Chapter 8
Last New Year’s Eve
Things we want to remember; things we try to forget
There were a lot of things I’d pretended not to notice since last New Year’s Eve—the looks, the whispers, Adam’s subtle maneuvering to shelter me from the worst of the gawkers after I returned to school, others carefully shielding me from anything that might remind me of that night, including views of the scene of the crime.
That last day of December, as well as my belief that the worst thing that could ever happen to me was being degraded by my own father, both had ended for me on the Ratliffs’ patio.
But it had begun in Adam’s room. What had ended as one of the worst days of my life, had begun as one of the best.
Because Adam was home from his first trip to New York. A Christmas vacation with his family, and an excruciatingly long week for me, one that I thought would never end. But it did end.
“We’ll be in my room,” Adam called out to his mom and stepdad as he bounded up the stairs with his bags and me in tow.
“Keep the door open,” his mom called back from the kitchen.
He threw me a look over his shoulder that said, “The hell we will.”
When we got to his room, Adam tossed his stuff on the bed and kicked the door closed.
I raised my eyebrows and laughed.
A week hadn’t cooled our passion for each other one bit. Fortunately, no one came upstairs to check on that door thing. I wondered for a moment if maybe his mom and stepdad knew what they would find and opted for the ol’ head-in-the-sand method of parenting: What you didn’t see, didn’t happen.
Once we’d quenched the fire, somewhat, there were a million things to talk about. That tattoo that I had seen almost immediately on Adam’s side for one. I made him hold his arm up, and I raised his shirt again so I could get a good look. I traced my fingers across the graceful black letters inked into his sunburned-looking skin: Gnothi seauton. He shivered.
“It’s Greek,” he said, looking at me looking at him. “It means ‘Know yourself.’ It’s kind of a coming-out present to myself.”
“It’s awesome,” I said. I was completely fascinated by the artistry of the tattoo. His body made a beautiful canvas. I traced my fingers over each letter again. “Know yourself,” I said softly as I did.
“Okay, enough.” He laughed and pulled down his shirt. “Keep that up and I’m going to have to disobey Mommy Dearest again. Besides, I have a present for you.”
He slipped a small black box from his pocket and handed it to me. Inside were two tiny silver hoop earrings.
“Do you like them?”
I swallowed hard around the lump in my throat. “Yeah. They’re great.”
He reached up and removed the standard new-pierced-ears studs from my ears (my response to his do-something-crazy-while-I’m-gone suggestion) and deftly replaced them with the hoops. I watched his face as he did, ignoring the dull pain in my earlobes and feeling like my heart would burst. His eyes flicked to mine when the last hoop was in place.
“I missed you so much ... it scared me,” I said.
His face grew serious and he fingered one of the hoops in my ear. “We went to the World Trade Center site one day.” He kept his eyes focused on my ear. “I was standing at the edge of the memorial—really just a big hole in the ground—trying to imagine how it must have felt to lose someone you loved that day.” He bit his lip and shook his head, his eyes sliding back to mine. “I couldn’t bear losing you, Nate ... ever.”
I reached up and took his pendant in my hand—the yin, a white, comma-shaped figure, surrounding a black eye. The yang—black with a white eye, his Christmas gift to me—hung from a thin leather strap around my own neck. He’d given it to me, wrapped in snowman paper, before he’d boarded the plane a week ago, with instructions not to open it until Christmas. I opened it in the parking garage. I turned his pendant to look at the back: Nate. I looked into his eyes. “Why do you get to be the girl?”
He laughed so suddenly that he blew spit in my face. He wiped it off, then pulled the pendant from around his neck. “Here, you want to be the girl for a while?”
I smiled and pushed it back over his head. “Nah. I’m good.”
“Do you like it?”
I decided to take a chance. “It means we complete each other. Together we make a whole.”
He nodded.
“I googled it.”
“I thought you would. That’s how I feel about us, Nate.”
Tell him. But I couldn’t get the words out.
It was such a relief to be out. At school, we’d stayed on the down low. But Juliet’s New Year’s Eve party wasn’t school. It would be the first time we showed up somewhere as a couple and no one’s jaw hit the floor. I had never been happier or felt more whole in my entire life. There wasn’t anything more I wanted from the world at that moment, except maybe a few more minutes alone with him. But there’d be time for that.
By nine the party had ramped up and Juliet’s parents retired to their room to wait out the New Year. We kept everything indoors since the weather had finally turned cold. We’d put on our jackets later, after midnight, and shoot off some fireworks.
“Come on, lover boy,” Juliet said, cutting me from the crowd and hustling me to the kitchen. “You can help me with the margaritas.”
“Virgin?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said, then pulled a bottle of tequila from a brown bag in the cabinet and unscrewed the lid.
“Quite the little rebel, aren’t you?” I smacked her lightly on the ass.
She pinned me to the cabinet with her body and laughed. “No teasing the redhead tonight.”
“Pleasant ... but not my type.”
She sighed wistfully. Then she shook her head as if to clear it. “Come on, let’s rock these margaritas.”
“Are you trying to get me fired?”
“My dad loves you. It’s just a little tequila. Pace yourself and nobody will know.”
She showed me how to rub the rims of the plastic cups with fresh lime slices and then dip the cups in salt she’d poured into a little dish shaped like a donut sliced in half. I rimmed and she blended, and then I held the cups while she filled them. We loaded them on a tray. I took two and followed Juliet into the family room.
Adam was telling Mike all about New York. I slipped in behind him and handed him a drink over his shoulder. He took it and turned his head back for a kiss. Once my hand was free, I wrapped my arm around his waist and pressed close to his back. He reached around with his free arm and held me to him. He felt so good, so solid, so real, and so here. I held on to him and sipped my drink and soaked up the sound of his voice.
Eventually Juliet had passed out all the drinks and came to claim Mike. She gave me a wink as she dragged him off to dance with her.
“I still can’t believe you’re really here,” I said, once they’d gone.
“I’m really here.” He laced his fingers with mine. “Will you promise me something?”
“What?”
“Promise me when I take you home tonight, you’ll get your guitar and play me my song?”
I nodded, my heart swelling at the request. I had envisioned playing it for him in a room lit by only candles in a house occupied by