Too many people packed in here. Laughing, shrieking, chattering. That human disaster of a bass player was off beat on the last song, just enough to be annoying. And maybe if Jess had been buzzed he wouldn't have cared, but he's sure as hell not gonna drink with people who don't know a keg tap from their own asses.
Enough of this shit. He finds a door on the second floor that's cracked open, so he knocks, loud. He hasn't puked so far today, all things considered, but if Dean's riding Legally Blonde in there, all bets are off.
Hallway light blazes onto the still-made bed. Otherwise, the place looks empty. Praise somebody. He shuts the door behind him and checks for a lock. Nothing. Damn.
He slumps into the armchair by the window. Time to run out the clock. She's been needling him all night, but in that gentle Rory way - petting his hair, studying him, wide-eyed - and that makes it infinitely worse, because she's expecting him to say it's work or the stupid prom tux that's the problem, something temporary she can kiss away. But it's not, and she doesn't know she's been hurt yet, and there's no way to sugarcoat Turns out I'm not what you wanted.
Now that the band's stopped for another break, his ears are left ringing in the quiet, even over the voices droning on the other side of the door. He figures he has another half hour, tops, before she corners him and starts flat-out guessing categories (Is it work? Is it school? Did something happen with Luke?), and if the circumstance is right he's just as capable of confessing as he is of telling her a lie. He wants neither. So he'll wait up here, stare out at the empty square and chew the inside of his cheek until the band's done. Then they'll leave and he'll think of something before he has to see her again.
The bedroom door opens. Thirty minutes was underestimating her. She comes closer, her steps even and her voice lilting. He's saying something about the party now, because that means they're not talking about the other thing. He hears his brain telling him to lean into her hand on his face, so he does. He's here. He's listening.
She knows something's up.
It'd be quick, telling her. He stands on the edge of the cliff and stares down at all the sharp rocks at the bottom. The wind pushes at his back. His stomach turns over. He can't. He can't.
He pleads the fifth with a peck on her lips.
The streetlamps through the window are making her skin glow, soft and pale in a cosmic kind of way. He can feel a chunk of food stuck behind one of his molars.
"You're not tired of me, are you?"
She's kidding, of course she is, but the longer he waits the silence is gonna read like, Yeah, I don't think this is really workin' for me, when actually she's the only - the best -
He's not gonna let her second-guess him in that way. He takes hold of the back of her neck and pulls her in, because she has to know that this is the polar opposite of her fault. He shuts out the crowd noise, the thump of the stereo. Everything has to go into this: pressing on her lips just enough, running his fingers over the tendrils on the back of her neck. And talking is always hard, but the lava that erupted in his chest this morning has cooled and hardened by now, and it's dark and cracked and flattening his lungs. This is the only way left.
He stands there, holding her. He knows every second with her has been an illusion. It's Joe Strummer back from the dead for an encore. It's borrowed time, a glitch in the system, and he's so goddamn lucky to have made it this far.
For a while now he'd been thinking about something more like a suite in Hartford after prom, some place with a deadbolt. Overpriced room service, and that lame Jewel CD she still hasn't copped to actually liking, and her eyes squeezed shut, breath hitching in his ear, and all of her, shuddering underneath him. But all that's shot to hell, now.
It blows, the fact that he can't give her that. But tonight he needs a win like nothing else. He sits her down on the mattress. The springs creak but it's an okay bed, in a nice enough house, and he has to stop thinking about that stuff now because from the second he shut the office door on Merton he's been calibrating and recalibrating and no, he's not letting that ruin this for him, too. He needs quiet, and he needs Rory.
He leans her backward, onto the comforter, and shifts his weight on top of her. It'll be a halfway decent prom night and she'll like it, he's gonna make sure of that, and then he can say at least he tried. Even if all it does is turn to cigarette ash.
When he exhales into the notch between her neck and shoulder, letting the soap wafting off her skin lead him on, he's thinking the same thought he had on the night of the crash when he wanted to keep driving, and when he stood up from the bridge on the basket auction date, and when he walked back to Luke's on the first day of the worst summer, with waxy bridesmaid lip gloss still on his mouth.
Don't leave yet might be pathetic but it's all he's had, curdling under the surface of his skin for over a year.