This Is What It Feels Like Read online

  (Why is that ridiculous? one part of her asked. Stranger things have happened.)

  (Not to you, another part of her answered. Life is not a romantic drama.)

  “Do I know you?” she asked, her words slow, quicksand for her tongue. “I feel like I should know you.”

  “I don’t think you do,” Autumn said, that smile still playing on her face.

  “Oh,” Jules said. They stared at each other, but it wasn’t staring, it was more watching. Waiting.

  For what?

  Jules whirled into movement, digging a couple crumpled-up bills from her pocket. “Autumn,” Jules said, trying to make her voice sound normal now and almost but not quite achieving it. “Do you like Skittles?”

  Autumn tipped her head to the side, her mermaid ponytail swinging through the air, curiosity in her eyes. “Um . . . yeah?”

  “Good.” Jules went to the vending machine and fed two dollars into it, punched the right buttons, and watched her prizes fall. She bent to collect them, and then walked over to Autumn. In the tiny break room, it should have taken two seconds to cross the space, but it felt endless as Jules moved toward her, every step closer filling her with electricity. It was like wading into the cool water of a lake until you were too deep to stand and floated there, spinning, content. “A welcome gift,” Jules said, with an uncontrollable smile, “from me to you.”

  She offered the candy, and the laugh Autumn let out was maybe the most delightful sound Jules had ever heard. “Thank you,” she said sweetly.

  Jules watched her reach out her hand and held her breath, waiting for the touch of this Autumn’s fingers against her. When it came, fleeting and thrilling, Autumn’s hand cool, Jules exhaled slowly.

  What sacrifice could she make in order to get that moment back, to play it out over and over again? Whatever she had to offer, she’d do it.

  “I have to get out there,” Autumn said, but she didn’t move to go. “I guess I’ll see you in a sec. Right?”

  “Right,” Jules said.

  “Okay,” Autumn said, and now she did move, making her way to the door and half out of it before she said, “It was lovely to meet you, Jules.”

  She was gone before Jules could process that and it was good, because there was no way she could think of anything remotely adequate to say in response.

  It was lovely to meet you.

  Who said that? Moreover, who meant that?

  Autumn did. Jules could tell.

  She stood there, watching the space where this new girl had been, and her heart was racing so fast, and she wanted to laugh out loud. So she did, one breath of it before clapping a hand over her mouth, and she collapsed on the lumpy old couch to stare up at the ceiling.

  Something very momentous just occurred in this room, she thought. Let this moment be marked: the day that I,

  Juliana Everett,

  maybe lost my heart

  to a near stranger.

  Hanna

  That afternoon Hanna was lying on her bed under her window, scratching her thoughts in a new notebook, when there was a knock on her open door. She tipped her head to the side and her face broke into a wide smile. “Ciara!”

  “Your sister let me in,” Ciara Lennon said, looking as out of place in Hanna’s house as she always did.

  So it wasn’t one hundred percent true that all of Hanna’s friends had given up on her; Ciara stuck around. At a distance, a text every once in a while that said, Checking in from Vermont. The trees are beautiful. C or Greetings from Denver! Not everyone here is high. C when she was on the road with her band, messages Hanna had read but never replied to.

  But when the blurriness cleared, when she could see straight again, Hanna had finally replied. Greetings from Golden Grove, she’d said. The view is clear.

  So now Ciara dropped by sometimes, when she wasn’t touring sticky, badly lit clubs or temping.

  Hanna sat up and shoved a pile of dirty clothes off her bed so Ciara could sit. “Molly’s mad at me,” she said, shifting over. “I don’t know why.”

  “She’s a thirteen-year-old girl,” Ciara said, stepping across more of Hanna’s mess and sitting. “Does she need a reason?”

  “Good point.” Hanna pointed at the plastic wrapped around Ciara’s right wrist. “New tattoo?”

  Ciara nodded, the faded ends of her blue-dip-dyed locs falling loose. “Wanna see?”

  She started to peel back the plastic and Hanna recoiled. “No! You know it grosses me out.”

