Just Like You Said It Would Be Page 18

  I wanted the closeness as much as he needed it. The warmth surrounding us felt like a physical force; I wouldn’t have been surprised if it’d left a visible glimmer in the air.

  We’d found our way into a bubble of our own private universe and I didn’t want to leave. Minutes elapsed before Darragh pulled gingerly away and said, “Can we…?” He motioned to the bed. “Only this. I don’t mean anything more.”

  I didn’t say yes or no. I stepped towards the bed, sitting with my feet over the side. Darragh sat down next to me, a set of our hips and shoulders touching. Then he lay back on the mattress, his fingers beckoning me closer again. His bed creaked as I stretched out with him, one of his arms winding around the back of my head and the other closing around my back. My free arm folded up snuggly against his chest, our legs snaking themselves together so that I couldn’t tell where he stopped and I started. His feet felt hot against mine. I had the coldest feet in the world—except when they were being bathed in summer sun—and it must’ve taken him some effort not to flinch.

  You can believe you’ll always know someone even if you don’t think it in words. Darragh’s heart beat steadily under my ear and I inhaled the feel of him, my senses surging. We couldn’t have felt any more together if we’d been naked and doing the things Jocelyn had been concerned about, but technically we’d done nothing wrong. No kisses. No touching of a sexual kind.

  We were profoundly quiet and unbearably tender, but not guilty. Meanwhile my entire body was on edge in a way that made it almost unrecognizable to me. It was a torture and a pleasure, twenty times more amazing than what I’d experienced that day on the back of Darragh’s scooter over a month ago. And then again, it was the most natural thing in the world, his chest rising and falling with his breath and my head rising and falling with it.

  I wanted to be his friend and to make him feel better. That wasn’t a lie. It was only that there was so much more I wanted from him. The ache between my legs throttled into a throb that hovered on the edge of detonating as we lay tangled on his bed.

  My mouth went dry and one of my arms fell asleep, but I stayed tucked in place for as long as was humanly possible, wanting things I couldn’t have and wanting the moment not to end. It was a losing battle—everything ends eventually—and when I sat up and excused myself to go to the bathroom nearly an hour later, my body carried an afterglow with it that felt like a superpower. As potent as invisibility, flight or superhuman strength.

  That afternoon the feeling was such a part of me that walking back into his room seemed impossibly difficult. Not because I didn’t want to climb back on the bed with him and lose myself in his heartbeat again, but because I didn’t know what expression I should be wearing when I glanced at him from the doorway. My face didn’t feel neutral. It didn’t know how to look at him like a friend. When it came to us, I didn’t know much of anything anymore.

  Chapter 14

  It’s just like you said it would be.

  Darragh wasn’t in his room when I returned. I found him in the kitchen making coffee. “I thought you’d be thirsty,” he said, handing me a steaming mug. “I know I am.” Leaning against the counter, he took a sip.

  I took a gulp too. “Mmm, you were right,” I told him, hoping my cheeks weren’t blazing. “It’s nice coffee.”

  Neither of us said anything about having curled up together. Friends cuddling, what was the harm in that? At the time I thought maybe Darragh was genuinely okay with it. He’d been through more relationships than I had; he was bound to be better at compartmentalizing his feelings.

  Meanwhile, standing in front of him, my tongue burning from swallowing hot coffee too quickly, my fingers were still trembling with a longing I seemed to have no control over. My bare feet stared accusingly up at me. Darragh, who I noticed was wearing socks now, saw me eyeing my feet and said, “I’ll go check on your clothes. They must be dry by now.”

  He came back with a pile of my things, all of them soft, warm and fruity. After I’d changed back into my clothes it was only slightly easier to act like nothing had happened. Darragh asked if he could look at any of my screenplay stuff and we went into the living room where I stared at an old episode of The Walking Dead on his TV while he read my treatment and the rough first half of Happiness is Easy.

