Awkwardly Ever After

by Marni Bates

  Spencer grinned. “You’re a terrible liar, Melanie.”

  “I really hate you right now.”

  His smirk only widened. “Like I said, a terrible liar. Don’t feel bad; you look pretty cute when you try to pull a fast one. I’ve always liked that about you. It’s probably for the best that I changed my plans, though.”

  And without bothering to explain that cryptic comment, he whistled as he walked away.

  I had no idea what to make of any of it.

  Maybe it was wrong of me to shrug it off and let Izzie sort it out on her own, but she seemed perfectly capable of keeping Spencer King at a distance.

  Okay, and maybe a part of me was a tad curious to see how things would play out between the two of them without anyone’s interference.

  Then again, if I hadn’t been so wrapped up trying to find the right words for my next conversation with Dylan, maybe I would have focused more of my energy on what was going on with my best friend. Once again, I was letting a boy keep me from my best friend duties. Except this time I didn’t regret it, because I was finally going after what I wanted.

  And even though I was pretty sure Izzie had every reason to complain about the way I’d been bailing on her recently, I also knew she’d be proud of me too.

  Eventually.

  Truthfully, I probably could have obsessed for hours about whatever weird thing was going on between Izzie and Spencer, and not have been any more prepared to talk to Dylan later that day. I couldn’t come up with anything particularly witty or smart to say during my English class, or during my freshman history class, or at any time during my walk to his house. I was still coming up blank when I sat down on the front steps of the Wellesley house and waited. Dylan’s scuffed-up soccer ball rested only two feet away from me and I idly wondered if I kept kicking it against the side of the house, would I be able to come up with something better than, “Heyyy, Dylan. Um . . . fancy seeing you here. At your house. What were the chances, right?”

  Instead, I nervously twisted one of the silver rings on my left hand and tried to use willpower to make time speed up.

  It felt like hours before I saw him approaching the house, his gait loose and easy. For a second I allowed myself to imagine that none of the events of yesterday had taken place. I hadn’t shown up with his older sister and her friends. I hadn’t tried to push him away. And his dad definitely hadn’t showed up.

  Once more Dylan was streaked with mud, undoubtedly the result of an intense soccer practice, and his eyes glinted with something extra when he caught sight of me.

  Something that had my palms sweating nervously before he banked it and glanced around. “I thought Mackenzie was tutoring Logan today.”

  I stood up, hoping that the additional height would bolster my quickly fleeting sense of confidence. “Uh, yeah. I’m not—well, I was waiting for you.”

  Dylan never slowed and I battled a wave of panic as the distance between us shrank. Five feet. Two feet.

  Six inches.

  But instead of stopping when he reached me, Dylan reached into the pocket of his jeans, fished out the house key, and unlocked the front door as if he had high school girls waiting on his porch every day. As if this was such a regular occurrence, he would’ve been more surprised to find the steps totally vacant.

  “You want to come in?” Dylan asked, his lips tilting up into a grin at my startled expression.

  “Uh . . . sure?” I winced as it came out more like a question than a statement; he was totally unnerving me. I couldn’t get a read on his emotions. If he was still mad at me over the things that I’d said the day before, he didn’t let on.

  I almost would’ve preferred it if he were pissed off. If he had seen me on the porch and told me to leave him the hell alone.

  At least then I would have known where I stood.

  But this whole nothing bothers me act he had going on only succeeded in rattling my nerves.

  “Great. Why don’t you make yourself at home while I clean up?” He wrinkled his nose as if he caught a good whiff of eau de soccer.

  Without waiting for a response, he headed right down the hall toward his bedroom, leaving me standing by the door looking in—fighting the urge to turn tail and run.

  Crossing the threshold was enough to have the hairs on my neck prickling into the full upright position, but I forced myself to shut the door behind me.

  No turning back now.

