Page 19 of Gone Tonight
Beer alone isn’t going to do it for me tonight. I put down my bottle and walk over to my dresser and pull out the top drawer. The bottle of Xanax with its bitter white pills is lodged in the back. I swallow one, grimacing at the aftertaste.
It will take a little while for the Xanax to relax my muscles enough for sleep to be a possibility.
I return to bed and pull out the green notebook I tucked into my big shoulder bag when I left Sam’s. I awakened my muscle memory by performing my old Poms routine, and now my mind is whirling with images from that long-ago time, too. I’m gripped by the need to continue writing my story for Catherine.
Someday, it could save her life.
That night at Pizza Piazzo, James seemed to figure out what was going on with Brittany before I even sat down.
Outsiders are like that. We size up situations quickly because we need to gauge if and when people might turn against us. And we can always recognize each other as allies.
A lot of the guys at my school had this bravado that seemed fake.They roughhoused and called each other slurs I won’t repeat here and swaggered down the hallway while everyone else skittered out of their way. The athletes were the worst, probably because they were treated like gods. They got their lockers decorated by underclassmen before every game, and the theme song from Rocky blasted over the school loudspeaker when they ran onto the field.
James wasn’t like any of them. He wasn’t like any guy of my generation I’d ever met.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly how he was different, but the closest I can come is to say he wasn’t a boy, or even a guy. He was a man.
The first thing I ever said to him was that I would kill for a glass of water.
He laughed and brought me one so quickly that I was still standing behind the chair Brittany had piled her things atop, trying to get her to acknowledge me.
James handed me the water. Our fingers just missed touching as I took it, but it was a close enough call that I felt a delicious swoop low in my belly. He’d put a thin round slice of lemon in it, and just enough ice to make it cold but not so much that there wasn’t enough room for a good serving of water. I watched him over the top of the glass while I drained it.
He looked at the chair, then at me, then at Brittany, who was in the middle of a dramatic reenactment of a curling-iron mishap.
James tapped her on the shoulder. She lifted her index finger without glancing at him and continued talking.
James didn’t miss a beat. He told her he was just going to move her things, then he scooped up her purse and backpack and put them on a chair at the neighboring table.
That got Brittany’s attention. She asked in a loud, huffy voice if he could stop touching her stuff.
James acted like he didn’t hear her, which was pretty funny considering that’s exactly what Brittany was doing to me. He pulled the chair closer to her, the bottom of its legs making a grating sound against the floor, and told her she could keep an eye on her things and now there was room for everyone in our group to sit down.
Mrs. Davis must’ve been watching it all because she stood up at the head of the table, her eyes blazing. She snapped at James, saying she wanted to speak to the manager.
I finished my water and slid into the now-empty chair, wishing James hadn’t tried to help me.
He walked around to stand face-to-face with Mrs. Davis. He wasn’t that much taller than she in her three-inch heels. He flashed a sweet smile, one I would grow to love.
She didn’t scare him one little bit, I realized.
I almost lifted my arms and cheered when James told her that he was filling in for the manager, and he’d be happy to hear her complaint.
It took James only a couple of minutes to calm Mrs. Davis down. The free glass of Chardonnay he delivered helped.
The restaurant must have been short-staffed because James was constantly in and out of the dining room, delivering checks and bringing extra napkins when a kid knocked over his soda and refilling water glasses.
He topped mine off twice, without my asking.
Our food arrived right after I did. The restaurant served lasagna pizza, which is how I got the idea to make it for you. I pretended to invent it for reasons you’ll understand soon.
I kept my head down and ate while I counted my blessings: I’d made it onto the squad. My dad was home, and he would protect Timmy for the rest of the night. One of the girls who came up from JV—Rosie, the one with glasses who’d pointed out Coach had only called eleven names—might become a friend, or at least someone to talk to during practice. The only thing I knew about Rosie was that her father had died of a heart attack when she was young, and her older sister had dropped out of school last year and almost overdosed. Her home life couldn’t be easy either.
I couldn’t tune out the barbs Brittany threw my way, but I didn’t give her the satisfaction of a reaction. I was pretty sure even James, who was clearing off a table nearby, heard her cackle that she didn’t need a second piece because she wasn’t a piggy—just as I reached for a third one.
James didn’t react either. Not in that moment, anyway.
Coach Franklin stood up and crumpled his greasy, orange-stainednapkin, tossing it onto his plate. He had broad shoulders and shaggy brown hair, and some girls thought he was cute, but I felt like he tried too hard to be hip with his faded Bruce Springsteen T-shirts and the Eric Clapton autographed guitar he kept in a glass case on his office wall.
