Nine
Mina
I could have Googled it. I knew that. I could have Googled Holden, his brother, his family. I could have creeped his Facebook—if he was even on Facebook—or whatever other social media he had. I could have asked my parents or my Facebook friends from high school what they knew about Holden Whittaker. If I dug hard enough, I could find out a lot about him.
But the truth was, I could have done all of that any time in the last ten years, not just in the time since I saw Holden again. I could have made it my goal to find the truth about why I was stood up, but I hadn’t. I chose not to. It was an old wound that still hurt, and I hadn’t wanted to rip it open again. I’d just wanted to forget it and move on.
“I’m dying to know,” Tess said to me as we rode the train into Manhattan that Saturday morning. “I mean, come on. I’m going to stalk him myself and find the answers.”
I leaned into the curve as the train screeched down the tracks. “You can do that if you want, but don’t tell me what you find. I’ve decided I’m going to let him tell me.”
“But why?” she asked, shifting her bag higher on her shoulder. “That way, you have to wait, like, however long until he has time to see you again.”
“Because I want to hear it from him,” I said. “That seems right, somehow. And the way he told the story, even just the beginning…” I bit my lip. “I have the feeling it’s something kind of serious. It isn’t just I changed my mind, sorry, or I guess I wasn’t that into you. I think something happened. I just don’t know what. And I think it’s important I hear it from him.”
Tess looked at me, her hand gripping the rail. She was wearing her usual uniform—jeans, a tee, Skechers, her hair in a ponytail. I’d met her sister and her sister’s husband, my neighbors, and I’d gotten permission to take Tess for an outing today. The sister and brother-in-law were nice people, but both of them were workaholics and they looked exhaustedly relieved to have me take Tess off their hands for a day. I wanted Tess to spend time with someone who really wanted to be with her. That someone was me.
“Okay, I get it, I think,” Tess said. “Besides, I think you like him.”
I blew out a breath. Like was a complicated word when it came to Holden and me. I’d liked him in high school—a lot. Too much, as it turned out, and I’d gotten hurt. Then I’d spent ten years not liking him. Now I had seen him again and I not only liked him, I suspected that the not-liking of the past decade was possibly a lie I’d told myself. And at the same time, part of me wanted him to get back in that elevator so I could slam the door shut on him all over again.
It had just been so damned satisfying.
“Come on, admit it,” Tess said.
“Okay, I like him,” I said. “Somewhat. With grave qualifications. The liking will probably pass and I’ll stop liking him again.” Liar, liar. Holden was hot and gorgeous and he saved freaking lives for a living. Still, I didn’t want to teach Tess that crushing on a guy was the path to happiness, because I knew for a fact that it wasn’t.
“I knew it,” Tess said. “You totally like him. As in, you naked like him.”
I snapped to attention. “What? You’re fourteen. What do you know about it?”
Tess rolled her eyes in a way that was supposed to annoy me but always amused me instead. “Yes, I’m fourteen, but it isn’t the fifteen hundreds or whatever, when you grew up. I have the internet and almost no adult supervision.”
I was horrified. “Do not go on the internet,” I said, so loudly that a few New Yorkers gave me an irritated look.
“Too late. I’m fourteen.”
“Oh, my God. Then don’t look up—”
“Too late. I probably looked it up already.”
I shook my head. “How do parents even cope?” I racked my brain. “Okay. Um. Whatever you’re feeling is normal and completely natural, and you’re perfect the way you are. Everything will be fine. Also, if anyone so much as touches you, mace the hell out of them.”
Tess blinked. “Are you actually trying to give me sex advice while we’re on the subway, Mina? For real?”
“I have to do something,” I said. “You’re already talking about naked liking. You shouldn’t naked like anyone for a long, long time.”
“I know,” she said, as if that were obvious, as if I shouldn’t be freaking out about a fourteen-year-old being naked anything. “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you, and the fact that you naked like this Holden guy.”
“I do not.” Okay, I sounded like a middle schooler myself. I couldn’t help it.
“You do too.” She pointed to my face. “You get a little gooey when you talk about him. I think if he asked you, you’d definitely get naked. That’s naked liking.”
“Let’s talk about something wholesome.” Thinking about Holden Whittaker naked was not wholesome, and it was making me flush hot in parts of my body I hadn’t thought about in months. I bet he had a dark trail of hair on his flat stomach. Maybe he even had a six-pack. And that butt… I forced my thoughts back into the present situation. I gestured to the bag on my shoulder and the bag on Tess’s. “Let’s talk about dance class.”
Tess’s expression shut down, and she looked unsure. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this. If I wasn’t so desperate to get out of my sister’s place, there’s no way I would have said yes.”
“It’ll be fun, I promise. And it isn’t really a class. It’s more of an instruction with a lot of room to do your own thing.”
She actually looked a little panicked, and all of her attitude had temporarily evaporated. “I’m going to suck anyway. I’ve never been to dance class before. I don’t even have the right clothes.”
Yeah, I remembered fourteen really well, especially that feeling that looking stupid would be worse than death. “You’ll be fine,” I assured her. “It’s really laid back, I promise. We’ll stay at the back of the class. You don’t have to memorize any steps or anything. Just try a few things and have a little fun. No one in this class is a pro.”
“You are,” Tess said.
“I’ve done some serious lessons, yes.” When I could afford them, which wasn’t all the time. “But this Saturday class is my fun class. It’s the one I go to when I just want to move and try things without a lot of pressure. I’m not actually a pro dancer, though I’m a better dancer than I am a singer. But if you want to be on Broadway, you have to be able to sing and dance at the same time.”
Tess relaxed a little, listening to me. “That is so cool, going for Broadway. Like, just doing it.”
I laughed. “I haven’t done it yet.”
“But you’re trying. At least you’re trying something instead of sitting around, complaining that nothing happens.”
I smiled at her, but I looked away. The truth was, I was speeding toward thirty, and nothing in my career really had happened. The theater business was all about optimism, and that optimism was harder and harder to find the older I got.