My Last Innocent Year(49)

Connelly was still on the phone. I moved my legs farther up the wall, letting my dress fall down around my waist, revealing the edge of my underwear. I could feel him watching me, heard him trying to get off the phone. As exciting as it was to imagine staying near him all summer, it was also scary to think about being here alone, without the structure of school or my friends, with no one to rely on but him. I worried that what we had wasn’t real and if we pushed it too far, we might see how easily it broke. But still, I wanted him to say he wanted me to stay, that he needed me to stay. In the meantime, I’d have the interview, talk to Kelsey about apartments, appease Abe.

Connelly hung up the phone as something scurried across the floor.

“What was that?” I said, pulling down my dress.

“Goddamned mouse.” Connelly leaned down and checked under the sofa. “See. There’s a hole under there. I’ve been trying to catch that fucker all winter.” He wrapped his arms around my waist. “I’ve got to get you away from this shitty office.”

“Where?” I asked, thinking of his cabin.

“I don’t know. Anywhere.” He kissed my knees, one at a time. “Don’t take that stupid job. Stay here with me. We’ll have fun.”

My heart swelled: he wanted me to stay. But still I pushed. “What about what you said on the first day of class? How working at the Citizen was the best job you ever had?”

“I said that?”

“Yes. You said people value art for art’s sake but real life happens all around us. School board meetings and droughts and all that. You don’t remember?”

“I must have been having a good day. Listen, I just think you start down that path and … Even the tiniest decision has consequences, Isabel. Look at your mother. She walked into a deli one day and never left.”

I must have looked as hurt as I felt. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Yeah. You shouldn’t have.”

He reached for my hand and kissed it. “All I mean is, it’s hard to get back on track. And every step you take in that direction, in the Get Out! direction, is one step further away from what you’re meant to be doing. And this,” he picked up a copy of the new story I was working on. “This is what you’re meant to be doing.”

“You like it?”

“I love it,” he said, and I forgave him everything. For the past few weeks, I’d been working on a story about a store a little like Rosen’s and a family a lot like mine. Connelly had read about fifteen pages, but I had close to fifty. I’d thought it was good, hoped it was, but hadn’t been sure until now.

“I just don’t know how you get from here to there,” I said as he thumbed through the pages. “Sure, it all worked out for you. You became a writer. You didn’t need a plan B.”

“Neither will you.”

“But how do you know that? How can you be sure?”

“Because I’m sure.” He tossed the story aside and slid his hands under my dress. I ran my fingers through his hair, pulled his mouth toward mine.

There was a knock on the door. “Randy? Are you in there?” Without waiting for an answer, Tom Fisher walked in. I jumped off the sofa, but Connelly waved for me to relax.

“Tom,” Connelly said, buttoning the cuff of his shirt. “Everything okay?”

I saw Tom take in the scene: Connelly, the sofa, my bare legs, mussed hair. Tom looked bad. His clothes were rumpled, his hair greasy; there were broken blood vessels on his cheeks. The cut on his hand was healing, but there was an angry red line running up the side of his wrist. He picked at it nervously as I stepped into my sneakers and reached for my bag.

“Randy, man,” Tom said. “I really need to talk to you.”

Connelly nodded at me. “Sure thing, buddy. Isabel was just leaving.”



* * *



THE KNOTTY PINE was the only real bar on Wilder’s Main Street. There were other places in town to get drinks—a glass of wine at the pizza parlor or a gin and tonic at the Wilder Inn when someone’s parents were in town—but the Knotty Pine was where you went when you wanted to get shit-faced. It was tradition to go to the Pine on your twenty-first birthday and let people at the bar buy you shots of J?germeister until you stumbled into the bathroom, past the condom machine and cologne dispenser, and puked your guts out. At least, that’s what I’d done. Debra hated the Pine, never went. She said it reminded her of the bar in The Accused.

I could feel the townies staring at us as Kelsey and I pushed our way toward the back of the bar; that Wilder students found the Pine amusingly ironic was no doubt irritating. Jason was already there, sitting at a long table with a bunch of his Gamma Nu brothers, including Bo. The Pine was always crowded on Saturday nights, but it was especially crowded tonight because Rice Krispy Treat, a popular student band, was playing. The lead singer, Tabitha something, had a paisley scarf tied around her head and was wearing tall leather boots; she looked like Stevie Nicks if Stevie Nicks was from New Canaan. Tabitha was dating Doug Biaggio, a Gamma Nu brother who sang with Bo in the Tunemen; he was known around campus for his winning rendition of “Jessie’s Girl.” Later that summer, he’d fall off a balcony at a party in the Hamptons and become the first of our classmates to die.