  Ciara smiled wickedly, taking her hand back. “Yeah, I know.” She swiped the notebook onto the floor. “So what’s happening, graduate? Wait—you did, didn’t you? Graduate?”

  “Barely,” Hanna said. “But at least it’s over. And I, Hanna Christina Adler, am now the proud owner of a high school diploma. Aren’t you impressed?”

  Ciara dipped her head. “I know you’re being sarcastic, but I am impressed. You could have given up. You turned yourself around, Hanna. You don’t think that’s impressive?”

  Hanna looked around her room. The walls were still the pale pink they’d been since she was a baby, but covered in marks from old posters, pictures she’d stuck up, that one time she’d fallen and kicked a chunk of the baseboard out. An impressive home for an impressive girl. People liked to say saccharine-sweet things like that when you were sober, or defied whatever preconceived notions they had of you. Hanna hated it. “I guess,” she said after a moment. “But whatever. I don’t want to talk about me. What are you doing now? Are you going out of town again?”

  Ciara leaned back and blew her cheeks out. “Nah. Pretty sure we’re done.”

  “Done touring?”

  “Done being a band,” Ciara said. “Fletcher’s getting married. Cole got accepted to med school. That leaves me and Penny, and I don’t think either of us wants to stay together.”

  Hanna made a face. “Well, she did dump you.”

  “Hanna.” Ciara threw her hands up. “Really? God, twist the knife a little more, it feels real good.”

  “Sorry!” Hanna said. But it was true—Penny did dump her, for a chef guy somewhere in Indiana. And it wasn’t like Ciara was going to want to live in a van with her ex for another three months, right?

  Hanna pinched the skin between her left thumb and forefinger. Just because it’s true doesn’t mean you have to say it, she reminded herself sharply. I am thinking before I speak, remember? “What I meant was,” she said, carefully this time, “you have been broken up for a while now, and I can see how that might not be fun anymore.”

  Ciara shook her head at Hanna, but a tired smile crept onto her face. “Yeah. I got my music out of it, but I’m done now.”

  “What about the Sun City contest?” Hanna asked. “You going to do it this year?”

  Ciara laughed now. “I wish,” she said. “Did you hear Glory Alabama’s sponsoring it this year? The prize money’s fifteen fucking thousand dollars. Do you know what I could do with that?”

  “It’s a lot of money,” Hanna said. “Like, a lot. And you could totally win, and then you’d have all that money, and I’m sure you wouldn’t mind tossing your best friend Hanna a couple grand, right?”

  “Please,” Ciara said. “If I had that money, I’d take it and run. Everybody round here’s a leech. You give ’em enough and they’ll bleed you dry. Nah, it’s not my year. Maybe next time.” Her eyes gleamed. “What about you?”

  Hanna rolled up the bottoms of her jeans and wiggled her toes. “No,” she said. Not that she hadn’t thought about it, because it was a lot of money, and she’d always wanted to win Sun City, and opening a show for Glory Alabama was a literal daydream of hers. They’d planned to enter, her and Jules and Dia, but that was a long time ago now. Still, she’d thought about it. But she couldn’t enter by herself, couldn’t play the music on her own, and even though for a minute she’d entertained the idea of forming a new band, her band, she hadn’t done anything more than think about it. It would mean finding people to play with, people who didn’
t know her as either the drunk drummer or that girl who always sits by herself, and where would she find them? And then she’d gotten exhausted at the thought of it and decided it wasn’t worth it.

  Fifteen thousand dollars, though.

  A car of my own. Money to move out. Put it in savings for college, eventually?

  Hanna shook herself. Why was she thinking about it when she wasn’t going to get it? “Nah,” she said finally. “Maybe next time.”

  Ciara nodded like they weren’t both talking shit and like next time didn’t really mean never. “What about the others? Do you think they’ll do it?”

  Hanna got up and went to the window, pushing it open another inch, like that might make an actual breeze appear. “I have no idea,” Hanna said. “You know that.”

  “I don’t know,” Ciara said, her voice hitting Hanna’s back. “I’ve been gone for three months. Maybe you spoke to them while I was gone, what do I know?”

