by Siera Maley
“I’m still processing the first part,” I replied, my eyebrows furrowed. “Wait. If you liked me, why didn’t you just tell me?”
“Well, I was going to! The only person who knew was Gabby, my best friend. You remember her, right?”
“Yeah, I remember Gabby.” I paused, thinking back. “You guys were inseparable.”
“So, I told Gabby that I liked you. And at my party, we put all of our names into that hat and we said that whoever she drew had to go into my closet and kiss, right?”
“Yeah,” I agreed, wondering where this was going. I could remember crossing my fingers that the game would get boring and end before my name was ever drawn at all.
“Well, she didn’t draw your name or mine. She just said she did,” Chelsea explained. “She set us up because she knew that I liked you.” I gaped at her and she rushed to add, “I didn’t know at the time! She told me later on. I just thought I was lucky. So, basically, what I’m saying is that my massive embarrassing crush on you is the reason we kissed, and for that, I’m either sorry or not sorry depending on how horrified you are right now.”
“You don’t have to be sorry,” I murmured, busy recalling most of my seventh-grade interactions with Chelsea in a new light. “But I believe you now.”
“And I was going to tell you the truth about all of it, but you seemed kind of spooked the next time I saw you, so I let it go. And here we are, five years later.” She stopped there, and I turned to face forward and finished the rest of my drink. We sat in silence for a moment.
“You probably did the right thing,” I eventually admitted. “Not telling me.”
“Yeah?” she asked.
“I’d have freaked out.”
She pressed her lips together, shooting me a sympathetic look. “At least you’re honest.” She didn’t really seem to know what to say. “And it seems like things worked out anyway…and you’re happy now, and everything.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I’m not that happy.” Again, she seemed to struggle for words. I interrupted her with sudden clarity, turning to shoot her an apologetic look. “Sorry. I don’t drink often. I think I’m kinda drunk already.”
She forced a laugh and asked, “Can you stand up?” Then she got to her feet and extended a hand to me. I set my cup down and grasped her hand, and she lifted me to my feet. My head swam and I stumbled forward into her arms, where she caught me with a quiet, “Whoa.”
“Sorry,” I repeated, placing a hand on the porch railing to steady myself and trying to ignore how close we were.
“Don’t worry. There’s no way you can be worse than my friends,” she reassured me. “I’ve been puked on.”
“Well, I promise I won’t puke on you,” I vowed, reaching up to place a hand on my head. “I might fall on you, though.”
“Hey.” A couple squeezed by us and the boy gestured toward the swing. They were already moving to sit on it as they said, “If you guys are done with this, we’re gonna use it,” and then, without waiting for a response, they pulled each other close for a long kiss. Chelsea shot me a disgusted look and rolled her eyes.
“Alright. Want to go sit near the sidewalk or something? Or we could go inside?”
“Kinda hard to talk inside with the music,” I reminded her. She nodded and I pulled my phone out of my pocket to check the time, hastily swiping away a text from Skylar. It was nearing 11:30. “I have to be home soon, though.”
“Want me to go find your ride for you?” she offered. “I won’t know him by name and it might take a little while, but if you can find a picture to show me I can probably go get him.”
That was definitely not a good idea. “Oh, no, it’s fine; I can do it,” I insisted, then took a small step forward and reached for the railing again. Chelsea shot me a knowing look and I corrected, “Or not. I’ll just call an Uber. He’s probably busy with some girl, anyway. I’ll just text him to let him know that I’m leaving without him.”
“I’m not exactly planning on hanging around after you leave,” said Chelsea. “I could just give you a ride home.”
“It’s out of the way,” I recalled, waving her off. “Don’t worry about it. Besides, you’ve been drinking. You shouldn’t drive.”
“It’s not that out of the way,” she laughed out. “It can’t be more than ten minutes. And I put like half a shot into my drink and I’ve been sipping it; if I’m not fully sober now, I definitely will be in another five minutes.”
