Learning to Fall (16 page)

“This is why I stopped coming to these things.” He shook his head. “I always end up running into someone I know, and they always tell me how sorry they are that he died. It’s been fourteen fucking months,” he said softly, more to himself than to me as he stared at a point over my right shoulder, “and they still act like it happened yesterday.”

I may not have been very good at asking questions or flirting or having a normal conversation without blurting out random useless facts, but I
was
good at knowing when to be quiet. Hugging an arm against my chest, I waited for Daniel to continue. With a heavy sigh, he did.

“His name was Derek. He was only two years younger than me, but we couldn’t have been more different. Growing up, I was always the outspoken one. I made friends easily. I played sports. But Derek…he was always quiet. He liked to be alone.” Daniel’s gaze shifted back to mine. The naked pain in his eyes wrenched at my heart, but I didn’t speak. Not yet. Not when there was still more Daniel needed to say.

“He could stay in his room for hours at a time. Sometimes days. He was diagnosed with clinical teen depression when he turned fourteen. Our mom sent him to a therapist and it helped for a little while, until it didn’t. Pretty soon he didn’t want to go to school. Didn’t want to go outside. Didn’t want to get off his computer. Some nights it was a fight to even get him downstairs for dinner. I asked him why he couldn’t just shake it off and be happy. Why he couldn’t be normal.”

Hearing the self-disgust in Daniel’s voice, seeing it in his face, I gently touched his arm, fingers encircling his broad wrist. It was the first time I’d ever initiated physical contact between us. “You were still a child yourself. You didn’t know the extent of what he was going through. You couldn’t have possibly understood.”

Daniel’s jaw clenched as he looked at the ground. “He told me once what it was like to be depressed. He said every morning he woke up it felt like he was trapped under five feet of dark, heavy sand. He said it took all the energy he had to dig his way to the surface and by the time he got there, by the time he could finally feel the sun on his face, the day was over and he had to start all over again. Can you imagine what that must have been like?” Fierce grey eyes met mine. “What he must have felt?”

“No,” I said simply. “I can’t.”

It was the truth. Despite all of my anxiety and compulsive eccentricities, I had never felt helpless. I’d never been hopeless. I’d never felt what Daniel’s brother felt, and for that I was selfishly grateful. I may have had my problems, but they were problems I could control. They were problems I could deal with. They were problems I could fix.

Depression was none of those things.

“I thought Derek was getting better when I graduated high school.” Again Daniel’s gaze went over my shoulder, and I knew even though he was talking to me in the present his mind was filled with the past. “He started going out more. He made a few friends. He even had a crush on a girl. Suzanne.” For an instant, his mouth hovered in a ghost of a smile. “I told him she was way out of his league, but he was persistent, and wouldn’t you know he got her to go out with him a few times.

“When I got a full scholarship to Ohio State for football, I didn’t want to go, but Derek told me he was fine. He told me he was fine,” Daniel repeated, “and in the first semester of my junior year he committed suicide.”

“Oh.” I couldn’t control the gasp that escaped between my lips. Now his reaction to Whitney when she’d asked him about college made sense. As tears born of distress for a boy I’d never known and sympathy for a boy I did welled in my eyes, I took a step back, my hand sliding off Daniel’s wrist to clasp around my stomach. “I’m so very sorry.”

His mouth twisted in a humorless smile before he brought his arms around my back and pulled me against his chest, chin fitting perfectly on the top of my head. For once, I didn’t resist or think twice about what it meant to be held by Daniel. I just closed my eyes, pressed the side of my face into his jacket, and breathed in deep.

“I’m the one who should be sorry,” he said, his voice a faint rumble. “This was supposed to be a fun date, but death and depression isn’t exactly light conversation.”

“I’m glad you told me about your brother,” I said without opening my eyes.

“You’re not just saying that because I bought you ice cream, are you?”

“No.”

His chest rose and fell beneath my cheek as he exhaled. “I should get you home. I don’t want you to turn into a pumpkin.”

I lifted my head. “Cinderella doesn’t turn into a pumpkin. Charles Perrault-”

“Yeah, yeah.” This time Daniel’s grin was wide and genuine when he spun me around and hooked his arm over my shoulders, keeping me close to his side as we navigated our way through the maze of picnic tables. “I know, little fox. I know.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Halloween

“We should have a Halloween party.” The bottom of my mattress sank down as Whitney threw herself on the end of my bed. “But I can’t decide if I want to be a sexy nurse or a sexy pirate. What do you think?”

“I think…what time is it?” Blinking groggily, I dragged my covers with me as I rolled onto my side and looked at the tiny silver clock I kept in the middle of my bedside table. “Whitney, it’s six thirty in the morning.”

Usually I wouldn’t have minded waking up so early - during the week my alarm clock went off at precisely 5:45AM - but last night Daniel and I had gone to the movies and I hadn’t gotten home until well past eleven. We’d seen a raunchy comedy starring Adam Sandler. Not to my taste, but it had been worth it to see Daniel laugh. Plus it meant I had next pick.

