Missing You 1-5 Page 16

  “I mean, nothing’s really wrong,” I said to Ruth. “I just…I really need to talk to you. I think…I think I did something really stupid.”

  “What did you do?” Ruth asked, her voice filled with dread.

  “I…I think Rob proposed, and I just sort of…walked out.”

  “You think Rob proposed?” I could tell Ruth was sitting up, since her voice suddenly got much clearer. “What do you mean, youthink he proposed? Did he give you a ring?”

  I gazed at Rob’s grandmother’s ring, still around the third finger on my left hand. It was dark in my room, but I could still make out the diamond in the middle of the band. There were smaller diamonds set all around it, in some curlicue gold stuff. I bet Karen Sue Hankey would know what that curlicue gold stuff was called.

  “Well,” I said. “Yes. But—”

  “Holy crap,” Ruth said. “Heproposed !”

  Which is when a male voice, sounding like it was coming from somewhere very close to Ruth, said in the background, “Hewhat ?”

  The weird thing was, I could have sworn the voice was Mikey’s.

  “Ruth?” I asked in the silence that followed. “Was that—”

  “That was Skip,” Ruth said quickly. “He came in here to see who I was talking to.”

  “Really,” I said. “Because it sounded like he was in bed with you. And it sounded more like—”

  “I can’t believe Rob proposed!” Ruth interrupted. “That is amazing, Jess! I mean, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but that’s the thing. He didn’treally propose. He told me he wasgoing to propose when I got back from Afghanistan. But then I—well, you know.”

  “Saw him with Miss Boobs-As-Big-As-Your-Head?”

  “Right. And he seemed to think it would be better if he just let me go through whatever it was he seemed to think I was going through, at the time.”

  “Which,” Ruth said, “in retrospect, wasn’t such a bad thing, Jess. I mean, you have to admit, you were a mess back then.”

  This was so not what I called her to hear.

  “What happened to‘he’s the guy who let you walk away when you needed him most’ ?” I asked indignantly. “Suddenly you’re on his side?”

  “Of course not,” Ruth said. “But look how things turned out. You’re a lot better now. And he still gave you the ring. Which means he must still want to. Marry you, I mean.”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “He didn’t so much as give me the ring as throw it at me. And I just sort of hung on to it. The thing is, Ruth—” And suddenly I found myself pouring out the whole story—Hannah, and Randy, and the videotapes, and the scrapbook, and the things Rob had told me that afternoon. All of it.

  And when I’d finished, Ruth said, “Well, it’s obvious he’s still in love with you. The question is, are you still in love with him? I mean, would you take him back? In spite of Miss Boobs-As-Big-As-Your-Head?”

  I had to think about that.

  “It’s not like she’s in the picture anymore,” I said slowly. “I mean, that I can see. And, I mean, we were broken up then…sort of. The thing is, I don’t even know if he’d take me back. You know, if I offered.”

  “He gave you a ring.”

  “He THREW it at me.”

  “Well, why don’t you ask him?”

  “What? Just go up to him and be all,‘Hey, do you still want to marry me?’ ”

  “Basically, yeah. Why not?”

  I stared at the ceiling. “Because what if he says no? What if he thinks I’m still”—I swallowed—“broken?”

  “Then you give him the ring back, say sayonara, and hop on the first flight back here, and I’ll find you a totally hot new guy who fully appreciates what an amazing person you are.”

  “Tell her if she wants us to, we’ll still beat him up for her,” whispered the male voice very close to Ruth, apparently thinking I wouldn’t overhear.

  Only I did.

  And this time, I knew it wasn’t Skip.

  “Ruth,” I said. “Why is my brother Mike in BED WITH YOU?”

  “Crap,” Ruth said. Then, apparently to Mike, she said, “I told you she could hear you.”

  “Hi, Jess,” Mikey called in the background.

  “Oh my God.” I was sitting up, convinced I was going to hyperventilate. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t seen it coming. It was just so…so…

  Gross.

