Our Year in Love and Parties

by Karen Hattrup

  Tucker stopped shaking the ball. His pulse kicked up a notch, and he fired back instinctively.

  “What? No. What are you talking about?”

  He waited for her to say never mind, to tell him they could drop this, but she kept silent.

  “Honestly, I was kind of surprised,” Tucker finally said. “You’ve never wanted to hang out with me before.”

  She started blinking too much, and her jaw went tense.

  “I’ve been really busy with training, you know that. I . . . Jesus, Tucker. I’m sorry for thinking that you’d want to say goodbye. To this summer.”

  Tucker wanted to ask her why they were saying goodbye at all, why it was so easy for her to walk away, but of course he didn’t—saying any of that would have been humiliating.

  Instead, he decided to get angry.

  “I didn’t think you cared. At all. I mean, this whole thing happened because you drove by me one day, right? You were bored, and I was there, so you backed up your car.”

  The harshness of his own words made Tucker’s heart thump harder. He waited for her to blow up at him, ready even, for the release it would bring.

  Instead, she gripped the wheel hard and kept her voice steady.

  “I wasn’t bored. I don’t hook up with people because I’m bored, all right?”

  She gave him a look that clearly demanded an answer, so Tucker finally mumbled “all right, all right,” and then she went on.

  “I was stressed that day, yeah. And then I saw you, and you made that goofy surprised face, and it made me smile.”

  Tucker knew there was nothing wrong with what she’d said, but it needled him, set him on edge. He wanted her to stop talking, but she wouldn’t.

  “I backed up my fucking car, because you’ve always seemed like a nice guy. I remember you took Christa to homecoming sophomore year, and she said you asked before you kissed her.”

  Face red, Tucker squirmed, trying to figure out why in the world she was telling that story right now, what it could possibly have to do with anything.

  “I didn’t know what else to do,” he said. “She looked nervous, but I couldn’t tell if it was normal nervous, and I didn’t want to do the wrong thing.”

  Suzanne stopped too hard at a red light, and both of them jerked against their seat belts. She turned to him with a look that was now more incredulous than angry.

  “I’m trying to explain what I like about you. Why do you sound so defensive?”

  He stared down at the cheap toy in his hands, the plastic oracle floating aimlessly inside. He didn’t know what was wrong with him—I thought you were nice should be better than I was bored, but right now, for Tucker, it wasn’t.

  He mumbled a half-assed apology, then stared silently out the car window for the rest of the drive.

  “You told them about Nina? Tucker, what the hell.”

  “They won’t say anything to her, I swear. They’re just here to hang out.”

  “They’re just here to hang out?”

  “Yes.”

  Bobby pursed his lips and nodded his head, like he believed absolutely none of that. He and Tucker were standing alone in a corner, trying their best to take refuge from the chaos that had taken over the great open swath of space that was Adam’s living room and kitchen.

  The keg was busted and foaming by the fridge, a couch upended. Empty cans and crushed Solo cups littered the tables and the counter, and the kitchen floor was a mess; a hiccupping girl tried to sweep up broken glass and spilled Cheetos while her friends cheered her on. All of it was set to a Drake song screaming from a speaker, and to a couple of kids in the corner who were just plain screaming.

  Bobby turned back to Tucker. “And Suzanne. She’s also here, just to hang out? Or did she go home?”

  The conversation from the car was rattling around in Tucker’s brain. Had he been a jerk at the Cave? He guessed that he had. After she’d walked away from him initially, he’d stayed away, hoping she’d be the one to come to him. When she didn’t, he sort of dug in on not going to her either. He felt embarrassed about it now, like he’d been childish. But at this point, wasn’t it best to let it go? She probably didn’t even feel like talking to him.

  “Uh, I think she went down to the basement. She’s kind of pissed at me.”

  “Does that have anything to do with the fact that one of those girls who knows Nina is that girl you were totally into? The one who was always laughing at your dumbass Harry Potter jokes?”

  Tucker paused and looked at Bobby, surprised he remembered that. He nervously looked over at Erika and Marissa, who were scouring the fridge for something acceptable to drink.

