“I’ll just bet you do.”
He laughed. “No. I mean … You look so different.” He touched his nose at the position of my nose stud. “Tell me what happened to you.”
A wave of longing washed over me. I’d wanted to tell A llison in the car. I wanted to tell Drew. But I couldn’t. “I can’t.”
“You can. I was about thirty seconds from breaking down in Mr. Rush’s office. You know all of my secrets. A nd you managed to get out of there without telling us any of yours. Tell me what happened to you.”
“I can’t, Drew.”
His warm hand moved up my neck to finger the hair at my nape. “Tell me,” he said.
“My dad cheated on my mom.”
His hand stopped on my neck.
I was stunned too that I’d said it.
“Your dad, Dr. Sauter?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Cheated on your mom, who made me breakfast?”
“More than two years ago.”
A llison’s laughter rang out. Over at the SUV Luther tapped on her hair helmet like he didn’t believe real hair could be formed into that shape.
“You see why I can’t tell anybody?” I asked. “My parents swore me to secrecy. It would ruin my dad’s practice if anyone knew. Women would feel threatened. They want to imagine that their ob-gyn doesn’t have sex. I can’t even tell A llison. Especially not A llison, because our dads are partners.”
His hand moved down my neck to my back and rubbed soothingly. It wasn’t about lust anymore. It was about comfort. A friend comforting a friend.
I went on, “My mom did everything she was supposed to do to be attractive to a man. She was Miss State of A labama 1982. She gave up her own education to help my dad get his education and a career. A nd in return, he cheated on her. A nd you … I don’t know.”
“I what?”
I was embarrassed to say it. I was afraid he wouldn’t understand. But in the spirit of family counseling, I gave it a shot. “A t the time, I sort of had a crush on you.”
I cringed, waiting for him to laugh.
He didn’t. His hand stopped on my back for a second, and then he started rubbing again.
I started again. “I mean, I was in ninth grade. Your brother was drum major. You were in the big bad tenth grade. You started the
‘Ooooooh, aaaaaah,’ which I thought was pretty funny. I didn’t really think you’d ask me out. But let’s just say I put on my eyeliner in the morning with you in mind. A nd then you made that JonBenét comment. You made fun of me.”
He said softly, “I didn’t mean—”
“I know you didn’t. A nd I know it had nothing to do with my parents. It was bad timing. The thing with my parents had just happened, and I made the connection. Why should I try to be what boys want when they make fun of me for trying? So I gave up and did what I wanted.”
“Drums,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Nose stud.” He touched the tip of my nose.
“Yes,” I said.
He tapped my foot with his foot. “No shoes.”
I wiggled my bare toes. “A nd I didn’t want to be a majorette like A llison. I wanted to be drum major, like your brother. I didn’t want to be the girl who glittered and danced in front of the band. I wanted to be the girl in charge of the band. Glittering will only get you so far.”
I turned to face Drew because I wanted him to understand where I was coming from. “I was glad my parents stayed together. I was also so proud of Mom for nearly kicking Dad out. I didn’t know she was that strong. But if she had kicked him out, what would she have done? She didn’t finish college. She hasn’t held a job in probably a quarter of a century.”
“It’s not like she’d be out on the street if she divorced your dad,” Drew said. “She’d come away with something.”
“A little Botox fund.” I nodded. “But that’s not much of a life.”
“Some people would think that was a great life,” Drew pointed out. “Just not you.”
I shook my head. “Not me.”
“You know,” Drew said, “from the little I’ve seen, your mother’s gotten over it.”
I thought of my parents holding hands in the football stadium. “She has.”
“So why aren’t you over it?”
I sighed. “I don’t know.”
“I think I know.” He slid one warm hand over my hands gripped together in my lap.
I stared down, not quite comprehending that his hand was on my hands. Very slowly a tingle crawled from my hands up my arms and shoulders and neck to my face, like sap rising in a tree in spring.
“I know how you feel,” he said.
The tingle? No, parents. We were talking about parents. “You’re kidding,” I said. “Your dad cheated on your mom?”
“I have the opposite problem. My dad can’t keep off my mom.”
We laughed.
“No,” he said, leaning forward so our foreheads almost touched. “I mean, I know that feeling. You argue with them, and you don’t want to do what they tell you. But somewhere in the back of your mind you’re thinking all along that they’re perfect and they know best. You feel like you can be a kid and get in trouble, and in the end it will be okay because they’ve got your back.” He picked up my hand and squeezed it.
“A nd then they let you down.”
“That’s it,” I said. “That’s exactly it.”
I stared at our hands. We were holding hands. I was holding hands in the back of a car with Drew Morrow.
A nd I was wearing a watch.
I jerked my hand away from Drew’s and looked at the time. “Oh, God.” I opened the door, stood up, and called over the roof of the car to A llison, “Hey, Cinderella. It’s almost midnight.”
A llison squealed. She directed Luther, Barry, and Craig as they hefted the trophy back into the SUV.
Drew frowned up at me from inside Luther’s car. “I wanted to talk some more.”
“We have curfew,” I said. I closed the door, rounded the car, and hopped into the SUV before he could even get out of the backseat.
In the rearview mirror I could see him watching us go. It probably wouldn’t make sense to him, but suddenly I’d been very uncomfortable sitting so close to him in the back of the car. I’d said too much. Even to the crush of a lifetime.
By late Sunday afternoon the uncomfortable feeling had disappeared completely, and I needed a Drew fix. A fter he’d held my hand in Luther’s car and come so close to kissing me—hadn’t he?—I expected him to call or come over. He didn’t.