If He Had Been with Me Read Online Free Page B

and it has felt less and less like Christmas.
    Jamie is spending Christmas with his grandmother in Wisconsin, and I am pleased to be missing him. It is a dull ache that I enjoy prodding.
    Jamie, I think, Jamie, Jamie, James, and I remember his tongue in my mouth. I don’t like it as much as I thought I would, but I’m getting used to it. I tell him that I love him all the time now, and he hasn’t said anything else about having sex. He gave me a new journal for Christmas, and even though I haven’t filled up my old one yet, I’m going to start it on New Year’s. He’ll be home by then and we’ll spend it together. Jamie, Jamie, Jamie.
    “Autumn,” my father says, “are you the sugar plum fairy this year?” There is a silence at the table as I try to understand what he means. Then I see my mother bite her lip, and I realize he is talking about my tiara. He has not noticed that I have worn this tiara every day for the past three weeks. I take a breath.
    “Yeah,” I say. “Just thought I’d make the dinner a little more festive.” He smiles at me and takes a bite of ham. He is pleased with himself. My mother says something to Finny, and slowly the conversation at the table resumes. After a few minutes, I excuse myself and go to my room.
    I’ve bought some posters: Jimi Hendrix rolling on stage with his guitar, Ophelia drowned and looking up at the sky, a black and white photo of a tree without leaves. I like the effect they have on the lavender and white room, like the corset and the cardigan, like my tiara with ripped jeans. I don’t look at the posters though. I lie down on the bed and look at the ceiling.
    When someone knocks on my door, I pretend I’m asleep. A moment later, the door opens anyway and Finny sticks his head in.
    “Hey,” he says. “They said to tell you that we’re done eating.”
    “Okay,” I say, but I do not move. I am waiting for him to leave. He doesn’t though; he keeps standing there like I’m supposed to do something. I do nothing. I look at the ceiling until he speaks again.
    “It really sucks that he hasn’t noticed,” Finny says.
    “At least my father’s around for Christmas,” I say. His expression changes only for an instant. Then it is as if a door has closed again.
    “I didn’t mean it like that,” I say.
    “It’s fine,” he says. “Everybody is waiting downstairs.”
    After he leaves, I lie in bed a little longer. I think about telling Finny how I don’t care, and how it hurts, and how it doesn’t really matter to me but I wish it mattered to my dad. I imagine that suddenly Finny is holding me and telling me it is okay, and he’s saying that you can feel more than one way about a person. We go downstairs and he holds my hand while we watch It’s a Wonderful Life together on the couch. When he and Aunt Angelina leave, he kisses me good night on the porch, and we see that it is starting to snow.
    I swing my legs over the side of the bed, wipe my eyes, and go downstairs.

8
    The party is at my house, because it is big and so my parents can meet Jamie before they go to The Office’s New Year’s Eve party.
    Jamie was good with my parents. He shook hands, made eye contact, and didn’t smell like any kind of smoke. Dad was satisfied. Mom was pleased, and I have a nagging feeling that it is because Jamie is so good-looking, as if she can now rest assured that I am not too uncool at school.
    Sasha, Brooke, and Angie are going to spend the night. Alex’s mom is going to pick up the boys after midnight. Until then, we are alone.
    Brooke has stolen a champagne bottle from her parents’ party. It’s wrapped up in her sleeping bag, and it will only be after it is too late that we will realize it was safe to put it in the fridge.
    We eat pizza and watch a movie. The movie is not great. The boys crack jokes and try to be the one to make the girls laugh the most. Jamie is winning, of course. I lean back in the leather couch and feel like a consort.
    Afterward,