The Upside of Falling

by Alex Light

  I headed straight to Brett’s kitchen and slammed my textbooks down onto the table. I took out my notebooks and pens and rearranged them into a neat little row. “Grab your essay,” I called, assuming he was listening, “and bring it here so I can read it over and see what needs to be fixed.” I waited to hear footsteps or some sign of movement. There was nothing. I turned around. He was standing in the doorway, watching me. “Brett? What is it?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “Then would you sit your ass down so we can get started, please?”

  “Did you just say ass?”

  “Sit down.”

  He held his hands up in surrender and took a seat. Sliding his laptop across the table, Brett pulled up his essay and let me read it. I could understand why Miss Copper gave him an F. It was terrible. The ideas were all over the place and the quotes weren’t even properly cited.

  I looked up at him. “How long did it take you to write this?”

  He thought about it for a second. “An hour?”

  “It shows. This makes zero sense, Brett. You don’t even have a thesis.”

  He shifted in his seat, drew up the hood of his sweater until it covered half his face. “I kind of forgot it was due. And I was up all night with my mom so I didn’t have time to write it.”

  Then I felt like a complete jerk. “Right, of course. Sorry. Forget I said that.” I kept scrolling through the essay, noticing how Brett was really quiet. I snuck a peek at him. He was staring at his hands on the table. I shut the laptop and pushed it aside. “We don’t need to study right now,” I said. “We can talk about your family if you want.”

  Brett lifted his eyes to mine. “I’d actually rather study,” he said.

  So we did. I printed out Brett’s essay and we went through it line by line. I started to highlight the parts he needed to change and suddenly three-quarters of the pages were yellow. We came up with a new thesis, found good quotes, and outlined his arguments. An hour later he had rewritten the introduction while I watched over his shoulder. I could tell he was starting to get antsy; he was writing slower and slower. His attention kept slipping and eventually he opened a new browser tab for a pizza place nearby.

  “I’m starving,” he declared. “You in?”

  We spent the next ten minutes concocting the perfect pizza. Brett was a meat-lover’s kind of guy, which, for some reason, was not all that surprising. All I cared about was pineapple being on it.

  “Do we want garlic sticks?” he asked. I gave him a what-kind-of-insane-question-is-that look. He changed the quantity to two.

  After the order was placed, we went back to studying. I was flipping through my English notebook absent-mindedly while Brett continued typing out his essay. Then something caught my eye. There were numbers written on the back cover. It was my countdown to graduation. Only I had stopped counting one day without realizing it. When did I stop keeping track?

  Brett slid the laptop over to me. “Does this make sense?” he asked.

  He was the answer, the reason I stopped counting the days. Brett gave me something better to look forward to.

  “Why are you smiling at me like that?”

  I cleared my throat, quickly shoved the notebook into my bag. “What? Nothing. Let me see.” I scanned the paragraph and told him that yes, it made sense.

  We kept working in silence for another few minutes before Brett’s mind was officially elsewhere. He had deleted and retyped the same sentence five times. Thankfully the doorbell rang, the pizza arrived, and we both took a break. I chewed on a slice, watching suspiciously as Brett picked off all the pineapple pieces.

  “If you don’t like pineapple, why agree to order it?” I asked.

  “Because you like it,” he said easily.

  “You wouldn’t eat the cotton candy ice cream,” I pointed out.

  “That happens to be where I draw the line, Becca.”

  “Right.”

  The smallest of smiles began to crack through his unnaturally stony face.

  “I’m wondering,” he said, grabbing another slice, “where you’ve been eating lunch this past week. I looked around the entire school and couldn’t find you.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You were looking for me?”

  “I was.”

  “But you said you wanted space.”

  “That,” he said, taking another bite, “was a mistake. Coincidentally, you happen to be the one person I don’t want space from. So, where were you eating?”

  I forced myself to swallow. “Behind the football field.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You walked that far to get away from me?”

  “As I said, you wanted space. Not me. I was simply obliging.”

