Perfect Fifths_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [102]
He cries out, “Jessica!”
Without hesitation, Marcus scrambles out of the shower stall, his sopping feet slip-sliding across the slick tiles. He bursts through the bathroom door and sees Jessica thrashing around on the bed, choking on agonizing sobs.
He rushes over to her, envelops her entire body in a wet embrace. “What is it?” he pleads. “Tell me!”
Jessica gasps for air. She takes a ragged, gurgly breath. She’s shocked by her body’s response to this good news. She had no idea just how much emotion she’d bottled inside until it all came gushing out. “She’s okay!”
“Who’s okay?”
“Sunny … hit by a car … in the hospital… coma …”
Her half-sentences are horrifying enough. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”
She squirms. “I didn’t know how deep you wanted to get.”
“Deep,” Marcus says without hesitation. “Always deep.” He cradles her in his still-wet arms, strokes her hair. “Tell me more.”
Jessica obliges. She tells Marcus about Sunny, the only Girl she worked with over the past two years who had become more than just a character in a story, but a complicated person who defied all narrative conventions. This process—from one of many to the One—began, ironically, with the give-and-take exchange of—what else?—stories. Jessica had once told Sunny the story of the decoupage Barry Manilow toilet seat cover. Sunny had loved that story, had become slightly obsessed with that story, a story so beautiful and bizarre, unlike anything that she—ever-boyfriendless at sixteen, for whom the delayed loss of virginity was, in her opinion, well-nigh inevitable to go to whatever frat boy was first to get her sufficiently but not prohibitively passed-out drunk during college orientation week—had come close to experiencing herself. To Sunny, this story begged to celebrated and commemorated through—yes!—a ring tone. A ring tone! Ha! What could be a better example of the inane ways that people chose to express themselves through mass consumerism?
“She’s why I’m getting my master’s in education,” Jessica explains. “I liked many of my mentees, but it was Sunny who made me realize that I could be good at this. That I could inspire young women the way Mac or even Haviland inspired me … Oh, fuck, I sound so goddamn pageant. I better snark on someone quick!”
Marcus laughs without any sound. It’s a distracted laugh. He releases Jessica just enough so he can look her in the face. “There’s something I should tell you.”
twenty-two
Jessica nods to encourage this confession. For a split second, she prepares to hear him confirm the worst of the rumors blitzing her brain:
He wants to be just friends.
He doesn’t want to be friends or anything else.
He loves another woman.
He doesn’t love me.
“I won an Inter-Ivy Fellowship.”
She says nothing, anticipating that there’s more to it than that.
“It provides tuition for any graduate school program in the Ivy League.”
Jessica nods slowly, almost afraid to acknowledge what this might mean for her.
“That’s why I was in New York City a few weeks ago. I was touring Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs.”
What it might mean for them.
There is a thoughtful pause. Jessica’s eyes spring wide-open, but her lips shut tight.
“What?” Marcus asks. “You look like you want to say something.”
Jessica makes a show of looking away. “You’re naked.”
Marcus looks down as if he himself is just discovering this fact.
The rest is unnecessary.
Jessica wriggles herself from Marcus’s embrace and sits up on the bed. He remains kneeling on the floor beside her, then drops face-first into the duvet cover. Jessica cannot tell if this is a gesture of supplication or defeat, neither of which sits well with her. She grazes the top of his scalp with her fingernails. He moans into the Egyptian cotton.
“I think I’ve changed my mind,” she says simply.
He lifts his head. And when their eyes lock, there is no question what Jessica is referring