  “I can’t believe I only go away for two days,” I said disgustedly, “and you two have already hopped into bed together.”

  “Jess,” Ruth said, sounding worried. “It’s not like that, really. I—I—”

  “Oh my God,” I said. “If you say you love my brother, I’ll barf. I swear it.”

  “Well, it’s true,” Ruth said. “I think I always have—”

  While this was true, I still didn’t want to have to hear about it.

  “Put Mike on the phone,” I said to her.

  “But, Jess—”

  “Just do it.”

  A second later, Mike’s deep voice was saying, “Jess. It’s not what you think. I really—”

  “If you break her heart,” I said to him, “I will break your face. Do you understand?”

  Mike sounded stunned. “Isn’t that what you said to Tasha, about Douglas?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shouldn’t you be saying that to Ruth, and not me?”

  “No,” I said. “Because in this instance, my loyalties lie with Ruth, not you.”

  “Oh, thanks a lot,” Mike said, sounding sarcastic.

  “Well,” I said. “She’s my best friend. You’re just my brother.”

  “I happen,” Mike said, “to love her.”

  “Oh God.” The nachos I’d heated up in the microwave for dinner came up a little. “You’re going to make me sick. Literally. Put Ruth back on the phone.”

  “Did Rob really propose?”

  “Put Ruth back on the phone.”

  “What are you going to say? Yes? If you say yes, are you going to stay in Indiana?”

  “Why?” I asked, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  “Because if you stay in Indiana, then I can move in here with Ruth,” he said, “when I transfer to Columbia.”

  “You’re transferring schools for a girl?Again? Did you forget what happened last time you did that?”

  “Shut up, Jess,” Mike said. “It’s different this time.”

  “You better believe it is,” I said. “Because if you screw this one up, you’re—”

  “—dead. Yes, I got the picture, thanks. So. What are you going to do?”

  “If one more person asks me that,” I began in a warning tone. Then I broke off, struck by a thought. “Hey, where’s Skip, anyway? What does he think about how you guys have turned the place into a den of sin? What does he think about what you’re doing to hissister ?”

  “Skip’s at the Jersey Shore,” Mike said. “With some girl he—”

  “Okay, that’s enough about Skip,” Ruth said, apparently having wrestled the phone back from my brother. “When are you coming home?Are you coming home?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, chewing my lower lip. I hadn’t mentioned anything to her about Douglas’s offer of a teaching job at his new alternative high school. Because I wasn’t sure I could stay in this town, knowing that Rob was living in it, too, and not be with him.

  As if she were the one with the psychic powers, and not me, Ruth said, “Jess. Just ask him. Okay? Now get some sleep.”

  She hung up.

  I sat there, blinking down at my cell phone. Then I placed it gently on the nightstand and flopped back down against the pillows. How was it, I wondered, that everyone—everyone I knew, anyway—was getting some, except for me? What had I done wrong? How had I screwed everything up in that arena so very, very badly?

  It was kind of ironic that as I was thinking this to myself, a hailstorm of rocks suddenly struck the bay windows in my bedroom. Not hard enough to break the glass, but definitely hard enough f
or the loud rattle they made to wake me…

  …if I’d actually been asleep, that is.

  Only one person had ever thrown pebbles at my bedroom window before. The same person who, earlier that day, had thrown an engagement ring at me.

  Tossing back my comforter, I went to the closest window and peered down, hardly daring to hope that it would actually be him.

  But it was. He was standing in the moonlight in jeans and a black T-shirt, just pulling his arm back to let loose another volley of stones. I hastily flung open the window and screen, leaned out, and whispered, “Hold on. I’ll be right down.”

  Then I grabbed a cotton robe I’d thrown into my overnight bag when I’d packed so hastily for the trip home, and slipped it on over my tank top and boxers. I wished I, like Ruth, had given a little more thought to my nightwear, and maybe bought something a little sexier to wear to bed, like her cute camis and matching tap pants, which my brother Mike was apparently currently—ew, that was WAY too gross to think about.

