by Kate Brian
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"I don't," she told him. "I don't regret what we did...."
She trailed off, trying to find the words she wanted to say--determined to say them. She was sick of hiding things. Sick of telling half-truths and full-out lies. Mandy wanted to lay her cards on the table for once and see how it felt.
"But you do regret something," Eric said slowly.
"I regret ... I regret that I did it for the wrong reasons," Mandy told him. "I was just... I was miserable last night, you know? I was fighting with Kai and I had just seen my dad right before he was going to turn himself in. . . . It was like the number-one sucky birthday on the list of all-time sucky birthdays. ... I mean, thank you for the party and everything. But I don't know if I was quite in the party mood."
Eric snorted a laugh and played with her fingers, touching the tip of each one by one.
"I guess I just thought that being with you would make it all better," Mandy concluded.
"But it didn't," Eric said.
"It didn't," Mandy said. "It just made me ridiculously emotional." She smiled and squeezed his hand. "You'd think they would have warned us about that in health class." This time Mandy laughed. "So ... I think we should wait awhile before we do it again."
Eric took a deep breath, leaned down, and pressed his lips to her forehead. "I love you, sweetness," he told her in a whisper. "I don't even care about any of this. I
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just want you to get better and get the hell out of here."
"I'm with you on that one," Mandy replied, closing her eyes and inhaling his comforting scent.
"Breakfast is served!" A blue-clad nurse walked in, carrying a tray full of steaming food, and Eric stood up to make room for her. She set the food on the rolling table and swung it over until it was right in front of Mandy. The very sight of the scrambled eggs, the toast, the butter made her stomach turn, but she knew she had to at least try to eat.
"You need help with this?" the nurse asked, ripping the wrap from the plastic cutlery. Mandy shot Eric a look and he jumped up.
"I got it," he said, pulling a chair up next to Mandy's elbow.
"You make sure she eats," the nurse told him firmly. "We're not letting her out of here until she eats."
"Oh, don't worry," Eric told her, spooning some eggs up onto a fork and looking Mandy in the eye. "I'll take care of her."
Mandy and Eric shared a smile, and Mandy knew that he meant it. She knew it all the way down to her toes. Suddenly she felt like a heavy blanket was being lifted off her and everything was going to be all right. She had a lot to deal with. A lot. But with Eric and her mom and her friends to help her, she knew she'd be okay. Her face broke into a big, broad grin.
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"I've never seen someone so happy about hospital food before," Eric said.
"You know how I love reconstructed eggs!"
The nurse disappeared and Eric held the full fork up in front of Mandy's face.
"Don't make me do the airplane thing," he deadpanned.
Mandy opened her mouth, took the bite, and made herself swallow. Things were going to get better. Starting now.
Kai ran upstairs on Sunday morning, irritated with herself for sleeping hours longer than she'd intended. She'd wanted to get to the hospital early so she could talk to Mandy before anyone else got there, but she had a feeling she'd already missed out on that. Miss Popularity was going to be inundated with visitors all day, but maybe Kai could somehow request a little alone time.
Kai shoved open the door at the top of the stairs and saw Andres's backpack and suitcase, stuffed to the gills, sitting by the front door. She paused with one hand on the doorknob and one on the doorjamb, not sure what to think of this new development. When Andres appeared at the end of the hall, rolling his new Penn State shirt over his hand, she was still standing there.
Andres paused momentarily at the sight of her, then continued past her over to his bags, shoving the shirt in among his other things.
"You're leaving?" Kai asked, closing the basement
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door and leaning back against it. She crossed her arms over her chest as he stood in front of her.
"Yes. It is what you want," he told her.
"It's what I've wanted for two weeks. Why leave now?" Kai asked, following Andres into the kitchen.
Andres walked around to the other side of the island in the middle of the room, laid his hands on top of the tile, and sighed. When he raised his head again, his eyes were soft and apologetic. This was new.
