Shallow

by Yessi Smith

  “Yes, you can. Of course, you can. And if anyone gives you any crap about it, they’ll have to deal with me.”

  “Yeah?” I felt his cheeks lift up when he grinned. “You gonna throw your pom-poms at them?”

  “Or run them over with my car.” I shrugged.

  He laughed, but it held none of the enthusiasm Danny embodied.

  “No one that matters is gonna care,” I said, running a hand over his back. “People love you because of who you are, not in spite of it. You have friends in this school that’ll stand by you. Give them a chance to show you.”

  He nodded, gripping the back of my shirt in a closed fist. “What if Ari doesn’t want that? What if he wants to keep us behind closed doors?”

  “Talk to him.” I paused. “But from the looks he was giving you during lunch, I’m pretty sure he’s waiting for you to say you’re okay with everyone knowing about you guys.”

  He peered back, hope flickered in his eyes and when he smiled, I was the one left grasping onto hope that I wouldn’t later be tasting the twinge of regret. But we had hope and it had to be real.

  “I’ll talk to him,” he said.

  “Good.” I kissed his cheek. “I want you to be happy. Do what makes you happy, okay? Screw everyone else.”

  “Yeah,” he breathed out.

  The school bell rang, alerting us that lunch was over. We made our way back with our hands clasped together. The walk back was lighter, and I felt even happier than I had before. I had a boyfriend I was crazy about, and my best friend would soon have one too.

  “I need details on this kiss, Danny.” I couldn’t help the tease in my voice. “As your best friend, you owe it to me.”

  “I don’t think I do.”

  I pushed my bottom lip out. “Please.”

  “Tell me about your dance.”

  My face reddened. That seemed to be its new complexion since Roderick and I got together.

  “I asked first,” I countered.

  “Lies.” He tugged my ponytail. “I asked you on Sunday and then again yesterday.”

  “We danced, we kissed.” I was sure my cheeks would catch fire any minute. It would almost be a mercy if it started raining again so I could cool down. “It was the best night of my life.”

  Grasping my wrist, Danny stopped us midstride. He looked around, and when his eyes met mine, there was real joy in them.

  “A group of us went to the dance together in Ari’s car.” He kept his voice low. “Ari and I talked a lot, but it wasn’t anything major. We’re friends, we hang out all the time, but something felt different.” He looked over his shoulder, and I hated how nervous he was about someone listening in on our conversation. “After the dance, he dropped everyone off and left me for last. Instead of taking me straight home, we went to the playground by his house. We didn’t get out or anything, just talked. And then, I kissed him.”

  “Wait.” I held out my palms and then smacked him. “You said he kissed you. But you…” I waggled my finger in front of his face. “It was all you.”

  “Yeah, but I ended it quickly and apologized.” He dug his toe into the sand. “Then he kissed me.”

  “Danny!” Excitement vibrated off every cell in my body. “Was this your first kiss?”

  A sheepish smile took over his face. “Yeah.”

  “And it was good? Not just good for your first time, but good.”

  “It was amazing,” he breathed.

  And that’s exactly how it should be. That’s how you knew you found someone special. Their kisses were amazing. Their touch made you feel everything.

  The right person could make you soar.

  The diner was crowded with football players and cheerleaders.

  Everyone I once avoided.

  I hated it. Felt like I was suffocating, like all the bodies in the room were taking up too much space, sucking in all the air and leaving nothing for me.

  It made eating the food I’d ordered hard, so eventually I gave up and pushed it to the side.

  Brinley was in her element though. Girls from her team surrounded her, asked her questions, kept her mind busy. Her smile was unreserved. Completely breathtaking. And I knew I’d do whatever I had to, to keep it there.

  Even though most of the guys had become friends with Seth, I understood why he didn’t show tonight. It was hard going from seeing everyone as your enemy to having more friends than you cared to have. While we had our differences, we weren’t that dissimilar. Where I was invisible, he was a target. It was the same people who’d ignored me, that had made his school life impossible. Now, those same people wanted to be our friends, as if they were some holy grail we should clasp onto.

