Chapter Two
We turned the corner into Laynie’s driveway and my mouth dropped open. Her driveway was full of cars, none of which I could really see since it had grown dark outside during the drive.
My cheeks burned and I started to jump up and down again.
“Surprise!” she yelled. “Movie night!”
I laughed and squealed, grabbing my bags and nervously walking to the door. Laynie jogged ahead and went inside, no doubt telling people that I had arrived. I walked through the mud room, and looked down at myself, making sure that I had all of my things. My hair hung in my eyes and I brushed it back, tucking it behind my ear.
When I looked up I screamed and dropped my things. Jonah was there, his face flushed just as red as mine. He grabbed me and squeezed me with all of his strength, I buried my face in his shirt, holding him to me with every ounce of will that I had. His body was warm pressed against mine. Whenever I had seen him before, we had always left space in between, a few inches for distance, a few inches to remind people we were just friends. But not this time, every inch of him pressed against every inch of me in a hug that nearly brought me to tears. I closed my eyes and held him.
We pulled apart, but kept our hands on each other’s arms. The hug had lasted longer than most hugs should, but felt like it had only been a moment. Jonah winced and smiled.
“Jeez, Tide. You almost blew out my ear drum.” He laughed. I blushed and then backed up, looking down at my things that had ended up in a heap on the floor. Jonah helped me pick up my bags and take them into the dining room. Then we walked to the living room which was filled with people, not a single spot available on the furniture or the floor. Jonah and I stood next to each other, our arms so close to brushing that I could nearly feel his skin there on mine.
“Hi, Tide!” everyone yelled from their places and then continued to jabber among their groups and to me. Everyone was there. But as much as I loved all of them, Jonah and Laynie were my priority. Laynie made herself comfortable on someone’s lap and motioned for me to go away with Jonah. Hannah, Jonah’s girlfriend, stood in the middle of the room, her eyes on Jonah, on me. She smiled at me, not a gesture of kindness but one of acknowledgement and almost smugness, and then turned back to talking. Jonah edged out of the room. I followed.
He held out his hand and I looked at him curiously.
“Sketchbook.” He said. “And pencil, if you would.”
I scuttled back into the dining room, dug through my bag and brought him what he wanted.
He flipped open my sketchbook, which was mostly filled with lyrics, math problems and doodles, rather than actual sketches.
“You still have these?” Jonah roared with laughter as he pulled out some of the sketches he had done for me. We had done one of them together on a piece of notebook paper. The front side was my own creation, the back side was his. I had drawn Jonah in a banana suit getting attacked by gorillas. On the backside, Jonah had drawn himself in the banana suit, with an assault rifle in hand, blowing holes through one gorilla and the other being hung in a tree. It was morbidly hilarious.
He flipped open to a clean page and started to draw.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Something that Hannah and I started. I’m teaching her how to paint.”
“Is she any good?” I asked.
“Eh.” He shrugged. “She drew the lighthouse on the one we’re doing together. I think I should have done it.” He laughed.
I smiled a little to myself. Art would never be something they could really share. Art belonged to Laynie, Jonah, and I. It was something we loved, just as we loved music.
“What’s the color scheme?” I asked as a comfortable silence fell upon us.
“Dark purples and reds. A few greens in the water.”
Jonah continued to sketch, his lines quick and precise. He shaded and scribbled. I loved watching him. He was curled up on the chair by the computer desk as I sat comfortably with my back against the desk, my head resting on his knee.
“Why haven’t you told me that you’re coming to town?” he asked. His eyes fell on me, a liquid, inky blue in the dim light of the computer screen; it was the only light in the room.
I could hear Hannah in the room over, still chatting away. She came into the room and I quickly jerked away from Jonah. She laid a possessive hand on Jonah’s shoulder, she looked down at what he was sketching.
“Oh! That’s the one we were working on together!” she said, her voice animated. I imagined her painted fingers turning into claws in Jonah’s shoulders. My jaw clenched and I plastered on a smile that only Jonah would know was fake.
“Yeah.” Jonah said. Smiling up at her. His smile was real enough, but wasn’t genuine. My heart twisted in my chest. She ran a hand through his hair and then walked back out of the room just as quickly as she had come.
I scowled after her and then dropped my head onto his leg again. “How’s that going, anyway?” I asked, not really interested, but thinking it polite to ask anyway.
“It’s okay. She’s leaving tomorrow for New York. We spend a lot of time together. A lot.” He added on the end.
I laughed out loud. “You hate spending time with people all the time.” I said.
