Where the Staircase Ends(42)

“I asked you to meet me tonight because I wanted to see you. But you’re always with Logan.” He shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

I made a face. I wanted to say, maybe if you had asked me out sooner I wouldn’t have had to date Logan, but instead I said, “What don’t you get?”

“Why you’re with someone like that.” After a few seconds of quiet he added, “You’re better than that, Taylor. You’re better than all of this, don’t you know that?”

“You keep saying that—” I started, but he held up his hand and frowned.

“You’re smart. And you’re nice. At least, you are when you’re not hanging around Sunny. I don’t know why you waste so much energy trying to pretend to be someone you’re not. It seems like the only time you ever act real is when you’re in class, away from your friends.” He paused and glanced up at the sky, searching for the right words. “Someday high school is going to end. And when you get out of here, you have a chance to actually be something. You can do anything you want, go anywhere you want, hell, you could probably be anything you wanted to be if you’d just stop trying so hard to hide it from people. The rest of them—Sunny, Logan—they will have peaked in high school. This is all there is for them, as good as it’s going to get. Can’t you see that? Can’t you see that you have a shot at being something more than all of this?”

I blinked at him, unsure what to say or how to respond. More how? More of what? I must have looked confused, because he kept talking, and at some point while he spoke he put his hand on my cheek. It was warm and wonderful, and I could no longer hear the words coming out of his mouth because the feeling of his skin against mine was so loud it drowned out everything else.

Then just like that, I had this crazy thought. I didn’t know where the idea came from, but it struck me with so much certainty that I had to say it out loud.

“Maybe it’s like the Emily Dickinson poem,” I said, feeling the weight of his fingers as they traced the length of my jaw. “You know, the one I had to read in class about the interposing fly? Maybe Sunny is my fly, interposing and distracting me from whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing with my life. Or maybe we’re all each other’s flies. Maybe we’re all a bunch of big, buzzing distractions.”


I felt stupid after I said it. It was the kind of thing I’d never have said around Sunny. She would have laughed me right off the roof. But Justin looked right at me and smiled, like he totally got it.

He reached out and tucked a wandering strand of hair behind my ear, and I noticed for the first time that his eyes had tiny flecks of green mixed in with the blue. They were an ocean, blue and green and unending. I wanted to dive into those eyes. I wanted to swim around forever and never surface.

I didn’t know if I leaned into him or he leaned into me, but suddenly his mouth pressed against mine, and it felt even more warm and wonderful than his hand on my cheek. Something bloomed inside my stomach, heat and nervousness and excitement all at the same time. It was so much better than any kiss I’d ever had before. He kissed me slowly, softly, like it was enough. As if kissing me would always be enough. Not like Logan who made it seem like kissing was a means to an end.

He broke away from me when we heard the crash from inside the bedroom.

“What was that?” I asked, my eyelids fluttering open. He shrugged and climbed over me toward the window.

“Don’t go anywhere,” he said, smiling at me before climbing into the house to see what the noise was. He came back a moment later, putting one leg through the window followed by the other on his way back outside.

“No big deal.” He explained. “Some drunken idiot knocked over a lamp. Probably thought the room was empty until they heard us and broke it on the way out.” He gave me one of his sly, half-grins. “Where were we?”

He tugged me back down on the roof, sliding his arm around me as he pulled me toward him. My head fit perfectly into the curve of his shoulder, as if we were made to fit together. I looked up at the sky and smiled, the warmth of his arms around me making me happier than I’d felt in a long time. I didn’t want the night to end.

When we finally went downstairs, the party had thinned out. The remaining revelers were trying to determine who was the least drunk and most able to drive. Justin gave me a long and lingering hug, then whispered, “I’ll call you tomorrow,” before heading out to catch a ride with Greg Younger. I thought I might float right up into the sky and join the stars.

The pool was empty when I went outside, except for a few beer cans floating in the water like buoys. I found Jenny passed out on one of the green-and-white striped lounge chairs surrounding the pool, her clothes haphazardly tossed over her and a tiny dribble of drool trailing down her chin.

“Jenny,” I said, shaking her. “Jenny, are you awake? Where’s Sunny?” She didn’t even flinch. It was like she’d been hit over the head and knocked unconscious.

Someone opened the door that lead out to the patio, and I turned to see Amber standing in the doorway with a slice of pizza in her hand.

“Sunny went inside a while ago?” she said in her familiar question-asking way as she stumbled toward me. “She was with a boy?” She looked around to make sure no one was listening and added in a whisper, “Someone said they heard noises coming from her bedroom?”