The Wild One

by Gemma Burgess

“I’m having the pumpkin chocolate chip loaf, because—”

  “It’s the manliest, butchest choice?”

  “That’s correct.” Joe grins at me.

  I take a bite of cinnamon bun. “Wow, that’s good.”

  “I love watching you eat,” says Joe. “You take little nibbles and then pause, really intensely, like you’re really tasting it.”

  “Joe! Don’t ever tell a girl you love watching her eat!” I throw a piece of cinnamon bun at him.

  “Now you’re in trouble…” Joe throws himself on the bed next to me and pins me down, and then grabs the whoopie pie from the bag and tries to force it into my mouth.

  I try to push him away, but I am laughing too hard, and before I know it, there’s whoopie pie frosting smeared all around my mouth.

  “Oh, you have a little something on your lip. Let me get it.”

  Joe kisses me, big sloppy kisses that are as much about slurping up the frosting on my lip as kissing me.

  A little fire lights up inside me, just like always when we kiss, and suddenly I can’t help but pull him closer, and then … well, you know.

  “Are you excited about the Potstill Prom tonight?” Joe says, a while later.

  “I’m like, totes psyched,” I roll over on the pillow and sigh happily. “It’s going to be the best nonofficial prom ever. And I have a surprise for you.”

  “What?”

  I pause, eking out the enjoyment. “I wasn’t sure whether to tell you, or just surprise you, but then I read this thing that surprises are really overrated because what we enjoy most about a thing is the anticipation of a thing, and—”

  “Tell me!”

  “I tracked down Ian James.”

  “Ian James?”

  “Remember? The music guy we met at the Ace Hotel. I found him on Twitter and invited him to Potstill Prom tonight, to see the band. And to meet you.”

  Joe stares at me. “Seriously?”

  “Yup,” I grin. “I mean, he may not come, you know, it was via Twitter, not a gilded invitation, but.… this could be your big chance.”

  “Wow. Oh, wow. Coco!” Joe grabs me and kisses me so hard that I yelp. “Thank you. Thank you! Jesus, do you think he’ll come? I mean, he probably won’t, right, he’s way too busy, but if he does … I swear, Mads has the talent. She could make it. All the way.”

  “You think?” I smile. “I love her voice.”

  “So do I. So does everyone, really. That’s why we’ve renamed the band MADS. Spector is fine for messing around with covers, but for the new stuff, we need—”

  “New stuff? You mean new songs?”

  “Yeah. Madeleine and Amy have been writing songs together for a while,” says Joe. “You didn’t know?”

  I shake my head.

  “You don’t talk to your friends a whole lot,” he says.

  I haven’t told him about how I’ve been avoiding the girls. But now that I think about it, even before the big fight, I’ve been kind of self-involved this summer. Between Joe and Topher and the bar and NYU … I was all about me. I can’t think the last time I really asked any of my friends how they were doing. Not that it matters anymore, I guess. I’m leaving.

  Why does that thought make me feel so sick?

  I glance back at Joe. “I guess we don’t talk as much as we used to.”

  “Millennials are always talking,” says Joe. “We’re in constant contact with each other, sharing via seventeen social media applications at once, or some shit, right? Personally, I think people just like saying ‘millennial.’”

  “Millennial?” That reminds me of something …

  Oh, right. That interview with Vic’s neice Samantha. It’s today. I haven’t thought about it since that time Topher and I saw her in Washington Square Park.

  I should do it, right? It’ll probably be boring, but it’s money. Money I really, really need. It might take weeks to find another preschool job once I’m back in Rochester … Urgh. The future. I hate thinking about it.

  Joe starts kissing and biting my neck again, and I make an involuntary, slightly embarrassing moaning sound.

  Joe pulls back. “You okay?”

  I nod.

  Joe resumes kissing me, and I shiver and wrap my arms tight around him, drawing his body as tight against mine as possible. I can’t help it: I want him. My body just reacts to him, it’s practically separate from my brain.

  And then it happens.