  Chapter 10

  Everyone at Mitch High School knew that Bethany and Ashleigh would ruthlessly pursue the title of prom queen. Underhanded insults intended to slash down the competition, malicious rumors spread throughout the hallways, none of it was too petty or too mean for the Terrible Twosome.

  But there was only one way to get the crown, and that was by being the biggest, baddest . . . Mitch the school had ever seen.

  —from “Prom and Backstabbing,”

  by Jane Smith

  Published by The Wordsmith

  It felt like an eternity before I heard the shower turn off.

  And then another millennium or so passed as I waited in the kitchen for Dylan to change. I felt every single tick of the clock above the sink as if I had swallowed it just like the alligator from Peter Pan. The fact that I was now thinking in terms of Disney movies didn’t sit well with me either. I wanted to blame Mackenzie for the Pocahontas invite, except that was what had led to this upcoming talk with her little brother.

  I couldn’t quite decide if that was a good thing or a really, really bad one.

  Probably because it all depended on this discussion with Dylan.

  I began pacing in nervous circles around the room, trying to decide how exactly I should pick up the thread of the conversation. I couldn’t exactly say, “So . . . nice shower?” or “Wow, you smell amazing. Want to have that talk?” even if I couldn’t think of any other way to break the ice.

  “You look serious. Do you want to take a seat or do you want to prowl around some more?”

  I jumped. It was a ridiculous reaction given that I was in his kitchen, waiting for his arrival, and listening to his kitchen clock until I thought I was about to lose my freaking mind, but he had somehow managed to catch me off guard.

  “I . . . uh . . . hi.”

  Dylan grinned and this time the expression reached his eyes. Suddenly, I felt . . . lighter. He was willing to hear me out—all the way—and I knew that he would actually listen.

  It was all I could ask of him.

  “My dad’s an alcoholic.”

  Dylan stared at me mutely for a second, clearly trying to process what I expected him to do with that information. “So . . . you can’t sit?”

  My knees turned to jelly and I sank into one of the chairs that surrounded the kitchen table. “No! Yes! Of course I can. I just . . . I thought you should know.”

  “Okay,” Dylan said slowly. Then he waited, probably because he didn’t think I would just blurt out something so personal and then turn mute. But I couldn’t seem to speak past all the emotions twisting and roiling inside of me.

  Hurt. Fear. Shame. Guilt.

  Anger.

  So much anger that I thought I might choke on all the years’ worth of unexpressed rage that I had kept to myself.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  They were my words from the day before, the ones I had used when I’d hoped a simple question might help Dylan find some kind of closure with his dad. Now I knew firsthand just how much it sucked to be on the receiving end of that question.

  “Not much to say,” I said stiffly. “He’s an alcoholic.”

  “I’m familiar with the condition, Melanie. What kind of an alcoholic is he?”

  I shot up from the chair and glared at him as adrenaline raced through my system. “He’s not a violent drunk if that’s what you’re getting at!”

  Dylan’s chocolate brown eyes never wavered from mine. “I’m glad to hear it, but that wasn’t what I meant.”

  I slowly eased back into the c
hair, my cheeks flushing hot with embarrassment. I was supposed to be explaining to Dylan that I wanted to try dating, not going for the jugular at the first mention of my father. Which was why I never should have brought him up in the first place.

  “Does he expect you to cover for him?” The words were spoken so gently, I wanted to squeeze my eyes shut. It was so much easier to answer when I could pretend that Dylan was asking because he truly, genuinely cared about me in a way that went way beyond friendship.

  “I . . . I guess,” I muttered. “He’s never asked me to do it or anything. It’s just—someone has to, right?”

  Dylan didn’t say anything and I found words suddenly tumbling out of my mouth in a free fall. “Somebody has to make sure he doesn’t die in his own vomit. Somebody has to make sure that he’s okay, and my mom can’t do it all. She tries, but it hurts her and I can’t stand to see it hurt her, so . . . somebody has to step in.”

  “And that somebody has to be you?”

