If Nina’s life was a movie, Steve would have shown up on her doorstep as a surprise. He would have been waiting on the porch with snow in his hair and a goofy smile and he’d say something like, “Should I have called first?”
But okay. He lived in Oregon. She wasn’t asking for miracles. But he should have at least called. On New Year’s Eve an e-mail does not do it. Especially an e-mail like this:
Neen,
Happy New Year! Hope you have fun tonight. Talk to you soon.
Love, Steve
What the hell was that? Her mom sent more heartfelt and gooey holiday notes to her old clients. Nina knew this for a fact. She usually stuffed and licked the envelopes.
Four notes in four weeks. That’s what he had sent. At first she’d found it hard to get annoyed at him. How did you fault someone who was trying to save the world and who didn’t have a cable modem or call waiting or a cell phone or anything from this century? Still, even the people she read about in English wrote to one another constantly. If you could send two letters a day two hundred years ago, Steve had no excuse for four short, impersonal notes in four weeks.
She looked over at her phone. It was resting on the lip of her carefully folded-over flannel snowflake sheets. This was not the time to have this nervous breakdown. She had something much more important to concentrate on tonight.
For the last two weeks Mel had barely left her house or changed out of her pajamas. She sat in her room, playing Norah Jones and Elliott Smith and reading breakup stories online. It had taken Nina three days to persuade Mel to come to this New Year’s party, and even then she had to bring Parker in for backup. In an attempt to wear Mel down, he rambled on for two hours about how this party was going to be the social highlight of his year and that if Mel didn’t go, his whole life would be ruined and he would end up a lonely middle-aged guy who spent all of his time playing EverQuest. She eventually, albeit reluctantly, came around and agreed to take a break from her monklike existence.
If Mel could briefly drag herself out of her mournful stupor, Nina surely felt she should. Of course, she would be kissless and bitter, but she would be there for Mel in her hour of need. It was just the distraction she needed.
“No one goes upstairs,” Georgia greeted them at the door. “No sex on the beds. That was the only thing my parents said.”
“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” Nina replied.
Mel and Parker were standing behind Nina, taking in the wonder that was Georgia’s house. Nina had seen the B&B many times, but they had never been inside before. A ten-bedroom house in a prime location across from the racetrack, Georgia’s humble little abode was packed floor to ceiling with antiques, and the walls were either covered in expensive-looking dark wood or heavy old-fashioned wallpaper. Every surface was adorned with greenery, fruit, or little sparkling lights. Nina was amazed that Georgia’s parents had turned the place over to her for the night since they didn’t take guests over the holiday. But then again, they had company over for a living. Somehow the house seemed to explain Georgia’s whole personality.
“Beer’s on the back porch. Booze is in the breakfast room. If you’re too drunk to drive home, you can pass out on one of the rugs or couches in the sitting room. Try not to barf on anything. You can put your coats behind the front desk. Go drink.”
In the breakfast room there was a huge cut glass punch bowl filled with blue liquid with little red Swedish fish floating all over the top. Parker took their coats, and Mel and Nina took their drinks to the living room and stationed themselves on one of the heavy Queen Anne sofas. The people who had already arrived were from no particular group. Every part of the AHH population was represented, proof of Georgia’s popularity and influence.
For a few minutes they sat quietly, sipping their punch. After Nina finished hers, she had a brainstorm and turned to Mel. “We need to find you a new girl,” she blurted.
“Um, not really.”
Nina ignored this feeble protest.
“What about her?” Nina asked, nodding to a girl in the corner. “I think her name is Lisa. She’s in my French class. Or Rebecca, that girl there. She’s a sophomore rep.”
“You can’t just point out girls with short hair,” Mel mumbled, her chin pinned to her chest.
“That’s not what I’m doing!”
“Yes, it is.”
“Okay,” Nina admitted. “Maybe. But how else can you tell?”
“Tell what? Who’s gay?”
“Yeah.”
“I have no idea.” Mel sighed.
“So she might be! Go talk to her!”
“You go talk to her.”
“I don’t want to hit on her!”
“Neither do I.”
“Mel …” Nina set down her glass rather unsteadily. She took one of Mel’s hands and clasped it between both of hers. “You have to move on. There are so many girls out there….”
Mel shushed her.
“Sorry. Was I loud?” Just then Nina realized what a lightweight she was. Only one cup of punch in and she was already nursing a good buzz. “You know what I’m saying. You’ve got to do something. If you play that album one more time, Norah Jones is going to come to your house and take it from you.”
“It makes me feel better.”
“It’s sad.”
