Tied Up in You

by Erin Fletcher

  “Thanks, man,” Troy said sarcastically.

  When we got in the car, I forced myself to calm down and drive carefully. It was mostly silent, with just Troy or Krista occasionally commenting on the song on the radio or something we drove by. I drove to Krista’s house first. As we approached, I felt guilty. I hadn’t really been thinking about the date from her point of view, and when I did, it wasn’t pretty. When I pulled into her driveway, I left the car running but got out and walked her to her front door.

  “This was—”

  Krista held up a hand to stop me. “You like her.”

  It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer.

  “You like her and didn’t want her to go out with Troy alone, so you used me to get in on the date.”

  Guilt made me want to squirm right out of my skin. I scratched the top of my head. “When you say it like that, it makes me feel like shit.”

  “Good,” Krista said, but then she smiled and squeezed my arm. “Talk to her. Tell her how you feel.”

  It wasn’t that easy. Krista didn’t know the background, the history, or the obstacles standing in front of us.

  I sighed. “I’m really sorry. For using you. That you had to spend the evening watching the two of us fight. I didn’t think…”

  “That’s the thing when it comes to love. You shouldn’t think.” She shrugged. “Besides, I got a good meal out of it. And I think you’re going to owe me a favor sometime in the future.”

  I smiled and stuck my hands in my pockets. “You want NTDP tickets? You got ’em.”

  She laughed. “I was thinking more along the lines of you washing my car or getting me out of a date I don’t want to be on or being my DD some night so I don’t have to worry about it. Or maybe all three.”

  I laughed. “Fair. Thanks for going with me.”

  “Let’s not do it again sometime,” she said.

  “Agreed.”

  Someone beeped the car horn, and I flinched. I had a feeling I knew which one of the two in the car had done it.

  “Talk to her,” Krista said again. “Apologize for the idiotic behavior that earned you that horn honk, and then tell her how you feel.”

  “Thanks, Krista. Good night.”

  “Good night, Jackson.”

  The second I climbed back into the car, Troy pointed at the backseat toward Malina. “She did it.”

  “I know she did,” I grumbled under my breath. Then instead of turning in the direction of Malina’s house, I turned toward mine.

  “Wait, where are we going?” Malina asked.

  “I’m dropping Troy off at my house so he can get his car. Then I’ll take you home.”

  “But my house is practically on the way,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “Wait,” Troy said. “You’re dropping me off first? And then you two are going to be in the car together, alone? Should I be concerned that one of you is going to end the night dead and the other’s going to end the night as a murderer?”

  “No murder,” I said. “We just need to talk.” Maybe not in the way Krista wanted us to talk, but we did need to talk. Malina and I had been best friends for too long to let tonight go. Even if nothing ever came of us, I didn’t want to leave anything as messy as it was right then. “You know, unless you want us to go ahead and talk now, while you’re in the car.”

  “No,” Troy said quickly. “No. That’s okay. Take me to your house. Please. I’m good with that.”

  “Thought so,” I said.

  “I don’t want to talk to you when you’re being an asshole,” Malina said. “Take me home.”

  “Oh, I’m the one being an asshole? What about you?”

  “Hey,” Troy said, holding up a hand. “I think everyone who was on this date can agree that you’re both being assholes, and I think everyone in the world can agree that you should wait until I’m out of the car to talk about it.”

  “Fine,” Malina said.

  In the rearview mirror, I saw her slump down farther into her seat. Troy turned the radio up too loud to allow any of us to talk anymore. When we reached my house, where his car was parked in the street, he practically jumped out of the car.

  “Thanks for dinner, Troy,” Malina said.

  I knew her voice well enough to know that she was feeling some of the same guilt I’d felt when I’d dropped off Krista.

  “You’re welcome. No murder,” he said, pointing at both of us before closing the door and running to his own car.