"It was what you said last night at the party," he told her. "I was drunk. I was not right to say what I did. But you . . . you were not drunk, yes?"
"Yes. I mean . . . no. I was not drunk," Kai said, her skin growing warm as she recalled all the things that had come flying out of her mouth at the party.
"So you meant what you said," Andres stated. No question in his tone. "Kai, there is something you should know. You make it sound like I wanted to hurt you. You said I used you. But this is not the case."
A sudden lump formed in Kai's throat and for once, she had no comeback. Somewhere in the back of her mind she realized she'd been waiting two years to hear him say something just like this.
Just don't let him screw it up, she thought.
"We were friends, Kai. We were," Andres continued. "Don't you remember the rope swing by the river . . . that time we lost annoying Tina Torres in the woods and we hid inside that log for hours. ..."
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Kai felt her heart softening. "Yeah. I remember."
"We were friends. But that is why I should never have tried to make it anything more. I was just a dumb boy. It is not a good excuse, but I am sorry. I never wanted to hurt you."
"Okay, stop!" Kai said, holding up a hand. "I don't do mushy."
She was going to cry if he kept talking, and that was just not acceptable.
"I am also sorry about what I said the other day here. It was just. . . you were hurtful to me, so I was hurtful to you. It was stupid."
Sounds familiar, Kai thought. She'd done the exact same thing the night before.
Andres looked down. "I never meant to make you hate me."
"I don't hate you," Kai said, surprising both of them.
"Then you sure fooled me," Andres told her.
"I don't," Kai said, realizing it was true even as she said it. "I did. A couple of years ago I definitely did. But now I just. . ."
I just what? she thought. Andres had just said all the right things. After all this time, that was all she needed-- acknowledgment that what he'd done was wrong. And now she wasn't angry or upset anymore. She didn't even feel attracted to him. Somewhere between last night's tirade and this apology, she'd gotten Andres Cortez out of her system.
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"I just want to forget the last two weeks ever happened," Kai told him finally. Both of them had been immature and hurtful, and she found herself wishing she could take it all back. Unfortunately, that wasn't possible.
The reality was that she and Andres had a history and that was never going to change, but she could decide if they were going to have a future. And what kind of future that might be.
"I would like that, bonita," Andres said with a smile.
"Eh! None of that!" Kai said, holding up a finger. "If we're going to be friends, you can't call me bonita anymore. And no more coming on to me. I know it'll be hard. . . ."
"We're going to be friends again?" Andres asked, raising his eyebrows hopefully.
"I'll take pity on you," Kai told him with a shrug. "I think we both equally humiliated each other last night, so maybe we should just call it a draw and start over."
Andres nodded slowly, drumming his fingers on the countertop. "Start over," he said. "I like it."
"Yeah," Kai said, smiling at him. "I do too."
Kai walked into the hospital room on Sunday afternoon just as the nurse was helping Mandy out of bed. Mandy's eyes locked with Kai's over the nurse's shoulder.
"Hey," Kai said, hands in the back pockets of her jeans.
"Hey," Mandy said.
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Nurse Rose turned to look at Kai and stood up straight. "You a friend of hers?" she asked Kai.
Kai looked at Mandy tentatively, as if unsure of how to answer that.
"Yeah. She is," Mandy told the nurse, sliding to the edge of the bed.
"Do you want her to walk with you instead?" Nurse Rose asked Mandy. "She looks sturdy. She can catch you if you fall," she joked with a wry smile.
"I'm on it," Kai told the nurse.
She walked over to the bed and bent at the knee so that Mandy could grip her arm and haul herself up. The second she was on her feet, Mandy got a head rush of epic proportions and squeezed her eyes closed until it passed.
"You okay?" Kai asked her.
"Fine," Mandy said finally. "Let's go."
The nurse held the door open for them and Mandy walked slowly into the hall, Kai at her side. Mandy couldn't believe how shaky and weak her legs felt. Like walking was this whole new thing. Each hospital room they passed held another patient, some old, some young, some sleeping alone, others surrounded by kids and family and bustling friends. "So . . . there's something you should know about me," Kai said, stepping around a cart in the middle of the hallway and holding her arm out slightly as if she were guarding Mandy from it. "I've never been good with apologies."