  Joe pulls back, practically midkiss, and looks at me.

  “No one else would have gone out of their way to track down Ian James for me, Coco, I just … oh, God, I love you.”

  I push Joe off me so fast that he nearly falls off the bed.

  “What?”

  Joe starts to laugh. “I said I—”

  “You do not!”

  “Uh, I think I’d know—” Joe laughs at my reaction. “I do. I love you.”

  “Don’t say that!” I grab a pillow and hug it tightly, to make a physical barrier between us.

  “Why?”

  “Joe, I can’t— I don’t—” I feel sick. “I’m so sorry, Joe, I’m so sorry—”

  “What for?”

  “No, no, I just, I’m sorry, I—” I cover my face with my hands. “I thought we were just friends, that was the deal, that was … that was the deal.”

  Joe’s face has turned to stone. “Friends. We’re practically living together, and you think we’re just friends?”

  “You told me we were friends. Just casual, we said casual.” I am filled with panic, clutching the pillow to my chest. “And anyway, um, it’s probably for the best, I’m leaving tomorrow, I’m just staying until the Potstill Prom is over, and then I’m going back to Rochester.”

  “You’re leaving? When were you going to tell me? On your way to Grand fucking Central?”

  “I thought … I’m … sorry…”

  “Stop saying you’re sorry.” Joe stands up and walks over to the window.

  “But I am—”

  “Sorry for what? For being an asshole?”

  I flinch. “We agreed to be just friends, Joe. You can’t just change the rules.”

  Joe turns around, his face white with anger. “Friends? You treat your friends like this? You used me for my apartment, right? You’ve been fighting with the girls? Didn’t want to be at Rookhaven?”

  I am speechless. How did he guess?

  “I’m not stupid, Coco,” says Joe. “Actually, maybe I am. I must be, right? Why else would you treat me like a fucking idiot?”

  “I did— I did not,” I stammer. “We were meant to be just casual, you agreed, we agreed.” I pause, my brain racing. “You’re the one who said breaking up was never a bad decision! Remember? You should be happy.”

  Joe can’t even look at me. “Get out.”

  I dress as quickly as I can, my hands shaking. I’m so stupid. How could I not have seen this coming? I don’t know what I feel. Guilt? Sadness? Shock? Resentment?

  Resentment wins.

  And as I’m going out the door, I’m determined to have the last word.

  “Joe?”

  He’s sitting on the bed now, leaning on his knees, hiding his face in his hands. He doesn’t respond.

  “You came on to Angie the night I met you,” I say. “You made it clear you liked her, not me, remember? You kept asking about her. I was just your consolation prize. I was your second choice. Hell, I was probably your fifth choice, but everyone else was either taken or gay. You never acted like I was anything special.”

  Joe looks up at me.

  I take a deep breath. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about leaving Brooklyn, but don’t pretend I’m breaking your heart.”

  “That’s the thing, Coco,” says Joe, finally looking at me. “You are breaking my heart.”

  I stare at him.

  I don’t know what to say.

  Joe stands up and walks over to the window again, trying to calm down. Then he turns around, his eyes cold and hard.

 
; “Don’t come to the Potstill Prom tonight. You’re fired.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Guilt.

  Nothing is as bad as guilt. It’s like being knifed from the inside out.

  This is what Pia was talking about when she cheated on Aidan.

  And I didn’t even cheat on Joe. In fact, I thought I was doing the right thing, I thought I was just telling the truth. But the moment I slam the door to Joe’s apartment, one new, awful thought is circling my brain.

  I hurt the kindest person I’ve met since I’ve been in New York City.

  With tears blurring my vision and a lump in my throat so big it genuinely hurts to swallow, I somehow get back to Rookhaven, shower and dress on autopilot, and catch the subway to Manhattan for that millennial interview set up by Vic’s niece Samantha. With difficulty, I push Joe out of my head. I’ll just answer some questions and collect my $100. Then I’ll go home, pack up all my stuff, and get ready to leave.

