by Amy Spalding
“OK, so.” I sit down at the tiny wooden table with our beverages. “You know how I’m, like, becoming good friends with Quinn Morgan.”
“Yeah,” she says, “I’ve noticed.”
“So we were hanging out just now and . . .” I muss my hair so it hides my eyes. “She kisses me.”
I expect James to look shocked, but she’s just sitting there, listening, like the super dramatic part of my story hasn’t even happened yet.
“She kisses me!” I repeat like I’m a helpful guide to my own tale. “And, like, of course I was really surprised, and . . . I really did think we were just friends, and . . .”
I take a huge sip of bittersweet chai goodness. “She felt bad about it but I felt bad because I just sat there like a rock, James, like, the worst way to look after someone kisses you.” I mime looking like a rock for her.
“It’s not the worst way if you don’t want to be kissed by someone,” James says.
“Maybe.” I slurp more chai. “She says she felt something.”
“And?”
“And . . . how do I know if I did, too?” I shove my hair around some more. Big hair can be a good curtain. “I’d just never even thought about it, like it wasn’t an option. Why would it be an option? I like boys.”
James nods. “I’m sure she’ll understand. And if not . . .” She shrugs. “It’s senior year. You don’t have to see her around for that much longer, all things considered.”
“James, I can’t imagine not seeing Quinn anymore,” I say, as I realize it. Whoa. “She’s, like, magically become this big part of my life. Also our college application list is basically the same, remember? We could totally end up at the same school. It would be weird to ignore her all year and then four years more.”
James doesn’t say anything, just sips her latte.
“I think kissing her might have been OK, if I’d been expecting it,” I say.
“Kat,” James says. “You don’t have to kiss someone you’re not interested in just to keep from hurting their feelings.”
“Obviously, I know. I’m just saying . . . I wish I would have known it was going to happen.” I think about Quinn lying next to me in my bed, how her grayish blue eyes watched me, how she somehow tasted a lot like my favorite sweet spicy beverage. I had to be imagining that last part, though, right?
“I wonder—” I cut myself off when I see a text come in from Quinn.
“See?” I show James the message. “How can I ignore her for most of a school year and potentially a whole bachelor’s degree?”
James calmly folds her hands together on the table. “Do you like her?”
“Of course I like her. She’s an amazing friend.”
She gives me a look. “You know what I mean.”
“I . . . I don’t think so. I don’t know. I’d know, wouldn’t I?”
There’s a faraway look in her eyes. “I didn’t know right away with Logan.”
“James!” I jump up from my chair and crowd in along the booth side of the table next to my best friend. “OMG, I’m terrible! We can talk about all his faults if you need to. Tell me every stupid thing he did.”
“I don’t want to talk about him,” she says. “I don’t even want to think about him.”
“See, I’m the freaking worst! I’m so sorry to make you have to think about him.”
She shakes her head. “It’s fine. Moving on.”
“It just seems like . . . I mean, I’m seventeen. Wouldn’t I know by now if I liked girls?” I try to picture it, liking Quinn. It’s silly to act like it would mean the same thing as it means now, even if already we spend so much time together. James and I spend plenty of time together, and I’m not in love with her. Liking Quinn would be completely new territory.
Though, would it be? I’ve liked people before. I’ve had awkward first kisses and better second ones. I’ve felt that wave of someone’s newness wash over me and wanted to stand there letting it hit me again and again and again.
“I don’t know what to do,” I say, and find that I’ve already gone through my entire chai. Would it be financially irresponsible to buy another one? My brain still feels scrambled.
“Do you have to do anything?” James asks gently, and then smiles. “I can’t believe you drank all that already.”
“I know! I feel like a beast.” I decide against a second drink and stand up. “I do think I have to do something, though. I’ll talk to you later, OK?”
She folds her arms across her chest. “You just got here.”
“Duh, it’s, like, a very dramatic afternoon. I’ll text you full details later.”