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"Okay," Mandy said, shuffling along.
"But you should know that I am . . . sorry," Kai told her. "About, well, about a lot of things."
"I know," Mandy said.
"I think I have a problem with letting people . . . you know..."
"Letting people in?" Mandy suggested.
"Yeah."
"I'm with you there," Mandy said. "I was so pissed at my parents for not telling me what was going on and pretending like everything was fine, but I was doing the same thing to you guys."
"Kind of. So it's in your genes?" Kai asked, raising her eyebrows.
"Apparently."
"Bummer," Kai lamented, cracking a smile.
"Yep. I'm doomed." Mandy grinned back. But then her stomach growled audibly and she suddenly felt nauseous. "I need to stop," she said, leaning back against the cool wall.
"Should I get someone?" Kai asked.
"No, just hold on a sec," Mandy said, breathing in and out. "Keep talking. I need to concentrate on something else."
"Uh . . . okay, something else you should know about me?" Kai said, leaning back next to her. "I've never had friends. I think it's a symptom of the whole not-letting- people-in thing."
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Mandy snorted a laugh. "Yeah, right."
"Don't get me wrong, people like me," Kai said jokingly. "I mean, I'm highly entertaining."
Mandy smirked and lifted her head, the nausea passing. She looked at Kai and could see that whatever she was trying to say, it wasn't easy for her to say it. Mandy knew that feeling--she'd been experiencing it every day since her parents' first argument. Surprisingly, her heart went out to Kai, and everything they'd been arguing over lately just seemed . . . stupid.
Who cared about volleyball or the presidency of the V Club--a post neither one of them was qualified to hold anymore? What really mattered was that Kai had tried to be there for her, she'd tried to keep Mandy from ending up here, in the damn hospital.
"It's just I've never lived in any one place for very long," Kai told her. "So I've never really bothered with friends. Not real ones. Not ones who I'm totally honest with. Not ones who I really talk to about real stuff. You know what I mean?"
"I think so," Mandy told her.
"So I was thinking, if you want, you know . . . maybe you could be my first," Kai said as they started walking again.
"Your first real friend?" Mandy asked, pausing.
Kai reddened slightly and looked at their feet before meeting Mandy's eye. "Yeah," she said with a shrug.
"All right," Mandy told her with a nod. "I'll give it a shot."
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Kai grinned. "Cool."
"Okay, now get me back to my room before I collapse," Mandy said, flinging her arm around Kai's shoulders.
"No problem," Kai replied, supporting her as they walked. "Just don't ask me to clean out any bedpans and we're all good."
They both laughed and Mandy leaned her head on Kai's shoulder. Somehow, in the midst of all the crap, some things had actually changed for the better.
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Chapter 26
When the doorbell rang on Sunday evening, Eva experienced the sensation of being sucked out of an alternate plane back into reality. Or at least, what she assumed that experience might feel like. The events of the last few days had opened the floodgates within her and she had spent most of the afternoon scrawling out ideas, lines, poems, and pieces of poems in her creative- writing notebook. She was so involved that she wasn't even entirely certain the bell had rung until it rang again. Eva slapped her notebook closed and trudged over to the door, figuring her mother had gotten off work early and didn't feel like trolling for her keys in the bottom of her bag. She opened the door to find Riley standing there, holding forth a huge bouquet of giant sunflowers.
"Hi," Riley said.
"Hi." This was just too bizarre, seeing the guy she'd
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been dreaming about for over a year standing in the middle of her reality.
"I'm taking you out," Riley said, stepping past her and walking into the kitchen.
Eva slammed the door and followed him, watching helplessly as he went through the cabinets until he found an old glass vase. He filled the vase with water, unwrapped the flowers, and stuck the whole arrangement in the center of the table. Eva quickly took out her hair rubber band, ran her hands through her hair, whipped off her frumpy cardigan, and smoothed down her T-shirt.