Parker returned from the Land of the Coats and sat down with them. He looked at Mel and Nina curiously. “What’d I miss?”
“I’m counseling her,” Nina slurred.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Mel said before scurrying off.
As she scanned the room, Nina saw that couples were starting to clump together, magnetized by the approaching New Year and the influence of Georgia’s blue punch. Nina put the tail of her Swedish fish between her teeth and started pulling.
“I guess I shouldn’t be trying to set her up.” she said.
“No,” Parker said. “It’s a good idea. She needs to move on. She’s obsessed.”
“She’s not obsessed,” Nina heard herself snap. It wasn’t fair to snap at Parker. He couldn’t understand what it was like to be in the Triangle. It probably did look like obsession from the outside, but Nina knew the truth. It was withdrawal. It was horrible. “I can’t even give her any good advice,” Nina added quickly.
“Why not?”
“Because I have a boyfriend who I never see and never talk to who never writes to me.” Oh, how Nina’s brain was praising the sweet nectar of the blue punch.
“How does that work?” Parker asked, raising his eyebrows.
“It doesn’t. It sucks.”
“Break it down for me.”
“I have a cell phone and he doesn’t.”
“He can’t call you because he doesn’t have a cell phone?”
“He lives in Oregon,” she explained. “It’s long distance.”
Nina immediately felt a backlash of semidrunken guilt. She was complaining about Steve because he didn’t have as much money as her family did. And that was evil.
“It’s totally understandable,” she added quickly. “When I call, it’s free.”
“Sounds shady, but I’ll let that one slide.” Parker took a long sip of his drink. “But why doesn’t he write?”
She leaned back and sighed. Don’t say any more, she told herself. But she’d started talking, and the Swedish fish from the blue punch seemed to be insisting that she go on and on. Also, Parker was such a good listener and funny as hell—all of a sudden it made perfect sense why Mel would confide in him so much.
Nina tried to ignore this weird whirring noise that had just entered her head and focus on what she was saying. “He used to write every day. Now he writes once every couple of days, and the notes are pretty short. He’s just a really busy guy. But I’m busy too, and I write every day.”
“Want my thoughts on this?”
“Tell me.”
“Okay” Parker turned himself around so that he was facing Nina directly. “If I were this guy, and I had a totally devoted girlfriend who wrote to me every day and called me all the time, I would drive out here and live in my car.”
“But he rides a bike.”
“He’s going to need a car for my plan. It doesn’t have to be a really good car.”
“How’s he going to live?” Nina asked. “What would he eat?”
“He can drink water from the springs. We’ve got a hundred frigging springs around this town spurting up the healthiest water on the planet or something, and it’s totally free. He can live on that. Live to be a hundred.”
“Just water?”
“Okay, water, and discount bread that they sell at the end of the day at the bakery. And there are ducks all over the place.”
“He’s vegetarian.”
“Oh God,” Parker said with a sigh. He plucked the Swedish fish from his cup and wielded it to make his point. “Fine. You know what? He can eat his car. Piece by piece. It’s been done before. There are guys in India who have eaten whole cars just to show that they can do it. It’s one of those David Blaine kind of endurance things.”
“If he eats his car, where’s he going to live?”
Parker rolled his eyes. “It’s going to take him a while to eat the car,” he explained. “It’ll probably take until spring, and by then it’ll be warm. He won’t need shelter anymore.”
“This is your plan? Is that what you do for your girlfriend?”
“That is my hypothetical plan for my hypothetical girlfriend.”
“Well, I practically have a hypothetical boyfriend, so …”
“So there you go”
There was a brightness to Parker’s eyes—a huge booming enthusiasm that was catching.
“I like this plan,” she said, while getting up and making her way back to the punch bowl. “I wish he thought like you.”
“If he’s not writing to you, he’s insane,” Parker said. “And who cares if he doesn’t have a phone? He can borrow a phone. How hard is that?”
That was a good point. Nina had never thought of that before.
“This is just my opinion,” Parker added.
Whatever was in the punch made Nina feel mellow. She dropped her head on Parker’s shoulder. An actual male shoulder. That was something she hadn’t experienced in a while. Something human to put her head against. It felt different. Steve had well-developed arms and shoulders. Parker’s shoulders were thinner, and there was a more wiry energy coming through them.
“I should go find Mel,” she said drowsily. “Avery really screwed her over, you know that? I never thought Ave would do something like that.”
“I know. It must be hard. You guys were really good friends.”
Nina didn’t reply. It was too difficult to explain that “good friends” didn’t quite cover it. Besides, thinking about Avery made her sad, and she didn’t want to ruin the calmness that had just come over her. She pulled her head up. It was heavy. It felt like everything she had drunk had run right into her skull and was sloshing around.
