Attachments(12)
Author: Rainbow Rowell

<<Beth to Jennifer>>

1. Poking the dragon. Is that another masturb**ion reference?

2. Baby Gap. Still?

<<Jennifer to Beth>>

1. Ha.

2. Still. Last weekend, I scored a celery green snowsuit with matching mittens for $3.99!

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Green is a smart choice—good for an imaginary girl or an imaginary boy.

And the season isn’t at all relevant with imaginary children.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Exactly. I don’t even go to the adult Gap anymore. Once you’re an imaginary mother, it’s hard to take time for yourself.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> I imagine.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> So, what’s tomorrow’s Indian Hills story about?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> There isn’t one.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> There better be. You’re on the morning budget for 15 inches.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> F ck.

CHAPTER 24

SO, THIS WAS what Lincoln’s romantic life had come to. Reading what women wrote about other men, other attractive men. Guitar gods and action heroes and redheads.

That night, after he trashed Beth’s and Jennifer’s messages, after he’d left The Courier, Lincoln got onto the freeway. It was laid out in a rough square around the city. Once you were on the freeway, you could drive as long as you wanted to without getting off, without ever really going anywhere.

It’s what he and Sam used to do on nights when they didn’t feel like being around their parents or sitting in some diner. Lincoln would drive, and Sam would roll down her window and lean her head against the door, singing along with the radio.

She liked to listen to a show called “Pillow Talk” on the light-rock station. It was a request show.

People would call in and dedicate songs on the air. They always requested sappy songs that were ten or fifteen years old even back then, songs by Air Supply, Elton John, and Bread. Sam liked to mock their on-air dedications, but she rarely changed the station.

She’d sing along, and they’d talk. The talking came easily to him when he was driving, maybe because he didn’t have to make eye contact, maybe because it gave him something to do with his hands. Because it was dark and the freeway was empty. Because of the love songs. And the wind.

“Lincoln,” Sam had asked him on one of those nights, the summer before their senior year, “do you think we’ll get married some day?”

“I hope so,” he’d whispered. He didn’t usually think about it like that, like “married.” He thought about how he never wanted to be without her. About how happy she made him and how he wanted to go on being that happy for the rest of his life. If a wedding could promise him that, he definitely wanted to get married.

“Wouldn’t it be romantic,” she said, “to marry your high school sweetheart? When people ask us how we met I’ll say, ‘We met in high school. I saw him, and I just knew.’ And they’ll say, ‘Didn’t you ever wonder what it would be like to be with someone else?’ And you’ll say …Lincoln, what will you say?”

“I’ll say, ‘No.’”

“That’s not very romantic.”

“It’s none of their business.”

“Tell me, then,” she said, unbuckling her seat belt and putting her arm around his waist. “Tell me now, won’t you ever wonder what it would have been like to be with someone else?”

“First, buckle up,” he said. She did. “I won’t wonder that because I already know what it would be like to be with someone else.”

“How do you know?” she said.

“I just do.”

“Then, what would it be like?”

“It would be less,” he said.

“Less?”

He looked over at her, just for a second, sitting sideways in her bucket seat, and squeezed the steering wheel. “It would have to be. I already love you so much. I already feel like something in my chest is going to pop when I see you. I couldn’t love anyone more than I do you, it would kill me. And I couldn’t love anyone less because it would always feel like less. Even if I loved some other girl, that’s all I would ever think about, the difference between loving her and loving you.”

Sam squirmed out of the top half of her seat belt and laid her head on his shoulder. “That is such a good answer.”

“It’s a true answer.”

“What if”—her voice was soft and girlish now—“someday, someone asks whether you ever wonder what it would be like to … be with somebody else.”

“Who would ask that?”

“This entire scenario is hypothetical.”

“I don’t even know what it’s like to be with you.” Lincoln said this quietly and without resentment.

“Yet.”

“Yet,” he said, focusing on the road and the gas pedal and breathing.

“So …won’t you look at other girls and wonder what you’re missing?”

“No,” he said.

“No?”

“I know you want more than a one-word answer. Let me think about this for a minute, I don’t want it to sound stupid or desperate.”

“Do you feel desperate?” She was kissing his neck now and leaning hard against him.

“I’m feeling …yes. Desperate. And like I might kill us both. I can’t …I can’t keep my eyes open when you’re doing that, it’s like sneezing. We’re almost to the next exit. Let me drive, just for a few more minutes. Please.”

She sat back in her seat. “No, don’t get off at this exit. Keep driving.”

“Why?”

“I want you to keep talking. I want you to answer my question.”

“No,” he said. “No, I’ll never wonder what it would be like to have sex with someone else for the same reason I don’t want to kiss anyone else. You’re the only girl I’ve ever touched. And I feel like it was supposed to be that way. I touch you and my whole body …rings. Like a bell or something. And I could touch other girls, and maybe there would be something, you know, like maybe there would be noise. But not like with you. And what would happen if I kept touching and touching them, and then …and then, I tried to touch you again? I might not be able to hear us anymore. I might not ring true.”

“I love you, Lincoln,” Sam said.

“I love you,” he said.

“And I love you.”

“I love you,” he said, “I love you.”

“Stop driving now, okay?”

It didn’t happen that night, the being with each other. But it happened that summer. And it happened in the car. It was awkward and uncomfortable and wonderful.

“Only you,” he’d promised. “Only you ever.”

“PILLOW TALK” WASN’T on the air anymore. There was another show in its place, a syndicated show, where people called in with their love stories, and the host, a woman named Alexis, chose the song for them. No matter what the situation was, Alexis always prescribed a current adult contemporary hit.