  The interview is in an office in the depths of NoLIta, and when I turn up, I see that I’m not the only twenty-something Samantha recruited. There are dozens of us, all waiting on the cobbled streets, leaning against the storefronts and in between parked cars, trying to get some shade.

  It’s so hot. New York is an armpit in the summer … I’ll be back in Rochester all winter, I suddenly realize. I’ll spend every night alone in the house I grew up in. The house is on a huge lot, so it’s practically snowbound for months on end. It’ll be just like every long, lonely winter after Mom died … like I never moved to New York City at all.

  A harried-looking guy—one of the grad student researchers, I guess—comes out of the building and hands out sheets of paper. We all take one and pass them on.

  It’s some kind of a disclosure agreement, so they can use anything I say in their work or whatever. I sign it and hand it back.

  Then we wait for another twenty minutes, everyone killing time on their phones. How did people handle waiting before you could get Facebook and Instagram on your phone? And how did people manage to ever meet each other before cell phones if one of them was running late, or if there was bad traffic, or they forgot the meeting place? It must have been a nightmare.

  Joe hasn’t texted me.

  Joe will never text me again.

  Stop it, Coco. There’s nothing you can do.

  Then Samantha appears, holding a chart. She doesn’t notice me.

  “Okay! Thank you all for coming today,” she says. “If I call your name, come forward. If I don’t call your name, try again next year. Abbott!” I look around, and a young guy wearing huge headphones around his neck, like the world’s clunkiest scarf, steps forward. “Amies!”

  What?

  Topher steps out from behind the construction awning of a building across the street. He walks to the front, and I see a few girls turn to look at him automatically, the way you do when anyone gorgeous crosses your path. But actually … today, for some reason, I don’t think he’s gorgeous. He just looks sort of … empty.

  Eventually Samantha gets to the R’s and sure enough, she calls, “Russotti.”

  I slowly make my way to the front and see that the only space for me is right next to Topher.

  How am I supposed to treat him? I mean, we went from seeing each other practically every day, and being constantly in touch, to being strangers again. He never responded to my embarrassing drunk texts, or got in touch after that party. He just disappeared. It’s been weeks.

  “Coco! Buddy!” Topher gives me a huge hug. “How are you?”

  I’m momentarily stunned, then hug him back. “Great! How are you?”

  “So great.” Topher flashes an easy smile, his teeth blindingly white compared to his newly tan face. “I aced my assignment. Thanks again for your help.”

  “Right.” My help. I wrote the damn thing. And he promised to buy me dinner to say thanks and never did. The asshat.

  “I’ve been up in Amagansett with Maggie. Man, I love the Hamptons, don’t you? But I couldn’t pass up the chance to earn an easy hundred dollars. Plus, Maggie’s boss has a chopper, and she was taking it into the city this morning to go to Russ & Daughters, so I was like, why not?”

  Topher starts talking about his journey into the city via helicopter, and I tune out, a practice, I think suddenly, that I used to do a lot back when we were friends. He talked a lot and I liked thinking about how much I liked him more than I liked listening to him.

  Or maybe we weren’t friends.

  We couldn’t have been. Because Topher doesn’t care about me. I mean, he’s polite and he smiles and says please and thank you. But he doesn’t really care about anyone except himself.

  And that’s probably the quality that made him so popular in high school.

  I can see that now. He only invited me to class because he knew I’d take notes for him when he had better things to do. Or even … write his assignment for him.

  How could I ever have thought I liked him?

  And then I realize: I didn’t.

  I liked the idea of him. The idea that Mr. Popular could see something in me that everyone back in high school missed, that his friendship could undo all those teenage years of being loveless and lonely and lost. If a guy as cool and popular as Topher could like me, it wouldn’t matter that Eric treated me like shit and I didn’t like myself.

  But nothing and no one can change the past.

  And it doesn’t matter.

  I smile for the first time since leaving Joe’s apartment today.

  “Coco Russotti!”

  A tall girl with long red hair calls my name. I turn quickly.

