Open Road Summer(10)

After half an hour of mindlessly pacing the suite, I knock on our door. Dee’s lying facedown on the bed, blond hair splayed out on a pile of hotel pillows. I sit down beside her, and she rolls over to look at me. Her face is a smeary mess of mascara. I reach for a tissue, and I wet it with the bottled water on the nightstand.

Dee sits up and leans forward, tilting her chin toward me. I swipe the tissue across her cheeks, clearing the charcoal trails of makeup. I know how to do this—how to take care of someone—only because of Dee. If I had a tissue for every time she’s cleaned me up, I’d have enough to suffocate the person who sold that picture to the media.

“What can I do?” I ask. I almost never see her without mascara anymore, and I’d almost forgotten how her golden eyelashes disappear against her pale skin. I toss the tissue into the trash can, and it lands with a soggy thwack.

“Just sit with me.” She scoots over to make room for me. “I have to do something.”

So I climb onto the bed next to her, with our legs stretched out on the white comforter in front of us. Dee cradles her personal phone in her hands.

“I talked to my mom,” she says. “My brothers don’t know yet. She said not to worry about it; she’ll explain, but . . .”

She trails off, and I glance over to see fresh tears forming.

“But . . . ,” Her voice breaks. “Apparently the reporters found Jimmy’s house.”

I wince as I imagine Mrs. Collier, Jimmy’s mom, asking hordes of reporters to leave. Jimmy closing the blinds in his bedroom, leaving through the garage, becoming the subject of attention he never wanted.

“It’s exactly what he was worried about.” Dee covers her face with her hands. “I feel so terrible. His family . . . I can’t even . . .”

“Hey,” I say. “Look at me.”

She peeks out at me from between her fingers.

“This is not your fault—do you understand?”

Dee buries her head again and moans, “What will my fans think of me?”

“Hey.” I clear her arms from her face. “They know who you are.”

She bites her lip. “I hope so. Okay.”

“Okay.”

Dee lifts up her cell phone and taps her finger against the screen. For the first time in ten months, she finds Jimmy’s number and types a message: I am so, so sorry about this.

After she clicks the Send button, I wrap my arm around her. I know how hard it is for her, composing such a short message. Dee has so much more to say to Jimmy. In fact, she has six songs on her new album full of things she has to say to Jimmy. It only takes a moment for the phone to beep with a return message: It’s not your fault, Dee. Don’t worry. It’ll blow over.

We both look at the text for a moment. Dee blinks rapidly, like she’s surprised that, after all this time, he’s still a few clicks away. There’s an invisible barrier between them, and it follows Dee no matter where she travels. Dee and Jimmy’s history is as wide as a river, and they can’t simply skip across it to get to each other. It’s too treacherous, too easy to get caught up in, too huge. Jimmy feels the same impassable distance. I see it all over his face at school, where we’re so careful not to mention her directly.

But here they are, crossing a rift that has been mutually imagined this whole time. A pained look crosses Dee’s face, and she tosses her phone off the bed—maybe out of frustration, maybe as an attempt to keep herself from telling him how she feels. Instead, she tells me.

“I miss him.” She sighs, leaning into my shoulder. “So much.”

“I know,” I tell her. “I know.”

Maybe it would be easier if Dee hated Jimmy, but even I can’t hold the breakup against him. Dating Lilah Montgomery meant fame and bragging rights—and Jimmy wanted none of it. He only wanted Dee and a simple life in our small town. Jimmy plans to attend college and then move back home to be a veterinarian like his dad. He can’t drop his goals to follow Dee around any more than she can drop her career to go to college with him. And without dropping her career, Dee’s life will never be simple. Their dreams are too different. That’s why he cut her loose after four years together, right as her career hit its stride. I’m so happy for you, he told her. I can’t hold you back. I have to let you go. In his mind, he was freeing her.

Dee told me that he wiped at his eyes as he said those words. She flung herself onto him, crying into his lap. He wouldn’t change his mind.

She glances over at me, eyes bloodshot. “Do you think he still thinks about me?”

“You don’t have to ask that. You know he does.”

When we were younger, hardly anyone noticed Dee. She was shy, a quiet shadow to my loudmouthed troublemaker. Dee was also sort of stout, with braces and frizzy hair. She’s always been beautiful, though not everyone saw it then.

But Jimmy Collier did. In sixth grade, he sat next to her in math. Jimmy was always nice but quiet, like Dee. Girls were starting to notice him since he’d grown almost six inches in as many months. He could only see Dee. He slid her silly notes and drawings during class, and she giggled into her hand.

One afternoon, they got sent out to the hallway for laughing in class. I gawked from my desk as they scampered out the door. Dee had never even gotten a warning look from a teacher before. While they sat on the tile floors of the middle school hallway, Jimmy asked her to go over to his house for dinner with him and his parents.