  Although weary, Seth welcomed them. I tolerated them for Brinley.

  Funny how I went from wanting to hate her to realizing I never stopped loving her. The love had evolved over time, from something innocent in our younger days to something ugly up until only a few weeks ago to something more than I could’ve hoped for.

  I loved her selfishly. I loved her selflessly. I loved her completely.

  “Hey.” Danny rapped his knuckles on the table before sliding into the booth in front of me.

  He scooted over to make room for Ari, and I hoped the rest of the guys wouldn’t join them. I purposely sat at an unoccupied table so I wouldn’t be forced to talk any more than I already had to. Keeping up with all of Brinley’s friends— a mixture of some old friends and a lot of new ones – throughout the day was exhausting, and I was relieved when the last bell sounded, only to find out we were coming here later. At least I got a few hours at my aunt’s house to myself and my writing before she picked me up for dinner.

  “Mind if we join you?” Danny asked.

  “Looks like you already did,” I said.

  He ignored my dig and pointed at a napkin I’d been writing on. While Brinley and I hadn’t written much together, I wrote every chance I had. Sometimes, like now, I was so lost in thought I didn’t even realize I was writing.

  Crumbling up the paper, I put it in my pocket and said, “It’s nothing.”

  This time, he arched a brow but didn’t say anything.

  Silence grew and just when I was going to stand up and find another booth, Jacob came over. He waited for me to make room for him, but I glared at him, unmoving. Turning, he grabbed a chair from a nearby table and sat on it backwards.

  “Brinley and the freak, huh?” His smile was wide, disconcerting.

  Anger flared, and I fisted my hands beside me.

  “She always had a bit of drama in her,” Jacob continued. “Not even surprised she stooped so low to get attention.”

  “Leave it alone,” Danny warned.

  “Does our Brin taste as good as she looks?” Jacob directed that question to me. “I bet she does. I’d give anything to have her sweet, tight body wrapped around me. Have her beneath me, screaming my name.” He chuckled while red spots tainted my vision. “She’s what dreams are made of, am I right?”

  Gripping the table, I leaned toward Jacob. “Don’t speak her name.” I shuddered out a breath, braced myself so I wouldn’t pummel through this guy and embarrass Brinley. “Don’t think about my girl, don’t talk to her or about her.”

  He lifted his chin, narrowing his eyes in challenge. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Get you kicked off the team,” Ari said before I had a chance to respond.

  I turned my anger to him, not wanting anyone to speak for me when it was my job to defend Brinley.

  “Keep your mouth shut, and your head out of your ass,” Ari continued. “One call to coach, that’s all I have to do. He gave you one last chance. Don’t blow it.” He waved his phone in front of him.

  Jacob slapped an open palm on the table, the irritating sound of his laughter rang loudly in my ear. “Roderick knows I’m joking. Right, man?”

  Hot rage pumped through my veins, settled in my chest. Slowly, I stood up and leaned in to him. “Say my girl’s name again, and it won�
�t matter what your coach knows or says. I’ll make sure you can’t play. Got it, man?”

  As I sat back down, Jacob cursed under his breath. Said something too low for me to hear before he jumped out of his chair and rushed to the door, leaving the diner without saying a word to anyone. Even without him looking back, I’m sure he felt the heat of my tempered glare on his back.

  Danny leaned back, his gaze seeming to assess me.

  “I didn’t need a save.” I leveled Ari with a heavy stare.

  “I didn’t do it for you,” Ari said, his tone bored. “I did it for Brinley.”

  “And because Jacob’s an asshole,” Danny added.

  Ari grinned. “That too.”

  Suffocating. I was suffocating with the noise, and the two guys sitting in front of me.

