“Ooh, I think you just sold Emerson’s version to me,” Izzy said, stroking her chin like a supervillain. “I do love overthrowing establishments.”
Sayid held his hands up. “Seriously?”
“My vote’s with Emerson, too,” I said. “Sorry, man.”
Sayid scowled and went to pack up the keyboard. “You guys never side with me,” he said.
“They can’t help it if I’m a lyrical genius,” Emerson said.
“Oh yeah, we got a regular Lin-Manuel Miranda over here.”
I grabbed my phone just as a text came in from Juliette.
Hey, the game just finished. We’re heading to You Got Soft-Served over on Hamilton Street if you want to come grab a shake?
Wait, so I could go consume some sugar, see Will again, and support a local pun-appreciating business? It’s not like I could say no to that, now, was it?
Everyone was already there when I arrived. Five basketball guys formed a row of black-and-white varsity jackets, crowded around a booth against the wall. They all had damp hair from their post-game showers. Will’s hair was the longest out of all of them, and he kept sweeping it back off his forehead with an impatient hand. He paused when he noticed me coming, his hand midsweep, and then ducked his head with a shy grin.
Across from them, Lara, Niamh, and Juliette sat, already sipping on milkshakes. Juliette beckoned me to sit next to her on the light blue pleather. “The guys haven’t ordered yet,” she said. “We’ve been waiting here a while.”
“We had to get ready, didn’t we?” Matt asked. “Do you think looking this good happens by accident?”
Lara raised an eyebrow. “Oh, God, girls, I think this is what they look like when they’re trying. How tragic.” She looked down at her phone and smiled at something on the screen. I tried to catch a peek of it but she was too far away.
“So, uh, how did we do?” I asked in a small voice. I wasn’t used to talking in front of the basketball guys. Honestly, they intimidated me a bit. They always seemed so confident, and loud, and judgmental. Not really the best mix with people who weren’t also confident, and loud, and judgmental.
One of the guys I’d never spoken to before, Ethan, started thumping his hands on the table. The other guys joined him, in a four-by-four beat that got louder by the second. Except for Will. Will just folded his arms and leaned back in his chair, looking damned pleased with himself.
Darnell jumped out of his seat and grabbed Will’s shoulders. “This man right here, this man, won us the game.”
“We’re even footing the whole way,” Matt added, holding his arms up in front of him, “then in the last quarter we start dropping. We have, like, two minutes to go, Will’s one-on-one on the wing, he makes the shot, then he steals the inbound pass and hits another contested shot absolutely out of nowhere, and suddenly we’re in the lead.”
Will was grinning, but it wasn’t gentle like his usual one. It was the harder, smug smile that kept crossing his face whenever he was around these guys. I’d seen him look like this across the cafeteria a few times. So self-satisfied. It didn’t suit him.
“That’s the kind of play I’m used to seeing from you, man,” Matt said. He had what must’ve been his “captain” voice going on. Like a teacher congratulating an apprentice. It had such a warm tone to it, I could imagine guys busting their asses to have Matt talk to him with that kind of appreciation in his voice.
Darnell nodded. “Yeah, we worried you might’ve gone soft on us, with all those music lessons,” he said, nudging Will. Will’s eyes flickered toward me. He wasn’t smiling anymore.
Matt nodded. “Yeah, man. No offense, Ollie, but we thought you were turning him into a freaking goth or something.”
Right. Because I was totally a goth.
“Try emo pussy,” Darnell added, then wilted at Niamh’s fierce glare.
“Do you need to be a sexist pig?” she asked, before sucking on her straw like it’d done her some great wrong. “That’s foul.”
Will snickered—snickered—and hit Darnell with a rolled-up menu. “Yeah, don’t be a sexist pig, Darnell. The proper terminology is emo genitalia.”
Darnell swatted at him. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“And do I look fuckin’ emo to you, smartass? Give me some credit.”
