that had been, and she didn’t ask, but a little smile played on his lips again. The squirmy feeling in Grace’s stomach eased.
“Where are we going?” she asked when they’d driven another few miles. Damien had turned on the radio and was tapping his hand along to the pulsing beat. She hoped it was back to the city. Maybe they could go to Bleecker Street Records. That’s where they’d met. She’d gone there with Campbell, the two of them having fun looking for some new music, but not so much fun that they hadn’t noticed Damien and his friend. Nobody could overlook Damien; he was too good-looking. She’d been aware of him the way you’re aware of light, a sudden presence in the store, and she’d looked up and seen him walking toward her, his hands reaching out to trail lightly across the racks of CDs.
She was sure he didn’t notice her, though she’d stolen glances at him, giggling with Campbell when she mouthed the word “hottie.” At some point Damien and his friend left and Grace could remember feeling a little bit let down, but then when she and Campbell left about ten minutes later, they found Damien and his friend smoking outside, and then Damien offered her a cigarette.
“You smoke?”
Those had been his first words to her. There wasn’t anything sexy about that, except that it was Damien who’d said them, his gray eyes cool and appraising, dirty blond hair falling forward over a chiseled face, a cigarette stuck between his own pouty lips.
And even though she’d never smoked, she nodded and took one from the outstretched pack, and then nudged Campbell, who took one, too. Later, when he kissed her for the first time, she’d tasted the smoke on his tongue.
Despite what her parents thought, they hadn’t slept together. As in intercourse. She’d done other things with him, gotten as far as what Campbell still stupidly called third base, but she couldn’t go for home. She was scared of it. She’d heard it could hurt the first time, but mostly she had this overwhelming fear that protection would fail and she’d be toting Grace Junior along with her to geometry class.
Damien didn’t pressure her much, which just showed he was straight up, not that her parents would ever listen. He’d taken to calling her virgin queen, but he said it with a smile so she didn’t really care.
She cared more about the other girl she’d seen him kissing. It was just two days before she’d been forced to leave the only home she’d ever known, and the piano movers had already been and gone so she couldn’t vent her feelings like she usually did through her music. She’d skipped out on the packing and taken the train uptown to surprise Damien. It had been a really hot day and the subway was a steam bath. By the time she’d walked the final blocks to his building on the Upper East Side, she felt like the ice sculpture she’d seen melting at an outdoor wedding, all shabby and unrecognizable as it dissolved into a puddle of nothing.
Just as she turned the corner up to his place, she saw Damien come out of his building. The timing seemed like a sign. For one happy second she’d thought they must be psychically linked. Only then he swung toward her, and she saw that his arm was around some blond-haired girl. She was model-pretty, tall and super-skinny, and wearing a tiny white eyelet dress and these impossibly high sandals with ribbons that wound around her ankles.
As Grace stood there, stunned, Vogue Girl had leaned into Damien and kissed him with her full red lips. Worse, he’d kissed her back, not some polite little kiss either, but a full scene-stopper. Grace fled before it was over.
She still met him later, keeping their regular rendezvous at a school playground near Campbell’s building because Grace could always get permission to visit her friend. When he’d asked why she was being such a bitch, she’d confronted him about seeing Vogue Girl and he’d gotten mad, telling her that she couldn’t claim exclusivity if she wasn’t going to meet his needs.
Just thinking about it brought back the anger. It had ripped through her, bringing tears in a hot rush, and she ran away from him, dashing half-blind across the park. It might have ended there, but he’d chased her, yanking so hard on her arm that afterward she had a bruise. He told her that he loved her, told her that she could get to him like nobody else, told her that she was his true love. She noticed that he didn’t promise to stay away from Vogue Girl, but when he literally kissed the tears that ran down her cheeks, she’d been willing to forgive him anything.
He probably still saw other girls, but she didn’t ask. It wasn’t like she could complain anyway, since she was the one who had to sneak around just to see him at all. It had been easier when she lived in the city, easiest after her mother had been attacked. There’d been several weeks when her mom barely got out of bed, and Grace had taken advantage of that to escape and see Damien.
It wasn’t like that in Wickfield. Her mother was still acting weird, but it wasn’t like before. She didn’t hide in bed, she was just super-security-conscious. She’d gotten freaked out about some missing college girl, and now she was insisting on watching Grace walk to the bus stop. It was embarrassing, and it also made it hard to slip away and head for the train station instead.
She hated Wickfield. Besides Damien, Campbell and all of her other friends were back in the city. She knew her parents wanted her to make new friends. She could feel the pressure in all their questions. How was your day? How was school today?
“You look ugly when you frown.” Damien glanced over at her, then back at the road. “What’s your problem?”
“No problem.” She turned up the radio and closed her eyes, letting the music drown her thoughts. “No problem at all now that I’m with you.”
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