brown eyes and long, wavy hair a boy could twist through his fingers. My signature pair of silver hoop earrings dangled from my earlobes. I thought I wore my desperation on my face where everyone could see it.
As Austin looked into my eyes, then reached for my hand, I felt the hollow place I imagined his mother left in his heart like an opening in a tree, the kind a scared animal wanted to burrow inside for the long, bleak winter.
Outside, a late-night storm pressed against the sky. Wind whipped up the hot, muggy air and cut through it like a knife. It sent a chilling, owl-like sound through the house. The sound of rain against glass.
“No, I wanted you to come,” I said. “I’m glad you’re here.” I moved back to the living room, toward the couch, and closed my eyes for a moment. In his presence I felt the world stop.
“Sit down,” I said forcefully. Now I would tell him what to do. What
I
wanted.
“Anna?” Austin moved closer. “Do you want me to leave?”
“I just don’t understand why you’re here.” I arrogantly ran my fingers through my hair. Of course I knew. “How was the party?” It came out harshly.
“It’s still going on,” he whispered. “It’s just that once you left, I didn’t want to be there anymore.” He moved to the couch next to me. His blue jeans were faded, and worn at the knees. “How come you wanted to leave?”
I was speechless. How could I confess that it was because I felt irrelevant and blank without the thumbprint of his attention?
“Okay, so now comes the part where I have to pry everything out of you? You know what your problem is? You walk around thinking you’re better than everyone. You could have at least tried to have a good time.”
It wasn’t that I thought I was better than anyone. He had read me all wrong.
“How would you know about it?”
“About what?”
“About me.”
“I know everything about you. I got the goods.”
His shirt hung out from his jeans, and was open at the neck. His chest was the color of porcelain and sweaty, same as his face. And after he’d made that comment about me, his eyes registered an emotion I hadn’t interpreted before: I saw how vulnerable he was.
“I said something wrong,” I said. I touched his face. “I’m sorry. I’m glad you’re here.”
He shrugged in that offhand way that boys do. He didn’t hold anything against a person for long. Or at least I thought so. “So do you forgive me?” he said.
“For what?”
“For ignoring you at my party.”
I pushed away the image of him and Rita together, at least for the duration of the night. Instead, I felt the dark heat of him, of the wild and partly drunk boy beside me on the couch.
Austin propped his head against the sofa’s arm; he slouched so he was half lying down, his legs hanging over the cushion. He reached for me. I folded myself into his arms, felt the baby fluffs of hair at the back of his neck.
“I saw you talking to Brian Horrigan,” Austin said. “He’s got the hots for you.”
“Does that surprise you?” I tasted the salt of sweat on his skin.
“Fuck, no,” Austin said. “But it doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
I fit myself against him like the last piece to a puzzle, forgetting Lilly was upstairs. He was warm and damp. He opened my arms, and unbuttoned my blouse. I traced the blue vein up to the inside of his elbow with my finger and back down again; pressed my finger against his pulse. Again, the spatter of rain against the window. The caw of birds just before dawn.
“I know you. I know what I love about you,” he said. He rolled me off the couch with him, onto the carpeted floor. “Isn’t this enough?” Austin said, kissing me again. “Let’s not ever fight. Can’t we be happy?”
Happiness was a
word that had no meaning, I had decided, years before, without ever knowing it. I had watched, and felt, even when I wasn’t watching, how my mother’s dates fed her with scotch and sweet talk, and
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