I shot her a skeptical look. “Are you sure you’re cool with it?”
She nodded and nudged me. “Of course. I already sent home two drunk friends in an Uber; let’s not make it three. It’s the least I can do after you kept me company.” She wrapped an arm around my shoulders and, half-heartedly, I let her help me walk off of the porch and onto the front lawn.
“Oh, so we’re friends now?” I asked her, only half-kidding.
“If you want,” she said. We reached a car I assumed was hers, and as she fumbled for her keys, she added, “I liked hanging out with you tonight.”
“Alright. Friends, then,” I agreed. My drunk brain had decided that I liked hanging out with her too, and that Skylar would approve. More time with Chelsea was a win-win. “Let me give you my number.”
Once I was in the passenger’s seat and Chelsea was safely behind the wheel, I took her phone from her, typed my number in, and saved the contact name as “First Crush,” complete with a large, red heart at the end. Then I exited out of her contacts and set her phone to give us directions to my address.
The first few minutes of the drive were silent. I was sleepy from drinking and exhausted from the stress of Skylar’s plan. But conversation with Chelsea had come easily, at least. She wasn’t hard to spend time with, or boring to talk to. Hanging out with her again seemed like a no-brainer.
“If you’d told me three hours ago that going to a party tonight would lead to driving my first kiss from middle school home after making my best friends promise an Uber driver that they wouldn’t puke in his car, I’d have never believed it,” Chelsea said eventually. “What a weird night, huh?”
“I probably wouldn’t have believed it, either,” I admitted, resting my head against the window. “I’m happy it went this way, though.”
“Me too,” she agreed, smiling over at me. “And you know what the best part is?”
“What?” I wondered, sitting up and looking over at her.
“I get to reintroduce you to good music.” She reached forward and turned on her radio, hit a few buttons, and then turned the dial up. The opening notes of an Owl City song began to play through the speakers.
“No!” I groaned, stretching the word out and covering my ears. I heard her laughing over the radio and shook my head, half-wishing she wasn’t taking me home.
I didn’t want the night to end.
4
“Well?”
I laid on my bed, newly changed into pajamas, and sent a text to Devon letting him know that I was home safely and not to worry. When I set my phone aside, Skylar was staring intently at me from the edge of my bed. I’d had about five unanswered texts from her asking questions that I’d forgotten to answer.
“Well?” I echoed, raising an eyebrow.
“Tell me everything!” she pressed, both frustrated and excited. “I was watching from your window; you got out of her car! What the hell happened tonight?”
“A lot,” I began, speaking slowly. My mind was still fuzzy and I wasn’t sure how to describe my night to her. I couldn’t tell her most of what I’d spoken to Chelsea about without revealing my history with her, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to share even if I’d been able to. “We talked,” I finally said.
That, obviously, was not enough for Skylar. She leaned in closer, clearly at her breaking point. “And…?”
“Just let me process for a second. We have all night.”
“So then there’s something to process.”
“I guess.”
“How long did you ta
lk to her for?” she asked.
“The whole time.”
“Oh my god.” Skylar looked positively delighted. “You’re in. We have her. God, you’re good.”
I couldn’t find the words or the heart to tell her that it hadn’t been like that, and so I just stayed quiet. Sure, I’d lied a little, and there’d definitely been moments where Chelsea’d upset me, but it was more complicated than that. I could see the bad parts of her, but I could see some good, too.
“What was she like with you?” Skylar asked next.
“What do you mean?”
“Like, when she talked to you?” she clarified. “Was she friendly? Flirty? Did she seem interested? What did you talk about?”
I blinked up at the ceiling, purposefully ignoring most of her questions. After a moment of thought, I said, “She was pretty magnetic. I think I get it.”
“Get what?”
“Why you liked her so much.” I paused. “Sometimes I couldn’t tell if she was sincere, but it always felt like she was. I think I like her.”
Skylar’s face fell and she shot me a hurt look. “Are you serious?”