  “Do you see anybody else around?” My voice cracked horribly on the question and suddenly I was crying again. It was as if my tear glands had somehow forgotten that they were supposed to be all tapped out after last night and had come back with a vengeance. I couldn’t even see Dylan; my eyes were so full of tears that they obscured my vision.

  Then I gave up even pretending I had everything under control.

  Really gave it up.

  I rested my forehead against the table, used my arm to pillow my nose, and sobbed for everything I knew wasn’t going to happen. Saying it out loud, using the word “alcoholic” in conjunction with “my dad” made it real somehow in a way that it hadn’t been before. It was like I had been living under a spell of silence, and all those years of tiptoeing around the issue had made me hope that as long as nobody applied that term to my dad, it wouldn’t be real.

  But it was painfully, excruciatingly real, and now I looked like a pathetic mess who started bawling at the drop of a hat.

  I jerked my head up, and I knew I had to get the hell out of there before I somehow made this embarrassing breakdown even worse. I wasn’t sure exactly how I’d even go about accomplishing that—maybe by blurting out that I liked him while he was trying to shuttle me out the door—but I didn’t trust myself not to find some way to screw it up even worse.

  “Sorry,” I choked. “I didn’t mean . . . I . . . sorry.”

  His face was right there. At some point while I was sobbing he must have moved closer because now he was only inches away. I could feel his arm stroking my back in a comforting motion that had nothing whatsoever to do with flirting and everything to do with silent support.

  I barely managed a weak chuckle when he brushed away one of my tears. “Great timing, right? You see your dad for the first time in years yesterday and the very next day I show up here and have a meltdown over mine.”

  The pad of Dylan’s finger lingered against my cheek and I almost wanted to keep crying just so he would have a reason to leave it there.

  “It’s okay, Melanie. I’m glad you’re here.” His mouth twitched upward into a smile that was every bit as soft as his words. “I’m always glad to see you.”

  “You weren’t yesterday,” I mumbled.

  “Of course I was.” Dylan’s finger moved away from my cheek and a wave of disappointment crashed through me until he reached up and carefully tucked a long strand of my hair behind my ear. “That doesn’t mean you can’t annoy the hell out of me too.”

  That startled a laugh out of me. “So . . . you’re not mad at me?”

  Dylan dropped his hand and leaned back in his chair thoughtfully as I cursed myself for asking the question. Things had been going so freaking well, all things considered, before I had opened up my big mouth.

  “I was more frustrated than angry with you, Mel,” he said slowly, measuring each word. “I don’t know what you want and I don’t enjoy guessing, so . . .”

  It was as good an opening as I was ever going to get.

  “You,” I said hoarsely. “I want you.”

  Dylan didn’t move, and for one horrible moment I wanted to look over my shoulder just to make sure his dad hadn’t entered the room again, because he was just as tense now as he had been when he’d found that unexpected visitor the day before.

  “Do you mean it?” There was no sign of the cocky soccer player now, the one who had no trouble crashing a high school party, or flirting with a girl who was close to his older sister. And I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way, because the anxiety in his voice, the fear and the hope all jumbled together, I felt it too.

  But it felt right that we were scared together.

  “Yeah, I mean it. I want you, Dylan.”

  A shutter fell over his eyes and he glanced away. “But not in public, right? You still want to pretend there’s nothing going on between us.”

  This time it was my turn to advance.

  So I leaned forward and kissed him.

  It began awkwardly, partly because I didn’t have the best angle to work from and partly because I knew he could taste my tears on my lips. I wanted our first kiss to be sweet, not salty. I pulled back just enough to look into Dylan’s eyes and breathe the one word that had resonated in my mind, “You. ”

  That’s when Dylan pulled me back in and gave it his all.

  And he showed me just how very sweet a first kiss could be.

  Ever

  Chapter 1

  Smith High School now has a student-run publication dedicated to fiction called The Wordsmith . . . and already it is proving itself to be fundamentally ill-conceived and horribly mismanaged. The latest edition included a short story called “Prom and Backstabbing” by junior Jane Smith that was pettiness masquerading as fiction. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that Smith is using her new platform as editor of The Wordsmith to further her own personal vendettas.

