Just Listen(34)

I stepped back, shutting the door, and just stood there in the hallway. Will Cash was one of the Perkins Day guys. He played guitar in the band and was a senior that year. While he was cute—very cute, the kind of guy you couldn't help but notice—he also had a reputation for being sort of a jerk, as well as a serial dater, at least in the short term. He was always with one girl or another, but never for long. Sophie, for her part, preferred jocks and clean-cut types and hated anyone even slightly alternative. Clearly, though, she was making an exception. At least for the time being.

That night, I tried to call her several times, but she never answered. The next day, around noon, when she finally called me, she didn't even mention Emily or what had happened between us. All she wanted to talk about was Will Cash.

"He's amazing," she told me. She'd given me the barest of details before announcing she was coming over, as if this subject was too big for a simple phone discussion. Now, she was sitting on my bed, flipping through an old Vogue . "He knows everybody, he's this amazing guitar player, and he's so freaking smart. Not to mention sexy. I could have kissed him all night long."

"You looked happy," I said.

"I was. I am ," she said, turning a page and leaning in to examine a shoe ad. "He is just what I need right now."

"So," I said, keeping Will's hit-and-run reputation in mind, "you're gonna see him again?"

"Of course," she said, like this was a stupid question. "Tonight. The band's playing at Bendo."

"Bendo?"

She sighed, reaching up to pull her hair back behind her neck with one hand. "It's a club, over on Finley?" she said. "Come on, Annabel, you have to have heard of Bendo ."

"Oh," I said, although I hadn't. "Yeah."

"They go on at ten," she said, flipping another page. "You can come, if you want."

She wasn't looking at me as she asked this, and her voice was flat, no intonation. "No," I said. "I can't. I have to be up early tomorrow."

"Suit yourself," she said.

So that night, I sat at home, and Sophie went to Bendo to see the band, after which, I heard later, she went back to the A-Frame and slept with Will. Despite all her bragging and talk, he was her first, and from then on, he was all she cared about.

For me, though, it was difficult to see the appeal. While Sophie claimed that Will was sweet and funny and hot and smart (as well as a million other adjectives) none of these things really came to mind whenever I found myself face-to-face with him. Will was good-looking and incredibly popular. But he was also hard to read, the kind of guy who is just attractive enough that a warm personality is almost required to make him approachable. Will didn't have that. Instead, he came off as standoffish, as well as eerily intense, and whenever I found myself having to make conversation with him—in the car, when Sophie ran in to pay for gas, or at parties, when we both were looking for her—I felt nervous, entirely too aware of how he stared at me or let long silences fall between us.

Even worse, it was like he knew he unsettled me, almost as if he liked it. Usually I attempted to make up for my uneasiness by talking too much or too loudly, or both. And when I did, Will would just keep his eyes level, no expression on his face, as I floundered on endlessly before finally sputtering to a stop. I was sure he thought I was stupid. I sounded stupid, like a little girl trying too hard to impress. At any rate, I did my best to avoid him, although it wasn't always possible.

Other girls, though, didn't seem to have this problem, and because of it, dating Will turned out to be a full-time job, even for a girl as hardworking as Sophie. From the very start, there were rumors, and it seemed like everywhere they went Will knew someone, usually female. Add in the fact that they went to different schools, which made the stories we heard second-or thirdhand of his wandering eye and—if the constant rumors were to be believed—hands that much harder to confirm. Plus there was the being-in-a-band factor. Plainly put, Sophie had her work cut out for her, and their relationship quickly became defined by a recognizable cycle: Will interacts in any way with some girl, rumors abound, Sophie goes after said girl, then after Will, they argue, break up, get back together. And on and on.

"I just don't understand why you put up with this," I said to her late one night as we drove too fast through a strange neighborhood, yet again looking for the house of some girl she'd heard had been flirting with Will at a party.

"Of course you don't," she snapped, running a stop sign as we took a sharp right. "You've never been in love, Annabel."

I said nothing to this, because it was true. I'd dated a few guys but had never had anyone serious.

Although, if this was love, I thought, as we screeched around another curve, Sophie leaning across me to scan house numbers, her face flushed, I had to wonder if that was really such a bad thing.

"Will could have any girl he wanted," she said, slowing down a bit as we approached a row of houses on the left. "But he chose me. He's with me. And I will be damned if I let some bitch decide she's going to change that."

"They were just talking, though," I said. "Right? I mean, that doesn't mean anything, necessarily."

"Just talking, alone, at a party, in a room with no one else, is not just talking," she snapped. "If you know a guy has a girlfriend—especially if that girlfriend is me—there's absolutely no reason you should be doing anything with him that could be taken the wrong way. It's a choice, Annabel. And if you make the wrong one, you have only yourself to blame when there are consequences."