“Not like that,” I said, rolling my eyes at her. “C’mon, Skylar. You know what I mean. There’s Fake Zoey, who doesn’t know you and ran into Chelsea by coincidence tonight, and Real Zoey, who is in on your plan. Fake Zoey likes Chelsea. As a person. Real Zoey would like Chelsea if she didn’t know what Chelsea did to you.”
“So you’ll hang out with her again?” she asked me, hopeful.
“Yeah,” I agreed. Both halves of me just wanted to know more.
“How are we gonna set that up? Did she invite you somewhere?” asked Skylar.
“I gave her my number,” I said. “Hopefully she’ll text me.”
Skylar let out a sigh of relief. “Honestly, this is going so much better than I thought it would. This is the best idea I’ve ever had.” She collapsed beside me on the bed, grinning. “You know what? I don’t need to know what you talked to her about. Just keep doing what you’re doing, because it’s obviously working.”
“Will do,” I promised. Skylar, satisfied for now, settled under the covers, and I turned the lamp on my nightstand off.
While Skylar fell asleep beside me, I rolled over onto my side and stared at the wall, reliving my conversation with Chelsea over and over in my head. I hadn’t clicked with someone that easily since the first day I’d met Alex. Maybe the reason I wanted to see Chelsea again so badly was because I just missed feeling that with someone. But with Alex it’d all been real. I wasn’t sure that was true with Chelsea and me.
My phone buzzed quietly on my nightstand and instantly I reached over and snatched it up, sparing a glance at Skylar to make sure my movement hadn’t woken her up. When I was sure she was still asleep, I checked the new text message on my phone.
“First Crush? Really?”
I grinned and saved Chelsea’s name into my phone, then stared down at the message, trying to formulate a reply. I started and deleted several drafts before I finally sent: “Technically accurate.”
My phone buzzed again seconds after my response.
“Technically inaccurate! I said you were the first one I KNEW was a crush. It’s different.”
“And too long to fit. Sleeping the alcohol off now.” I added a smiley face and sent the message, then put my phone on silent and placed it back on the nightstand.
When I closed my eyes again, I felt strangely content.
I spent the next week and a half texting back and forth with Chelsea. A lot.
It started slow, with a few generic messages like “Hey! Hope you’re having a good day!” or, during school hours, “Are you as bored as I am right now?” and then by the following Wednesday we were having conversations about anything and everything. There was a lot of nostalgic trading of stories and memories of people from our middle school. We updated each other on the more news-worthy people we’d gone on to high school with, like Hannah Draper, who’d gotten pregnant last year and nearly had her baby in the middle of our Physics class last semester, or Mr. Vaughn, our old English teacher who’d transferred to Chelsea’s high school and then gotten fired for smoking pot on school property.
But there were also conversations about things I didn’t expect, like where we were going to school in the fall (a decent university about 50 miles down the freeway for me, and for her, a liberal arts college about 20 miles away from mine), and what we were hoping to do in the future (I wasn’t sure; she wanted a psychology degree). We even talked about a strange dream she had on Tuesday night that involved having to fight Kanye to the death gladiator-style for Kim Kardashian’s heart even though she wasn’t even attracted to Kim Kardashian and kept trying to tell everyone she didn’t want to be there, and that one had me snickering to myself in the middle of my History class, which earned me a curious, pointed look from Skylar, who sat one seat over from me.
I was sure she hadn’t missed the way I’d scrambled for my phone every time it’d buzzed over the past few days, or the way I’d deflated just a little every time it’d turned out to be a new email alert or a message from some app I’d forgotten to disable the notifications for. And though I could tell, despite what she’d said before, it annoyed her that I wasn’t sharing much, I knew she trusted me enough to not ask too many questions.
