Forever Innocent Read online

  I felt doomed. I couldn’t be with him. Too much had happened, and everything since. God. If he knew why I hit my professor, why I quit school. If he put it all together, he’d hate me. Right now, he still thought I was perfect and good.

  Even though he left.

  If he had all the facts, he’d leave again.

  Go away, I told those thoughts. Live in the moment. Feel something for once.

  I closed my eyes, reveling in the warmth of Gavin next to me and the comfort of sharing space with someone who knew me.

  “Corabelle?”

  My name sounded familiar when he said it, as though no one had used it since him. “Yeah?”

  “Seems like the world wants us to at least be friends again.”

  I didn’t know which words to get stuck on. Friends. Or at least. “Seems like it.”

  “You think we’re the only ones who still think about Finn?”

  Just hearing his name out here, in the open, with the heavens opened wide, made my throat close up. “I don’t know.”

  He turned his face to me but I kept my eyes up on the stars. The Big Dipper rested neatly in the sky, surrounded by lesser bits of light, and I understood how it all fit together. Some moments of our lives were vivid and strong, hanging among all the other memories, not to be forgotten. Our baby was that constellation for us, and no matter where we looked, no matter what other stars dotted our sky, he would always be there, the biggest and the brightest of them all.

  Chapter 10: Gavin

  Damn, this worked.

  I made sure I kept my head straight, no worries about tomorrow. Just the night sky, the Big Dipper, and Corabelle next to me.

  Something had shifted in her. I could see it, feel it. And as soon as I realized she wasn’t going to go away, that she’d reconciled with us being around each other again, I’d adjusted too.

  She lifted her arm to point at the constellation. “I’m still reeling from the lecture on those stars.”

  “Really? Why?” I’d been so distracted during class that I just transcribed the words, barely letting them penetrate. Corabelle had been so close, and I’d been so anxious to get to the TA and switch labs.

  “He said two of them were Horse and Rider, orbiting together.” She dropped her arm. “They look like one star but really are two, endlessly circling each other.”

  I figured Corabelle was using metaphors, like she always had. We’d been as close as one person until I’d walked. Or possibly she was just talking about stars.

  “If you’d been listening today,” she went on, “you’d know that after all these centuries, a couple other astronomers decided that there were actually three. They discovered one more small star in their gravitational pull.” Corabelle still looked at the sky as she said all this, but the emotion was thick in her voice.

  “That was 2009,” she said, barely holding it together, and my urge to pull her close was crazy strong. “They discovered this exactly four years ago.”

  I felt the punch in my gut. That was when we last saw each other. When Finn was born. When he lived and died in his little plastic bed. I could hear the beeps of the monitor again, a steady stream of his heartbeat and random alarms. The only thing worse than those sounds was when they stopped.

  “That’s a powerful coincidence, finding that third star right then,” I finally said.

  Corabelle turned on her side, watching me. “When he said it in class, I could barely breathe. And you sat there, all defiant in your chair, just as stiff and angry as you got at the end.”

  I’d been angry. I knew that. The doctors had no more told us Finn would die than everyone was looking to me to make the decisions. To be strong for the whole lot of them, as if this wasn’t as hard for me. Just thinking about that day made the rage boil over and before I could think about what I was saying, I blurted out, “You made me sign the papers to turn off the machines.”

  Corabelle sat up. “What are you talking about?”

  I should shut this down, but I’d started it. I had to finish it. “The damn forms. The ones allowing them to shut down his ventilator.” Bitterness coursed through me. I hadn’t thought about this in years, but she was making me. She was dredging it all up.

  Corabelle tried to touch me, but I jerked away.

  “Is that why you left?” she asked. “Because you had to sign?”

  I couldn’t breathe, much less answer. Everything was rushing at me, like it had in those final days.

  Corabelle dropped her hands in her lap. “We did what the doctors told us to do.”