  “But what does that really mean?” Tucker asked. “Does it mean she thinks I’m funny or does it mean that she thinks I’m a dumbass?”

  “Get up on the coffee table and do your little dance again. I’ll watch her reaction, and then we’ll know for sure.”

  Tucker could almost imagine trying exactly that, but then Suzanne might emerge. She’d stand there watching him with a knowing little smile on her face, wondering why she wasted so much of her summer in his basement . . .

  “This night got really weird, really fast,” Tucker said. “I might have screwed everything up.”

  “Nah,” Bobby said. “You’ll find some way to fix it. That’s kind of your thing. Hit the mound in the seventh inning and save the day.”

  “Uh, maybe half the time. The other half I run the whole game into the ground.”

  There was no time to say more, because Erika and Marissa were coming their way, each holding a beer. Once they’d squeezed their way through the crowd, Tucker introduced everybody, Marissa looking at Bobby with an absolutely ridiculous smile, while Erika did her best to play it cool.

  Bobby rolled his eyes. “So how was the Cave?”

  “MAGIC,” Marissa said. “Pure magic.”

  “Sorry I missed it, then,” Bobby said.

  “Oh, the night is still young,” Marissa said. “There is so much magic yet to come, so much.”

  Bobby officially looked mortified, which made both girls laugh, and then Tucker was laughing, too. Bobby announced that he hated all of them, which set everyone off even harder.

  This night can be saved. This night is worth saving.

  As Tucker started to seriously consider the coffee table, he heard a yelp.

  “OH MY GOD. Marissa? Erika? What are you guys doing here?”

  Nina had popped up behind them. She stood there with her cute glasses and her curly hair up in a bun, a big, bright smile making her whole face glow.

  Tucker felt a light splash on his shoes, and looked down.

  Bobby had dropped his beer.

  6

  Erika

  In the far corner of the yard, there was a big, beautiful tree house that Adam’s parents didn’t have the heart to get rid of, even though Adam was seventeen and his brothers were off in college. That’s where they’d convened, seven of them sitting in a circle—Erika, Marissa, Tucker, and Bobby, plus Nina and her two friends. Kara was teeny and pale with a blunt bob, and Yrma was tall and brown-skinned with a shiny ponytail. It took Erika a minute to pick up on it, but the two girls were clearly together.

  After they’d had a go-round introducing themselves, Yrma pointed at Marissa, grinning.

  “I totally remember seeing you at Nina’s house, hanging out with Marco. And her mom still has your prom picture on the fridge. I knew I knew that hair!”

  Marissa ran her hands through her mane, shaking it out even bigger than it already was. “My enormous, flaming-red hair? I had no idea it caught people’s attention!”

  “Where did you meet him, if you didn’t go to Gaithersburg?” Yrma asked.

  “Where else? At church.”

  Marissa looked up at the ceiling and did the sign of the cross, Kara and Yrma cracking up while Nina groaned and covered her face.

  Erika gave a distracted smile. Tucker had ended up across the circle from her, after he’d done som
e subtle maneuvering to make sure Nina and Bobby were sitting next to each other. Now Erika was stuck trying and failing not to look at Tucker’s stupid, cute belly button.

  “What about you two?” Marissa asked, motioning to Kara and Yrma with her beer bottle. “I love a good meet-cute. Lay it on me.”

  Nina put a hand up in protest.

  “Oh, hell no. I can’t listen to this again.”

  Kara ignored her and sat up straighter.

  “It was freshman year. First day of JV soccer. I accidentally got Yrma with my cleats—just barely, mind you—and she called me a very, very, very offensive name.”

  Yrma scoffed. “I did not. I wouldn’t have even known that word when I was fourteen! And I have never, ever said it.”

  “END OF STORY!” Nina said.

  People were laughing, a new energy filling the air as Marissa peered around the circle.

  “All right, all right,” she said. “Let’s keep going. Platonic meetings can be cute, too. Kara, how do you know Nina?”