It was times like those, when Skylar was around, that I got the reality check I desperately needed. Because the truth was that Chelsea was very easy to like, and our shared past was accelerating the bond we were already very quickly developing. But when Skylar was around, I remembered this was a game—for me, but also probably for Chelsea too. This was her chance to conquer her first crush. I had to let myself believe that was truly her goal, because if there was even an ounce of authenticity on her end, then what I was doing was downright evil.
I tried to keep that thought in the back of my mind, warning myself not to push things too far in case there really was some other explanation for what she’d done to Skylar other than the obvious “Chelsea is evil” theory, but the more I spoke to her—as much as I did like her—the more I became convinced that Skylar was probably right. And it was because I did like Chelsea so much that I believed Skylar was right. No one this good at drawing someone in could have good intentions, I’d decided. And so, I was stuck swinging like a pendulum, going back and forth between liking her and reminding myself that she was probably evil.
I liked the explanation I’d given Skylar for that conundrum: Fake Zoey versus Real Zoey. Fake Zoey got butterflies from every new text and already wanted to make out with Chelsea until our lips lost feeling, and Real Zoey maybe wanted to make out with her, too, just a little, but definitely only so that I could laugh at her later when I turned the tables a few weeks down the line.
I got one step closer to doing just that on a Wednesday night, minutes after Skylar had arrived to recap the events of the past few days with me. We’d decided to have these meetings once a week—while my parents were out at church—and the fact that I’d agreed to them was probably a big part of why she’d let me be.
My phone buzzed on the bed beside me, and, as per usual, I snatched it up immediately. The text was from Chelsea: “Hey, my birthday’s this weekend and I’m having a party at my place on Saturday night. It’s just a few friends, nothing big. I know it’s short notice, but would you want to come? It’s cool if you’re busy but I just thought I’d ask!”
I reread the text a few times, just like I always did before I replied, and this time Skylar read over my shoulder without me noticing. She let out a short laugh next to me.
“Do you exude some sort of pheromone I’m immune to? She wants you so bad, dude.”
“Shut up,” I dismissed, nudging her away with an elbow. “It’s just a party invitation.” But I could feel my heart beating a little faster in my chest despite myself. Just to involve Skylar, I asked, “I should say yes, right?”
Her eyes widened at me like she thought I was stupid. “Yes! Ar
e you kidding me? This is perfect!” The wheels in her head were turning before I could even press my thumbs to my phone to start a reply. “We’ll have to go shopping sometime this week, though. Maybe Friday after school? You need an outfit, and we need a present for her. Something good. It needs to be intimate enough to say that you’re interested, but we can’t overdo it. She has to wonder a little, you know?”
“No, I don’t know,” I answered, even though her question had been rhetorical. “What do you want me to say to her?”
“You have to do it,” she insisted. “It has to be in your words.”
I sighed and stared at the text. I overanalyzed half the stuff I said to Chelsea even when it wasn’t important. I wondered, briefly, if she was doing the same thing on the other end, or if this all came naturally to her like it usually did to me.
“I’m pretty sure I’m free,” I finally began. “Sounds fun! If your friends from the party are gonna be there, I hope for their sake that there won’t be alcohol.”
I sent the message and waited with Skylar, who looked thoughtful. “So what’ve you two been talking about this past week anyway?” she wondered, clearly curious about the secret to my success.
“I thought you didn’t care as long as it worked,” I reminded her.
“Yeah, but it’s working really well.”
“We talk about life,” I said honestly. “Our interests. Crazy classmates. Normal stuff.” I shrugged. “I guess we just click.” Then I felt nervous for some reason, and added, “Or I’m good at making sure we click, anyway.”
“Has she mentioned me at all?” Skylar wondered. “Or like, referenced an ex or anything?”
“Not via text,” I said. “Only when we talked at the party.”
She gaped at me. “At the party? And you didn’t tell me?”
“You said you didn’t care!” I repeated.
“Obviously I care if she mentions me!” exclaimed Skylar, pushing at me lightly in frustration. “We’re only doing this because of what she did to me, remember?”