  As much as I wanted to start talking then and there, that wasn’t a good decision. If things got tense, which they no doubt would, I’d still have to drive her home. Better to drive her home first, where we could duke it out and then she could go inside and I could cool off on the drive home. While I headed in the direction of the Hall household, I thought about the other times we’d fought, which weren’t many.

  Our biggest fight was during our sophomore year. Malina had planned her birthday party for Valentine’s Day, which happened to be on a Saturday that year. Of course I wanted to be at my best friend’s party, but I’d also started dating this girl who really wanted me to take her out. I’d tried to find a way to do both, but in the meantime Malina found out and freaked out. She said I was putting a girl I’d been dating for two weeks before our years of friendship. In retrospect, she was right, but at the time I was thinking with my hormones, and Malina’s anger pissed me off. We yelled at each other, I missed her party, and I ended up breaking up with the girl a week later. I made it up to Malina with an apology and a slice of her favorite red velvet cheesecake. Our friendship returned to normal, but it was proof that we did know how to fight. I wasn’t sure we’d bounce back from this one so quickly.

  When we pulled into the Halls’ driveway, I put the car in park, killed the engine, and stared hard out the windshield.

  “What the hell, Jackson?” Malina’s words shook with barely contained anger. “What is wrong with you?”

  That sent my anger up a notch or seven. “Me?” I asked, spinning in my seat so I could look back at her. The only light came from a single, dim bulb on the porch, so I couldn’t make out her expression, but I could imagine it. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Oh, Canada’s more beautiful than Hawaii, Malina,” she said, doing a terrible impression of what I’d said at dinner. “USA Hockey’s colors should be friggin’ green and yellow. Seriously? You weren’t even making any sense tonight, and the things you brought up—”

  “Me?” I asked again, incredulous. “The things I brought up? What about the drunk video that you swore would never be mentioned?”

  “I only brought that up because you brought up the stomach flu incident from freshman year! Were you trying to embarrass me in front of Troy?”

  “Yeah, well what about what you said about Krista? Did you have to make fun of that yearbook picture? You know she had no control over that. And why were you going after her, anyway?”

  Malina leaned forward into a swath of porch light, and I hated that even with anger and frustration boiling in my blood, she was still so damn pretty.

  “What about Troy?” she asked. “He’s your teammate. Yet you basically called out the small size of his junk while he was on a date with a new girl. With me.”

  “Exactly!” I yelled. The second the word was out of my mouth, I wanted to take it back.

  “Exactly what?” Malina asked. “Was it a problem for you that he was on a date with me? With you? Because if I remember correctly, I didn’t invite you along in the first place.”

  “No. It’s just…” I was still yelling, but I didn’t know what to yell about.

  “Just what?” Malina yelled back.

  Krista’s advice echoed through my mind. Tell her how you feel.

  “I don’t want you to date him, okay?”

  She scoffed. “Yeah. Like you have any say in who I date, Mr. Player. Okay. Let’s hear it. Why don’t you want me to date Troy?”

  The truth came out before I c
ould stop it. “Because I like you, okay?”

  “What?” Malina demanded, as if she hadn’t heard me right.

  My cheeks warmed. “Because I like you. Me. I like you. I don’t want you to go out with him because I want you to go out with me.” I braced myself for her reaction. For laughing. For pity. For her to run far, far away. Instead, I got more yelling.

  “Yeah, well I like you, too!”

  Everything stopped. My brain. My heart. My lungs. Cause of death: shock. “What?”

  “I like you! Why do you think I said all of those things about you and Krista at dinner? You know I’m not a jerk! You know I wouldn’t do that out of revenge for everything you were saying! It’s because I like you and I didn’t want to see you with her!” She huffed in frustration. “God, every time you put your hand on her arm…”

  “I wanted to be putting my hand on you instead!”

  “Well I didn’t know that!”

  “Well now you do!”

  “Fine!”

  “Fine!”