  “Kindergarten,” Kara said. “Nina was crying for her mom, and I held her hand. Besties ever since.”

  That set off a round of awwwws while Nina begged for this to stop, but Marissa’s eyes were alight now. She was really getting going, and that made Erika nervous.

  “Okay, okay,” Marissa said. “Let’s switch this up. You. Tucker. What do you remember about meeting Erika?”

  Erika went completely still and silently cursed her best friend, the freaking queen of subtlety. She tried not to look at Tucker again, but couldn’t help it. Tucker seemed a little anxious as he toggled the tab on his beer can.

  Then he put it down and started to smile.

  “How much time do you have?” he asked Marissa.

  That led to snickers and chatter, and Erika did her best to look annoyed, but her pulse was racing now.

  “I’m fifteen, right? First job, at the Cave. I come one day for training or whatever. I hear this girl giving an elaborate explanation of why she hated a very specific plotline on Game of Thrones. And you know what? It’s a really good point, something I’d never thought of. I’m about to say that, but she’s down behind the prize counter with some other kid, unpacking more plastic spiders or whatever, and I can’t really see her. But then the manager walks over, and the girl pops up. She’s got pink hair and she’s beautiful, but she’s giving me this look that clearly says, Holy shit, who hired this fetus, he’s not old enough to work here.”

  “You looked straight-up eight years old when you got that job,” Bobby said.

  It was the first thing Bobby had said the whole time they were in the tree house, and people were laughing, were loving this—the ridiculous story, of course, but also what was happening between Erika and Tucker.

  They’d all noticed, right? How could you not notice, the way he’d dropped beautiful in there, so nonchalant?

  The word had hit Erika’s chest like a firework.

  “So I stand there, speechless, and she goes, ‘I hope you know we get paid in Laffy Taffy and bouncy balls.’ Then she walked away and I spent days thinking of all the funny things I could have said.”

  Marissa announced that this was “the most Erika story” she’d ever heard, and Nina agreed. People were laughing and watching her, waiting to see what came next.

  Erika kept her cool, but she was feeling overwhelmed, thinking back on all that. She’d been in so much pain that summer, and that silliness with Tucker, those hours together . . .

  They’d been a sliver of light when she’d had so little.

  “My turn?” she asked, looking over at Marissa.

  “Of course.”

  Erika made a point of casually examining her nails.

  “So I’m seventeen, working at the Cave, and this fetus shows up.”

  Everyone laughed hard at that, and she waited for them to calm down. In that pause, she found Tucker’s eyes, big and brown and shining.

  She held them just long enough for it to mean something.

  “So I meet him or whatever, but before he leaves, the manager tells me to put him on for three shifts the next week. So I pull the calendar up on the computer, and it’s weird—he’s only available on the days where he can see my name.”

  Marissa was dying. Bobby was shaking his head. Nina and her friends were having silent exchanges with their eyes about what exactly was happening here.

  Tucker, though—he couldn’t manage to look at her right now. He was staring very earnestly at his shoes.

  “Every time I try to schedule him on a day when I’m not there, he tells me he’s busy. Sports stuff, or when that doesn’t make sense, he says he has to meet with his English tutor.”

  Bobby leaned over to see Tucker better. “English tutor?”

  “So he’s leaving, shoving paperwork in his backpack, and Slaughterhouse-Five falls out. I ask if it’s summer reading, and he says no, just for fun. So I point out how very interesting that is. That he needs an English tutor, but reads Vonnegut for fun. And do you know what he says?”

  She waited for a second. Two. Three.

  “He says: ‘I’m much better at extracurriculars.’”

  Everyone was cracking up now. They had gotten much too loud, but nobody cared—even Nina had given up on hushing them. She was too busy chugging her beer, after which she leaned over to talk to Bobby, her hand on his knee.

  In the middle of it all, Tucker had his face hidden away in his elbow, but Erika was pretty sure that he was blushing. He’d never expected her to remember all that, not in a million years.

  When he finally looked up, she mouthed two words to him, careful and slow.

  Got you.