  “Do me a favor, Hart. Next time I tell you I want space, ignore me.”

  “Noted.”

  Brett stood up and walked to the fridge. “Hey, where’s your mom?” I asked.

  “She’s staying with my aunt for the night,” he said, walking back with two water bottles.

  “And your dad?” I asked slowly, not wanting to push too hard.

  “He’s been staying at a hotel for the week.” Brett sat back down, this time in the chair directly beside me, and handed me one of the bottles. “We’ve been going to family counseling.”

  “Wow. What was that like?”

  “Other than a waste of two hundred dollars? Pointless. My mom cries the whole time. My dad talks about how sorry he is. But it doesn’t count if he’s only sorry after he got caught.” Brett paused, drank half the water bottle. “I sit there and wait for the hour to pass by.”

  I grabbed the last corner slice of pizza. “My mom never tried the therapy route. I did see her reading one of those self-help books once. It was called Children and Divorce or something like that.”

  “And? Did it work?”

  “Apparently the bookworm trait is not genetic. She turned to baking instead. But we got jelly bells out of it, so not complaining.”

  Brett’s face took on this dreamy look, like he too was thinking about those magnificent doughnuts. I should have brought him some. It would have been a way better icebreaker than me shoving textbooks in his face. Speaking of his face, it was so close. And his eyes were kind of hypnotic. I always thought I liked his smile the most. But his eyes were something else.

  “You’re staring at me.”

  “I’m looking at your eyes,” I said quickly. “Before I knew you, that was the one thing girls always talked about. Your eyes.”

  He looked genuinely surprised. “My eyes? Not my amazing football talents or hot bod?”

  I stifled a laugh. “Nope. Just the eyes.”

  “Well, tell me, Becca. What do they say about my eyes?”

  “That they’re nice. Dreamy. Swoon-worthy.”

  “Do they?” he said, wiggling his eyebrows. “And what do you think about my eyes?”

  I swallowed this weird lump that rose in my throat and said, “Your eyes are nice. They’re like the ocean. Calm.”

  “Oceans can be deadly.”

  I was starting to think Brett was too. Or at least the way he made me feel was. Like I was standing on the edge of a cliff. Or riding a roller coaster that only went up.

  “Hey,” he said suddenly, “do you wanna get out of here?”

  “But we have to finish your essay.”

  “We can finish it later. This will only take an hour.”

  It was kind of ridiculous that he expected me to say no. It had been so long since I’d seen him like this, somewhat happy, that I would have said yes to anything just to make him stay like that a little longer.

  So when Brett held out his hand, I took it.

  We ended up at Finch’s, the only bookstore in town. Brett paused in front of the door and spread his arms out like ta-da!, with this larger-than-life smile on his face.

  “You . . . brought me to a bookstore?” I asked, looking between him and the doors, not really catching on. “Do you need another book for your essay?”r />
  “Noooo,” he said, stretching the word out and taking a step closer. “I thought I should repay you, Becca. You helped me study, you came to my football games and to the arcade. We’ve done so many things for me. It’s time we do something that you like. Don’t you think?”

  I mean, I couldn’t argue with that.

  And I wanted to go inside. Badly.

  “I’m having trouble deciding whether or not you like this,” Brett said.

  I couldn’t help it anymore. I threw my arms around him and pressed my face to his chest. “I love it, Brett. Thank you.” And what I loved the most was how the space that had opened up between us seemed to be almost entirely gone.

  We stood there for a second before Brett said, “You’re dying to go inside and run through the aisles. Aren’t you?”

  “Very much. Yes.”

  He held open the door and gave me a little nudge. “Go crazy.”

  I ran inside. The store was empty aside from Mr. Finch, who was standing behind the counter, half asleep. He gave me a little wave—I was a regular here, to say the least—and then I set off for the aisles with Brett hot on my trail. We spent an hour huddled between rows and rows of books. It was dreamy, really. Totally swoon-worthy, sort of like Brett’s eyes. I read the summary of every book aloud, waiting for his approval. If he nodded, I added it to our bag. If he scrunched his nose up (which he usually did) I put it back on the shelf before trying another.