  I searched the diner for the bathroom, but there were too many people standing by it. Five minutes, that’s all I needed by myself. Outside would be better. Fresh air, no crowd. I inched toward the edge of the booth and as if she sensed me, she turned around. I met Brinley’s gaze from a table down. She smiled and I stopped moving. After a few words passed those lips I dreamt about, she got up from her table to sit beside me. And I felt the world right itself. The space was no longer too small, too loud, too anything.

  It was perfect with my girl beside me.

  “What are we talking about?” Brinley asked.

  I put my arm around her and scooted closer to her. She squirmed in to my side until she found her favorite spot where her head rested on my shoulder.

  “We weren’t,” I answered.

  “You weren’t, what?” She peeked up at me, her pretty green eyes seeming lighter behind the dark lashes framing them. “Talking?”

  “Just sitting here,” Danny said. “Not saying anything.”

  “That’s… nice?” She scrunched up her nose.

  Ari laughed. “It was uncomfortable.”

  “No one made you sit here.” I chewed on my inner cheek to keep from saying anything else. Something that would hurt Brinley if she knew how much I didn’t want to be here.

  Ari angled his face to the side. “Danny didn’t want you sitting by yourself.”

  The confusion and hurt that marred Brinley’s features reached inside of me, tore into my chest.

  “You were alone?” she asked.

  I twisted her in my arm to kiss her neck, trail my nose to her ear. I let my lips linger there and whispered, “I told you, I’m not alone. Not anymore.”

  Weaving her fingers through mine, she tugged on my hand. “We’re gonna head out,” she said to Danny and Ari.

  Danny slid out of the booth, and Brinley let go of my hand to hug him. When she whispered something in his ear, he nodded.

  From over her head, Danny looked at me, repeated the same words from two weeks ago. “If you hurt her…”

  “You’ll hurt me,” I interrupted. “Got it.”

  He smiled and I felt my own lips twitch in response. Yeah, Danny wasn’t a bad guy. Maybe Ari wasn’t either. It was me who had to get used to hanging around so many people.

  When she turned back to me, her hand reaching for mine, I took it, let her lead us out of the diner. It wasn’t until we were in her car that I could finally breathe. Away from the noise. Just me and my girl.

  We sat next to each other, cross-legged with our knees touching. With both our phone flashlights on, our cave was bright. The stuff I hadn’t taken with us when I brought Roderick home with me was still here. Cold and wet.

  “Nicole wasn’t there tonight,” I said.

  Up until two weeks ago, I’d never gone to the diner with the guys. It was just them, some sort of bonding the coach urged them to do outside of football. But since Ari had invited me, I’d told the girls in my cheerleading team in the hopes Nicole would go so we could finally speak.

  “Have you talked to her?” he asked.

  “At practice, but other than that, no.” It saddened me how easily she gave me up. “She won’t return my texts or answer my calls.”

  “I’m sorry, baby.”

  I knew he was, just like I knew he didn’t understand why losing her made me sad when we were never as close as we pretended to be. This proved it. I was replaceable, forgettable.

  On limber legs, Roderick stood up and went to our wall. Read our poetry. And I wondered what he thought now that he knew the girl writing with him was me.

  “You don’t hate being alone,” Roderick said, breaking the silence. “You hate the silence that comes with it.”

  When I went to him, he put an arm around my shoulder and held me close to him. Safe, I was safe. “When you surround yourself with people, you kinda force yourself to listen to what they have to say, and it drowns out your own thoughts.”

  “But your thoughts…” He turned me in his arms, so we faced each other and pointed at the wall. “I love your thoughts.”

  My eyes shifted down. “I hate them. When I’m alone, they’re all I hear and I hate them.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they yell at me about my mom, about what she’s become, about what…” My voice broke, and I cleared my throat. “About what I might become.”

  He took me in his arms, as if he could shield me from my fears. I wished he could. Except all he was doing was exposing them when they should stay where no one could see them.

  “What about you?” It came out harsh, but I kept going. “Alone isn’t a tragedy?” I scoffed, taking a step back, away from him while I peered up to see the hurt cross his face. “You hate it.”