  Some other day I probably would’ve been more nervous about it. That afternoon it didn’t faze me. Parts of my mind and body were still upstairs holding on to him. There wasn’t enough left on the ground floor to worry about what he thought of my script.

  When he was finished, Darragh looked up from the pages and stared over at me, the clarity in his eyes shattering our casual act and making me feel like an open book. “You’re really good. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Sometimes I think so,” I said honestly. “And other times everyone else in my class feels so much better that I wonder if I’m kidding myself.”

  “That’s a trick the mind plays so your ego doesn’t go raging out of control.” Darragh smiled with his teeth. “Not that I know anything about that. But I do know you’re good. The characters are like real people. I love how you stay so close to the truth in it. None of that Hollywood bullshit with no depth.”

  “Popular bullshit,” I agreed. Even Jocelyn, who was more tolerant of my fondness for indie and foreign films than Yanna or Kérane, preferred happy endings with minimal loose ends.

  “It’s the same with music,” Darragh lamented. “Most of the shite that sells these days is a joke. But we’ll win them over in the end, you and me.”

  As soon as there was a break in the rain he offered to drive me home. His brothers shuffled in just as we were leaving, smirking and looking like clones of each other. Darragh introduced me and Ciaran proved The Brash Heathens’ reputation by aiming a cocky look at me and booming, “Are you Ursula’s replacement then?”

  “The American version of Ursula,” Cillian added, having heard my accent when I’d greeted them.

  “Watch your mouths,” Darragh warned, glowering at his younger brothers. He turned to me, both apologetic and angry. “Don’t mind them. They like winding people up.”

  “I can see that.” I flicked twin glances at his brothers, not in a mood to humour them. “But I’m Canadian, not American. And you two are the ones who look like versions of each other. I’m one of a kind.”

  Darragh laughed out loud, his brothers shutting up as they stomped through the entranceway and moved deeper into the house. We went in the opposite direction, heading outside. When I settled myself on the back of his Yamaha and Darragh drove me back to my aunt and uncle’s place, I didn’t realize that I wouldn’t hear from him for a while. But it also didn’t surprise me when the days passed and we left each other alone. He must have felt as confused as I was, and I had other things to consume me, like that no one picked up when I called the Sandhu’s landline on Monday night, and then again on Tuesday.

  I messaged Yanna and Kérane, asking if they’d heard from Jocelyn. Ker replied first:

  She’s been pretty incommunicado the last few days. She said there was a lot of family stuff going on since court.

  Yanna’s response was similar only it expressed more pointed concern. It was late Wednesday afternoon before Jocelyn herself texted me back.

  I know you’ve been trying to get ahold of me but please understand if I’m not in touch for the next little bit. It’s not because of what you said about Ajay, although you should have told me.

  I’m still trying to work something out here. And I don’t know, maybe you’re right about Darragh. Either way you’ll do what you’re going to do, right?

  I was puzzled but relieved to her from her. What could she have been working out? Was she still angry with me? And what else could I do but give her more space if that’s what she wanted? She’d be fine in the end, wouldn’t she? Ajay would get out of prison and her family would make things as right as they could. But there was no fast and easy way through the time in between and no simple way to make her forgive
me.

  I wrote Rana two notes that week, the first about Jocelyn and the second about Darragh. When my sister showed up in my sleep that Saturday the two of us were sitting in my aunt and uncle’s kitchen in sarongs and flip-flops, like we were going to the beach. A rock song was playing on the radio, the volume growing louder as Rana leapt up and spun in a circle. She threw out her hand, pulling me up along with her and as I began to sway my hips I noticed the tune was familiar, and Darragh was the one singing it.

  I didn’t know what the dream meant—what Rana was trying to tell me—but when I walked out of screenwriting class on Monday afternoon, the sound of a guitar greeted me in the open air. A short but otherwise nondescript woman in her thirties was strumming an old Sinead O’Connor tune on an acoustic guitar, roaring: “Ah, when you close my eyes, babe, I can see most everything.” I’d forgotten the name of the song until I stepped closer to listen to the chorus:

  It’s just like you said it would be.