  It’s time to pull the plug on this failed experiment.

  —from “Stop the War of Words,”

  by Lisa Anne Montgomery

  Published in The Smithsonian

  Melanie Morris was a dead girl.

  Or at the very least she was going to be dead to me. No more favors. No more expecting dorky Isobel Peters to magically find a way to bail her out. Not.Going. To. Happen.

  Rope me into hanging out with Notables once? Shame on me.

  Ditch me outside Mackenzie Wellesley’s house with the most obnoxious boy at Smith High School?

  Shame on you.

  Not that Melanie stuck around to hear my opinion of the huge violations to the Friendship Code that she was breaking. She was too intent on her pursuit of Dylan, in more ways than one, and if she hadn’t just left me standing uncomfortably next to Spencer “I Practically Own This Town” King, I would have sympathized with her. She was obviously trying to pretend she felt nothing more for Mackenzie’s little brother than . . . something vaguely little brotherly, but the only person she’d probably fooled was Mackenzie.

  Normally, watching someone else’s social life in a state of flux would have appealed to the future psychologist lurking inside of me, but I couldn’t focus my attention on Mel when I was stuck next to a guy who was probably either a narcissist or a megalomaniac.

  Or maybe he was just a garden-variety jerk.

  Sometimes the simplest diagnosis gets overlooked for a flashier title. I should have known better than to discount the obvious, especially given that I was stuck in a high school that was chock-full of a range of jerks. They came in all sizes and, well, there wasn’t a whole variety in color—Forest Grove being one of those communities in Oregon where everyone looked like vampires who would burn to ash if they ever left town without the protection of a daylight ring.

  But regardless of their pallor, the jerks tended to brighten their days with a little geek hazing.

  And since I happened to be the obligatory chubby freshman girl, I was often the target.

  There were days when I really wished I could move and start over at some other hi
gh school—one where no football-playing jerk ever yelled, “Move your ass, Fatty,” at me in the cafeteria at a decibel level that basically ensured everyone within a fifty-yard radius would overhear.

  I was still trying to live that down.

  Not that anyone mentioned it to my face. It was more of a hushed snicker that buzzed in the background every time I raised my hand in my honors psychology class. One that could have been “geek” or “loser,” but that probably went right for the posterior: fat-ass.

  So even though Spencer King himself hadn’t treated me like trash for the past—oh, year—that didn’t mean plenty of his ilk hadn’t beaten him to the punch. Or that he wouldn’t take advantage of Melanie’s hasty departure by playing a quick game of tease the fat chick.

  Yeah, that was a fun one.

  Ten points if you make her cry.

  Fifteen if you can make her run away.

  “Are you coming or not?” Spencer didn’t even pause to hear my answer before he opened the driver’s side door and slid behind the wheel.

  I glanced briefly at Melanie’s retreating form and then over to the door of the Wellesley house, where only thirty minutes ago I had been pretending to watch a Disney movie. It seemed ridiculously PG now. Especially since having Mackenzie’s dad show up was the emotional equivalent of dropping an atomic bomb on both Mackenzie and Dylan.

  I didn’t exactly want to stick around and observe the aftermath.

  Well, that wasn’t entirely true: I did want to soak it all in. Maybe even jot down a few notes while I was at it. But I had learned the hard way that most people don’t enjoy being studied and treated like a case subject when they are at their most vulnerable—or at any time, actually.

  And since I didn’t exactly want to alienate the handful of people at Smith High School who didn’t feel the need to put a brainiac nerd like me in my place, I crawled into the passenger’s seat and buckled in with sweaty palms.

  I braced myself for an attack. Not a physical one. That would be too easy. No, it would be something snide and cruel that he could rationalize to himself later had “just been a joke”; if I was offended by it, that was because I obviously lacked a sense of humor.