  Just like that, with my heart threatening to explode with anger and frustration and surprise and some of the most intense desire I’d ever felt in my life, I lunged over the center console and kissed her. Hard. Not like that first kiss. Not something she could see as an accident. Not something I had to or wanted to apologize for, but a real, lip-crushing, soul-melting, heart-bursting, desperate kiss. And she kissed me back just as desperately.

  Until she pulled away.

  “Wait,” she said, breathless. “This isn’t right.”

  My heart sank. Not this. Not again. We couldn’t go back to friends and pretend this didn’t happen. Not now.

  “Get out of the car,” she said.

  She got out, and I followed suit. Then she stormed around the clicking, still-cooling engine and threw herself at me so hard I fell back against the car before catching her and kissing her like I wanted to all along. Our mouths fit together perfectly. Every time I tipped my head, she met me there, stealing the breath from my lungs and making my legs go weak. I didn’t know how long it’d take to make up for the years I could have been kissing her like this and hadn’t, but I was determined to try.

  Heat rushed to every inch of my skin that came in contact with her. I pulled her close, hands cupping her face, sliding around into her thick hair. With each touch, I understood why Malina liked astronomy so much: I saw stars. Constellations. Galaxies. And they were incredible. When I parted her lips with mine and she gasped, then moaned, I felt it all the way down to my toes. Finally. Even though I didn’t realize it, this kiss was what I’d been waiting for, what I’d been searching for, and it had been worth the wait.

  When my brain caught up to my body, I pulled back, breathing hard. “No more dating my friends. Only me.” I didn’t mean to yell, but emotions were still running too high. It was like the anger and ecstasy wires in my brain were all tangled up.

  “Fine! No more dating anyone else besides me.”

  “Fine.”

  Then we kissed again—quick, yet fierce, sending stars shooting across the backs of my eyelids one more time—before she stormed off to the front door and I got back in the car. I slammed the door and tried to breathe. Then I started laughing and laughed until there were tears in my eyes.

  I’d kissed Malina. Intentionally. Because I liked her and she liked me back. And it was the best damn kiss I’d ever had.

  Why hadn’t I done that in the first place?

  Chapter Fifteen

  Malina

  I slammed the front door and immediately started pacing the length of the entryway rug. My lips were still tingling. I could still feel the warmth of his hand on the back of my neck. Holy crap. I’d kissed Jackson. On purpose. There was no going back, which was good because I didn’t want to go back. Ever.

  “Hey, Lina,” Mom said as I walked into the living room. She frowned as she studied me. “Everything okay?”

  It was only then that I realized I had slammed the door hard enough to rattle the mirror on the wall. “Yeah,” I said. “Cold out there.”

  She nodded and glanced up at the clock. “I didn’t expect you this early.”

  The date had been short. It probably hadn’t felt very short to Krista or Troy, though. Oops. “Yeah,” I said. I took off my shoes and put them in their place in the closet. I wanted to head upstairs. To FaceTime Izzy and tell her what had happened. To text Jackson and say…what did you say to your best friend when you just shared the best kiss you’d had in your entire life? I didn’t know, but I was willing to figure it out.

  But Mom muted the TV and looked up at me with this hopeful expression like she wanted nothing more than some girl talk and asked, “So, how was it?”

  I had no clue how to answer that question, either. The date itself? Pretty terrible. The unexpected detour after the date? Pretty amazing. Tutu was sitting on the couch, weaving lauhala. Whatever she was weaving was so early into the process that I couldn’t tell what it was going to be yet. Maybe she couldn’t tell, either. I forced myself to calm down and took a seat next to her, careful not to disrupt the neat pile of leaves next to her leg. “It was fine.” I guessed if you took the awkward parts of the date and the incredible kiss and mashed them together, it probably evened out to “fine.”

  “Only fine?” Mom asked. “Was he nice?”

  Troy had, in fact, been very nice. Nicer than most guys would have been if they had to put up with what Jackson and I put him through. “Very nice,” I said. “Troy is a good guy.”

  Mom frowned and picked up a glass of water from the coaster on the end table. “You don’t like him,” she said before taking a sip.