  It’s just like you said it would be.

  It’s just like you said it would be.

  It’s just like you said it would be.

  The woman herself was a sloppy singer. Not a fraction as passionate, raw and vulnerable as Sinead at her best. But the rendition got to me anyway. It made me think of the same person I’d spent so much of the summer thinking about. I had it so bad for Darragh that at times breathing could’ve made me think of him, but the song felt like a direct link between the two of us.

  Sinead O’Connor was the opposite of the things he hated about the music industry, and the words springing out of the woman’s mouth were exactly what I wanted from him. “We don’t know that we can’t still have everything,” he’d said outside Trinity. But instead it felt as though I’d end up with nothing except a collection of almost’s. It took every ounce of willpower I could muster not to pull out my phone and text him the words: 5 weeks today.

  ______

  The summer sun began rising early in Ireland and when I opened my eyes on Tuesday morning the clock radio next to the bed said it was approaching five o’clock. Leaving sleep behind, I realized the ringing in my ears was the telephone landline. Jack didn’t have one in his bedroom but everyone else did and seconds later the sound was abruptly silenced.

  Early morning and late night phone calls usually meant only bad things and my mind leapt to my parents at sea. Sometimes cruise liners crashed and sank.

  Seconds later Uncle Frank knocked at my door and swung it open. He was holding the cordless phone from the master bedroom, his hand covering the mouthpiece. “A Mrs. Sandhu from home is on the telephone for you. There’s some trouble there. She needs to speak to you.” Uncle Frank’s eyebrows knit together as he offered me the cordless, retreating from the room the moment it was in my grasp.

  I pressed the phone to my ear, the relief at my parents’ well-being already fading. Jocelyn’s mother wouldn’t call at such a weird time unless there was an emergency. Back in Canada it was nearly midnight. “Mrs. Sandhu?” I said, my voice creaking.

  “I’m sorry to wake you, Amira. I know it must be early there. But Jocelyn hasn’t come home tonight and I need to know if you have any idea where she could be.”

  “No.” I was dumbfounded. “I’ve barely heard from her this week.”

  “We thought she was spending last night at Yanna’s house,” Mrs. Sandhu declared, “but that turned out not to be the truth. And a couple of hours ago I received an email from her that said not to worry, to let everyone know that she was safe, and that she’d be home very soon. It looks like it was forwarded through a free service that lets you choose when the email will be sent. But that’s all. No details. She won’t answer her phone and we’ve spoken to Anthony and most of the friends we could think of. Nobody seems to know where she is.”

  I threw my feet over the side of the mattress and paced beside the bed. “What did Yanna say?”

  “She’d never expected Jocelyn last night in the first place.” Mrs. Sandhu’s tone was reasonably calm, but she must have been shaken-up underneath. “That’s what she told me. You’re the final call I’m making tonight before we contact the police.”

  Before this summer Jocelyn was the last person I’d have expected to run away, but if Jocelyn had told her parents she was going to sleep over at Yanna’s house and sent her parents some kind of scheduled email, she hadn’t gone off somewhere on the spur of the moment—she’d planned this.

  “If you can think of anyone I might not have called…” Mrs. Sandhu prompted.

  I listed off the names of Joss’s co-workers and a collection of more casual friends from school. They were probably all people her mother had already tried. “Maybe she’ll be back tomorrow,” I added hopefully. “Or later tonight.” Where had she spent last night? She must have confided in somebody.

  “I hope so. If you hear anything let me know right away. Anything you think might help. Anything at all.” She recited her cell number and I scribbled it down on the back of my hand.

  “Of course I will.” I paused, imagining how Jocelyn would feel about the suggestion on the tip of my tongue. “Did she leave her laptop or tablet there—did you look at them?”