“Yea, I know. It’s weird. I can hang out with you and Laynie all day, but if I’m with the guys or Hannah, don’t tell her this or I’ll kill you, but I sort of just get bored. Not that I don’t like being with them, but it’s just so much easier being with you and Laynie. I don’t have to talk with you guys.”
“I know.” I smiled into his leg. “It’s like we can spend hours together and never say a word.”
He looked away from his sketch, staring at me point blank with a small smile on the corner of his lips. I gripped his leg and I could only remember one other time that we had been this close.
*****
Laynie’s garage was warm and I sat on the couch, Laynie’s hand was in mine.
“You need to tell him,” She said.
Jonah sat in the chair opposite of, his eyes trained on me, his jaw clenched and the muscles in his neck strained.
“I can’t,” I whined, tears welling in my eyes.
Jonah knew already. By the way I had been clenching my stomach and how I felt sick and tired all of the time. He knew, but I had to confirm it.
I slid off the couch onto the dirt-caked floor and wrapped myself around his leg. I buried my face into his knee, letting my tears fall freely. I grabbed his hand, and pressed it to my forehead, begging him to either lend me his strength or crush me where I sat. He brushed my hair back and squeezed my hand.
“Just promise me that you won’t hate me, kill me, or leave me.” I told him. “I’m so sorry.” I shook my head, tears continuing to fall.
“Tide, I’m not mad at you. Just tell me.” He spoke softly. I hugged his leg tighter. Anchoring him to me, begging him not to leave.
“I’m an idiot,” I said. “I’m just an idiot.”
“No you’re not,” He said, just as softly as before.
“Yes, I am. I made stupid mistakes that I wish that I could take back. I’m so sorry,” I sobbed.
I felt Laynie’s hands on my back, soothing me and urging me at the same time.
And then it spilled from me, the words stone-cold and dreadful. “Laynie and I have been talking about it for a few weeks now, and I haven’t wanted to psych myself out so we’ve really been monitoring it all…” I started. “We think I’m pregnant.” I sobbed again and turned away from him, not wanting to look at him, too scared to see the disgust written on his face.
Jonah lifted my face to look up at him, his eyes full of warmth. “I know.” His voice was just a whisper. He brushed away my tears with a calloused thumb. “Have you told your mom yet?”
“No,” I choked out.
“Well first things first. You need to confirm it. Go get a pregnancy test, figure out if you really are pregnant before you start to worry. If you are, we’ll all tell your parents. If you’re not, we’ll act like none of this ever happened.”
I nodded.
“And if you are, I’ll be there. We’ll figure it out.”
“James won’t help,” I said softly. “Laynie and I already told him that I had been worrying. He didn’t care.”
“Fuck James, Tide. I swear, when I get my hands on him...” His jaw clenched and I felt his arm on me tighten for just a second before he realized that his touch might hurt me. "They'll take me to jail for what I'll do to him."
I believed him when he said this. Jonah was good-natured and calm. Never had I seen him angry-- irritated maybe, but never angry. He had told me that only once had he hit someone, and when he had he’d broken their nose, given them a fat lip, and they’d been sent to the hospital.
Knowing this made me scared, but made me feel safe there next to him. Nothing would hurt me if he was there.
Laynie’s mom yelled for her from the house and Laynie got up from the couch and went to her mom. I lifted myself from the ground and moved to the couch, stretching out my legs and laughing a little from my legs being asleep.
Jonah got up from his seat and moved to sit on the arm of the couch next to me. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders; I wrapped my arms around his waist, burying my face into his side.
“Do I smell bad?” He asked, pushing his weight down me to make me smell under his arm. I laughed and squealed, pushing him away. I breathed in the scent of his shirt, his chest.
“You smell good.” I smiled into him. We sat there laughing, our limbs intertwined. Laynie walked in with her phone in hand. She still had her eyes trained on her phone.
“My dad texted me.” she said, and then looked up. She looked taken aback for a second, confused as to why Jonah and I were so close. She looked at me, her eyes knowing everything without me saying a word.
*****
“You do realize she’s going to want to kill me now, right?” I asked, fiddling with a loose string on his jeans.
“How do you figure that?” he asked, still shading slightly but nearing completion on the sketch.
“Well. First of all, we didn’t turn the lights on. Second, we’re in here alone. And third, she’s probably wanting to slit my throat for not being ten yards away from you.”
“Nah, she wouldn’t. Well, maybe. We should probably go in there before she has a bitch fit.” Jonah laughed a little and then sat the pencil down on the computer desk. The computer screen darkened and Jonah jiggled the mouse to bring back our source of light. I gasped a little as I glanced down at his ten minute sketch. It was a light house scene, the kind of scene that left you thinking about what it would be like to stand within the page and be overwhelmed with the beauty that it held.