  I couldn’t take this anymore. I sat up and snatched at my bag. “I signed the paper. I decided when it ended. I was the one who told them when to let him die.” I kicked at the fluttering page of the lab assignment and stepped on the stick as I strode away. This wasn’t going to work. Too much history. Too much misery. Too much everything.

  I shoved through the door and hauled ass down the stairs. Only when I was on my motorcycle, the roar of the motor drowning out all sound, did I start to feel any better. Distance. I needed miles to separate me and Corabelle again. Nobody could go through all this and come out okay. No one could be tough enough. I sure as hell wasn’t.

  The lights of the city began to fade as I tore through Torrey Pines State Park and to the ocean. Just the quiet there, and the lack of strip malls and concrete, calmed my fury. I hated blowing up at Corabelle for something that wasn’t her fault. If she’d signed the papers, nothing would have been any different. The nurse would still have come in, and Corabelle would still have sat in that chair to hold the baby her first and last time. They would still have removed the ventilator. And the whir of the machines and the beeps of the monitors would still have gone silent.

  Finn would still have died.

  I turned off where the highway made contact with the beach and killed the bike. The water crashed against the shore, its endless wake a lulling sound, like the white-noise monitor some friend had given us for the baby. When Corabelle was still pregnant and couldn’t sleep, I played it for her at night. We laughed that since we couldn’t go to the college by the sea, we’d bring the sea to us.

  Everything was flooding back, a trove of memories deeper than the ocean in front of me. I couldn’t handle it any more than I had back then. I’d run again and ditched Corabelle a second time.

  I yanked my helmet off and ripped the gloves from my hands. What was I doing? Where was I going? I wanted to hurl something at the moon, all serene in the stars. My classmates were on the building still, doing their lab work, and now I was going to start with an incomplete on the first assignment. Hell, maybe college was a waste. I had experience at Bud’s. If he wouldn’t promote me out of the oil changes and tire repair, I could find a place that would. My family boasted a long line of blue-collar workers. I didn’t have to be any better.

  I couldn’t run from the stars, the whole ceiling winking at me like a mockery of my time on the roof with Corabelle. There didn’t seem to be any place where I could escape.

  Chapter 11: Corabelle

  The sugar jars clanged together as I shoved them all in a bin to be filled. Whoever closed the night before was officially on my bad side. Prepping the coffee stand for the next day was the job of the evening crew.

  I opened on Thursday mornings, a crazy early shift that started at 5 a.m. The shop would open in half an hour and Jason and I were manic, grinding beans and starting all the coffees, filling the bagel bin and bringing in the pastries from the dawn delivery.

  But the work was brainless, so I could think through all the events of the night before. After Gavin stormed out, I caught the page of his lab work, filled out mine, adjusted for his, and turned them both in. I didn’t really want to help him, and even as I did it, I burned with anger that he let something as small as a signature ruin everything. If he hadn’t left me then, I would have been okay. No blackouts, no arrest, no leaving my old college.

  Sugar slid over my hands as I overfilled a jar. “Shit!” I said,
pulling back on the jug.

  Jason paused as he walked by with a tray of biscotti. “Frozen Latte knows curse words?” He shook his dreadlocks. “The world is upside down.”

  I flicked sugar at him. This seemed so unbelievably simple. I’d spent half the night trying to remember that day, the parts I could bear. I really had no recollection of the conversation about the paperwork. We sat in some little conference room, and they’d gone over the results of Finn’s heart test, and his brain scans, and how there was no longer any hope and the surgeon would not operate.

  I closed my eyes for a moment. The room was so clear, the gray walls, black chairs, fake wood table. The doctor’s beeper had gone off incessantly, but he ignored it, at least.

  Finn was already lost. They hadn’t saved him. His heart defect would not be repaired, and the lack of oxygen had already taken its toll. He would die, now or later, and we should prevent him from suffering.