  Besides, Rob wasn’t here, I’m sure, because of any romantic feelings he might be harboring for me. Probably his sister had run away again.

  Or maybe he just wanted his ring back.

  The thought caused me to pause midway down the stairs.

  That’s right. He probably wanted his ring back.

  And suddenly, I found I couldn’t breathe.

  My heart banging ridiculously hard in my ears, I crept the rest of the way down the stairs. The house was in darkness. Both my parents were asleep. Only Chigger was awake. He climbed down off the living room couch—the one Mom had forbidden him from sleeping on, so he only did it when she wasn’t looking—and came to the door to greet me.

  “Sit,” I said to him, quietly unlocking the front door. “Stay.”

  The dog did neither. He licked my hand, then walked silently back to the sofa and climbed back onto it. So much for knowing over fifteen commands.

  I opened the screen door and slipped out onto the porch. Rob was already there waiting in the shadow from the porch roof cast by the moonlight. I couldn’t see his eyes. They just looked like twin pools of darkness to me.

  But I could see the place in his neck where his pulse beat. For some reason, a shaft of moonlight fell right across it.

  And I could see it was thrumming almost as fast as my own.

  “Hey,” he said in a soft voice.

  It was a neutralhey . Sort of a questioninghey . Not likeHey, good to see you. More like,Hey…what’s going on here?

  Like I knew.

  “They have this new invention now,” I whispered. “It’s called cell phones. You can call people now in the middle of the night, if you need to, instead of throwing rocks at their window.”

  Rob said, “You never gave me your cell number.”

  “Oh.” Well, I never said I wasn’t an idiot.

  And suddenly, I knew. I knew why he was there. And it had nothing to do with his sister.

  Cold hard fear gripped my heart. I found myself slipping my left hand behind my back.

  Because I knew then. I knew I wasn’t giving that ring back. Not unless he pried it off my dead body. I’d never worn a ring before in my life—I’m not exactly a jewelry girl.

  But I’d gotten used to wearing this one, and fast. I wasn’t ready to give it up. I didn’twant to give it up.

  And I knew, right there on the porch, that I wasn’t going to. Instead, I was going to do what Ruth had told me to.

  I was going to ask him.

  Unless, of course, I didn’t have to. Because if he held out his hand and went, “Give it back,” that would be a pretty strong indicator that the answer was no.

  “Are you missing something?” I asked him, still keeping my hand behind my back. “Something else, besides your sister, I mean? Is that why you’re here?”

  A strange sort of expression passed across his face. I couldn’t tell what it was, exactly, because his head was still in shadow. But I saw some of the tension seem to leave his shoulders.

  “My sister left this afternoon,” he said. “With her mother. After stopping off at the police station for about a trillion hours. Hannah’s not what I’m missing.”

  I held up my left hand.

  “Is it this, then?”

  He sucked in his breath.

  “You have it?” he asked. “God, I thought I was going crazy. I was looking everywhere.”

  “You couldn’t wait until morning?” I asked him. “You had to come get it now, in the middle of the night?”

  “I didn’t realize you must have taken it,” he said, “until a little while ago. And then I—”

  He broke off. I still couldn’t see his face so well. But it was clear he wasn’t exactly smiling.

  “You what?” I asked.

  “I had to know,” he said, finally, with a shrug, “if you took it. Well, not so muchif. More like…why.”

  My heart still banging in my ears, I took a step towards him. I knew the moonlight was full on my face. But I didn’t care. I didn’t care what he saw there.

  “Why do you think?” I asked, tilting my chin up.

  “I don’t know what to think,” Rob said. “The whole way here, I was thinking I was crazy. I mean, whywould you take it? Unless…”

  He took a step towards me. I still held up my left hand. The moonlight caught on the diamond, and caused it to sparkle crazily.

  “Jess,” Rob said in a cautious voice. “What are you doing? Seriously.”

  “Seriously?” I shook my head. “I really don’t know.” Because I really didn’t. All I knew was that my throat was dry as sand and that my heart was doing crazy things inside my chest. I think it might have been a jig. “But you’re like the hundredth person to ask me that today. Do you want it back?”

