No. No, that wasn’t possible.
Rob was fishing through his wallet for a couple of bills to pay the check. He wasn’t looking at me. Instead, he stared out the window at a guy in a Sherlock Holmes outfit who was walking his pug. We see this guy a lot on our street. We call him the Sherlock Holmes Guy. Hey, it’s New York City. It takes all kinds.
If Rob noticed the tweed hat with the ear-warmers and the curved wooden pipe, he didn’t mention it. His strong jaw was set, as if to guard against saying anything more. He’d taken his jean jacket off, because the air-conditioning at Blue Moon wasn’t the best. I couldn’t help noticing the way the round curves of his biceps disappeared into the sleeves of his black tee.
No one at Juilliard has biceps like that. Not even the tuba players.
“I gotta go,” I said in a strangled voice, and stood up so fast, I knocked my chair over.
Rob looked surprised. “You’re going?” he asked. And his gaze fell to the picture in my hand.
Yeah. I’d picked it up. Don’t ask me why.
“I’ve got stuff to do,” I said, starting for the door. “I have to practice. If I want to be first chair in the fall, I mean.”
Rob knit his brows. “But—” Then he glanced at my face. And stood up as well. “All right, Jess. Whatever you say. Just…look. I don’t want there to be any hard feelings between us, okay? What I said—I didn’t say it to hurt you.”
I nodded. “No hard feelings,” I said. “And…I’m sorry I can’t help you. About your sister, I mean. I’m sorry I can’t…” Can’t what? Be his girlfriend anymore? See, that’s just it. He hadn’t ASKED me to be his girlfriend.
He never had.
“I’m just sorry,” I said.
Then I left the restaurant just as fast as I could.
Five
“Are you kidding me?” was what Ruth demanded, after I’d told her—in the privacy of our bedroom, since I didn’t want Mike and Skip to overhear—what Rob had come to New York for. “Find his long-lost sister? He has some nerve, after the way he treated you.”
“How did he treat me?” I asked. Because at this point, I was so confused, I didn’t know what to think anymore.
“How did he treat you?” Ruth looked shocked. “Jess, he was making out with some other woman the last time you saw him.”
“Not the last time I saw him,” I said. “The last time I saw him, I was spying on him from the back of your car.”
“I meant the time before that,” Ruth said.
“The time before that, I told him we needed to take a break.”
“And,” Ruth said meaningfully.
“And,” I echoed. “And what?”
“And helet you.” She was perched on the end of her mattress, her blond curls framed by the purple sari she’d draped over the head of her bed, to give the room more “elegance.” Though how you could hope to lend elegance to a room that was literally like, six feet by twelve feet, with a single window over which we’d had a metal gate installed so burglars couldn’t get in, and more than its fair share of cockroach sightings, I don’t know.
“He only did what I asked,” I pointed out. “Look, he’s not such a bad guy. I mean, I was head over heels in love with him in high school. He could have taken advantage of that. But he never did.”
“Because he didn’t want to go to jail,” Ruth said.
I grimaced. “Thanks for that.”
“Well, I’m sorry, Jess,” she said. “What do you want me to say? He was a great guy? A perfect catch? He wasn’t. And I don’t care if he owns his own business now. He’s still the guy who let you walk away when you needed him most.”
“He says he tried,” I said. “He says I was like a cactus when I got back, covered in prickles, and wouldn’t let anyone near me. Plus, you know…there was Mom.”
That’s the nice thing about having a best friend. You don’t have to elaborate. Ruth knew exactly what I meant.
“If he really cared about you,” she said, “he wouldn’t have minded the prickles. Or your mom.”
I thought about that. The thing is, I wasn’t sure. Both, I imagined, would have seemed plenty formidable—especially to a guy like Rob, who for so much of his life, didn’t have much of anything…except his pride.
Which I’m pretty sure both my stubborn independence and my mom’s disdain for him had injured…maybe even beyond repair.
Although…
“He saysI ’m the one who’s broken,” I murmured. “He says no one can fix me but myself, because I won’t let anyone rescue me.”
“Oh, so now he’s a psychiatrist? What’she been doing for the past year?” Ruth asked with a sneer. “WatchingOprah ?”
I sighed, then flopped back against my own mattress, which was covered with a nondescript brown bedspread from Third Street Bazaar. I had done nothing to lend more elegance to the room. The part of the wall above my bed was blank. I stared at the cracked, peeling ceiling.
“I just thought,” I said to the cracks in the ceiling more than to Ruth, “that coming here would make me happy.”
“Aren’t you happy?” Ruth asked. “You seemed happy today, when you were showing that kid how to breathe from his diaphragm.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That part makes me happy. But school…” I let my voice trail off.
“No one likes school,” Ruth said.
“You do.”
“Yeah, but I’m a freak. Ask Mike. Well, okay, he’s a freak, too.” I restrained myself from pointing out that Ruth and Mike seemed to have a lot in common these days. I mean, they had both been übergeeks in high school who had “found” themselves—their true selves—in college.
And I would have to have been blind to miss the surreptitious looks I sometimes saw Mike shooting Ruth when she was in a cami and cutoffs, trying to beat the New York heat. Not to mention the looks she sometimes shot him when he came out of the bathroom with just a towel on, or whatever.
It was kind of revolting, actually. I mean, my brother and my best friend. Yuck.
But hey, if it made them happy…
“Skip,” Ruth said brightly. “Hehates school.”
“Because school is just something he has to get through,” I said, “until he can start pulling in that hundred grand a year.”
“True,” Ruth said with a sigh. “But I’m just saying. Most people don’t like school, Jess. It’s a necessary evil you have to live through, to get you where you want to be in life.”
“But that’s just it,” I said. “I don’t know where I want to be. And what little clue I do have…well, it doesn’t involve playing in an orchestra, let’s just say.”
“But you like to teach,” she said. “I know you do, Jess. And having a degree from Juilliard will look a lot better for that than having no degree at all.”
“Yeah,” I said.
I knew she was right. And the fact was, I was living many a musician’s dream. I was in New York City, attending one of the finest music colleges in the world. I had instructors who were internationally famous for their skills. I spent all day immersed in the music I loved, doing what I loved doing best—playing my flute.
Ishould have been happy. I had seized the opportunity when it came along, because I knew it was the kind of opportunity thatshould have made me happy.
So why wasn’t I?
There was a tap on the door, and Ruth said, “Come in.”
Mike poked his head in.
“Is this a private party,” he asked, “or can anybody join?”
Ruth glanced at me. I said, “Come in, stay out, whatever. I don’t care.”
Mike came in. I saw him avert his gaze from Ruth’s jewel-tone bra, which lay draped across the radiator. I saw her notice him notice it, and blush.
Oh, for God’s sake,I wanted to groan.Would you two just Do It already, and spare the rest of us?
“So Skip and I were just talking,” Mike said, and I noticed that Skip had crept in behind him.