Chapter Four #2
Several couples immediately came together as if by suction. Terrence looked at her as if asking if she wanted to. He would have taken a no with equanimity, but she nodded.
Jack started playing “Time in a Bottle.” Then, to her surprise, he started singing, too.
She’d never heard him sing before and his voice was breathtaking, as clear as water.
This man had something special. The world was going to love him.
She stared at him over Terrence’s shoulder and he met her eyes.
After the song ended and everyone hooted and clapped, she muttered something to Terrence about needing some air. She ducked outside and leaned against the building, taking some deep breaths and telling herself to pull it together.
A few minutes later, the side door at the far end of the gym opened with a flash of light.
She turned to see Jack step outside with his guitar case.
The door closed behind him, but not before a loose balloon escaped and floated up into the night sky like a stray thought.
She watched as he fished a pack of cigarettes out of his blue jean shirt pocket, lit one, then took a few puffs.
He picked up his case again and started to turn toward the street, ostensibly to walk back to Principal Penwell’s home.
“You were amazing,” she called, though she had almost convinced herself not to. He hadn’t seen her. He never would have known she was there.
He turned and they stared at each other for a moment before he walked over. “Thanks. And you look amazing,” he said.
“I look like something from a TV comedy sketch,” she said, whipping off her hat, and then patting her blond hair back in place.
“Now that you mention it…” She hit him with the hat, which made him laugh. “Why are you wearing it if you don’t like it?”
“My grandmother picked it out for me.”
“You didn’t have a say?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It is that simple,” he said. “You’re making it complicated. You, and everyone else in this town. You’ve given too much power to a woman who, as far as I can see, only peddles in myth and rumors.”
“Your grandmother, Mim, saved you by letting you go,” she said, nodding to his guitar case and the umbrella he kept inside. “Mine saved me by keeping me here. We show our gratitude in different ways. Gram doesn’t want to be alone. Everyone she has ever loved has left her but me.”
He took a drag off his cigarette. “So who’s the guy?”
“Terrence Wester. He’s a distant cousin.”
He waited a few beats before he said, “He’s more than that.”
She wouldn’t insult him by pretending to misunderstand. “Gram wants me to marry him.”
“Ah. So are you?”
“It could be worse. He’s decent. Uncomplicated.”
“In other words, the very opposite of you.”
“You don’t think I’m decent?”
His eyes went to her lips. “I think you’re complicated.”
“You don’t know me at all,” she snapped, angry at him for validating every feeling of discontent she’d been having lately about her life, her future. “Why did you have to come here?”
“Don’t ask the feather, ask the wind.” He took one more puff from his cigarette and tossed it to the ground.
“I’m usually pretty good at going with the flow.
But I’m staying in a damp basement bedroom and giving lessons to teenage boys who dream about being in a band with all the booze and girls they want, but who don’t give a fuck about the music.
And I lie awake at night thinking about a beautiful girl I just met whose grandmother has made her believe that she can only exist here, that she will vanish like magic if she steps outside of this place, so she’s too afraid to leave.
And I can’t stay.” He shifted his weight to stub out the cigarette still smoldering at his feet.
“So I actually agree with you, Wills. We both would have been better off if I hadn’t come here. ”
She thought he was turning to leave her. And in a moment of sheer desperation, she dropped her hat and grabbed his denim shirt, pulling him into a kiss. Surprised, he put one hand to the brick wall beside her head to keep from falling forward.
She’d kissed Terrence before, but it was nothing like this. Nothing was ever going to be like this, the pull of him, as if he had his own gravity. He slowly drew back.
Suddenly there was a burst of light to the side, like maybe someone had opened the gymnasium door for a second, causing a flash from the strobe lights. They jerked away from each other, startled, but no one was there, only the sound of quickly retreating steps.
“I should go,” he said, but didn’t move.
“I was good at going with the flow, too,” she whispered. “Then I met you. You’re not the flow, which is why you scare me so much.”
“That’s the opposite of going with the flow, Wills. That’s resisting it.”
“Okay, then. Meet me in the east pasture of the Holloway farm tomorrow night.” She couldn’t believe the words coming out of her mouth.
He smiled, and then he kissed her again quickly, but deeper this time.
“You’re going to be the death of me, Wills Wester,” he said as he backed away, watching her with such passionate intensity that it made her breath hitch. Then he finally turned and disappeared.