“It’s a true answer.”
“What if”—her voice was soft and girlish now—“someday, someone asks whether you ever wonder what it would be like to … be with somebody else.”
“Who would ask that?”
“This entire scenario is hypothetical.”
“I don’t even know what it’s like to be with you.” Lincoln said this quietly and without resentment.
“Yet.”
“Yet,” he said, focusing on the road and the gas pedal and breathing.
“So …won’t you look at other girls and wonder what you’re missing?”
“No,” he said.
“No?”
“I know you want more than a one-word answer. Let me think about this for a minute, I don’t want it to sound stupid or desperate.”
“Do you feel desperate?” She was kissing his neck now and leaning hard against him.
“I’m feeling …yes. Desperate. And like I might kill us both. I can’t …I can’t keep my eyes open when you’re doing that, it’s like sneezing. We’re almost to the next exit. Let me drive, just for a few more minutes. Please.”
She sat back in her seat. “No, don’t get off at this exit. Keep driving.”
“Why?”
“I want you to keep talking. I want you to answer my question.”
“No,” he said. “No, I’ll never wonder what it would be like to have sex with someone else for the same reason I don’t want to kiss anyone else. You’re the only girl I’ve ever touched. And I feel like it was supposed to be that way. I touch you and my whole body …rings. Like a bell or something. And I could touch other girls, and maybe there would be something, you know, like maybe there would be noise. But not like with you. And what would happen if I kept touching and touching them, and then …and then, I tried to touch you again? I might not be able to hear us anymore. I might not ring true.”
“I love you, Lincoln,” Sam said.
“I love you,” he said.
“And I love you.”
“I love you,” he said, “I love you.”
“Stop driving now, okay?”
It didn’t happen that night, the being with each other. But it happened that summer. And it happened in the car. It was awkward and uncomfortable and wonderful.
“Only you,” he’d promised. “Only you ever.”
“PILLOW TALK” WASN’T on the air anymore. There was another show in its place, a syndicated show, where people called in with their love stories, and the host, a woman named Alexis, chose the song for them. No matter what the situation was, Alexis always prescribed a current adult contemporary hit.
Something by Mariah Carey or Céline Dion.
After a few minutes of Alexis, Lincoln turned off the radio and rolled down the window. He leaned his hand into the wind and his head against the door, and drove around the city until his fingers were cold and numb.
From: Beth Fremont
To: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder
Sent: Thurs, 10/14/1999 11:09 AM
Subject: October, at last!
Callooh! Callay!
<<Jennifer to Beth>> At last? October is half over. And what’s in October anyway?
<<Beth to Jennifer>> Not “what’s in,” what is. October. My favorite month. Which, by the way, has only half begun.
Some find it melancholy. “October,” Bono sings, “and the trees are stripped bare …”
Not I. There’s a chill in the air that lifts my heart and makes my hair stand on end. Every moment feels meant for me. In October, I’m the star of my own movie—I hear the soundtrack in my head (right now, it’s “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”)—and I have faith in my own rising action.
I was born in February, but I come alive in October.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> You’re a nut.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> A hazelnut. A filbert.
October, baptize me with leaves! Swaddle me in corduroy and nurse me with split pea soup.
October, tuck tiny candy bars in my pockets and carve my smile into a thousand pumpkins.
O autumn! O teakettle! O grace!
<<Jennifer to Beth>> I do love tiny candy bars.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> Merry October!
<<Jennifer to Beth>> All right, Merry October! Why not?
Are there other factors in your unreasonably good mood? Non-autumnal reasons?
<<Beth to Jennifer>> Nope, I don’t think so. I had a really crappy night last night—I went to a Sacajawea party with Chris—but I think that’s actually enhancing my good mood today. I woke up thinking about how, no matter how bad everything else is, there’s still October.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> Who has a party on a Wednesday night?