We stood up then and made our way to the living room where everyone was watching Jurassic Park 2 but talking about Air Bud.
“No more vanilla pudding cups for you!” Emmet yelled in a harsh voice as we walked in.
“Jonah!” Mitch yelled, getting up from his spot on the couch to hold Jonah's hand and smack his butt in that weird way that they had. I sat down on the chair that Laynie pointed at, flipped my legs over the arm and laid back. Jonah was approached by Hannah, making Mitch move back to the couch without a word and wide eyes. I tried to say something, but thought it better to keep my mouth shut. He grabbed her hand, which sent a little bit of a jolt through my chest, and then he guided her to a free spot on the floor, which happened to be located in front of my chair. Jonah sat right in front of me with Hannah to his right. He held her hand and we watched Jurassic Park 2.
“I love how much filming has changed since the nineties,” Tan said.
Emmet glowered at him. “This is clearly a two-thousand film!”
Jonah leaned his head back on my thigh and stuck his tongue out at me. I brushed my fingers through his hair, messing it up and we both laughed. Hannah squeezed his arm and laid her head down on his shoulder. I stiffened up, unsure of what to do now.
Jonah fake yawned, stretched his arm over his head and then reached back to pinch me.
“Ow!” I yelled.
Everyone looked at me, unsure of what to say.
“Stubbed my toe.” I mumbled and glared bullets into the back of Jonah’s head.
Jonah choked a laugh at my lame excuse and continued to pick on me throughout the end of Jurassic Park.
Hannah continued to push herself closer and closer to Jonah. I wanted to gag a little and laugh at how insecure she was. She gave up with a sigh as Jonah and I continued to mess around. She whispered in his ear, he looked at her, and then back at me for just a second.
“I think it’s time we head out, we’ll see you guys later.” Jonah says, helping Hannah up and giving people hugs.
I got up, waiting for my hug which was a given thing with us.
“Hey, Jonah, hug me.” I laughed.
But he didn’t. Hannah pulled him out the door without a word to me. My heart sunk into the pit of my stomach.
For another three hours, the rest of us walked around town in the dark and laid down in random people’s yards.
Tan groaned. “Can’t we just go sit down on Laynie’s porch? The chiggers are eating me alive.”
I agreed with him and swatted at my legs, trying to stop them from itching so much.
Emmet looked at us like we had oranges growing from our heads. “What the hell is a chigger?”
Tan and I took turns explaining what exactly a chigger was and where the expression came from. Emmet continued to not understand and made fun of us for it.
“Well, Emmet, at least we have those nineteen nineties films.” I grinned smugly.
Everyone laughed, even his girlfriend, who usually stays relatively quiet.
He ran at me full force then, tackling me and pretending to strangle me. I yelped loudly, laughing and screaming into the night sky.
“Who’s out there?” a gruff voice asked from the doorway of the house whose yard we were sitting in currently. The lights flicked on and before I knew what was happening, I was back on my feet running down the street, hooting and laughing all the way back to Laynie’s house.
We had been sitting on the porch for a while when Megan, another girl from our group who was also leaving for New York in the morning, got a phone call.
“Hello?” she answered.
Everyone sat still and grew quiet.
“Yeah, I can talk. We’re all just sitting around here.” She laughed a little.
Tan asked who it was, his motion of his lips was exaggerated, his voice no more than a slight whisper.
Megan put the phone to her chest for a second, “It’s Hannah, and she needs to talk to me privately.” Megan got up, looked at me for a long second, and then walked around the house to have her private conversation with Hannah.
Laynie and I made eye contact for a second. She quirked her head to the side, questioning what this was all about, I shrugged, completely unsure of what was going.
Around three in the morning, all of our guests were gone and we were curled up in her living room trying to get to sleep but still unable to stop talking.
“Guess what else?” Laynie smiled.
“What?” I turned around to face her. I was on a mattress on the floor; Laynie on her couch which she claimed was hot and uncomfortable in the summer.
“You have another surprise in the morning.” She said matter of factly.
“Is that so?” I laughed a little, unsure of what this surprise could be.
“Yup. And it may possibly be better than the one tonight.”
“No. Way.” I said with my snob voice.
“Yes way. Our dear friend Jonah is coming over to jam in the morning.” Laynie said happily and then rolled over on the couch, leaving me to wallow in the news, laughing and smiling. I wouldn’t sleep tonight.