  “Follow me.”

  I glance back at Topher for the last time. “I’ll see you around.”

  CHAPTER 31

  I’m somewhere deep in one of those old downtown NYU buildings where they divided up an original long room into offices with weird temporary-for-twenty-years walls. It feels old, dusty, forgotten. The walls are so thin that I can hear the murmur of the interviews on either side of me.

  The redheaded girl, Jessie, spends a few minutes arranging a video camera so it’s pointed right at my face.

  “Okeydokey!” Jessie says. “We’re going to start with a straightforward Myers-Briggs, it’s a simple psychometric questionnaire. You’ve probably heard of it.”

  “Totally.” Briggs what?

  “We’re trying to figure out how millennials break down into the classic personality types, if it’s the same as older generations, specifically Generation X and baby boomers,” she says. “After this study, we’re choosing ten participants to interview more intensely. But for now, I’ll make statements, and you answer yes if you agree with them and no if you don’t. Got it?”

  “I think I can grasp the concept,” I say.

  She doesn’t smile. “Okay. Let’s begin. You are almost never late for your appointments.”

  “Um … True. I mean, yes,” I say. “Sorry.”

  “I guess you didn’t grasp the concept quite as well as you thought,” says Jessie. My eyes narrow. Bitch. “You like to be engaged in an active and fast-paced job.”

  “Um…” I think for a moment.

  Do I like a fast-paced job? I don’t know. My favorite moments working in the preschool were probably reading time, when everything was quiet and cozy, but that might have been because Miss Audrey couldn’t bully me at those times.

  I liked working at Potstill most when it was fairly empty, but that might be because Joe and I could just talk and mess around and laugh all night. Oh, God, Joe …

  I suddenly get a huge, painful lump in my throat.

  Why would I cry about Joe? I’m the one who ended it.

  Pushing thoughts of Joe aside, I don’t think that preschool teaching was ever the right career for me, so of course I didn’t enjoy the busy times. And maybe bar work wasn’t either. But how do I know if I’d like to be active once I find that mythical perfect career?

  How do I know?

  Jessie stares at me,
waiting. “Just a simple yes or no will do.”

  “No,” I say finally.

  “You enjoy having a wide circle of acquaintances.”

  “No,” I say. “I like just a small group of friends.”

  Even when we’re not talking to each other, like right now. I miss my friends. I wonder if they’re all okay. I hope Julia isn’t working too hard, no matter how angry she is at me, I just want her to be safe and happy. And I hope Maddy forgives me for outing her without her permission.

  “Coco!” snaps Jessie.

  “Sorry! What? I mean, excuse me?”

  “You feel involved watching TV soaps.”

  “Like, emotionally involved? Yes,” I say. “Totally. Very involved. And reality TV shows.”

  Jessie ignores my extra comments and asks more questions. And more. And more.

  And then finally, we’re finished.

  I am exhausted from thinking about myself so much.

  “Well, you’re what we call an ISFJ,” Jessie says, without bothering to look up at me. “Pretty normal, about twelve percent of the population. You’re defined by being supportive and caring, you value relationships and harmony in your relationships—”

  Not recently, I think to myself.

  “You retain information well, you’re imaginative, reliable, patient, warm, considerate, humble, modest, helpful, traditional…” Jessica is listing these personality traits like I’m the most boring person in the world. “… and you always, always put family first. You’re the caregiver. We call you the Nurturer.”

  “The Nurturer? Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Jessie looks up in surprise. “What?”

  I can’t even answer.

  I’ve spent all summer trying to be wild—trying to be like someone else, someone who has casual sex and gets drunk and dances on bars and steals education.

  And I’m still exactly the goddamn same.

  I’m the fucking Nurturer. I’m the good girl.

  Jessie is still talking. “… what you’re going to do with the rest of your life?”

  “Um…” I pause. “Why are you asking me that? I don’t know. I just, um, I don’t know yet.”

  “Well,” says Jessie, “I can tell you what you’d be good at. As Nurturer, your people skills—”