How to Love

“How’d you even get in here, anyway?”

“I have ways.” Sawyer shrugged. “Actually, some freshman girl let me in.”

I snorted, rolled my eyes. “Of course she did.”

“Of course,” Sawyer echoed. “So how are things in the world of print journalism?” he asked next, opening up the door for me and stepping out into the early-winter dusk. “On the eve of extinction as always?”

“I mean, I don’t know,” I said, smiling. “I might have been able to answer that a little better if you hadn’t just yanked me out of my meeting before it was over.”

Sawyer pulled a face. “I didn’t yank you anyplace,” he countered, grabbing my wrist and doing just that, pulling me into him so he could get an arm around my shoulders.

“Right.” I laughed and leaned closer, the waffle of his thermal shirt warm against my cheek. “No, it’s good. Noelle’s starting to give me some feature stuff besides the column, which is cool. I’m covering the winter musical, I’ll have you know.”

Sawyer raised his eyebrows. “Fancy.”

I pouted up at him. “It is!”

“I know,” he said, and kissed me again. “That’s awesome, Reena.” Then, as he flipped the key in the driver’s side door of the Jeep: “So what are you doing tonight, anything? Do you have plans?”

Well, sort of, if homework counted. “Was thinking I’d jet down to Havana for the weekend, actually,” I told him, figuring sarcasm was the safest way to go here. Sawyer was definitely acting pretty boyfriend-esque lately, picking me up from school on the days I didn’t ride with Shelby and leaving pomegranates on my front porch. Still, whatever was going on between us was still achingly gray and amorphous: He hadn’t made any declarations, and I certainly wasn’t going to be the one to make them first. Instead, I waited. I kept watch. “Check out the nightlife.”

“Oh, I see.” Sawyer slid his hand behind my headrest, backed the Jeep out of his spot. “Well, if you think you could maybe blow off El Presidente just for tonight, we’re playing at the Prime Meridian later. You should come and see us, meet everybody.”

Everybody.

On the nights we spent goofing around in the restaurant or hanging out on his parents’ front porch, it was easy to forget that Sawyer lived an entire life into which I had no point of entry—that he hung out with friends I’d never met, played music I’d never heard. I didn’t like to think about where he was when he didn’t pick up his cell phone, weekends I spent with Shelby or by myself doing mundane, high-school-life-type things. It made me feel nervous. It made me feel weird.

“Yeah.” I smiled and willed down the slimy greenish mass of anxiety I already felt forming in the pit of my stomach. “You know, it’s sort of a bitch to get to Cuba, anyway, so.”

“I mean, customs alone.” Sawyer grinned, pulled up in front of my house, and tugged at some hair that had fallen out of my ponytail. “I’ll pick you up at nine.”

* * *

The Prime Meridian wasn’t nice. Sandwiched between a pet store and a sketchy Chinese restaurant in a strip mall off the highway, it was long and narrow and boasted a tiny stage in back, a raised platform a foot or so off the ground. The bar was strung with multicolored Christmas lights and tended by a scowly guy who was, in all seriousness, probably seven feet tall. It smelled like beer and cigarettes, too many people in too small a space.

I’d been here with Allie once, back at the beginning of high school, both of us wearing far too much makeup and dressed in our tightest jeans. We’d taken one look inside and fled for the fluorescent safety of last call at Panera Bread, but I figured she’d probably returned at some point, more likely than not with the same boy who was currently steering me through the crowd, one hand on my lower back. The idea made me feel sick-sad, the same way I did whenever I thought about Allie and Sawyer.

“I have to go set up,” Sawyer said over the noisy chatter of the crowd, once he’d settled me at the far end of the bar. “Are you going to be okay by yourself? Mike said he’d keep you out of trouble.”

Mike, the giant bartender, nodded gruffly in my general direction and I nodded a little, sweating: It was stifling hot at the Prime Meridian. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. No worries.”

“Good.” He found my hand and squeezed once, fleeting. “Make sure you cheer real loud.”

Sawyer left me and headed for the stage, where a couple of guys were already assembling a drum kit, connecting an amp. I watched them for a while, until the drummer—Animal himself, presumably—caught me and nudged Sawyer. He said something, but I couldn’t make out what.

I tried to get comfortable on the stool, to not stare at anybody, to look like I belonged here. I wished for a notebook. I wished for a pen. Probably a girl writing in a bar was weird, but not as weird as a girl who was just sitting around all by herself and sweating, with nowhere to comfortably look. I wished I’d asked Shelby to come.

“You want something?” Mike wanted to know, leaning over the bar so I could hear him.

I nodded. “Just a Coke. With a lot of ice.”

He raised his eyebrows at me. “That all?”

“That’s all.”

“Good girl.”

I just shrugged. That’s me, I wanted to tell him. Serena Montero, good girl at large. I should have had business cards printed up.

I chewed ice cubes as the bar filled, as another guy climbed onstage and began tuning a guitar. People kept making their way through the door, and I glanced around warily as a group of three or four girls positioned themselves almost directly in front of me. There was definitely a target market in the Prime Meridian that night, a whole lot of American Apparel up in there. “Um,” I said, as Mike passed by. “Can I ask you a question?”

“You just did.” He looked impatient; he was busy.

“Do they play here a lot?”

“Every few weeks or so.”

“Is it always like this? The … crowd, I mean?”

“What, the lady brigade?” Mike smirked, glanced around. “Pretty much.” He looked at me for another moment. “You need something else?”

Yes. How the hell did I not know this was a popular band? I wanted to yell, but the lead singer, who wore a green T-shirt with MY OTHER RIDE IS YOUR MOM emblazoned across the front, approached the mic. “We’re the Platonic Ideal,” he announced, as the drums started up behind him. “How are you guys doing?”

I looked back at Mike and just shook my head. “No,” I said slowly, which was useless—I couldn’t even hear my own voice. “I think I’m good for now.”

The members of the Platonic Ideal were all variations on a theme, shaggy-haired boys with bad attitudes and Converse sneakers, but it worked for them—didn’t hurt that their melodies were gorgeous, the harmonies right on. The kid on the keyboard had braces, I noted with a smile, and the guitarist, who was wearing aviator sunglasses even though it was muddy dark, and whom I vaguely remembered Sawyer referring to as Iceman, had a lot more John Mayer in him than he probably wanted to admit.

Sawyer, though, my Sawyer LeGrande, was very obviously their token looker—dark jeans slouched low on his narrow hips and a belt buckle the size of a saucer. He wore a plain white T-shirt, the kind you buy at Walmart in packs of three for six dollars, but of course he looked like a million bucks, all angles and muscles and fierce concentration. I plucked another ice cube from my glass.

He knew how to play the girls, too, in particular a coven of about four or five who were standing right next to the stage, singing along to every song and positively wiggling. Wiggling. Jesus. Sawyer played the bass and didn’t say much, just grinned occasionally, tapped one sneaker-clad foot on the stage, and sang his songs. He had a pretty voice, all yearning tenor, velvety and sad.

I shifted in my seat, out of sorts and aching; I couldn’t get over the sneaking suspicion that I was sitting exactly where I didn’t want to sit. I’d gotten this far and still all I could manage to do was watch him from across the room and wish there was a way to capture him, to write him down—the girl in the yard at the party, hiding outside the pool of light.

He talked to those girls between songs, the Wiggles, laughing like he knew them, crouched down at the