Thirty-seven
Adina
EVERY COUPLE MINUTES THE DATE Tovah found me sends an awkward smile in my direction. Henry Zukowski has slicked-back blond hair and light stubble on his chin, and his spicy cologne stings my nostrils.
“I’m sorry about your girlfriend,” I say to Henry, straining to be heard over the music in the hotel ballroom. She broke up with him two weeks ago. I am his backup.
“Nah, it’s fine. Thanks for agreeing to go with me. I hope I’m not completely pitiful.”
“Only partly,” I say, and he grins.
We’ve been around Tovah and Zack and Lindsay and Troy all night. They’re on the dance floor, leaving us alone for the first time. This whole thing feels so high school. For four years, I avoided all this, and it strikes me as funny that it’s all happening tonight. When the three of us got ready earlier, Lindsay watched me braid my hair in a crown around my head and asked if I’d do hers. Then, at the restaurant, I ordered fettuccine with sausage in a ricotta cream sauce, and Tovah stared at me. “Oh—I don’t keep kosher anymore,” I told her. Tovah wouldn’t quit looking at me like I was a stranger, but then Zack nudged her arm and told her a joke and no one said anything else about it.
The music changes, and Henry’s face lights up. “This is my favorite song.” His eyes plead with mine. The song is quick with a pulsing bass line. Its patterns are obvious, but tonight I find the simplicity refreshing.
I give him my hand. “Let’s go.”
I don’t realize how fast the song is until we start moving along with it. I’m too aware of my arms and legs for a while, so I copy his movements. Gradually, I start to relax—and then the song ends and the crowd erupts into applause. As I turn back to our table, Henry’s fingers graze my arm. “One more?” he asks.
This song has some strings in it, which I like, so I say yes. We dance a little closer this time, though we’re still not really touching. We dance the next one too, and by the one after that, my feet are throbbing and I’m out of breath, so we take a break.
A slow song comes on, and the DJ invites all the couples onto the dance floor. Tovah and Zack are at the edge of the crowd, moving in time with each other. Together they look effortless. Her head is against his chest, and he pushes hair away from her ear, whispers something into it that makes her smile. His hands drift down, settling around her waist, and her fingers curl into the hair that grazes the back of his neck. No one has ever held me the way Zack is holding my sister.
I want that.
And it is stronger than any want I’ve experienced before. It’s a longing, an ache deep in my belly. It is not the same as the way I’ve wanted sex from guys, when that was the only thing I focused on.
I make another vow. One day I will be loved for my music and my mind by someone who puts me above everyone else. Maybe someone who is discovering love for the first time too. I will not be a secret. I will be a declaration.
I cannot believe I spent so much time making Tovah miserable. We could have been growing closer with the time we have left. I don’t wish our fates were reversed—how could I wish this on anyone?—but knowing what will happen to Ima and me and being unable to stop it must be its own kind of torture. She deserves this happiness.
Henry catches where I’m looking. “They’re cute together, huh?”
“Yeah,” I say around the knot in my throat. “They really are.”
I tear my gaze away. I’ve always been good at getting what I want . . . and one day, I will have that.
A bridge and a chorus later, the music switches to something fast again, and Henry says, “I’ve clearly gotten you out of your comfort zone enough for one night, but would you believe this is my second favorite song?”
I shake my head, laughing as we head back to the dance floor.
After the dance winds down, the six of us hang out in a hotel room upstairs. Troy pulls out bottles of rum and Coke and pours them into the Styrofoam cups next to the coffeemaker.
“Classy.” Lindsay accepts a cup and raises it to him.
Troy loosens his tie. “Anyone have a deck of cards? We could play strip poker or something similarly debaucherous.”
“I’m not playing strip poker,” Tovah says.
“Fine, what about Ten Fingers?”
“How do you play?” I ask.
“Everyone holds up ten fingers, and we go around saying something we’ve never done. If you’ve done it, you have to put down a finger. First person to put down all ten fingers wins.”
“Or loses, depending on how you look at it,” Lindsay puts in.
We go several rounds of this game. I’ve never had sex in a public place. I’ve never cheated on a test. I’ve never read Harry Potter. It lasts an entire hour. Maybe these are the experiences I should have been collecting, hanging out with people my age, playing stupid games, laughing until my stomach hurts.
