Here Without You

I can’t let go of him.

And then the door opens, and the middle-aged woman I recognize from the background of my only photo of River stands there, a faint smile wreathing her face. Her hazel eyes are clear and kind.

‘Brooke and Reid, I presume?’ she says, and we both nod. She pulls her arm gently from behind her, her hand attached to a little boy who appears slowly on the right side of her hip. All I see are dark blue eyes, impossibly huge in his small face. ‘This is River.’

DORI

Shayma has nudged me at least ten times this morning – whenever I’m not paying attention and someone asks me a question about operating the washers and dryers, how many tokens are allowed per person, or where the nearest public bathroom is located. After my last space-out, she says, ‘Girl. Where is your head this morning?’

While my roommate is one of the few people with confirmed knowledge about Reid and me, I’ve never been a big fan of sharing too much information with anyone, even trusted friends. I love Aimee and Kayla, but I’m pretty darn sure they’ve told every living soul at UCLA that they’re friends with Reid Alexander’s girlfriend. Shayma knows we’re going out, and that we met when I supervised him (or rather, tried to supervise him) at Habitat. She also knows I don’t publicize our relationship, so neither does she – which places her in a select class of friends.

Occasionally, she surprises me with facetious questions like, ‘So … is Reid Alexander a good kisser?’ or ‘I’ll bet Reid Alexander is RAWR in bed, isn’t he?’ I’m glad she hasn’t yet discovered my glowing, telltale ears. The wide-eyed look on my face is indicative enough of my discomfiture, I’m sure.

‘How do you deal with all the making out your boyfriend does in those movies?’ she asks now in her naturally discreet voice (thank goodness), after handing a stack of washer/dryer tokens to a guy who probably hasn’t washed any of his clothes in months. The smell makes my eyes water involuntarily until he shuffles over to a machine with an armful of grubby laundry and the small box of donated detergent I just handed him. I suspect he’ll need more than the one box.

‘And the rumours with ex-girlfriends or not-girlfriends. That alone would drive me batshit crazy. My mawmaw – the self-proclaimed seer? – is a practising Cajun Voodoo Queen. She’d be happy to whip up a little gris-gris for you.’

At the word voodoo, I arch a brow. ‘I’m afraid to ask what a gris-gris is …’

‘It’s a protection amulet. Sometimes for luck, but usually to ward off evil. I imagine ex-girlfriends qualify. Also, I figured you might not want to follow the still-practised but ethically-murky voodoo superstition to make a man stay faithful.’

‘Now I’m really afraid to ask.’

She leans closer and whispers, ‘You put a drop of your blood in his coffee.’

‘Ugh!’ I look down at the latte in my hand, appalled.

‘Right?’ she chuckles. ‘I overheard Mawmaw telling my momma to do that to Daddy when I was little. And my ordinarily sane legal-secretary mother was listening. I never asked her if she did it … If she did – it didn’t work. If she didn’t – well, who’d want to keep a guy that way anyhow?’

‘But using an amulet is a-okay,’ I laugh.

She shrugs and smiles. ‘That’s the first time I’ve heard you laugh in a few days.’ When I pin my lips together and sigh, she says, ‘Amulets are about warding off bad stuff, not binding people to do things they might not otherwise do. But I’m with you. If and when I get a guy I’m interested in keeping around, I want him to stay because he wants to stay. Not because I poked a voodoo doll of him in the junk with a pin.’

During a show we were watching online last night, an ad for the MTV Movie Awards popped up, which is on next month. Reid and his School Pride co-star, Emma Pierce, have been nominated for Best Kiss. As the clip played, Shayma gave me a sidelong glance, but didn’t say a word. An unwelcome mental image of the two of them re-enacting the lip-lock that made every girl I know swoon (Claudia excepted) at the upcoming awards show made me feel temporarily homicidal.

‘Maybe I should tell Mawmaw to make a gris-gris for Emma Pierce,’ Shayma suggests now, and I suppress an actual growl. ‘Though supposedly, she and Graham Douglas have been a legit couple for months. They went to the Vancouver Film Festival together last fall, and she popped up for a romantic weekend in Dublin a couple of months ago, when he was filming there. They’re spotted together all the time – alone or with friends, sometimes with his daughter. In particular near NYU, where they’re rumoured to be condo-shopping.’

I narrow my eyes. ‘You looked all of that up last night, didn’t you?’

‘No! I looked it up this morning.’ Shrugging, she counts out tokens to a tired woman with two small children in tow, all three of them holding a basket of clothes, and I plop a trial-sized box of detergent in each of their baskets. ‘You looked like you might go postal when that ad came on, is all. A little abnormal for such a peaceful girl, if you ask me.’

Rats. My non-existent poker face betrays me again.

REID

River doesn’t speak a word during the visit, of course, but he seems curious enough that he doesn’t signal an end to our stay. The first hour is spent under Wendy’s supervision, and he never ranges far from her. Brooke and I sit side by side on the worn sofa, our legs wedged behind a coffee table that – while smelling of wood polish – has been crayoned and scratched and generally battered to hell. Propped next to his foster mother’s chair, River leans his thin frame against her as though her bodily support is necessary to his ability to remain upright.