  I couldn’t remember where I had been when the papers were signed, only that it was prom night, and people who had no idea what was happening were sending me texts asking if we would get away for the night, if I had a dress to wear. Facebook was blowing up with pictures of corsages and hairdos and limousines.

  The shadows of a couple customers darkened the windowed door. I had to move, stop thinking, and work. I wiped down the sugar jars and set them out on the coffee bar. Jason came toward me, lugging the first two coffee tureens of the day. “You can let them in,” he said. “We’re set up.”

  I crossed the shop and twisted the lock on the door. Several early regulars in suits and work clothes hustled in. Jason waited behind the counter, and I rounded the pastry display to man the machines. I already knew what several orders would be.

  In New Mexico, I had a cushy job working in the dean’s office, filing and answering phones. Sometimes here in San Diego, early in the morning, during the rush, when customers were late to work and we couldn’t make their coffee fast enough, I wished I had taken the risk to use my experience to get something better. I still could. If I went for an office job outside of the university, probably no one would look very close. And even if they did find out about my altercation on campus, the worst that could happen would be to get fired, and I could try the next place.

  But I’d been too rattled when I first arrived. It seemed easier taking a job like this where no one cared about your past or even your present outside of the hours you were in the shop. Show up, do your job, and don’t steal anything. That was about as much as anyone asked. Baristas could be surly and still be considered just to have character. Friendliness didn’t necessarily get better tips, as regulars were set in their ways on ordering and dropping in change or adding to it. It was easy to be unmotivated.

  The first three customers grew into a line to the door, and two hours passed before we got a break. The shop was still pretty empty, as the students who filled the tables weren’t up yet. Everyone had taken their coffee to go.

  Jason leaned on the counter. “At least it goes by fast.”

  I opened the back of the pastry case to see what needed replenishing. “I’m going to grab some more strudel,” I told Jason. “Be right back.”

  Alone in the storeroom, my thoughts went right back to the star lab. I had to take great gulps of air. Gavin had brought all this emotion back to the surface. I’d have to do something about it soon, maybe really push. I kept all the plastic bags out of sight, but now, I didn’t think I could resist. I looked forward to the black. I wanted it, the one thing that always connected me to Finn.

  I snagged a tray of strudel and headed back up front. Jason still leaned on the counter, his cell phone in his hands. “I’ve got news for Frozen Latte!” he said.

  I tugged a plastic glove on my hand and began loading the strudel into the case. “What are you talking about?”

  “Found something in my apron pocket and decided it was a sign to take some action!” He laughed.

  Whatever. I started a new row of strudel, but something nagged at me. Apron pocket. Oh, God. That e-mail address for Austin, the boy yesterday. I must have left it in one of the aprons in my hurry to get back to campus.

  I whipped around so fast that the last few strudels on the tray flew off, one of them bouncing off Jason.

  “Pastry attack!” he shouted, still laughing. “Don’t panic, Latte, I didn’t act like the e-mail was from you.”

  I snatched at his phone. “What did you say to him?”

  I fumbled with the unfamiliar settings. I couldn’t afford a smart phone, so I had no idea what all the icons meant. The envelope seemed logical, but those turned out to be text messages.

  Jason scooped up the errant strudels and dropped them in the trash. “All I said was that he should come by the shop today. That you were here.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “He likes you. You need to get out more.”

  “I want to be the one who decides that.”

  “He’s a good guy,” Jason said. “We all approved.”

  “What?” I looked around the empty shop. “Who’s we?”

  “Pretty much the whole staff who was around last night.”

  The phone dinged and I held it away when Jason reached for it. “I should be able to read it first if it’s him.”

  Jason shrugged. “Okay, but if you get an eyeful of my sexting, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  God. I walked away from him and sat at one of the tables. After a bit of button pushing, I found the e-mail. It said to come by, as “the girl you gave your e-mail to” was working today. He hadn’t given him my name.

  As I suspected, the reply was from Austin. He had class until noon, but then he’d come by.