  “Her father and Ajay checked them both and got into a few of her social networking accounts. But they couldn’t find anything helpful. I have to go now, Amira.”

  “Please let me know when you find something out.” Surely whatever Joss’s plan was it included coming home soon?

  “I will,” Jocelyn’s mother said. “Goodbye.”

  The phone call only lasted a minute or so and then I was calling Jocelyn’s cell, courtesy of Zoey’s leftover paid minutes, and listening to it go straight to voice message.

  “Your mom just called and nobody knows where you are,” I said. “Please call or text me and let me know what’s going on. I want to help. I really need to hear from you.”

  Next I texted Yanna, and then Kérane, to see if either of them were still awake. Yanna texted back three minutes later, the two of us switching immediately to Skype. I recognized her pyjamas from the last time I slept over at her house—a minty green pair with tiny sheep printed all over—and the sight of them made me homesick.

  “Did Joss have a fight with her parents or something?” I asked. “What was the last thing you heard from her?”

  “It was hard with her parents after the trial.” Yanna rested her bent fingers against her cheeks, frowning. “But there was nothing that hinted at this. As far as I’ve heard nobody’s seen her since she left her parents’ place, Sunday at three o’clock.”

  Roughly a day and a half ago.

  “We’re supposed to go see the new Chris Hemsworth movie on Wednesday,” Yanna added. “She wouldn’t set that up if she was planning on staying away, right?”

  My throat tightened. “Her email to her mom said she’d be home when she could. She’ll probably be back at any second and all this panic will have been for nothing.”

  “Yeah,” Yanna say anxiously. “Probably.”

  We promised to be in touch with each other the moment we heard anything. Being an ocean away I felt hopelessly removed from the situation and after we’d disconnected I sent a second text to Kérane and one to her ex, Anthony. If I knew how to get in touch with Noah I probably would have contacted him too. Replies came in from Ker and Anthony over the next hour, but neither of them had anything to say that solved the mystery. They only had the same worries I did.

  By then the sun had finished rising and I jumped in the shower, taking my phone with me. I was the first person down for breakfast, but I was too antsy to eat more than a few of spoonfuls of cereal. Mrs. Sandhu had told my uncle the reason for her call and when he and Aunt Kate sat down at the table with me he said, “Were you able to be any help to your friend’s mother.”

  “I have no idea where she is,” I replied glumly.

  “She’ll be fine, pet.” Aunt Kate squeezed my hand. “You’ll see. She’ll turn up.”

  “Of course she will,”
Uncle Frank chimed in. “She’s probably tucked in safe somewhere, biding her time until she knows her parents will be more relieved than angry to see her.”

  I nodded numbly, waiting until afternoon to call my parents and tell them the news.

  “Habibti,” my mom said, unease and disapproval plucking at her vocal cords.

  Hearing my mother’s unhappiness made me feel scratchy on the inside. Couldn’t she try to see this from Jocelyn’s point of view? Did she have to act as though someone had died? “I’m sure she’s going to be okay,” I insisted. “She’s been going through a rough spell—you know how hard it’s been with her brother. She probably just needs space.” I had to stop myself from repeating it: She’ll be fine, she’ll be fine.

  “But to run away, how can that help anything?” My mother’s tone skidded towards suspicion. “Are you certain you don’t know anything that could help her parents find her? If there was anyone she’d tell where she was going, it would be you.”

  “I wish she had. But she won’t answer any of my texts or phone calls.” Every time I sent one out and didn’t hear back it was a surprise. Even if Joss wanted to keep her distance from everyone else, normally she would’ve been able to talk to me. She’d said the reason she was going to be out touch wasn’t because of what I’d told her about Ajay, but how could I believe that?

  The idea that something could’ve happened to her scared me more than anything. I kept pushing the fear away and it kept slamming back into me like an ongoing assault.

  After we got off the phone Mom called Mrs. Sandhu, but with my family being so far from home there was nothing we could do.