Always Forever Maybe

by Anica Mrose Rissi

  “And Benji?” I asked, tipping my head back to rinse out the conditioner.

  Jo paused. “Still on. We didn’t talk about him much, really.”

  “Oh.” I turned off the water and groped for the towel. When I stepped out from behind the shower curtain, her face was grim.

  Shit. I hadn’t meant to burst her bubble. At least, not entirely. I’d only wanted to deflate it a bit with a small prick of reality, to protect her from getting hurt too much down the line. But now I felt like an ass.

  My brain grasped for something to distract her with. The news that Aiden and I had deflowered each other last night didn’t seem like quite the right choice. “I saw Eric at the Shack yesterday,” I volunteered instead.

  Jo rummaged for her eyeliner. “So?”

  “So,” I said, bending over to wrap my hair in a second towel, “you were right, the other day. Something is up with him. At least according to Lexa.” I flipped back up, adjusted my turban, and filled her in on what Lexa had said about Eric being distant and wanting to wait to have sex. If Jo was surprised on either count, she didn’t show it. “Oh, and get this—she said before I met Aiden she used to feel jealous of Eric and me. Isn’t that absurd? I mean, just picture me with Eric.”

  Jo drew a smoky line across her eyelid and flared it out into a wing. We’d gone through our learning-to-apply-makeup years experimenting right here in this bathroom together, but somehow she had become an artist while I had yet to demonstrate competence with even a wand of clear mascara. Luckily Aiden didn’t like girls to wear makeup anyway. “It’s not that absurd,” she told the mirror.

  I waited for the punch line. It didn’t come. “It isn’t?” I pushed.

  She switched to the other eye. “I always thought you and Eric would be kind of good together.”

  “Seriously?” I half squeaked. I wouldn’t have been more surprised if she’d said she wanted to date him herself.

  “Yeah.” She studied her reflection. “Actually, for a minute there I kind of wondered if when he broke up with Jasmyn, he might start something with you. I mean before he got with Stacy or Corina.”

  “And then Taylor.”

  “And Arum.”

  “And Monica.”

  “And Lexa.”

  “Don’t forget Sonia Park,” I said. She’d been the one before Lexa.

  “Right.” Jo grinned. “My Brother the Slut.”

  I steered clear of that one. It was one thing for Jo to semi-insult Eric, but another thing entirely for someone else to do it in front of her. She once stopped speaking to me for an entire recess because I had called Eric “booger brain” after he’d said she was a doo-doo head. It hadn’t mattered one bit that I’d been defending her honor—putting down her twin was crossing the line.

  “Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I wanted you guys to get together,” she said, tipping my world back onto its axis. “It’s just, I could picture it working.”

  “I am so not Eric’s type.” But already the narrative was shifting in my head, and all those past moments of wishing and what-ifs seemed less pitiful, more bittersweet.

  It didn’t change anything about now, of course. He was still my friend and Jo’s brother, and besides, I was in love with Aiden. But it was nice to imagine my secret crush had been slightly less pathetic than I’d thought.

  Jo shrugged and put down the eyeliner. “Anyway. Clearly it doesn’t matter now, but I’m sorry I didn’t say anything about it back then. That would be weird, though, you know? My best friend and my brother?” She scrunched up her nose.

  “Yeah. Totally weird,” I said, mirroring her ick face. “And never going to happen.”

  She exhaled. “It feels good to confess. I hate keeping secrets from you. But it’s like, saying it out loud might have made it come true, or something. Before. I didn’t want to be a third wheel with my best friend and my brother. I need you both to always love me the most.”

  “Well, consider yourself forgiven.” I’d always hated that math: If Jo was my favorite, and Eric was Jo’s favorite, and Eric also loved Jo the most, then whose favorite was I?

  But now it all added up to one easy answer: I was Aiden’s and he was mine. There were no other variables or factors to consider. The equation was perfect, complete.

