Good For You
“Sounds like a deal to me,” John says, giving me the please-don’t-screw-this-up-for-me face. Shit. He’s going to be pissed by the end of this night.
*** *** ***
Dori
“So you’re dropping out of col ege? Before you even start?” The shocked look on Nick’s face elicits a new heaviness in the pit of my stomach. “I haven’t decided yet. But I get spacey sometimes lately. I just… zone out. I can’t go to school at Berkeley and do that. I’d fail.” Nick reaches out before I know what he’s doing and places his hand over mine where it rests on the smal bistro table. “Dori, Deb wouldn’t want you giving up on your dreams because of what happened to her.” His hand is warm, covering mine completely. I stare at his square fingertips, the flat, short nails clipped evenly. So different from Reid’s tapered fingers—long, like a pianist, his hand stil big enough to dwarf mine.
“I know that.” I withdraw my hand to pick at non-existent fuzz on my sweatshirt, hoping the rebuff isn’t too conspicuous. As selfish as it is, I don’t want to lose Nick’s friendship—even if I no longer want anything other than that from him. He knows this, though it took him a little while to accept it. Staring at his hand, stil on the table between us, I try to explain. “I feel lost without her, and detached from those dreams. Maybe they weren’t ever real y mine.” He frowns, pul s his hand back to the steaming mug of green tea in front of him. “What do you dream of doing now, then?”
Reid’s image flashes across my mind like one of those ads with a subliminal message inserted—a single frame of a face inside a strip of film. What I dream of now is Reid; everything else is fil er. This realization should scare me to death, but it doesn’t. “Nothing,” I say. Before he can form another question, I ask him how he likes Madison, where he goes to school.
“Wel ,” he gives me a stern look, “everyone isn’t quite as fond of cheese as we’ve been led to believe.” One side of his mouth sneaks up.
“False advertising?” I ask, smiling back.
When he settled on Wisconsin as one of his top university choices last fal , he bewildered his parents—who are innately incapable of detecting sarcasm—by insisting that “an abundance of cheese” was one of his motives for wanting to attend. Nick’s parents don’t get his sense of humor. “Definitely.”
I sip my latte and smile. “Cheese aside, how’s col ege life?”
He considers for a moment. “Chal enging.”
“Ah, you must love it there,” I tease.
“Pretty much.” Dunking the teabag like he’s operating a marionette, he adds, “So what can I do to convince you to go to school, Dori?”
I heave a sigh. “Everything just feels pointless right now.” His serious brown eyes regard me closely. “Because of Deb.”
I nod. “I guess so. But it doesn’t feel like it’s her, or what happened to her, exactly. I feel more like… like I’m final y seeing everything for what it is, and nothing is what I thought.”
“Hmm,” he says.
We sit in our typical companionable silence for a few minutes, watching bag-laden Christmas shoppers scurry in and out of nearby stores. A few nights ago, Reid pul ed me into his house, tel ing me we were going Christmas shopping. “But—?” I said, fol owing him upstairs and into the media room.
He’d hooked his laptop to the screen, and while we ate dinner, I watched him give new meaning to the notion of online shopping. Armed with a list of people and addresses from his manager, he spent more money in a couple of hours than I could keep track of. When I wouldn’t let him buy me anything, he peered at me for a moment before pul ing me into his arms and asking, “So you only want me for my body?”
I bit my lip and nodded, and he growled and kissed me senseless. Once it got dark, Immaculada handed us senseless. Once it got dark, Immaculada handed us thermoses of hot chocolate and Luis drove us around to look at Christmas lights.
As though the thoughts in my head are transparent, Nick says, “If you don’t mind my asking—what’s the deal between you and Reid Alexander? I don’t fol ow Hol ywood gossip even when I’m in LA, but the whole country was speculating over the date—or whatever it was—you two had a couple of weeks ago. The one preserved for posterity on every website from TMZ to People. So I hear.” Before I left his house last night, Reid asked me to sing something, threatening to tickle me if I refused. When I told him I couldn’t sing without accompaniment—which he knows is a lie, he produced a guitar from his closet.
“Do you play?” I asked, sitting on the edge of his bed.
His mouth pul ed up on one side. “Not wel .”
“I could teach you.” I tuned the instrument, which was top-of-the-line, expensive. “I mean, you’ve taught me to massacre Nazi zombies. It’s the least I could do.”
“I’d like that,” he said, watching me.
He sat next to me while I strummed simple chords, singing “Fal en” by Sarah McLachlan. After, we lay on our sides, staring at each other. He ran a finger over my lips, down my throat. “You do have a beautiful voice, Dori.” I knew he was withholding something more, but I didn’t ask him to say it.
I pul out of the Reid reverie, shrugging at Nick. “We’re friends.” How can I explain to him, or to anyone, that without Deb, Reid is the only person in my life who sees me for who I am?
When it’s clear I’m not going to offer any more, Nick inclines his head and shifts his eyes to his mug. “Just, you know, proceed with caution. He’s not exactly in our league.” He bobs the teabag restlessly. “I don’t want you to get hurt.