  It wasn’t that I wanted to hide the kiss with Jackson from Mom and Tutu. It was that I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to feel about it yet, so it wasn’t something I was excited to talk about with adults. “I’m not sure,” I said, even though I was sure. I didn’t like Troy. Jackson had proved that.

  Mom clucked her tongue. “Sorry, hon. First dates can be rough, though. Maybe give him another chance? Did I ever tell you about my first date with your dad?”

  She had told me, probably about a hundred times. They were at the university, and neither of them had enough money to do something off-campus, so they went to some theater production. It was so boring that they both fell asleep. Mom loved telling the story, dramatizing exactly how terrible the play had been. Neither one of them knew if it was solely the production or the chemistry between them that was terrible, but when she woke up with her head on his shoulder, she knew her subconscious was telling her to give him another chance. And there they were, all those years later, still married. Still in love.

  Not only had I heard the story, but I could practically tell it myself. Thankfully, the oven timer buzzed in the kitchen.

  “The cookies!” Mom set her mug down. “Hold that thought. I’ll be back.”

  “You’re making cookies?” I asked. It was only then that I noticed the sugary-sweet smell wafting in from the kitchen. It had been so long since Mom had made her coconut shortbread cookies.

  She smiled at me on her way to the kitchen. “You were on a date and your dad’s out with the guys, so Tutu and I needed something fun to do after her appointment. I’ll bring you both some.”

  “Deal,” I said. Talking to Izzy and Jackson could wait a few minutes. After all, the date hadn’t gone well enough to warrant dessert at the restaurant. “What are you making, Tutu?” I asked.

  “A basket, I think,” Tutu said.

  It didn’t look anything like a basket yet, but I believed her. I watched her hands move, shaky and slow but confident, and listened to the faint sound of Mom humming while she removed cookies from the oven.

  “Malina,” Tutu said, not looking up from her weaving.

  “Yes?”

  “You said the date was ‘fine,’ but you have that look.”

  I forced a smile and tried to hide any “look” off my face. “What look?”

  “The look like you
kissed a boy,” Tutu said.

  My cheeks flushed and I wiped at my mouth, like I could wipe away any visible evidence.

  Tutu laughed. “You did kiss a boy?”

  Then I felt like an idiot. I didn’t have any look on my face; she was just waiting to see what my reaction would be so she’d know what I had or hadn’t done. Tutu might have been old, but she was sharp. Sharper than I gave her credit for.

  “Yeah,” I said. Then I quickly added, “Don’t tell Dad. Or Mom. Because she’ll tell Dad.”

  Tutu waved off my concerns. “Your secret is safe. But you don’t seem happy about the kiss. It wasn’t good?” She glanced up from her weaving. “Did he do something you didn’t want?”

  There was an edge to her tone that let me know she’d be more than willing to protect me if needed. But I didn’t want her thinking negatively about Troy, and certainly not about Jackson.

  “No,” I said. “No. Nothing like that.”

  This should have been awkward, talking to my grandma about this, but it wasn’t really. It kind of felt like talking to a friend.

  “Then what’s the problem?” Tutu asked.

  I sighed and picked up one of the lauhala leaves, running it between my fingers. “The kiss was good. It just wasn’t with Troy.”

  Tutu looked up from her weaving and didn’t return to it. She studied me for a minute, then nodded. “Jackson.”

  I had to fight back a smile, because oh yeah, I’d kissed Jackson. “Yeah. Jackson.” I told her the quick version about how dinner had gone so terribly, with the jabs and anger that I’d since realized were mostly jealousy, and how we were yelling at each other in the car, and apparently the line between anger and kissing was very, very thin. And possibly dashed.

  “I always liked that boy,” Tutu said.

  “Me, too.”

  She held up one finger. “But if he hurts you, I won’t like him anymore.”

  I laughed. “Fair enough.” But I couldn’t think about Jackson hurting me. I could barely comprehend the beginning of this change from friends to more, let alone the end of it.