  Bee + Aiden = Everything

  Twenty-Three

  SPRING FEVER HIT OUR SCHOOL AT FULL TILT, AN orgy of madness and hope, more frenzied than even in years before. My classmates were like wind-up toys that had been cranked slowly, all winter long, and were now finally released to their literal and metaphorical flips, spasms, and somersaults. The hallways and lunchroom were mayhem, and half the teachers seemed to give up on even trying to make us learn. We were seniors. That was fine with us.

  I didn’t know if my parents felt sorry for me after squashing my romantic prospects, or if, like everyone else I knew, they were distracted by the slight lift of winter’s grays and forgot to be total dictators for a minute, but now that I had decided to ignore them and their rules, they were being uncharacteristically lenient. When I wasn’t at school or working my shift, I was “studying with Jo” almost every waking moment of the next few weeks, and my parents barely said a peep. Of course, no real studying got done. Kissing, though: A lot of kissing got done. Caffeinated walks by the river, chilly picnics in the park, and hot chocolate and games of Uno with Aiden’s little brother and sister, who were even cuter in person than in their pictures, and adorably in love with him. Kendra was prone to misty tears over games she didn’t win, and to fits if she thought you were letting her, but Aiden was a master at both sneakily playing to lose and turning her frowns into giggles. I loved being his coconspirator in it.

  From everything I knew about Aiden’s history with his mom, I’d kind of expected the whole family to be damaged by how she’d left them. But Alex and Kendra seemed like normal, happy kids, and their dad, though I rarely saw him, always offered an easy smile and a laid-back “Well, if it isn’t the famous Bee.” Maybe Kendra and Alex had been young enough when it happened that they weren’t as affected as Aiden. Or maybe once Aiden cleaned up, he’d been able to help them adjust and get through it. He was an attentive big brother and it was clear just being near him made them feel safe and free—much how I felt on our long rides to nowhere, the motor humming through us, my arms wrapped around him, our hearts and bodies flying.

  There was more sex happening, too. We were getting good at it, I thought. Most of our afternoons were spent naked in his apartment, exploring every inch of each other’s skin, sharing every random thought in our heads. We were doing exactly that in the stolen extra hour after one of my shifts, when Aiden’s kiss to my kneecap was punctuated by the sound of a car door closing in the driveway—his father returning home from work. I rolled onto my back. “Do you think your dad knows we’re having sex?” I asked.

  Aiden kissed his way up to my hip bone. “I doubt he thinks about it. But if he did I guess he’d probably assume yes.”

  “You don’t think he cares at all?”

  Aiden shrugged and continued the kiss trail across my belly, toward my ribs. “It’s different with sons.” I stiffened and he laughed. “Don’t get mad. That’s how the world is. I didn’t say it should be, it just is.” Perhaps he could sense my desire to rage against that, so he softened it with “My dad knows the way I feel about you. That’s all I meant.”

  I accepted the diversion. “How do you feel about me?”

  “I love you. You’re my life.”

  The kisses moved up the side of my breast and approached my neck. “Yeah, but what do you like about me?” I asked.

  He nuzzled under my chin. “Everything.”

  I rolled onto my side and wriggled lower so we were face-to-face. I’d been fishing before—for compliments, affirmation—but now I really wanted to know. I wanted to hear him say it. “No, I’m serious. That first day we met, what was it that made you want to make some big romantic gesture for a girl you’d only talked to for te
n minutes in the candy shop?”

  He shrugged. “I’m a romantic kind of guy.”

  I exhaled in frustration. “So it had nothing to do with me at all?”

  “What? Of course not. Where is this coming from?”

  I rolled away. I felt ridiculous, but I couldn’t let it go. “I just want to know why me. Why you liked me. Why you love me.”

  “Bee.” He touched my face but I didn’t turn toward him. He moved closer and pressed his lips to my shoulder. “It’s you. I know you. And I love every wonderful and maddening thing about you.”

  I burrowed a little deeper into the pillow. “Like what?”

  “Like how stubborn you are.” He teased my shoulder with a bite. “Like how delicious your skin is. Like how fun it is to eat you up.” I squirmed and his voice got serious. “It’s not even a choice, Betts. You’re part of me. It’s like a reflex or an instinct or an eleventh toe, but way better than that sounds. And way more than that too.” I forgave everything and rolled back toward him, but he kept talking. “I love the face you make when you’re lost in thought, how you kind of bite your lower lip and blink in threes, and don’t even know that you’re doing it.”