  “If you’re not gonna marry me,” Rob said. He seemed confused. I didn’t blame him. “Then, yeah, I want it back.”

  “What if I am?” I asked him, though it was kind of hard to talk, considering the fact that I couldn’t seem to breathe anymore.

  “Am what?”

  Then Rob took a step forward that brought him out from beneath the shadow of the porch roof. And even though his back was still to the moon, I could see his eyes.

  “Jess,” he said in a warning tone.

  Which is when I took the deepest breath I could—considering I couldn’t seem to inhale at all—reached out to grab a fistful of his shirt, dragged him the two-step space between us, and said, my face just a few inches below his, “Rob. Will you marry me?”

  He looked down at me expressionlessly. “You,” he said, “are insane.”

  “I mean it,” I said. Amazingly, the second the words were out of my mouth, the crazy banging in my ears stopped. And I could breathe. I could actually breathe. “I’ve been an idiot. I had a lot of crap to deal with. And I think I’m done dealing with it now. Almost all of it, anyway. Obviously I still have to finish school—and so do you—and all of that. But when we’re done with school, I think we should do it.”

  Rob looked about as serious as I’d ever seen him look. “What about your mom?” he asked.

  “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m over eighteen,” I pointed out. “Besides, she’ll come around. So, are you in?”

  I will admit, it wasn’t exactly easy to breathe while I was waiting for his reply. In fact, it was impossible.

  So it was a good thing he said, “I’m in,” before I ran out of oxygen and collapsed right there onto the porch.

  I grinned up at him. “Good,” I said.

  And then, just like that, we were kissing.

  Well, okay, maybe not just like that. I might have had something to do with it, by standing up on my tiptoes and throwing my arms around his neck.

  I am definitely responsible for what happened next, which was that I grabbed another handful of his shirt and started leading him to the front door.

  “Jess.” Rob was grinning. Even in the shadow of the porch roof, I could see his smile. “What are you doi
ng?”

  “Shhhh,” I said. “Follow me. And be quiet or you’ll wake them.”

  “Jess.” Rob let himself be led inside as far as the foyer before he put on the brakes. “Come on,” he whispered, as Chigger came over from the couch to give him a few desultory licks before retiring again. “This isn’t right.”

  “No one’ll ever know,” I assured him. “You can sneak out before they wake up. Besides,” I added, “it’s all right.We’re engaged .”

  Which is how Rob got to see my room that night for the first time. And a lot more than just my room, actually.

  Twenty

  He woke up before I did.

  “Jess,” he was whispering, when I opened my eyes to find the gray light of dawn turning my bedroom walls pink. Also to find Rob putting his shirt back on, a sight truly worth waking up so early for. “I’m gonna go.”

  “Don’t,” I said, throwing my arms around his waist. I’d apparently missed the putting back on of the jeans. Too bad.

  “I have to,” he said, laughingly prying my arms off him. “What if your parents wake up? Is that really how you want them finding out about us?”

  Flopping disgruntledly back against the pillows, I said, “I guess not. Still. What are you doing later?”

  “Seeing you,” Rob said as he sat down on my window seat to tug on his motorcycle boots. It was extremely odd to see Rob Wilkins in my bedroom at all.

  But it was especially weird to see him sitting on the lace-covered pillows with which my mom had decorated the built-in window seat beneath my bay windows. It was sort of like seeing Batman shopping for shampoo at the drugstore, or something. Just completely out of place.

  “I have to go to the garage for a while,” Rob said after he’d gotten both shoes on, and stood up. “Want to come over and grab some lunch around noon?”

  “I could bring you lunch,” I said. “I could make some sandwiches and cupcakes or something.”

  Rob looked at me. “Did you just say you’d make cupcakes?”

  “Yeah,” I said apologetically. “I don’t know what came over me. Since that would so never happen.”

  “I’m sure if you did make cupcakes someday,” Rob said chivalrously, “they’d be delicious.”