Perfect Fifths_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [71]
But she doesn’t blink. In fact, she’s staring at Marcus in a heavy-lidded, dreamy way that, whether intentional or not, is more seductive than any look any woman has ever given him.
I want to tell you, Marcus thinks. I want to tell you so much.
four
He’s testing me, Jessica thinks.
Jessica is exhilarated with exhaustion, like an ultra-endurance athlete who is thoroughly depleted after a double triathlon or other superhuman test of strength yet still pretty! fucking! pumped! that she crossed the finish line. Only in Jessica’s case, it’s like finishing a double triathlon and then finding out that what she thought was the finish line is actually not the finish line because she signed herself up for a quadruple triathlon and she’s only halfway to the end so she better pound some carbs and chug some electrolytes and get back out there. But if his near-silence is any indication, Marcus is also in need of a respite before the next matchup, so she need not push herself just yet.
No, not a test, she reconsiders. That gives him too much power. This is a battle of wits between two well-matched opponents. And so far, it’s a draw. I’ve missed this, Jessica thinks. I’ve missed talking to you.
Like a pro, Jessica reviews her performance, the reel of highlights and lowlights unspooling in her mind. As much as she didn’t want to, she couldn’t stop herself from talking about Sunny. It’s so goddamn Freudian of her, to babble on about the one subject that she wants to keep sacred for herself. And isn’t it just like Marcus to assume that her half-told story was all about protecting him? Of course, this conclusion might stem less from narcissistic than from altruistic motivations. His half-told story about the sweater, the watch, The Beard, etc., was surely edited to protect her feelings, a certainty that leaves Jessica feeling less unsettled than she’d expect from such an intimidating intimation.
Sunny would be positively thrilled to serve as a subject of discussion between Jessica and Marcus. Would it help if Jessica called right now and asked Sunny’s parents to press the phone to her ear? Marcus Flutie knows about you, Sunny. You’re a story worth telling. Would that be enough to make Sunny’s eyes open? Would she grab the phone out of her mother’s hand and demand, “PUT MARCUS ON THE PHONE NOW”? And if a little teaser wasn’t enough to coax her back into consciousness, there was so much more Jessica could tell Sunny now than when she first considered calling from the airport restroom.
Jessica could start by telling her how Marcus pretended not to know anything about their minor impact on contemporary pop music. This is a near-impossible claim of ignorance, coming from someone who lived on a college campus that had, just three months earlier, hosted the Mighties on a double bill with a Princeton-based band named Steampunk Dandy. It’s a 100 percent impossible claim of ignorance coming from someone who, toward the end of their two-hour conversation, actually quoted from the infamous song, a song that is in heavy rotation on Sunny’s own iPod, without acknowledging that those lyrics (You have stopped the arrow of time / There’s no meaning to this rhyme / Because my song will never mean as much as the one / He once sang / For you, yes, you …) were in fact written by (a) Len Levy (b) about them.
She could also tell Sunny how Marcus went out of his way to press her on the subject of her friendship with Manda, whom he must know was the one who ramblingly revealed their identities as the subjects of the aforementioned song to the Mighties’ modest but rabid blogospheric fan base. This was a development that Sunny herself first reported to Jessica within minutes of this praecoxal post to a fansite called TheMightiest.com in response to the question from an approved commenter screen-named Len’sGirl2010: does ANYONE know who MY SONG is about? i’m DYING to find out and Len won’t tell!
Couchsurfeminist commented: i went to high school with everyone in MY SONG. i was so fortunate to date