  “I do?”

  He blinked three times at me. “Yeah. I love the way you overthink everything but still try to act chill. How you have the biggest vocabulary in the world but also appreciate corny knock-knock jokes. I love your body and your brain and the way you move, the way you look at me. I love that you hold my heart in the palm of your hand and could crush it completely with the slightest flinch, yet somehow you’re the one who needs me to list all the reasons I need and adore you.”

  I lifted my neck to smash my lips against his and fell back into the pillow, knowing the kiss would follow me. My heart bubbled at the thrill of the things he’d just said. I didn’t know if I really held that power, the power to crush him, but I felt a rush at hearing he thought so, a rush at being so needed.

  “It’s not some checklist or formula,” he said. “It’s you.”

  I believed it because I felt that way too.

  The first crocuses pushed up through the frost-crusted ground and Mr. Sugarman scraped the shamrocks from the windows of the Sugar Shack, painting eggs and chicks and bunnies in their place. “Jesus sure died for a lot of pastels,” Eric noted when he dropped by our shift to see Lexa. I grabbed my spray bottle and got busy on some imaginary smudges, to give them the illusion of privacy. But Eric followed.

  “Killer Bee, what’s up with my sister? She’s been moping like a wilted daisy all weekend.”

  “She has?” I asked. She’d seemed fine that week at school, at least as far as I had noticed.

  “Yeah. I thought maybe you guys had some kind of fight.”

  I shook my head. I hadn’t seen a whole lot of Jo outside school, since I’d mostly been hanging with Aiden, but as far as I knew, we were good. We had been careful with each other ever since our big fight. I could tell she was trying to be more supportive about Aiden, and I tried to talk about other things. Last week she had learned she’d gotten into Brown, her top-choice college, and I had hugged her and cheered and not even re-googled the 405.7 miles between the Geneseo campus and Providence, Rhode Island. Her mood probably had something to do with her unrequited yearning for Sydney, which had gotten nowhere in the past few weeks, but if Jo hadn’t told Eric about that herself, I certainly wasn’t going to. I made a mental note to check in with her later and pushed away the guilt that I hadn’t done so already. If Jo needed me, she had my number. I couldn’t be expected to magically know if something was up.

  Eric leaned against the ice cream case. “So you haven’t been avoiding us?”

  “Nope.” It was half true. I hadn’t been avoiding Jo at all.

  Eric, on the other hand, I’d been keeping my distance from. Ever since Lexa and Jo had made it seem not so outrageous that there once could have been something between us, I had felt extra aware of that something, whatever it was or wasn’t, whenever Eric was near me. I hoped taking a step back from him would allow the feeling to pass.

  Besides, I’d been busy with Aiden. There wasn’t time for much else.

  “Good, because that would be tragic,” Eric said. He looked over at Lexa but she was helping a customer, so he wiggled his fingers in her direction and headed for the door. “Don’t be a stranger now, you hear?” he called to me as he backed out of the Shack, nearly slamming into Aiden.

  “Sorry, man,” Eric said as he stepped out of the way. Aiden nodded sharply and walked inside.

  “Hey!” I slid my arms around his neck and felt the happiness spread to the tips of my ears. “You got off early.”

  “I thought I’d surprise you.” He looked over his shoulder at where Eric had been. “Who was that?”

  “Eric. Jo’s brother.”

  Aiden frowned. “Was he hitting on you? It looked like you were flirting.”

  “No!” I swallowed. Had I been? “No way,” I assured us both.

  He stared like he didn’t believe me. “He’s Lexa’s boyfriend,” I explained, gesturing over at her. Lexa looked up from the register where she was ringing up three cellophane-wrapped Easter baskets, and gave Aiden a cheerful wave. His shoulders dropped.

  “Well, as long as he knows you’re mine.”

  “He does,” I promised. “And I am.”

  He kissed me. “Good.”

  I nestled against him and resolved to be more careful.

