Woodstock Day Three #2
“What gives?” I said, fanning myself with the pamphlet. For the first time all weekend I was hot.
“My cousin’s a master prankster. He’s somewhere looking at us right now laughing his ass off.”
We turned circles, scanning the area for Johnny—and I for Livy—but saw neither. Leon even shouted his cousin’s name. “Come out of hiding, Handsome J. You got me.” He waved both hands in the air, crossing one over the other. But Johnny never showed up.
“What do we do now?” I asked.
“Go listen to Joe Cocker.”
Joe’s backup band, the Grease Band, had already been introduced and was jamming in the background.
“Sounds good to me,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Leon didn’t answer.
“You ready?” I asked, but his gaze had fixated over my head on something else.
I pulled on his sleeve. “Leon? Are you ready to head over?”
He shifted his eyes toward me, but only briefly, then diverted his stare back into the crowd.
I looked, too, curious as to what had captivated his attention.
A gorgeous blonde was waving at him. She must have just arrived, because she wore a spotlessly clean white dress.
A ring of white daisies crowned her long, waist-length blond hair. She could have passed for Livy’s twin.
Leon waved back, with a curve in his lips.
Another gorgeous girl, wearing a matching white dress and daisy wreath, waved too. After a second look, I realized they were not only dressed like twins; they were twins. Identical twins.
The two Livys moved swiftly in Leon’s direction.
He shot me another brief glance. This time with a pall of panic on his face. With a mere six-foot distance separating him from the twins, he ran a hand through his hair. He held it back from his forehead, then slowly let go. “Shelly” was all he said. Then gave her a wide grin.
My heart dropped like an elevator. Shelly, the girl he was “not really” sad about breaking up with, answered him, but the roar of my pulse inside my ears drowned out her voice.
Both girls melted into his arms.
“Good to see you, Leon,” I heard Shelly’s twin sister say before they all broke from the embrace. She looked at me curiously. “Hi.”
All I could do was offer a shy wave. And a tight-lipped grin. An empty pain gripped my stomach.
“I didn’t know you guys were coming,” said Leon.
“It was my idea,” Shelly’s twin told him. Her tart New York accent puckered my nerves.
Shelly looked straight at me but asked Leon the question: “Who’s your friend?”
He gestured to each of us as he made the awkward introduction. “This is Suzie. Suzie, meet Shelly and Sarah. That’s a lot of S’s.”
I heard the discomfort in his voice.
While the three of us managed an exchange of weak hellos, all I could think about was how much the twins looked like Livy. And how gorgeous they were. And how I’d been trailing behind Livy’s gorgeous shadow my whole life. I couldn’t do it anymore.
I reminisced on the last few hours of our time together in the butterfly meadow.
For me, they were the most magical hours of my life.
For Leon, they were nothing special. The girl, the gorgeous girl, with whom he had most likely lost his virginity was standing in front of him.
They would always share that special bond.
I took a step backward. I can’t do this.
“We tried to get here yesterday, but the cops told us they weren’t letting anyone else in,” Sarah said. “We had to spend the night in Poughkeepsie.”
Shelly’s eyes sparkled like two stars in a midnight sky. “We heard the Who was outta sight!” The Who. Shelly knew it was Leon’s favorite band.
As I listened to them ramble on with idle conversation, the situation became crystal clear.
I wasn’t the kind of girl he found attractive.
He may have told me I was beautiful, but that was a lie.
He only wanted a weekend fling, a way to get in a girl’s pants.
I thought maybe I’d found someone different, a boy who liked me for me.
He had me convinced he liked me just the way I was.
He had told me he couldn’t believe that out of all the hundreds of thousands of people at Woodstock, he got to meet me. That was pure unadulterated bullshit.
I will not fight for someone who’s interested in drop-dead-gorgeous, complicated girls like Livy. I won’t.
While Leon and the twins prattled, I took another step backward, silently thanking God for protecting me.
I told him I was sorry for the bad things I’d done and I’d try my best to do better.
I especially thanked him for helping me to remember Livy’s wise words about birth control.
Not going all the way with Leon was the best decision of my life.
How many other girls had he coaxed into removing their clothes?
I had thought I could trust him, but I was wrong.
I took a third step backward. When a tall dude strolled past, I positioned myself next to him, matching his stride. We walked together for several yards, as if we were a Woodstock couple. Step by step I followed along with him until I was sure I had melded into the massive crowd.
I never looked back to see if Leon had noticed I was gone. Or if he was searching around frantically. It would have hurt too much to learn he wasn’t.