Well, this was uncomfortable. And not that I exactly identified with being emo—come on, it wasn’t 2007—but obviously Will didn’t see any difference. And the way he’d scrunched up his nose at the idea told me a lot about what he thought of seeming anything like me. I glared at the table.
“To be honest, Will, it’s a good thing you’re not,” said Lara in a hard voice. “You don’t have the ass to pull off jeans that tight.”
The guys broke out into laughter, high-fiving each other. “Damn, Lara,” Matt said, looking half-impressed, half-delighted.
Wait, had Lara just stood up for me? That seemed very unlike her. But then she caught my eye, raised her eyebrows, and ran her tongue over her teeth. She had the air of someone who’d won a battle with the patriarchy. Holy shit, she had said that to stand up for me.
I almost would’ve grinned, if I didn’t feel so empty all of a sudden.
A waiter came over. The rest of the guys all competed with each other over ordering the best freak-shake—the shake with the most brownies, Nutella, strawberries, Oreos, peanut butter, whipped cream, shaving cream, laundry detergent, and whatever-the-hell-else they added on top.
When he came to take my order, though, I just shook my head and asked for a water. Will seemed to notice, but he didn’t say anything.
Juliette had leaned over to whisper with Niamh, then as soon as the waiter left, she turned back to the guys. “So, Darnell,” she said, while an alarmed Niamh shook her head at her. “Has anyone asked you to the Snowflake dance yet?”
His eyes went straight to Niamh, who was turning an interesting shade of burgundy. “Not … yet. It’s a little early for that, right?”
“It’s never too early,” Juliette said.
“What’s the Snowflake dance?” I asked, trying to keep quiet enough that the conversation didn’t become about me. But, of course, the whole table turned to look at me. Maybe if I talked more, I’d get less attention when I did speak up.
“It’s a dance we have right after Christmas break,” Juliette said.
“The catch is, girls have to ask guys,” Matt added.
Huh. Seemed pretty heteronormative. And what if a girl wanted to ask a girl? Or otherwise.
What if no one asked me?
Oh, God, what if someone did?
“Yeah, right, and how about you, Juliette?” Darnell asked. “You gone and asked someone already?”
“Oh, I can’t go,” she said airily. “I have an audition with the Conservatory that weekend.”
“What?” I screeched. For once it didn’t even occur to me to feel shy in front of the group. “Holy shit, you do not!”
“I do!” She beamed and grabbed my hands. “I just found out.”
“Oh my God! I’m so proud of you.”
We bounced up and down in our seats while the girls squealed their congratulations and the guys tried to figure out what the big deal was.
I noticed Will was watching me with a funny smile. My excitement evaporated, and fire started shooting up from the ground, and my fingernails turned into talons so I could rip that smile off his face. How dare he look at me like that after talking shit about me, right in front of me?
When they brought out the rest of the shakes, I admittedly felt a little twinge of regret that I’d passed them up. They were works of art made out of chocolate, some of them towering several inches above the Mason jars they were served in, covered in whipped cream, candy, edible glitter, gold flakes, mint chips, and most of them drizzled with three months’ worth of melted Nutella.
And here I was with my water.
Eurgh. This was all Will’s fault.
My phone buzzed. I tuned out of the conversation
and checked my phone.
Will.
I’m heading to the parking lot. Meet me there in 1.75 minutes?
His chair squeaked as he hopped up and clapped Matt on the back. “Hey, I’ll be back, bro.”
“Your milkshake just got here.”
“I can’t help it. And don’t you dare touch it while I’m gone.”
Matt grinned. “You know I can’t promise that.”
I tracked Will out of the corner of my eye. He headed over toward the restrooms, but then, casual as anything, veered left to go out the back door.
All right. Time to count down. One-point-five-three minutes until I had to pull the same maneuver.
I leaned in to whisper to Juliette. “I’ll be back in a sec.”
“Where are you going?”
Really? Really? “You know. Just over, ah, to the …”
“Oh, bathroom?”
“Yeah.”