  “Right. Yeah, I should have told you, we all made up while you were away.” Hanna turned, her delivery dry. “We’re the absolute bestest besties in the world again. Yay!”

  Ciara rolled her eyes and stretched out on Hanna’s bed now. “God, I forget how moody you are,” she said. “And I was only asking. Is it beyond the realm of belief that they might be entering?”

  “I guess not.” Hanna hadn’t thought about that. That Dia and Jules might enter the contest together. Without her.

  Obviously without me, she thought. Maybe they’ll find some other drummer.

  Replace me.

  “Maybe they are,” Hanna said, ignoring the spike of jealousy and hurt in the pit of her stomach. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”

  Ciara bounced to her feet. “Okay, that’s enough. You’re pissy, I’m starving. Let’s go get something to eat.” She grabbed Hanna’s hand and wove their fingers together. “I miss you being a pain in my ass when I’m gone.”

  “You’re so sweet,” Hanna said, but she smiled and meant it. “If we get food, Molly has to come too.”

  “That’s cool,” Ciara said. “Me and the Adler sisters, causing trouble.”

  “No trouble,” Hanna said, taking her hand from Ciara’s to lift her hair from the back of her sticky neck. “Or my mom will kill us all.”

  Ciara grinned. “Okay.”

  Hanna warmed to Ciara’s smile. She went away, but she always came back. That was more than Hanna could say about any of the other people she’d called her friends in the past.

  Jules

  Jules’s other job was at the mall, folding jeans and mass-manufactured tees with ridiculous slogans on them, ringing up people who were always in a rush and asking them, Would you like to get our store card? It’s a great deal!

  Usually she was good at it, efficient and forcing a necessary smile. Today she smiled without meaning to, and accidentally rang up some woman’s items at three times the price. Eventually she got switched to dressing-room duty, where her mess-ups would be harmless. But that was okay, because she got to stand there thinking about Autumn.

  Autumn standing at the register opposite Jules’s, laughing sweetly at her old lady customers. The tie of her uniform apron looped in a bouncy bow right above her ass. The swing of her blue-pink-purple hair. To stand there for hours with this distance between them, and customers insisting on interrupting their conversations, was torture.

  Not that their conversations were anything wild—not to anyone listening. Only words floated across the space between their registers: “How long have you worked here?”

  “Two years.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “Some days more than others.”

  “I like it so far.”

  “I like it today most of all.”

  And a smile from Autumn, like a bolt to Jules’s heart.

  Now she almost couldn’t wait to be back there, surrounded by cut-price toilet paper and misshapen fruit and Autumn, Autumn, Autumn.

  When her shift was over, Jules walked to the food court and ordered the five-dollar special from the sandwich place. She ripped open the package of chips as she navigated her way to the table where Dia and Alexa were waiting for her, and stopped when she reached them. “Dia,” she said. “I have to tell you something.”

  “Juju!” Alexa crowed, waving her chubby arms and bouncing in the mall-issue high chair. “See apples.”

  “Yeah, you have apple, baby,” Dia said, looking at Jules. “I have to tell you something, too.”

  Jules pulled out the chair opposite Dia and dumped her food. “Okay,” she said, and she couldn’t stop herself from smiling again. “What?”

  Dia looked at her curiously. “Why do you look weird?” she asked. “You’re all . . . smiley.”

  “It’s nothing,” Jules said, a half-truth at best. “Tell me your thing.”

  Dia’s eyes narrowed, and then she sat back suddenly. “It’s a girl thing!” she said. “Wait. This isn’t a Delaney thing again, right?”

  Jules shook her head. “No way,” she said. “You know we were terrible together.”

  “I know that,” Dia said. “It doesn’t mean you still remember.”

  “Oh, I remember,” Jules said. “But don’t worry, it’s not her.” Under the table her knees bounced up and down. “There’s this new girl at work. The grocery store,” she clarified. “Her name is Autumn.”

  “Autumn?” Dia repeated.