“So?” Whitney asked. 

“It’s six thirty in the morning on a
Saturday
.”

“Mo, I know what day it is.” Sitting on up on an elbow, she rolled her eyes. “What I need to know is if I should be a sexy nurse or a sexy pirate. Oh! Or what about Daenerys from Game of Thrones?”

Relenting to the fact that I wasn’t going to get anymore sleep, at least not with Whitney at the foot of my bed, I sat up and leaned against my headrest, letting my head fall back and hit the wall with a soft
thunk
. “Daenerys from the books or Daenerys from the HBO series? Because in the books she’s only thirteen.”

“Seriously?” Whitney’s nose wrinkled.

“How can you watch the show if you haven’t read
A Song of Ice and Fire
?” It baffled me that people could watch movies based on books - Harry Potter, Hunger Games, and Lord of the Rings, to name a few - without ever actually reading the books.   

“A song of what and what?”

I sighed. “Nevermind.”

“Sexy nurse,” Whitney decided. “Sexy pirate is
so
overdone. Plus there’s a chance the doctor I’ve been seeing might show up and
hello
, instant fantasy come true.”

That woke me up.

“The doctor might show up
where
?” I asked suspiciously.

“You know,” Whitney said evasively, “the Halloween party.”

Batted eyelashes and feigned ignorance might have worked on the men Whitney had wrapped around her pinky finger, but they had little to no effect on me. “And where, exactly, is this Halloween party supposed to be?”

“Don’t be mad-” Whitney began.

I threw my pillow at her.

* * * * *

Our house.

Whitney had planned a full scale Halloween party, complete with tons of food and alcohol neither one of us could afford, at
our
house.

Tonight.

Over the past few weeks I’d been proud of how well I was managing to balance my job with the relationship Daniel and I were tentatively forming. Well, at least it was tentative on
my
part. Even with midterms looming I had made time to go out with him on three separate occasions, the last of which had been the movies.

The dates were simple and uncomplicated. As though he was able to sense the pressure and anxiety I was fighting to keep at bay, Daniel never pressed for more. Aside from the night he’d told me about his brother, we kept our conversations light and straightforward. I’d learned Daniel’s favorite food was lasagna and he’d earned eight detentions in high school (he had been astonished when I told him I’d never gotten detention in my life). His favorite movie was
Pulp Fiction
. He’d tried smoking cigarettes once when he was eleven, threw up, and never touched them agai
n
(with the exception of the one cigarette he smoked every year in a memory of a friend who had died in high school; the cigarette I’d seen him smoking the first night we met
)
. He was allergic to bees (‘
not deathly allergic, just swell up and look like Sloth from the Goonies allergic’
) and had never ridden a horse.

For our own personal reasons, we’d both stayed away from any topic involving work or family or the future. I wasn’t ready for the level of commitment those subjects demanded and neither, it seemed, was Daniel.

We’d also remained largely celibate. Aside from a few kisses and holding hands, we hadn’t passed first base (Whitney’s terminology, not mine) let alone come close to ‘slamming the ball out of the park’. It wasn’t that I didn’t desire Daniel, because I did. I wanted him, more than I’d ever wanted anyone else, even Justin. But there was still something holding me back. Something that was keeping me from falling completely. Something that was preventing me from saying the words I felt in my heart.

I
wanted
to be with Daniel. I wanted to be his girlfriend. I wanted to be intimate with him. I wanted to share my deepest, darkest fears and secrets and hopes and dreams with him. But I knew…I knew once I went down that path there would no going back, and so far I hadn’t been able to muster the courage to take that first step out over the ledge into the unknown.

And now, on top of everything else, I had a Halloween party to get ready for.

I’d tried to talk Whitney out of it, but in typical Whitney fashion she’d refused to change her mind.

“The kegs are already ordered and I sent out, like, twenty text invites.”

“Twenty?!” I’d cried, my lips parting in dismay. “We don’t know twenty people!”

“Friends of friends, Mo. Nothing to get your panties in a bunch about.”

If twenty strangers pouring into the house we’d put a hefty security deposit down on wasn’t a reason to get my panties in a bunch, I didn’t know what was. I’d already printed out ‘DO NOT ENTER’ signs for my bedroom, office, and the upstairs bathroom. I was seriously considering buying locks when Whiney called me downstairs and had me help her rearrange our living room furniture. Huffing and puffing, we pushed the sofa, chairs, and tv table to the far wall, clearing out the middle of the floor.

“This is good,” Whitney said with a nod of approval as she turned in a slow circle to survey our handiwork. With all of the furniture pushed to one side the living room was surprisingly large. “This should definitely be enough room for the dance contest, and the DJ can set up by the front window. We’ll have food and drinks in the kitchen, and-”

“What did you say?” I’d been in the middle of rearranging throw pillows on the sofa, but Whitney’s words stopped me cold and filled me with dread. Twenty people was one thing. A DJ was something else entirely.