“I’m going to check on her,” she said “Be right back.”
Nina took a rambling walk around the first floor, then went out onto the porch, where all of the beer was being kept cool. She pulled her cell phone out of her bag and sat down on an antique-looking bench. Maybe Parker’s theory would come true tonight. Maybe Steve had borrowed someone’s phone and called her. Maybe he’d realized that not only was she going to be alone and kissless, but that he’d really violated the good-boyfriend code.
Nothing. No little envelope on the screen.
It was stupid of her to have checked. This only sent her mood crashing down again.
She heard the front door open from behind her and turned to see Devon coming out onto the porch. In honor of the holiday he was wearing a black jacket over his regular shirt and tie.
“What’s up?” he asked, grabbing a beer.
“Just checking my messages.” She dropped the cell phone back into her bag.
Devon cracked open his beer and leaned against one of the porch columns as if he planned on staying and talking for a while.
“How do you think you did on Frost’s midterm?” he asked.
“I don’t want to think about it.”
“Me either.”
“I don’t care that much,” Nina said. Then it dawned on her that she could make herself feel better by taking a short but well-deserved ego trip.
“I already applied to college. I did early decision and got in, so …”
“You got in? Where are you going?”
“Stanford.”
“No shit,” he said, nodding. “Impressive.”
“I just sent out a few,” he said. “I was putting my portfolio together while I was getting ready for the AP exam, so I was kind of freaking out. I didn’t sleep for like three days.”
This was the most personal information she’d ever exchanged with Devon.
“What about your boyfriend?” he asked. “Where’s he going?”
“My boyfriend?”
“That guy on the sofa.”
“That’s Parker,” Nina said.
“He’s not your boyfriend?”
“No.”
“Oh. I thought he was.”
A weird thought passed through Nina’s mind—maybe Devon was trying to tell her something. Why else would he be asking about her boyfriend?
Although Nina was quite aware that she was a tad on the drunk side, Devon suddenly seemed very attractive to her. He was hiding behind those ties, behind that perpetually disappointed scowl, behind the camera lens. Underneath all of it might be a really great guy.
“Got your midnight kiss lined up?” she heard herself asking.
“I’ve got this,” he said, holding up his beer. He peeled off his beer label, rolled it up, and pitched it into a snow-filled trough that was already crammed with empties. “What about you?”
Nina held up the Swedish fish from her cup. “I’d like you to meet Marvin. He’s very special to me.”
“Pretty sad.” Devon snickered. He was smiling a lot, and Nina felt herself smiling back. Was it any big surprise that she was feeling this way? After all, she hadn’t been able to kiss Steve since August. It wasn’t unreasonable to want a little contact with the male species. And Steve kind of deserved it right now.
Suddenly Parker appeared at the door.
“I thought you got lost,” he said. “It’s almost time.”
“It is?” Nina said. For a second she was almost disappointed that Parker had picked this moment to turn up. “I thought it was ten or something.”
“No. It’s like eight minutes away.”
Parker looked from Nina to Devon and back again.
She pulled herself from the bench and went to the door. Devon took another swig of his beer and raised it up in a salutelike fashion.
As soon as she got inside, Nina realized two things. One: that kissing Devon Wakeman was probably one of the best ways a girl could bring in the new year. Two: that she’d just come alarmingly close to cheating on her boyfriend. But luckily Parker had saved her. Indeed, Parker had saved her whole relationship. Nina loved Parker. She gripped his arm hard to show her appreciation.
“You all right?” he asked, looking down at the nails that were digging into the sleeve of his black shirt.
“I’m okay,” she whispered. “Thanks, Park.”
“For what?”
“Nothing. Everything. You know what I mean.”
He looked baffled, which was understandable.
“I found Mel,” he said.
“Mel?” Nina asked. She’d forgotten that was how she’d ended up outside in the first place—she was supposed to be searching for her best friend. Oh, she really had to get an enormous glass of water or mug of coffee, and quick.
“She’s fine. She’s saving our spot on the sofa.”
Parker, Parker, Parker … Nina felt her emotions swelling for him. It was like he had stepped in at the critical point in their lives, maybe even to take Avery’s place.
“You’re the best,” she said, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek.
Parker froze and peered down at her. He touched the spot where her lips had been.
“Um … thanks.”
He smiled, but Nina noticed that the bright look in his eye that she’d seen earlier was gone. She wondered about this, but then she saw Mel waiting for them on the sofa, pointing eagerly at the countdown on the television, and the thought drifted away.