  “Yes. Dia—” Jules leaned her elbows on the table and put her hands over her mouth, trying to keep words in and failing.

  She spread her fingers and spoke through them. “Do you believe in love at first sight?”

  “No!” Dia laughed. “No. I believe in lust at first sight, sure. But love?”

  “I know, I know, it sounds ridiculous but . . . I don’t know, Dia, I don’t know what else to call it. Because I think this is what it feels like.” Jules tugged on her earlobe, the scarred bump where she used to have a third earring. “Love.”

  Dia picked up the burger on her tray and took a bite, staring at Jules as she chewed for a moment. She swallowed and then said, “Okay. Tell me about it. About her.”

  Jules looked down at her hands, chipped black polish and a single gold ring, warm against her dark skin. “Yesterday,” she started. “One minute I’m bored out of my mind and then I go in the break room and there’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. And I felt this . . . energy, or connection or . . .”

  “Or what?” Dia said, a teasing lilt to her voice. “Come on. Tell me the rest.”

  Lex knocked her juice box over and Jules turned it right side up again, then scooted closer to the baby and lowered her voice. “Lex, your mom thinks I’m being weird. And maybe she’s right, but I don’t think I care. You get it, right?”

  Alexa looked at her very seriously, her big brown eyes unblinking. And then she said, “Cheese, please.”

  Jules laughed. “I knew you’d understand.”

  “What does she look like?” Dia cut in. “Did she speak to you? Fill in the blanks, Jules.”

  “She’s cute,” Jules said. “Her smile is like the kind you can’t ever be mad at. Her hair is all different colors. She could be in one of those old-school pinup calendars. She’s like this cute, sexy, funny girl with the best smile and . . . oh.” Jules twisted the ring around and around. “I think I really like her.”

  “And this Autumn girl, does she get to be an actual participant in this love story?” Dia raised her eyebrows. “Or are you going to have a giant crush on her and leave it at that?”

  “I don’t know.” Jules shook her head, casting her eyes upward. “I swear—no, it’s—” She stopped herself and took a breath, looking back at Dia. “When I looked at her and I felt that thing, it felt like it was both of us. It was, like, a real thing—I saw her, she saw me, and this thing happened. I know what you’re thinking. It’s not love. It’s lust. Infatuation. But—can’t it be all of that?”

  Love, lust, infatuation. Autumn, bright smile, these swishy
dresses beneath her Callahan’s apron, flashes of leg as she walked around the store. And then the rest of her . . . well, Jules could only imagine. Would have much fun imagining in the shower later.

  Dia smiled big now. “Maybe it can,” she said, sounding sincere. “Autumn sounds cool, really.”

  “It’s ridiculous,” Jules said. “I’m excited to go to work tomorrow. I don’t know who I am anymore.”

  “What are you going to do?” Dia asked, excitement in her voice now too. “Ask her out?”

  Jules’s hands felt suddenly clammy and she wiped them on her jeans. “I’ve never asked anybody out before,” she realized. “Maybe I should. What do you think?”

  Dia raised her eyebrows. “Why not? What’s the worst that could happen?”

  “She says no?” The thought of it made Jules not even want to try. God, if she said the words Will you go out with me? and Autumn’s answer was No?

  Heartbroken.

  “So maybe she says no,” Dia said. “At least you’ll have asked.”

  “But then we’d have to work together,” Jules said, “and I’d know she doesn’t like me and I’ll have this huge crush on her and oh my god, how embarrassing.”

  Dia shrugged. “If she’s as cool as you say, she won’t be gross about it and you’ll go back to how things are at this precise moment. You know, because none of this has happened? So you don’t have to freak out.”

  “Right.” Jules sighed. “This is bad. But in a good way.”

  “Right,” Dia repeated. “Autumn. Pretty name.”

  “Isn’t it?” Jules said, picking up a napkin and twisting it around and around. “Autumn, Autumn. Oh, I disgust myself.”

  Dia laughed and Lex copied her, hers more of a high-pitched squeal. “It’s okay,” she said. “You’re allowed to do this. I’ll give you two weeks before I start giving you shit.”