“Maybe she doesn’t want you to know.” He pauses, considering the possibilities. “Because she’s dating her swimming instructor and she doesn’t think you’ll approve of him. Or maybe you are right. Maybe she’s having an affair with a professor and the only place they can meet is in the swimming pool after hours where they can have sex in the water.”
I suddenly get a picture of the time Quinton and I almost had sex in the water. I was confused at the time and was glad he backed out, but now… well, thinking about having sex with him in general gets my skin burning and makes my stomach somersault.
But I try my best to pretend the word “sex” coming out of his mouth doesn’t have any effect on me. “You sound so scandalous. Has that older lady that you’ve been helping out been making you watch soap operas again?”
“Yeah, sometimes. Why? Is it starting to show?”
“Yeah, kind of,” I reply. “How is Mrs. Bellington doing?”
“Good. Although her family put her in a nursing home the other day clear across town so it’s really hard for me to visit her,” he says, then pauses. “You know, she kind of reminds me of you.”
“A seventy-year-old woman reminds you of me.” I frown, taken aback a little. “Wow, I feel kind of stupid right now.”
“Don’t be,” he says. “It’s a compliment. And besides, she reminds me of you because of some of the stories she’s told me about when she was younger.”
I relax a little. “Like what?”
“Like how she spent time in the Peace Corps.”
“I’ve never been in the Peace Corps, though.”
“Yeah, but I could easily see you being a volunteer, going around, trying to help the world,” he says, his mood lightening. “Spreading Nova peace everywhere.”
“Is that really how you see me?” I wonder, feeling a little uncomfortable with how much he actually might see me—more than Landon, maybe. “As a do-gooder?”
“In the best way possible.” His tone is much more upbeat than it was a few minutes ago. “You’re a good person, Nova Reed. Too good to be talking to me, probably, but I don’t want to stop you.”
“No way,” I argue defensively. “You’re perfect for me.” I shake my head at my cheesiness. I’m one step away from Jerry Maguiring it like Tristan did the other day. “Sorry, I didn’t mean for that to come out the way it sounded.”
“It’s okay. You can call it payback for me being cheesy earlier, but I think I’m just a little on emotional overload between this phone chat and our text conversation earlier. You’re giving me a high dose of the feel-goods and I’m starting to get really nervous about how I’m feeling right now. It’s freaking the shit out of me.” He stops talking and if I listen really closely I can hear the scratching of a pencil across paper. I wonder if he’s drawing and, if he is, what he’s drawing a picture of. “So would you mind if we call it a night and go to the song?”
We started the song thing a week ago, when Quinton asked me for some good ones to listen to. Instead of telling him, I turned some on for him. Every night since then, I’ve picked out a song and we’ve listened to it together before I hung up.
Honestly, I’m not really ready to stop talking, but if that’s what he needs then I’ll give it to him. So I get up from my bed and go over to my dresser to turn on my iPod. “Sounds good, but what kind of one do you want for tonight? Happy? Sad? Angsty?”
“How about a mellow, relaxing one?” he requests. “Because I think I need to chillax a little.”
“Hmm…” I consider my options, then scroll to one that I hope will relax him. “Okay, you ready?” I ask, with my finger hovering over the play button.
“Yep, hit me with your best shot.” He laughs at his own joke, since the other night I picked “Hit Me with Your Best Shot” by Pat Benatar.
“Hey, no recapping the previous night’s song choice.” I press play. Moments later, Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” comes on. I crank up the volume and stay near the speakers so he can hear it.
He’s quiet, absorbing the guitar solo until it gets to the lyrics, then he finally says, “Excellent choice, although I’ve heard it before.”
“Yeah, I figured, but is that a bad thing?”
“Nah. In fact, I like that I have. Usually you’re so music-superior over me, but now I feel like we’re equals.”
“That’s because I’ve taught you well, young grasshopper,” I joke, turning up the volume a notch.
“Did you seriously just quote Kung Fu?” He’s stunned.
“Yeah, so what? I’m cool like that.” I plop down on my bed on my back, bouncing a little before settling and returning my feet to the wall and tapping them to the beat of the music.
“You know what? You seriously might be the coolest person I’ve ever met, Nova Reed.”
“And vice versa, Quinton Carter.” I lean over and pick up my drumsticks from my nightstand. Then I start drumming them on my legs to the beat as we listen to the song together.
When it gets to the chorus, he tells me, “This song makes me think of you.”
I stop tapping the drumsticks and set them aside. “How so?”
“I don’t know… the lyrics just make me want to see you.”
I rotate to my side, trying not to grin. “That’s secretly why I picked it. So that you’d want me to come out there and see you.”
“I don’t think I’m ready for that.” He seems irritated with himself. “I’m sorry, Nova. I wish I was, but I’m afraid. Not just of how it’ll feel or if I’ll be able to handle it, but of what it’ll mean for us. And what we’ve got now is so great at the moment. I just don’t want to ruin that.”
It stings a little, but I let it go, because he’s only being honest. “That’s okay. We’ll see each other one day, right?”
“Yeah, one day.” But he doesn’t sound that committed, which seems somewhat strange. I mean, we’ve been spending all this time on the phone, and it felt like we were headed somewhere, but maybe this is how he plans on things being. Maybe he can only talk to me when there’s a few-hundred-mile barrier between us.
We don’t really say much after that and when the song’s over, we say good-bye and hang up. It’s about eleven o’clock, not extremely late, but at the same time, all I want to do is go to bed.