She lowered her voice even more. “It’s just, I thought you might be going to meet Will like he asked you to.”
Oh my God she totally eavesdropped on my text. Or, like … eyesdropped. What was the visual equivalent of eavesdropping? Actually, no. Irrelevant. With as much dignity as I could muster, I rose to my feet, gave her a pointed look, and headed over to the restrooms. Super casual, just like Will had.
Then when I got there, I turned around to check if anyone was watching me. Juliette caught my eye and smiled, and I paused, frozen, terrified someone might notice her glancing at me. Super not casual, the exact opposite of Will.
But what else was new.
I think I made it outside without anyone other than Juliette catching on. In fact, I was so distracted by the whole mission that I briefly forgot I was kind of pissed at Will. But then I saw him, leaning against the wall near the edge of the building with his hands stuffed into his jacket pockets, and oh boy I remembered.
I stalked toward him, arms folded. “Yes?”
He lit up when he saw me like the way he used to at the lake when I’d torn him away from his thoughts. Somehow, this annoyed me even more. He could at least acknowledge that I was annoyed. He didn’t have to look so happy to see me.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hi.”
“You’re not eating?”
What an icebreaker. “Not hungry.”
He nodded, then opened his mouth. Then closed it, opened it, then closed it again. He folded his arms against the cold and stepped from side to side. He looked like an unusually melancholy square dancer. Well, at least he wasn’t acting all cheerful anymore. “I feel really stupid,” he said.
“Uh-huh.”
“God, I don’t even know what to say. It just slipped out. I’m so used to acting a certain way around the guys, you know? It’s not me, I know it’s not me, but I always joke with them, and they expect me to say things, so I don’t even think.”
I didn’t say anything.
He sighed, and tipped his head back. “I’m really sorry.” He peeked at me, but I still didn’t reply. I mean, what could I say? That it was okay? Because it really wasn’t. “I’m a dick because I’ve always been a dick around my friends” wasn’t really an excuse.
“I like your jeans,” he tried. “And your music. And you in general, really. So much it’s ridiculous. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since Thanksgiving.”
Since Thanksgiving? I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him since summer. Honestly, it was starting to feel like maybe since birth. I couldn’t remember a time when I’d been able to brush my teeth, or make toast, or play guitar without Will’s face popping into my mind like a jump-scare in a viral video.
But. Still.
He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about our kiss.
Did that mean the idea of us—being with me, properly, for everyone to see—wasn’t so scary to him anymore? Could our kiss have reminded him of what it was like when we were together? It had definitely reminded me. Maybe he’d decided I was worth the risk.
I softened the tiniest bit.
Suddenly, he shrugged out of his varsity jacket and held it out to me. “Will you wear this?” he asked. “Just for a few seconds or whatever?”
I didn’t mean to look at it so suspiciously, but my mind couldn’t help but race to see if there was a trap or a catch here. “Why?”
He shifted his weight from one leg to another, giving the jacket a small shake. “I wanna see how it looks.”
For once, I didn’t have a sassy comeback. I crossed my arms over my chest to barricade my insides, which had melted like butter. Peak softness reached. “Really?”
Deep inside my chest, my heart was beating as though it was trying to tear free of bondage. With an embarrassingly giddy grin I took the jacket and slipped it on. I mean, it definitely couldn’t look any good on me—l ike a Chihuahua trying to pull off a Great Dane’s collar, I imagined—but … okay, admittedly, it made me feel good. So good. Special, even. Like, it didn’t matter that I’d had a breakout that week, or that my cowlick wouldn’t behave itself, or that I’d never gotten braces when by all means I should have.
None of it mattered, because Will wanted me to wear his jacket, and Will thought I was beautiful.
I lifted my hands awkwardly, the cuffs of the sleeves drowning my fingertips. “Sexy, am I right?” I joked.