  Marissa was halfway through a story about her and Marco sneaking off into the woods during a CYO retreat, Nina howling for her to stop, when Adam’s angry face appeared in the doorway of the tree house.

  “You are way too loud. Your tree house privileges are officially revoked.”

  Everyone started filing out, but Erika pinched Marissa on the arm, and the two of them hung back in a corner, pretending to look at something on their phones, while everyone else took turns climbing down the ladder.

  Tucker went last, and seemed on the verge of saying something, but then he too disappeared over the edge.

  As soon as they were alone, Erika sat down cross-legged and Marissa settled right in front of her in the same position, their knees almost touching.

  “You okay?” Marissa asked.

  “What? Yes. I thought you’d be doing a victory dance or something right now.”

  “I am, in my head. But you look kind of nervous and sweaty, so I’m also a little worried.” Marissa pulled a ponytail holder from her pocket. “Do you want to braid my hair? It’s disgustingly hot out here.”

  Erika told Marissa to swing around, then quietly went to work. It helped having something to focus on, and it also helped not having to look her in the eye.

  “Sometimes I kind of miss Truth or Dare. Seven Minutes in Heaven,” Erika said. “Wasn’t it nice, having a dumb excuse to say the things you wanted to say, do the things you wanted to do?”

  “Oh, people still have those kind of excuses. Only now they’re called beer and vodka.”

  “Because that’s so healthy.”

  Marissa laughed. “Fair enough. But you’re a mature, empowered woman. If you want to do something, shouldn’t you just do it?”

  Erika stared at the thick woven strands in front of her, then pulled them loose again, told Marissa she was going to try a fancier braid. They were both quiet as she did.

  As Erika tied off her handiwork, she took a breath.

  “I think I need a reset button.”

  “A reset button?”

  “It’s . . . I suck at college. Seriously. I never have fun. You realize I haven’t even kissed someone, since everything happened?”

  Marissa turned around and gave her a questioning look.

  “And tonight could be the night?”

  “Maybe. He�
��s a puppy dog, right? I can’t imagine anything feeling safer. If I can’t get through this, then I might as well join a convent.”

  Marissa had been holding out the braid, admiring Erika’s work, but now she dropped it and raised her eyebrows.

  “If you’re just trying to get through it, I’m not sure I endorse this decision.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Erika scoffed and mumbled a nonresponse, then stood and pulled Marissa up after her.

  Sophomore year, here I come.

  7

  Tucker

  Tucker stood at the bottom of the old, sprawling oak. With a distressed sort of wonder, he considered the perfect acoustics of this spot, how clearly they had sent the girls’ conversation right to him.

  His plan had been to wait here until Erika came down, make a play for her in the grass and the moonlight, but instead he turned and went inside.

  Tucker did not want to be anyone’s puppy dog, but he did want to get very, very drunk.

  A few guys from the baseball team were standing in the corner of the basement, so Tucker went and joined them, and they started laughing about his shirt, or at his shirt—whatever, who cared, right? He rummaged around in the cooler and pulled out a Bud Light, tried to drink it quickly.

  When Tucker was about eight years old, his dad had given him a sip of beer, and Tucker had told him it tasted “ugly.” His dad had cracked up, had repeated the story to everyone they saw that day, laughing every single time he did.

  It was one of the only times Tucker could remember him laughing at all.

  Tucker still thought beer tasted ugly, but right now that didn’t matter. Right now he started drinking faster, pounding the whole thing down, feeling a little dizzy, a little woozy, listening-but-not-listening as the guys talked about Fortnite, about summer hookups, about how they couldn’t believe it was finally senior year.

  Bobby appeared, eyeing him suspiciously, asking Tucker if he was okay, but Tucker shrugged and said he was fine.

  “Does anybody have a key?” Tucker asked.

  Pete, the starting pitcher, pulled one triumphantly from his pocket.

  The only other time Tucker had tried shotgunning a beer had been a year ago—and he’d choked on it, practically thrown up. Now he was convinced he could do better. He took a breath and steeled himself as Pete jammed a hole in the side of a new can with a loud pop.