Perfect Fifths_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [3]
He says nothing.
“We should—” Jessica starts. She’s rocking from side to side now, an anxious, joyless dance. “You should—” The pronoun change doesn’t go unnoticed by either of them. “E-mail. Or, I don’t know. Text. Something …”
“Something,” he says simply.
Marcus musters the courage to look Jessica right in the face. She still wears her hair like an afterthought, pulled back with a few quick twists of a rubber band. If she removed the elastic and shook it out, he would breathe in the fruity scent of shampoo, certain that the chestnut tresses resting against her neck are still damp from her morning shower. He finds some comfort in this knowledge, as well as in the overall familiarity of her features, which haven’t changed that much since he last saw her. But he must admit to himself—only to himself, never to her, even if she’d had the time or the temerity to ask—that her casual loveliness is more than a little washed-out. Her eyes are tired, tinged pink, and buffered by puffy purple undereye circles. Her lips are crackled dry, her nostrils chapped and flaking around the corners, perhaps from too many rubs with a paper towel, a wool coat sleeve, or some other rough tissue substitute. He hopes that her careworn appearance is an aberration, that her immune system is down but she’s not. He wants her to be sick or tired, but not sick and tired, or just plain sad.
“I’d catch up if…” Her cheeks glow an embarrassed red, and her pale complexion is better for it.
“If you had time,” Marcus finishes for her, trying to determine from her voice whether she’s suffering from a cold or something worse.
“If—” she starts again, but doesn’t finish.
She can’t look up at him. If she looks up at him, she will see him. And if she sees him, she’ll be compelled to ask questions she doesn’t have time for. Instead, she concentrates on her own familiar Converses, but even that fails to bring her relief. That they both still wear their same favorite brands of sneakers after all these years is only a minor revelation, and yet even this tiny glimpse of his world going on without her—and hers without him—is almost too much for Jessica to bear. What else hasn’t changed? Does he still meditate for hours on the floor of his closet? Jessica braces herself with a deep breath. Would he still smell like smoldering leaves if she leaned in close enough? Does he still compose elliptical, poetic songs on his acoustic guitar?
Derelict lyrics force themselves to the front of her consciousness, a ballad softly sung when they were still teenagers, the only one Marcus ever wrote or sang for her:
I confess, yes, our fall was all my fault
If you kissed my eyes, your lips would taste salt …
Her watery eyes stay fixed on the unraveled seams splitting his mossy V-neck a quarter inch lower than the designer’s intentions. This is an expensive-looking sweater—two-ply cashmere, she guesses—and she doubts Marcus could afford to buy it for himself. She assumes it was a gift from someone who is very familiar with his face, one who knew how this gray-green shade would shake loose those evasive hues from his multifaceted brown eyes. Definitely a gift. He doesn’t even have the cash to care for this item properly with regular dry-cleaning. She imagines him blithely tossing the sweater into one of his college’s communal washing machines,