Completing her circle, Whitney blinked owlishly at me. “I said we’ll have food and drinks in the-”

“No, not that.” Picking up a throw pillow, I hugged it against my chest. Hard. “You said DJ. Whit, we
cannot
have a DJ.”

“Why not?”

“Because - because this is our
home
, not a frat house! And we’re adults, not college students.”

She skimmed a hand through her long ponytail. “Which is exactly why we need a DJ. I’m doing this for you, you know.”

This should be good. “How so?”

“Mo, you may have gone to Harvard for six years, but you were never a college student.”

“That doesn’t even make any sense.”

“Of course it does. Going to class and getting a degree is half of the experience, but what about the other half?” Sticking out her right hand, she began to tick off her fingers. “You never drank underage. You never pledged a sorority. You never snuck into a frat party. Come to think of it, you never went to
any
party.”

“I went to a party.” At least, I think I had. 

“Oh yeah?” Whitney challenged. “What one?”

“The one…the one at the student center! We both went.”

“That was a wine tasting party. We sipped white zinfandel and ate stale crackers.”

“It counts,” I said defensively.

“It does
not
count. Mo, you’ve been an adult all your life. You even said so yourself. Don’t you want to know what it feels like to be irresponsible?”

I frowned. “Not particularly.”

Whitney groaned and threw her hands in the air before collapsing in the closest chair. “I give up.”

“I liked my college experience. It may not have been the same as yours, but that doesn’t mean it was any less enjoyable and I don’t need a big party and a loud DJ to make up for whatever it is you think I missed out on.”

“
Life
, Mo. You missed out on
life
. And whether you like it or not, we’re having this party. You can be mad at me when it’s all over. Besides, I already invited your sexy man friend.”

The pillow I’d been holding dropped to the floor. “You invited Daniel?” I said incredulously. “Why would you do that?”

Whitney’s head tilted to the side. “Uh…because he’s your sexy man friend? Duh. What’s the big deal? You two have been spending, like, all your time together anyways.”

“No we haven’t.”

“You can lie to yourself all you want, but you can’t lie to me. You’re in love.” She batted her eyelashes at me. “It’s written all over you face.”

I clapped my hands to my cheeks. “No it’s not.” I didn’t love Daniel. I
didn’t
. Wouldn’t I know if I did? After all, I knew what love felt like. I had been in love with Justin for two years and what I had experienced with him was
nothing
like what I was experiencing with Daniel.

My love for Justin had been nice, safe, and predictable. We’d both known from the start we were a perfect match, and after dating for a suitable length of time it had seemed only natural to make the decision to fall in love. But with Daniel, nothing felt like it was supposed to.

When I was around Daniel - when I even
thought
about him - I didn’t feel nice, safe, and predictable. I felt…I felt excited and anxious and aroused. I felt like I wanted to be with him every minute of every day and that level of infatuation wasn’t comforting, it was terrifying. Because I didn’t know if we were a good match. And I didn’t know if he was right for me. And I didn’t know if I was ready to fall in love. Not the type of love I’d felt for Justin. Not safe, I’ll-be-okay-if-we-break-up-love, but
real
, passionate, all-consuming love. The type of love not everyone got to experience in their lifetime. The type of love I knew, deep down inside, Daniel and I were capable of.

And all the things I didn’t know were outweighing the things that I did and the more I thought about it the more confused and overwhelmed I became.

Not surprisingly, Whitney wasn’t exactly helping matters.

“Puh-
lease
.” She rolled her eyes. “I might not be a genius like you, but I know love when I see it and you, sweet cheeks, are head over heels.”

“You shouldn’t have invited him.”

“Don’t worry, I have a costume you can borrow.”

“I don’t care about the costume, I care about the fact that you went behind my back and-”

“It’s a Jane Austen costume. Yep,” Whitney said with a self-satisfied smirk when I blinked. “You heard me right. Jane Austen. Your all-time favorite author. So are you in? And can we keep the DJ? Pretty please?”

I’d thought there was nothing Whitney could possibly say that would make me want to actually attend her little impromptu Halloween party (save inviting Daniel), but she’d managed to do it. With images of swirling ball gowns, elegant fans, and elaborate coiffures dancing through my head, I nodded reluctantly. “Fine. But just this once,” I warned, holding up a finger, “and if the DJ gets too loud he has to leave. And no more inviting Daniel over without telling me first.”

“Of course,” Whitney said solemnly. “I pinky swear.”

We linked our pinkies and did three quick shakes.

Whitney’s grin stretched ear to ear. “Mo, you are going to have
so
much fun. I promise it won’t get out of hand.”

“I hope not. We’re renting,” I reminded her. “If anything gets broken, we’re responsible.”

“It won’t,” she said with the utmost confidence. “I found you a Jane Austen costume, didn’t I? If I can do that, keeping one little party from getting out of hand will be easy peasy. Trust me.”

Unfortunately, I did.