  “Hey,” he said, shifting his weight, and only then did I realize he’d been keeping one hand behind his back. He held out a bouquet of orange and yellow tulips, and grinned at my surprise. “Happy six-week anniversary. I love you.”

  No one had ever given me flowers before, aside from the three-dollar school-fundraiser carnations Jo, Eric, and I exchanged on Valentine’s Day, attached to the grossest haikus we could think of. This year Jo’s card to me said, Circumstances change but my underwear doesn’t. So crusty. Such goo. Eric had written, This morning I pooped and thought of you as always, hoping you pooped too. I treasured that tradition but this was far more romantic.

  I accepted the stems of sunshine and spring and looked into his eyes. “I love you too.”

  Twenty-Four

  “I’M SORRY YOU WERE DOWN BUT I LOVE IT WHEN YOU bake off your problems,” I said around a mouthful of rosemary shortbread with tart lemon glaze. “Mmph. These are like buttered sunshine in a pine-tree forest. But way tastier than that sounds.”

  Jo smiled more to herself than at me. “Eric’s perception of reality is not always to be believed. But thanks. Things are definitely looking up.”

  “Good.” I didn’t push for details. She clearly was enjoying acting mysterious. She hadn’t been very forthcoming on the phone last night either, and then Aiden had called so I’d switched over to him and it had gotten too late to call her back. But whatever she may or may not have been moody about, she seemed to be over it now.

  We stopped at my locker and I snuck a glance at my screen while sliding my Latin book onto the top shelf. I typed a quick reply to Aiden’s text. Jo looked away.

  “So, what do you want to do for your birthday?” she asked as we wove our way toward the lunchroom. “You’re staying over Friday, yes?”

  “I’m not sure,” I hedged. “I have to check with Aiden.”

  “We could all hang together. Invite him over.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” But I knew full well that we wouldn’t.

  Jo shot me a look of the don’t do this variety. She was onto me.

  “He might be thinking more like dinner just the two of us,” I confessed.

  Her jaw muscles twitched and I steeled myself for a fight. We always celebrated our birthdays together, even the year she and Eric had chicken pox. But she exhaled through her nose and said only, “Okay. It’s your birthday. You should get to do what you want.”

  I hated this new politesse between us, the don’t-ask-don’t-tell tiptoeing around the Aiden-shaped elephant in the room. Our con
versations had morphed into an overly timid boxing match, all bobbing and weaving and circling around the point. Every now and then Jo would send out a light jab—an “Oh, well if Aiden thinks so” when I’d mention his opinion, or a “Wow, he’s even worse than your mom” when he’d text to find out what I was doing—but for the most part, she behaved, and when she was snide about him, I ignored it. These were the rules of our unspoken truce. There was no good solution for this problem between us, the problem of him, so we stayed normal on the outside and avoided the conflict within. In moments like this I found myself waiting for the bubble to burst, both wanting and dreading it. But I wasn’t about to throw the first punch. It was easier to let things be and keep dancing around it.

  “Betts! Jo!”

  I winced out of pure habit but, for once in her life, Cicily had excellent timing. She and one of her spirit-squad minions—Sheila? Shira? I could never remember that girl’s name—squeezed in between us. “Did you get your tickets for spring formal yet?” Cicily asked, slightly breathless. “It’s three bucks cheaper in advance than if you buy them at the door.”

  “Good to know.” Jo caught my eye and we were united by our shared understanding of the universe and Cicily’s role within it.

  “The decorating committee’s planning some really cool stuff.” Shelby/Sheena sounded almost accusatory—maybe Jo and I weren’t being as subtle as we thought.

  Cicily turned to me. “Are you bringing Aiden?”

  For a second I could see it: the teen-movie version of my life. Hair upswept, heels low. Smile shy. Dress long. The boutonniere on Aiden’s blazer and matching corsage on my wrist. His eyes bright in the dim lighting as he led me to the dance floor and pulled me in close. We’d slow-dance even to the fast songs, oblivious to the world around us—our private bubble impenetrable even by the sloshing fruit punch of the jocks bouncing beside us, the chaperones’ bored-but-watchful glares, the flashes from photos being snapped and posted where my parents might find them. . . .