  It would be close. I got off at one to head to class at two. If he came right away, he’d make it. Maybe I could spend my last hour in the back, doing setup. Jenny would be here by then, not Jason, and she’d cover for me.

  I stood up and slid the phone across the counter to Jason. “I’m going to stack mugs.”

  Jason laughed again. “We’re going to get you laid whether you like it or not.”

  Right. That’s exactly what I’d been avoiding all this time. I wasn’t going to break now. In the year after Finn died, I studied the failure rate of every form of birth control. All of them had chinks in their armor, including the shot, which I’d been on.

  The only way to avoid it was to side with the Catholics. Full-on abstinence.

  Jason pushed a broom around, catching the crumbs from the pastry incident. His eyes were full of mischief as he pretended to dance with the handle and sweep it into a dramatic kiss. I wasn’t mad, not really. These people wanted something good for me. They just didn’t know any better.

  And I wasn’t going to enlighten them.

  •*´`*•*´`*•

  My heart started hammering the moment the clock struck twelve. Jenny came in through the front, looking harried. “Stupid traffic jam on 52. No accident or anything. Just slow people.”

  Jason tucked his apron under the register. “Too many people. Always too many people.” He tied his dreadlocks into a ponytail. “I’d stick around to see the happy reunion, but I have class.”

  Jenny leaned on the counter. “What’s he talking about?”

  “Nothing,” I said. Austin probably wouldn’t show. No use feeding futile gossip.

  Jason halted, his hand on the door. “It’s not nothing! Latte here has a hot hookup with one of the regulars.” He saluted us and headed outside.

  “Are you holding out on me?” A customer came in, so Jenny moved around to the back, shoving her messenger bag in a cabinet.

  I ignored her and smiled at the middle-aged man asking for a cappuccino. I’d serve him, then head to the back to do setups. Austin could arrive at any time. On a good day, you could get here from campus in about fifteen minutes. In traffic, it might be longer.

  Jenny waited for me to hand the man his change before launching into questioning. “Who was Jason talking about? Why don
’t I know about this?”

  I shrugged. “Some guy gave me his e-mail address yesterday. I left the note in one of the aprons. Jason found it and e-mailed the guy.”

  “WHAT? That is a blatant disregard of the hookup code!” She tied an apron around her waist. “Contacting potential boy toys is at the sole discretion of the best friend!”

  I moved past her. “I’m going to do the dishes.”

  Jenny grabbed my arm. “What does he look like? How will I know he’s here?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I don’t think I’m up for that.”

  She let go. “It’s because of hunk boy, isn’t it? He’s got you all wired up.”

  “Maybe.”

  Jenny shook her head. “I guess I’ll be seeing him tonight. Maybe I’ll give him a piece of my mind.”

  I walked to the end of the counter and lifted the overflowing tray from the busing station. “Actually, you won’t. Gavin switched too, thinking he’d get away from me. We were both there last night.”

  A girl walked up to order something, but Jenny held up her hand. “Just a minute.” She turned back to me. “So you’re saying you had to be on the roof with him after all?”

  I shrugged. “There was nothing romantic about it. Just a lab mapping out the Big Dipper.”

  Jenny frowned. “But weren’t there stars? Night breezes off the ocean? Anything?”

  I pictured Gavin on his back, head on his pack, lying next to me, my fingers still warm from where he held them. My stomach turned, and I could feel my breath threatening to kick up. “No,” I managed to say. “Just lab work.”

  Jenny blew a puff of air at her frothy pink bangs in disgust. “Then that class is a total waste.” She finally turned back to the girl. “What can I get for you?”

  I pushed my elbow into the door, trying to avoid spilling any of the mugs or cups on the tray. Plenty of dishes to deal with until the end of my shift, unless Jenny got swamped and needed someone to make the drinks while she took orders. Hopefully that wouldn’t happen. We didn’t serve anything substantial here, so lunch tended to be quiet.