He didn’t laugh when he nodded. “It looks great on you.” He glanced around us to make sure there were no basketballers lurking in the shadows waiting to catch us out. It ruined the moment for me for half a second, but then, with this affectionate little smile that made me seriously worry about spontaneous combustion, he held out his hand to search for mine inside the left sleeve. He looped his pinky finger around mine. “I wish you could wear it at school.”
“Me, too.”
I waited for him. This was an in. He could say “wear it inside now.” He could say “maybe you’ll wear it someday.” If he’d just given me something to hold on to, I’d take it. But he didn’t.
Suddenly, the jacket felt too heavy. I started to shuck it off but Will stopped me.
“Can I get a picture?” he asked.
I shrugged, and waited sullenly while he took his phone out. He held it up, then lowered it again. “Can I get a picture where it doesn’t look like you’re thinking of ways to drown me?”
I cracked a smile. “Sorry,” I said, and he crinkled his nose at me before taking a photo.
Once he was finished, I handed him back his jacket. “You should get back in before they notice how long you’ve been missing,” I said.
“Yeah. Make sure you wait a couple minutes before coming back, right?” He looked around us, then stepped toward me. He placed a hand on my chest and pushed me gently backward until I hit the wall, and then, even more gently, pressed his lips against mine.
It was probably a good thing I had to wait a few minutes before heading back inside, because it took about that long for me to collect myself.
When I got back to the table, Will, who’d been making his way through his milkshake soup, waved at me. “Mm, Ollie, I was just telling them about the other day in music class, when Ms. Ellison showed us that YouTube video.”
I sat down warily. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Anyway, it was the most patronizing shit ever, right? Like, it had all these clips of high schoolers comparing pop stars to classical composers. It’s like someone told Ms. E she had to try to ‘relate’ to us more.”
“Sure it wasn’t you, Will?” Darnell asked.
“Not me. Honestly, I find the classical stuff pretty interesting on its own.”
“Oh, God, they’re brainwashing you,” Matt said, grabbing onto Will’s arm in mock despair.
Will shrugged. “Hey, it’s better than German. What a useless language. Who even speaks German here?”
“Yeah, who needs a foreign language when you can just waltz up to people and sing at them?” Matt asked, but he was grinning. That was the thing with Will. Even when he was being teased, every
one was always laughing with him, never at him. He was the last person who should’ve been scared of being judged, when you thought about it.
“Music is a universal language,” Juliette said.
“See?” Will said, holding a hand out. “She gets it. Y’all are outnumbered.”
“Three versus, what, six?” Matt asked. “You call that outnumbered?”
Juliette looked to her left. “Lara? Niamh?”
Niamh, who’d been staring into the distance and propping her head up with one hand as though to keep it from falling into her milkshake, jumped and refocused. “Hmm?”
“Come on, Lara,” Matt wheedled.
“Hey, I stand with my girls,” Lara said. “If Juliette thinks music class is cool, then music class is cool. End of discussion.”
Will shared a mischievous look with me, and I couldn’t help but grin at him. Under the table I sent him a text.
Apology accepted.
16
From that point on, I guess Will and I were kind of seeing each other. I say “kind of,” because we never labeled it. That, and the fact that it was still a bigger secret than the aliens the government have locked in a warehouse somewhere. And let’s be honest, the government definitely has aliens locked in a warehouse somewhere. The government is just being coy about it.
And that’s what Will and I were doing. We were being coy.
Because coy meant “texting someone all day every day, calling each other to hear their voice, and making out in secret whenever possible, all the while pretending to be acquaintances,” right?
Right. Yeah. We were totally being coy, then.
This year was probably the first time it’d actually been a letdown to go on winter break. I’d gotten used to seeing Will in the halls, in the cafeteria, in Music Appreciation. Suddenly, all I had was social media, texting, and the once or twice a week we met up to go for a drive somewhere private.
That’s why, when he messaged me out of the blue asking if I was free one Friday night, I found myself calling Aunt Linda for permission for him to join me babysitting.
He arrived at the door armed with Twinkies, Doritos, and Pop-Tarts.
Only Mostly Devastated Page 14
