fine pretending it’s okay, but I’m not. You left. That’s all you get.”

He walked out, leaving me standing there in the middle of the dance floor with everyone staring at me. And even though he was really yelling at Jessie, even though he wasn’t actually mad at me, standing there with all those eyes on me was awful. The tequila was catching up with me. I started crying. I took one deep breath after another, but I couldn’t pull it together.

I grabbed my purse and ran out the door. I wasn’t running after Fish. I was just running. I needed air. I needed to confess. I needed to leave. I needed to be done with Jessie Morgan. I’d pushed it too far.

I ran through the lobby and tripped down the stairs to the parking lot. I pulled my heels off and kept running. It was drizzling. The pavement was freezing and my feet picked up bits of gravel as I ran, but it felt good to move, to put distance between me and all those people. It felt like if I ran fast enough, I might get away from myself. I dashed through the parking lot and down the stairs to the falls.

My face was wet with tears and rain, my arms were full of goose bumps, and my toes were numb. Snoqualmie Falls was lit with green lights, but the path was dark. It didn’t seem like the smart way to go, but I needed the air, the freedom. I needed to be Jenny again for a moment so I could catch my breath. The water rushing over the falls was loud and disorienting.

I got all the way to the end of the observation deck before I realized that someone else was out there—a dark figure walking toward me. He reached out his hand, and I tried to scream but my voice wasn’t working. It came out like a squeak.

He grabbed my wrist. His face was so close.

It was Fish.

Before I could say anything, he wrapped his arms around me and kissed me with more intensity than I’d ever been kissed in my entire life.

I should have stopped him, but I didn’t. It was the most romantic thing that had ever happened to me, so it was easy to ignore the fact that it wasn’t actually happening to me. Fish was kissing Jessie. But I let myself believe that Fish was kissing me, because I really wanted to be kissed.

He pulled away and hugged me hard. “Don’t disappear this time,” he whispered. “Please.”

And I didn’t know what to say, so I just hugged him and reached for his face in the dark and let my mouth find his.

He didn’t have his jacket, and I didn’t have my sweater, so it wasn’t long before we started shivering. His body shook under his thin dress shirt, teeth chattering, even though he clenched them tight to get them to stop.

“Shit,” he said, patting his pants pocket. “Robbie took my keys. Asshole.”

“Because you shouldn’t be driving and he doesn’t want you to die?”

“Oh my God!” He laughed. “Who are you?”

“The safety police.”

“I think that’s redundant.”

“I think you’re redundant.”

“How so?”

“I don’t know. I’m just talking.” I laughed. I never just said stuff. With Deagan, I always looked at everything from every angle and tried hard to consider the best thing to say and the best way to say it.

“If I had my keys, we could sit in the car and warm up.”

“We could just go back in.”

He hugged me close. “I don’t want to,” he said. “I don’t want to share you right now.” He breathed deeply. My face was pressed into his chest. He may have been crying. I couldn’t tell.

“We could go up to my room,” I said.

“You know we’re going to run into everyone.”

“Not if we’re stealthy,” I said. I pulled away from him and dug my extra room key out of my purse. “If we get separated, I’ll meet you in room four-thirteen.”

I grabbed his hand, and we ran up the stairs and across the parking lot, my bare feet smacking against the asphalt. We giggled like kids when we ducked behind a pillar to avoid the
“Tubthumping” girls, who were stepping outside to smoke. They didn’t see us, or if they did, they didn’t care, but that didn’t stop Fish and me from pantomiming our plan. “You first,” Fish mouthed, pointing at me, waving his key with the other hand. I took a deep breath and tiptoed out from behind the pillar.

Heather was in the lobby on her cell phone. “Hey!” she said, covering the phone with her hand when she saw me. “It’s Karen! Do you want to say hi?”

I coughed. “I have to get my inhaler again. Emergency!”

“Oh! Oh! Okay! We can always call her back later,” Heather said.

I took the elevator up to my room, and my whole body buzzed with the idea of meeting up with Fish. Of what we were about to do. But by the time I got to my floor, I started to panic. I couldn’t sleep with Jessie Morgan’s ex-boyfriend and I couldn’t pretend we were meeting in my room to do anything else. This was where I had to draw the line.

But when the elevator door opened, Fish was standing there, out of breath from running up the stairs. Without saying anything, he grabbed my hand and we ran down the hall to my room.

He opened the door with the key I’d given him.

We didn’t say anything. He kissed my neck. I unbuttoned his pants. He pushed the straps of my dress off my shoulders, and it was suddenly less about erasing Deagan or erasing myself than about the crazy animal attraction I had for him. I wriggled out of my dress. We fell onto the big fluffy bed together.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” he said. And in that moment, I completely forgot he wasn’t really talking to me.

I
’d never had
a one-night stand. I had a couple of short, sad, two-week relationships when I first moved back to Rochester. Luanne would drag me out to bars and I’d meet a guy and think, okay, he could be someone. We’d go on a few dates, then he’d spend the night, and I’d wake up before he did and he’d just be there, in my bed, breathing, and I’d get overwhelmed by the idea of having someone else to take care of in my life. And then, because Rochester is like living in a small town even though it’s a city, I’d see him out at the bars with some other girl a few weeks later, and all I could feel was relief. Not jealousy. Jealousy would have been normal. I felt like “Good, she can take care of him. Better her than me.”

Deagan was different. He wasn’t needy. I never felt like I’d have to take care of him, but he didn’t take care of me either. I tried, really hard, to be warm. To do things for him. But because he didn’t need me, he also didn’t notice when I made the effort to go to his games or make him a nice dinner. It was all very civilized—the opposite of romantic.