  Apparently Brett was very picky. More so than me. I couldn’t be too picky now. I needed new books to read after the mass paper-murder I committed on the bridge. Which, looking back, may have been a smidge uncalled for.

  “What’s the last book you read?” I asked Brett.

  He plucked a book off the shelf, rolled his eyes, then placed it back. “Romeo and Juliet,” he said.

  “We were forced to read that for class, Brett.”

  “So? Still counts.”

  It definitely did not!

  I walked over to the counter with a total of four books in my bag. “How long will it take you to read all these? A few weeks? A month?” Brett asked while Mr. Finch scanned everything.

  I scoffed. He had so much to learn. “Try a week.”

  “Thirty-five dollars and twenty-one cents,” Mr. Finch said.

  I started reaching for my wallet when Brett stopped me. “I got this,” he said. “My treat. Remember?”

  “Thank you.”

  He just smiled, saying nothing while kind of saying everything.

  When we walked outside, I headed toward the car but Brett grabbed my hand, pulling me over to a bench on the side of the street. He sat down and tapped the empty spot beside him. I took a seat, placing the book bag in my lap. It was a little cold out now that the sun had set and the wind picked up. It was blowing my hair around my shoulders, fanning it into my face while I scrambled to pull it back. Brett laughed beside me and the sound seemed to carry into the air, playing like a symphony being strummed by the stars.

  “You’re wearing the ring,” Brett said, startling me.

  “What? Oh.” I held up my hand, staring at the rose ring on my finger. It was the prize we won at the arcade. “I like it,” I said.

  There were many things I liked. Many of those I wanted to share with Brett. With the quiet settling around us, I could have. But now that we were together again, it was like all the words my mind had planned out were gone. And all I really wanted was to kiss him. This time, I didn’t want it to be fake. I wanted it to be as real as this moment felt.

  The scariest part was, I still didn’t know if this was real to him.

  I jumped when Brett tapped his finger against my forehead. He was watching me, smiling. “What’s on your mind?” he asked.

  “I was thinking about what you said that night at the hotel. That you couldn’t decide if what you felt for me was real.”

  The memory still felt a little raw. From the way Brett winced at the mention of it, it was like that for him too. But we had spent a week avoiding each other and dodging the subject. Normally, that would be fine with me. After all, I was a master in burying my emotions. But there was something about Brett that made me want to grab a shovel and dig them all up. Everything I felt for him was good and light and warm. Not dark like I was used to. Why would I want to ignore that?

  “I was wondering,” I continued, “if you figured that out yet. . . .”

  “Oh,” he said. “That.”

  “Yeah. That.”

  Then Brett scooted across the bench, moved a little closer. It was only an inch or so, but enough for my heart to start playing Ping-Pong against my rib cage.

  “I’ve been thinking about that night a lot,” he said.

  “So have I.”

  “And what I realized,” Brett continued, “is that nothing I felt toward you was tainted or confusing, Becca. In fact, you’re the only clear part of my life right now.”

  He moved a little closer.

  I moved a little closer too.

  “You know what I like about you?” he said.

  I tried to hide my smile but I could feel it breaking across my face. “What?”

  “I like how you have the absolute worst taste in food,” he said, moving another inch across the bench.

  “Agree to disagree,” I chimed in.

  “I like how you don’t even flinch when we watch scary movies,” Brett continued. Paused. Moved a little closer. “I like how you always get lost in thought, like you live half your life inside your head. And I like how your face turns all pink whenever you catch me staring at you.” As if on cue, my face started to heat up. “See?”

  There was no space between us on the bench now. We were thigh to thigh. Knee to knee. I was all warm and tongue-tied. My brain went to mush whenever Brett was this close.

  “Sooooo,” I said, inching my hand closer to his. “What does all that mean?”