"Um . . . you are?" she asked when he finished.
"Yeah," Riley said with a grin. "Unless you have a problem with that."
Eva glanced at the phone, her heart seizing up in her chest, knowing it was going to ring any second and ruin yet another chance.
"No," she told him, grabbing his wrist and yanking him out the door. "Let's go." She slid her keys from the counter and slammed the door, then sprinted down the stairs, trying to get out of earshot of the ringer as quickly as possible.
"Don't you even want to know where we're going?" Riley asked with a laugh.
"Nope," Eva told him, grinning. "Let's just go."
Twenty minutes later she and Riley were sitting on a blanket on the edge of Huff Lake, the tall, old-fashioned streetlamps that lined the running path glowing in the darkness. Eva wore Riley's leather jacket to guard against the cold and
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watched as he lit tiny votive candles in the center of the blanket. He pulled his backpack over and unzipped it, revealing a stack of Tupperware, each one filled with a different food.
"What is all that?" Eva asked as Riley pried one of the containers open.
"I forgot to tell you another interesting thing about myself," Riley said, rubbing his hands together. "My mother always makes too much food. But that's not really about me, is it?"
Soon there was an entire meal laid out in front of them. Cold fried chicken, salad, bread, pasta with some heavy-looking Italian sauce. Riley pulled out a bottle of Sprite and filled up two plastic champagne glasses. Eva blushed as he handed one to her. The picnic, the lake, champagne. This was it. This was her perfect first kiss.
"Riley, can I ask you a question?" Eva said as he scooted closer to her. She grew impossibly warm as his arm leaned against hers.
"Shoot," he said.
"What are we doing here?"
"Well, I had a visit from one of your friends this morning," Riley told her. "She was under the impression that I liked you but that I might need a little help, you know . . . with the wooing."
"The wooing?" Eva repeated, cracking up.
"Yes, the wooing," Riley deadpanned. "So s
he gave me a few tips about what Eva Farrell might like in an evening of romance."
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"Wow. You just lay it right out there, don't you?" Eva asked, her heart skipping around.
Riley took a deep breath. "You may not believe it after last night, but I'm an honest person, Eva," he told her, staring at her profile. "I don't mind if you need me to prove that to you, but it's the truth."
Eva's heart thumped and she pulled her knees up under her chin and hugged them to her, holding her champagne glass in front of her shins. "It was Debbie, wasn't it?" she asked, hazarding a glance at him. "Debbie told you to bring me here."
"We both know we messed up," Riley said. "But you should have heard her talking about you. She's, like, president of the Eva Farrell fan club."
Eva's heart warmed and she smiled slightly, touched.
"She's a good friend," Riley said. "She cares a lot about you."
"Yeah, I know," Eva said. "I mean, she is a good friend."
Riley smiled. It was the kind of smile you smile when you really admire someone. When you're tucking away something they've said or done because you want to always remember it.
"Eva, there's something I have to tell you and I don't want you to freak out," Riley said, turning to face her. He placed his champagne glass aside and looked down at his hands.
Oh God. This can't be good, Eva thought. She felt sick to her stomach, but she didn't run. She didn't look away. Pressing her hands into the blanket, she turned to face 261
him as well, their knees touching as they sat Indian style.
"Okay," Eva said finally. "What?"
Riley looked up at her then, his Caribbean blue eyes twinkling in the soft light. Suddenly Eva felt it. That same sensation of anticipation that she'd felt hundreds of times in her daydreams. The hair on her arms stood up, tickling her skin. This time there was nothing panicky about it.
"I told you I liked you last night, but that wasn't exactly true."
Oh God.
"Eva, I think I'm falling in love with you," Riley said.
"Wow." The word escaped her lips with a sigh. A relieved, ecstatic, perfect sigh.
"I take it that's a good wow?" Riley said tentatively.