“I can call an Uber whenever you’re ready to go home,” Henry says
“I have a little bit left in me.” Our cups are empty, so I get to my feet and say, “I’m going to get more ice.”
I grab the bucket and head into the hall. After I fill it, I check my phone out of habit. There’s nothing new on it, but I put my thumb on Arjun’s name anyway. He sent me one text last week, which simply said, I hope you’re okay, and I replied, Fine. I must have frightened him because he hasn’t said anything to my parents, and I’m certain he won’t. Whenever I think about it—and I try my best not to think about it—I realize Arjun was not this great love of my life. It was doomed from the beginning.
I thought I could force him to love me. Relationships are not about control, though, and perhaps that is why I have never had a real one. I want to always feel strong when I am with guys. That isn’t going to change. I am always going to wear my dresses and red lipstick because I like them. I am always going to have people watch me when I am onstage, but my looks are not the only things that make me Adina.
Arjun knew I was vulnerable and perhaps took advantage of that, but I shouldn’t have threatened him. My last words to him were cruel. That is not who I am anymore.
I send him one last text: I won’t say anything. Then I delete the entire conversation and erase his name and number too. I won’t check to see if he replies, and I doubt he will. Gone from my phone, from my mind, from my life.
I’m not settling for another relationship that revolves around my body.
A click, and the door to our room opens. Tovah makes a strange face when she sees me sitting across the hall.
“Hey,” she says. “I was wondering where you were. Had to make sure you didn’t have a tragic ice machine accident.”
“Nope,” I say. “Needed a little break, I guess. I’m not used to . . .” I wave my hand in the direction of the room. All those people.
She nods, getting it. I realize she’s wearing her evil-eye bracelet again. We both are. “Can I sit with you?” she asks.
“Go ahead.”
“It looked like you were having a good time with Henry.” She slides down onto the carpet next to me.
I feel my face flush. I was having a good time. I’ve spent so much time trying to convince myself I’m not young, that I’m old enough for all those guys, but the truth is . . . I am young. And I’ve spent so much time isolating myself that I’ve missed out on countless things. There’s still so much to experience. I want love like Tovah has, like my parents have, but I want more than that. There’s more than that out there. More than viola, even. I feel greedier than I have ever felt, for friends I can confide in, and dancing with strangers, and sitting in a room playing a stupid, fun game. The miniature orchestra swells in my chest again, but this time it is playing something new, something I have never heard before.
“He’s nice, but I’m taking a break from boys, I think.” I pluck a stray thread from the carpet. I’m not wearing tights tonight. “I can tell. With Lindsay. That it’s not . . . that things aren’t how they used to be with you.” At dinner, the two of them didn’t speak to each other, only to the rest of the group.
Tovah sighs. “It’s been like that all year. She cares more about Troy, and that’s her choice. We might never talk after high school. Apparently you meet the best friends of your life in college, though, so maybe I’m not losing all that much.”
But she still looks sad.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. Maybe this whole year, she was as alone as I was.
A silence falls over us. We exist in silences these days, but I suppose it is better than yelling, than slamming doors, than destroying prized possessions.
I unzip my bag and pull out an envelope. “Tovah. I know I can’t begin to apologize for what I did, and I know it’s not as special because it’s not Aba’s, but . . . I wanted to give you this.”
She turns the new Nirvana ticket over. “How did you get this?”
“I found it online, and it arrived in the mail earlier today. I swear I’ll get it framed for you, but I wanted you to have it tonight. That was such a shitty thing for me to do. I’ll continue making it up to you however I can—”
Tovah holds up her hand. “No. I don’t want there to be any more debts between us. I don’t want one of us to owe the other.”
“Okay.”
“Thank you.” She regards the ticket with a sad smile, and then her head jerks up as though she’s just remembered something. “What time is it? I left my phone in the room.”
“Quarter to ten. Why?”
“Get up. We’re going somewhere.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Where? And what about Zack and everyone?”
She holds her hand out to me, pulling me to my feet, and grins. “It’s a secret. And they’ll be fine. This is just for us.”