So, with Fish, after the initial explosion of passion, I expected an “oh crap, what have we done?” moment. But it didn’t happen. I didn’t want to run screaming. I didn’t want to run at all.

We lay in bed, tangled up in the sheets, and talked like old friends, snippets of conversation punctuated by sex and sleep, a steamy scented bath, late-night room service. All I wanted was to be in the same space with him. Being near him made me feel better than I’d ever felt.

“When did your hands get so bony?” he asked, threading his fingers through my fingers and holding our hands up to kiss mine. “You have these, like, bird hands. I don’t remember that.”

“Bird hands?” I said, laughing. “You have these, like, eel legs.” I wrapped my leg around his.

“You know what I mean.”

“You have, like, elephant antlers and lizard wings. Oh! And monkey gills.”

“You!” he said, rolling over on top of me. “Are crazy. I don’t have a single monkey gill.”

“What about here?” I asked, grabbing his ribs. He twitched. “Oh! Does that tickle? What about here?” I reached down and grabbed at his knee.

“What about here?” Fish said, and tickled me back.

“Fish!” I yelled. “Wait!”

“What?” he said, letting go of me.

“Nothing,” I said, and went right back to tickling him.

“Cheater!”

“I can’t believe I slept with Jessie Morgan,” Fish murmured. “My sixteen-year-old self would die.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Jessica,” he said, sighing as he wrapped his arm around me and pulled me close.

“Gilbert,” I said, running my fingers along his arm. He had beautiful biceps.

“I had the biggest crush ever on you. And you knew that the whole time. Stop pretending you didn’t.”

I’d been so sure that Fish was Jessie’s boyfriend. If this were one of those
Back to the Future
time-travel things, I would totally end up fading from the picture or accidentally running over my own grandfather or something. It’s a good thing that the only consequence of all this was that I ended up in bed with an incredibly hot guy. At least that was the only consequence I wanted to think about. In one more day I’d be back in Rochester and Fish would be happily daydreaming about how he finally got his high school crush in the sack. No harm, no foul. I was sure people hooked up at reunions like this all the time. Just a one-night thing to get the long-term yearning out of their system. I was helping Fish make his childhood dream come true and getting over Deagan at the same time. It was win-win.

“I know it now,” I said.

“Everything’s easier in hindsight, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Like now,” he said. “With more perspective. I’m guessing that you didn’t leave at graduation just because I told you I loved you.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, picturing him holding that horrible thought in his mind for years.

“I mean,” he let out a funny laugh, “you didn’t say it back, and then you disappeared. But you didn’t leave because of me, right?”

“No,” I said. “I didn’t.”

He sat up and looked at me. “Why did you leave?”

“Because,” I said, sitting up and wrapping my legs around him, “I was a stupid, stupid girl.”

I ran the bathwater and added bubbles while Fish poured wine. We shed our robes at the edge of the tub and climbed in, resting our heads across from each other.

“Ew!” Fish said.

“What?”

“Your feet are disgusting.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re black on the bottom from running around without shoes on.” He grabbed my foot and scrubbed hard with a washcloth.

I splashed water at him.

He splashed me back. “I can’t believe,” he said, “I’m taking a bath with Jessie Morgan.”

“I can’t believe,” I said, “I’m taking a bath with you.” And as soon as I said it, it made me sad. I couldn’t pretend to be Jessie forever, but when I stopped, what would I be left with? What would I be leaving Fish with?

“You’re missing the reunion,” I said, worried that I was taking something important from him.

“I’m not missing anything.”

I should have insisted that we go back to the party, but he drifted over to kiss me, and I didn’t have the willpower to stop him.

“So does everyone in your grown-up life call you Fish?” We were wrapped in the fluffy hotel bathrobes, sitting on the floor, with the room service tray balanced between our laps.

“Nah,” he said. “It’s mostly just Robbie and those goons.”

“I love the name Gilbert. Like Gilbert Blythe,” I said, shoveling artichoke dip into my mouth with a crusty piece of bread.

“Huh?”

“Gilbert Blythe from
Anne of Green Gables
. It’s one of my favorite books.”

“Who are you, and what have you done with Jessie?”

My heart stopped. “What do you mean?”

“You don’t read.”

“Well,” I said, trying my hardest to keep the panic from showing up in my face, “I had an image to protect and all. Once I got to college, I felt free to, you know, read books.”

“You were a wild child in high school, so you had to go to college to be a rebellious reader?”

“What did you go to college for?” I asked, eager to change the subject.

“Premed. As planned,” Fish said. “My rebellions came later.”

“When you went to college, did people call you Gilbert?”

“Mostly,” he said, rearranging the plates on the tray so the french fries were closer.

“Good.”

“You’re the one who started calling me Fish!” he said, making sure to cover every inch of his fry in ketchup. “In second grade.”

“Really?” I said, placing my hand dramatically on my chest. “Me?”

“You don’t remember?”

“It was such a long time ago.”

“I wanted people to start calling me Gil instead of Gilbert, and you said, ‘Ew! Like a fish gill,’ and then everyone called me Fish for ever and ever.”

“Amen.”

“What?”

“It just seemed like there should be an ‘amen’ at the end of that.”

“Are you drunk?”

“Terribly.”

“Ha,” Fish said. “Me too.” He grabbed the bottle of wine we’d ordered and poured us each another glass.

Later Fish fell asleep before I did, and the sound of his slow, steady breath made me want to hold him tightly.