I must have passed out because the next thing I knew Dad was helping me into the backseat of his car.
While I waited for him to get back in, I noticed that the car smelled like flowers. I was wondering what the scent was when I became aware that a red rose was floating just below the passenger-seat headrest. I wondered if I was having a vision. After some woozy contemplation, I figured out that the rose was attached to a dark-haired woman’s bun.
“You’re not Cheryl and Morty,” I said, pointing my finger at her.
The woman shook her head. “No. I am not Cheryl-Ann Morty.” She had a Spanish accent of some kind, and she sounded amused. “Who is this Cheryl-Ann Morty?”
“Do I know you?” I asked her, but by then my dad was in the car. “Naomi, this is my friend, Rosa Rivera,” he said.
“You were supposed to be out with Cheryl and Morty,” I said, wagging my finger at him. “Why aren’t you out with Cheryl and Morty?”
“Yeah, and you’re not supposed to drink until you’re twenty-one,” Dad replied. “And especially not in your condition.”
“One beer! Barely one. Oh, that’s…” But I didn’t complete the thought, because I passed out in Dad’s car.
I don’t remember when we dropped Rosa Rivera off or how I got into the house. I do remember throwing up on Dad’s beige floors.
“I’m never drinking again,” I said to Dad as he held my hair back while I threw up in the bathroom.
“Well, I’d say that’s probably wise. At least for the time being.”
“Who was that woman?”
“Like I said, her name is Rosa Rivera. She’s a tango dancer.”
I didn’t find any of that particularly illuminating, but I was too screwed up to make him elaborate.
“She smelled like roses,” I said about ten minutes later when we were back in the kitchen, where Dad was making me take two aspirins. “I don’t have any friends who smell like roses. I don’t have any friends at all.”
“That’s not true, kid.”
The home phone rang. Dad answered it. Still standing, I set my pounding head on the kitchen counter. The porcelain tiles felt refreshing.
“That was Ace. He was really worried about you. He said you disappeared,” Dad reported.
“True,” I said. “True, true.”
“I read him the riot act anyway.”
“Daddy, I need to go to bed now.”
My cell phone rang. It was Will. I handed it to Dad. “Tell him I’m okay, wouldja?”
“Hello, Will…Yes, Naomi’s fine. Except for being grounded for the next week, she’s fine.”
“I’m punished?” I asked after he’d hung up.
“Well, mainly you’re punishing yourself, but I thought I ought to add a little something. So you’ve got to stay in for the next week. Seems parental, don’t you think?”
My head was pounding. “Could you start by sending me to my room?”
“Good idea, kid. Let’s go.”
Around three a.m., there were three rapid taps on my window. It was Ace. He asked me if it was okay if he came in; I flipped on the light, wincing at the brightness, and got out of bed to unlock the window.
This time when he vaulted himself over my shelf, he knocked my dictionary off. It hit the floor with a booming thwack. “Oops,” he said.
I hoped the noise hadn’t woken Dad.
“Where’d you go?” he asked. “I was worried.”
“Where’d you go?” I asked.
“We were just out back in the pool. All you had to do was look.”
“You abandoned me.” I had a headache and I was in no mood to be questioned by Ace. “I was totally alone. Did I seem like I was having a good time to you?”
“But, Naomi!” Ace protested. “You said that you were.”
I had said that. It was true. I had observed Ace to be a very literal person, so arguing with him was probably pointless. Instead, I told him that I didn’t feel well, which was also true.
“Go back to bed,” Ace whispered. “I don’t want to disturb you.”
I did, and I thought Ace might leave, but instead he sat in my desk chair. “Can we, maybe talk? Just for a little bit?” he asked.
I wasn’t really up for more conversation with Ace, but I guess I felt sorry for the guy. I turned onto my side and asked him what he wanted to talk about.
“Do you remember that time we were at my cousin Jim Tuttle’s house in Scarsdale?”
“No,” I replied. I stifled a yawn and prepared myself for another one of Ace’s fascinating drinking stories.
“We were coming back from sectionals. You still had on your tennis whites. Your hair was in a ponytail. I love your hair that way. You reached up and took my face in your hands and you kissed me. I was totally blown away. We weren’t going out then. I didn’t even know you liked me. You were the first brainy girl who’d ever shown any interest.”
“Brainy girl?”
“One who reads and stuff, not just for school. I liked that about you. We never had classes together or anything. But I’d seen you around, and I always thought a smarty like you’d go for a guy like Landsman.” Ace paused to look at me.
“He’s just my friend.”
“When you kissed me that first time, you were still wearing your tennis wristbands. I took them off of you and set them on Jim’s couch. We forgot all about them. That’s why I got you another pair. I, uh, realized my gift must have looked pretty lame to you if you didn’t know the context.”
I nodded. Something about his story had put a lump in my throat. It might have been the way he told it more than the story itself, or I might have been weakened by my emerging hangover. In any case, I was somehow granted a solitary moment of X-ray vision and what I saw was this: Ace was probably as frustrated with me as I was with him, and the only thing stopping him from breaking up with me was that he was, when it came down to it, pretty decent.
He knelt down beside my bed. His breath was bittersweet with alcohol. For a second, I worried I might throw up again, but the feeling subsided.
I took his face in my hands, the way he had described, and I kissed him.
Ace started stroking my hair (which was pleasant, but not romantic—it made me feel like a well-behaved lapdog), and he whispered so low I could barely hear him. “I don’t want to pressure you. I don’t want to be, you know, that guy who pressures you. Do you think we might have sex again someday?”
Without even thinking about it, I sat up in bed and pushed his hand away. “No.”
He replied, “I didn’t mean tonight necessarily.”
I hadn’t meant just tonight either, but I didn’t say that. I told him that I’d gone off the pill, which I had.
Ace smiled all dopey and drunk. “Maybe we could do it at homecoming?”
“Homecoming?” I asked.
“Yeah. It’s in three weeks. We’re still going, right?” Ace explained that we had planned to before my accident.
I said yes. I mean, why not? I didn’t remember ever having been to a homecoming dance.
Ace fell asleep on my bedroom floor. I couldn’t, so I just lay in bed staring at him. He reminded me of a six-foot-four baby—he had long downy eyelashes and was drooling. It was more than just physically, though. Sleeping on my floor, he seemed somehow undefined and vulnerable. I even felt a certain tenderness for him. I wondered if that was the same as love.
When I awoke the next morning, Ace was gone. Actually, I should say afternoon. Dad had let me sleep in until around two before knocking on my door. “I’m making eggs.”
I informed him that I couldn’t eat anything, but Dad insisted it would make me feel better.