  “I don’t hate it,” he countered. “I prefer it over being in a roomful of people I don’t like.”

  “The only reason you isolated yourself was to protect yourself,” I barreled through. “If no one got close, they couldn’t hurt you if they left. Tell me I’m wrong,” I challenged.

  He sighed. It was heavy and sad. “You’re not wrong, and I’m not fighting with you tonight.” He roughed a hand through his hair and stared at the wall. “I see you. I know you. That’s all I was trying to say, not start a fight.”

  Biting my bottom lip, I watched him pick up the discarded black marker from the ground. I fought back tears when he pressed it to the wall to write. He shook it a few times when it didn’t work and then threw it against the wall on a grunt. The top popped off while the marker rolled away.

  “Here,” I said, digging into my jeans and taking out a marker I’d taken from the diner after seeing how panicked Roderick looked sitting with Ari and Danny. He’d gone to the diner for me, so I wanted to bring him to our cave for him.

  He took it without looking at me and started to write.

  Of all the places

  he sought to hide

  the only safe place

  I put a hand to his shoulder, stopping him from continuing.

  “Can I finish?” I asked.

  His Adam’s apple bobbed when he handed the marker to me.

  I changed the he to they and continued.

  Of all the places

  they sought to hide

  the only safe place

  they found was

  in each other

  I bowed my head, regret making my skin tingle. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m good at being mean to keep anyone from seeing too much. I don’t know how to stop. But you’re my safe place.”

  “Groups of people are your safe place,” he countered.

  “I use people.” I accepted that about myself. People were nothing more than a means to an end, very few of them were actual friends. “I surround myself with them to quiet my thoughts, but my mind is most silent, most at peace, when I’m with you. You’re my safe place,” I repeated.

  He shook his head, and I readied myself for the blow. For his rejection. It was something I deserved after I deliberately tried to hurt him.

  “At school, at the diner, that’s when I see you the happiest, the most comfortable. Not here with me. Not when I was sick in your room.”

  Confusion twisted in my gu
t, made bile rise to my throat. “Why do you think that?”

  “Your laughter, your smile, your voice – you’re the most animated when you’re around everyone. When it’s just us, you’re quieter, more reserved.”

  I wanted to laugh, to shake him for seeing so much while seeing so little. “In a group of people, I’m the center of attention, but still I somehow feel completely alone. I circle around everyone so that they notice me, but no one really sees or hears me, just what they want to see and hear. But you… you listen for what I don’t say, you look for what I don’t show you.” I steadied my gaze on him, blinking back the frustration and hoped he heard what I was trying to say. “When we were younger, I felt like you were minutes away from finding what I was trying so hard to hide. That’s why I stayed away from you. I knew if anyone could’ve figure me out, it’d be you.”

  Grief flared behind his eyes. He clenched his jaw as if he were bracing himself against an attack. As if he were bracing himself against me.

  “Sometimes I think I know you.” His voice was like gravel. “Most of the time I know I don’t. You’ve gotten so good at hiding, do you even know who you are anymore?”

  “No.” It was the most honest answer I had. “But I’m trying to find out.”

  “Tell me one truth about yourself. Something you don’t hide from the world.”

  My bottom lip trembled, so I caught it between my teeth. “I’m not a good person.”

  He threw his hands in the air. “Lie!” The word echoed in the cave, reverberated in my chest. “You hide the good. I don’t know why, but you do.” Silence fell between us. “You can’t do it, can you? One true thing that everyone knows. Just one, Brinley.”

  I sucked in a breath and let it go on a sob. Wrapping my arms across my chest, I held myself together. Panic throbbed in my veins, seized my lungs until breathing became painful.

  I wore masks, played roles. The girl everyone at school thought they knew didn’t exist. Like Roderick said, I was good at hiding. I was fake. If only I could find a way to hide from the hope he awoke in me, from the sharp pieces that sliced through my defenses and left me open to him.