Something by Mariah Carey or Céline Dion.

After a few minutes of Alexis, Lincoln turned off the radio and rolled down the window. He leaned his hand into the wind and his head against the door, and drove around the city until his fingers were cold and numb.

CHAPTER 25

From: Beth Fremont

To: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder

Sent: Thurs, 10/14/1999 11:09 AM

Subject: October, at last!

Callooh! Callay!

<<Jennifer to Beth>> At last? October is half over. And what’s in October anyway?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Not “what’s in,” what is. October. My favorite month. Which, by the way, has only half begun.

Some find it melancholy. “October,” Bono sings, “and the trees are stripped bare …”

Not I. There’s a chill in the air that lifts my heart and makes my hair stand on end. Every moment feels meant for me. In October, I’m the star of my own movie—I hear the soundtrack in my head (right now, it’s “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”)—and I have faith in my own rising action.

I was born in February, but I come alive in October.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> You’re a nut.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> A hazelnut. A filbert.

October, baptize me with leaves! Swaddle me in corduroy and nurse me with split pea soup.

October, tuck tiny candy bars in my pockets and carve my smile into a thousand pumpkins.

O autumn! O teakettle! O grace!

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I do love tiny candy bars.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Merry October!

<<Jennifer to Beth>> All right, Merry October! Why not?

Are there other factors in your unreasonably good mood? Non-autumnal reasons?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Nope, I don’t think so. I had a really crappy night last night—I went to a Sacajawea party with Chris—but I think that’s actually enhancing my good mood today. I woke up thinking about how, no matter how bad everything else is, there’s still October.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Who has a party on a Wednesday night?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Musicians.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Don’t most of them have day jobs?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Their day jobs are night jobs. (Sometimes late-afternoon jobs.) Only the girlfriends have to get up in the morning, and mentioning that you have to get up—that you really shouldn’t be partying on a school night, so to speak—is band-girlfriend blasphemy.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> What happens to blasphemers?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> As soon as you leave, dragging your man with you or not, every other lord reaches for his lady and thanks her for not being such a killjoy. She, in turn, feels special and loved and goes to work the next morning haggard, headachy, and wearing a guitar pick around her neck like an albatross.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Are you a killjoy?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Oh, the worst. A killjoy of mythic proportions. For starters, I won’t let them party at my apartment. And I leave all their parties early, by midnight. I’ve stopped pretending that staying up all night, smoking, and drinking have no effect on my body.

It wouldn’t be any better if I stayed. You’re not allowed to politely not partake in their debauchery.

That’s as good as passing judgment.

Last night was especially bad. Stef got all up in my face. He was high, and I think he was trying to impress some girl he picked up at a show.

“Beth … ,” he said, “why don’t you have fun anymore?”

I ignored him, which he couldn’t let stand. “I’m serious, Beth, you’ve changed. You used to be cool.”

“I haven’t changed. I was never cool.”

“You were. When Chris started bringing you around, the rest of us were jealous. You had that hair down to your waist and your tight Hüsker Dü T-shirts, and you’d get wasted and stay up all night rewriting our choruses.”

He’s vile in so many ways: 1. Implying that he ever liked me.

2. Reminding me how he used to stare at my br**sts.

3. Making me scramble to insult him in a way that won’t insult Chris. I mean, I can’t say, “I’m an adult now” or, “There’s nothing to rewrite, you’ve been playing the same songs for six years …”

So I said, “Give it a rest, Stef, I’m tired.”

Then he got all fake-sympathetic and suggested that I go home so I would be all rested up for work in the morning. I told him that movie reviewers never go to work before noon. Union rules.

“I think that’s what changed you, Beth. Your job. The film critic. Critics are parasites. They live off other people’s creativity. They bring nothing into this world. They’re like barren women who steal other people’s babies in grocery store parking lots. Those who can’t do, teach, and those who can’t teach, criticize.”

Just when he’d settled into a fine rant, one of the other guys decided to cut him off—“Hey, Chris, aren’t you going to defend your girlfriend?”

And Chris said, “Beth doesn’t need my help defending herself. Trust me. She’s a Valkyrie.”

Which sort of made me feel good. That he loves me strong and independent. But also, I would like some defending. And also, don’t Valkyries steal the souls of fallen warriors? Or maybe just escort them to heaven or Valhalla or wherever? Either way, it doesn’t make me a warrior. Maybe a Valkyrie is just another parasite, reflecting the glory of the souls she claims. I don’t know, it’s not what I wanted him to say.

I wanted him to say …“Fuck off, Stef.”

Or, “Beth is not a barnacle on my boat. She’s the wind beneath my wings. And, without her, films like Armageddon and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer would claim scores of innocent victims, our friends and neighbors. Hers is important work, creative work.”

Or, “That’s it, I quit this stupid band. I’m going back to school. I’ve always wanted to be a dentist.”

<<Jennifer to Beth>> A dentist? Really, a dentist?

If Chris went back to school to become a dentist, I think you would dump him.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> I would not!

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I just can’t picture you married to a dentist, somebody who wears sensible shoes and always smells like fluoride treatment.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> I can …He’d have a comfy little neighborhood dental practice with back issues of Guitar World in the waiting room. I would stop in to see him some afternoons, and he’d pull down his white mask to kiss me hello. The kids would fight over a set of giant teeth, and his nice, grandmotherly dental assistant would give them each a sugar-free lollipop …