  “It means,” Brett said, wrapping his pinky around mine, “that I like you. A lot. And that I was a jerk to ever doubt that. A lot of things have been changing in my life, Becca. In this whole mess, you’re the only constant. You’re the one that always comes back.”

  “I’m still a little unclear on what you mean,” I said, smiling.

  Brett gave me a look. “Is this some sort of payback?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Fine.” I shrieked as he reached out and grabbed my waist, pulling me across the bench until I was halfway on his lap. My first reaction was to make sure no one was lingering on the street, watching. They weren’t. Then I let myself relax, grabbed Brett’s face in my hands.

  “Can we give this one more shot?” he said. “No more pretending. No more space. No more people coming between us. One last try. I won’t mess it up this time.”

  “Only real from here on out?” I asked.

  Brett smiled, pressed his check into my palm. “Only real.”

  He leaned in, touched his mouth to mine ever so lightly.

  It was nowhere near enough.

  “One more question,” I said. He made a very agitated noise in response. “Our first kiss in the hallway, rate it on a scale of one to ten.”

  Brett pulled his face back a little. “Are you being serious?”

  “Yes. Rate it.”

  “A nine. Why?”

  I shrugged. “I thought it was only me that felt that. I mean, it was my first kiss, so I didn’t have much to compare it to. But it’s nice to know you thought so too.”

  “That was your first kiss?” I nodded. “Tell me, Becca,” Brett said, running his thumb across my bottom lip. “If this were a book, how’d you want your first kiss to be?”

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly. I never really thought about that.

  “Come oooon. I don’t believe that for a second. Would it be raining? What about fireworks? Or would it be late at night when you’re sitting on a bench in front of a bookstore?”

  “That doesn’t sound totally horrible,” I said.

  Brett took my face
in his hands then, gently. He moved closer until I could see nothing but those deadly ocean eyes. “I think you’re amazing,” he said, “and I think you deserve a first kiss that’s a hell of a lot better than standing in a school hallway while everyone watches.”

  “Like sitting on a bench with no one watching?”

  “Becca,” he said, closing the space between us until our foreheads were touching, “your first kiss should have been like this.”

  I wondered if Brett could feel how quickly my heart was beating when his mouth touched mine, or if he could feel the shift too. Because in that moment, something changed. Like the world remolded itself around the two of us.

  I didn’t question why my heart was burning when I wrapped my arms around his neck or why it felt like it would fall out of my chest. I only pulled him closer until we were one silhouette of lips and hands and beating hearts against the night sky.

  I wasn’t sure who pulled away first. All I knew was that it was too soon, and my heart no longer felt like it was entirely mine. It was shared somewhere between the both of us.

  “That,” Brett whispered, “was an eleven.”

  I was thinking more of a twelve.

  Brett

  IT HAD TO BE IN here somewhere.

  I was rummaging through my closet, trying to find my black denim jacket to wear tonight. There was a new horror movie playing in town and, in light of Becca’s obsession with all things scary, I told her I’d take her. Only the film started in a little over an hour and I couldn’t find my damn jacket.

  I was pulling boxes off shelves and throwing them onto the floor. There were hangers everywhere like my room had turned into an out-of-control garage sale. I was digging through boxes on the top shelf, knowing full well my jacket would not be there, when I found a blue box. Seeing it kind of knocked the air from my lungs. I held it in my hands and sank down on my bed.

  Slowly, I took the lid off.

  Everything was in there. The first football my dad ever bought me. Polaroid photos of the two of us at my football games as a kid. My old cleats, jerseys, trophies. It was a box of memories I’d forgotten I even had.

  My mom came running into my room. “Brett! What was that— What happened in here?”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the box. I picked up a photo. My dad and I were smiling at the camera. I was missing my two front teeth and my hair was long, covering both my eyes. I think I was nine or ten when this was taken. I could still smell the grass and feel my dad’s arm on my shoulder. He looked so happy. So proud. We both did.