I wish I was fast like James is, because I’d run over to Quinn’s. Instead I walk at my regular pace because this is how people who aren’t tall runners get around. I text Quinn once I’m at the path that leads up to her house.
The front door opens, and she stands with her hands on her hips. “Kat, I’m . . .”
“Stop apologizing.” I close the distance between us. “Can we just see?”
“See what?”
I reach out and hold her face in my hands, waiting, just a tiny bit, before pulling her closer and covering her mouth with mine. Her arms slide around my waist, and our lips part as the kiss goes from tentative to searching.
And then it’s just kissing, period.
Quinn grins at me as we step back from each other. I’ve never been so close in height to someone I was kissing before.
“What were you seeing, exactly?” she asks.
“Earlier, I was saying becoming friends with you has been magical. And . . .” I hook one of my fingers through one of her belt loops. How am I just noticing Quinn’s hips? “Maybe this is the magic.”
She groans. “Only you could get away with that line.”
“It’s not a line! I’m very earnest!” I watch her, scanning for her reaction to all of this. “I’m sorry if I was weird earlier.”
“I’m sorry if I was weird earlier. It felt like the right time and . . . it turns out I might be terrible at judging the right time for things.”
“It wasn’t the wrong time,” I say. “This is all just . . . new to me.”
“It’s new to me, too, you know,” she says. “You’re new to me, so, all of this is, too.”
“OK, I should . . .” I laugh. “Actually go home and work on calculus now.”
“Already?” She smiles, a timid smile I’ve never seen from her before. I think it might be a question, so I nod, and she kisses me again.
Dad walks through the front door as I’m finishing my homework. This means I have at least twenty minutes before he yells down the hallway, asking me about dinner.
“Hey,” Dad calls, from right outside my bedroom. “Kat. Are you—do you have a second?”
I jump up to open my door. He’s standing there holding out a button-down shirt on a hanger.
“Is this . . . OK, you think?” he asks.
“Like in general?”
He sighs and rakes his hand through his hair. “Like for a . . . dinner. With a, y’know. A lady.”
My heart feels like it suddenly isn’t working at all. I hold my hand to it and pray this passes. It does.
“A date?”
Dad makes a face like he’s got heartburn. “Yeah.”
“Oh.” I try to keep my voice light. “I didn’t know you signed up for the thing online. I guess I thought you didn’t.”
“I don’t think online dating is for me,” Dad says. “This woman messaged me and asked what kind of music I like. I had a panic attack, replied Bruce Springsteen, and deleted my account.”
“Dad.” I laugh. “So . . . what happened, then?”
“Stacey,” Dad says. “She knows this . . . woman. I don’t know. I let her talk me into it.”
My stomach clenches. A lot of people don’t know that cardiac symptoms actually often present as stomach issues in women. It makes me worry no part of my body’s safe.
“Oh, I didn’t know you still talked to
Stacey.”
Stacey is—was Mom’s best friend. The last time I saw Stacey was at Mom’s funeral. Back then, I thought that Stacey would want to form some kind of special relationship with me, the only daughter of her very best friend. But I haven’t heard from Stacey since that day when Mom’s coffin went into the ground, so I guess I didn’t mean anything at all, much less something special.
“Sometimes, yeah.” Dad squirms around like he’s itchy. “Anyway. This shirt. It’s OK?”
“Yeah, Dad,” I say. “The green looks nice with your eyes.”
“Aw, man.” He sighs. “Women care about that kind of stuff, don’t they. I have to start caring about all of this.”
“Maybe she’ll be horrible and you’ll never have to see her again,” I say.
Dad laughs. “Fingers crossed. Here.” He takes out cash from his pocket. “Call and get something delivered. Or have that friend of yours come over and make you another lasagna.”
I close my eyes and smile. “Dad? I think I like Quinn.”
“Well, sure,” he says. “Good kid, great lasagna.”
“No . . . like like.”
“Oh.” Now Dad looks even itchier. “Well . . . OK then. I’m gonna change and then—well, we’re meeting on the Westside.”
“OK.” I hug my arms around myself. “Have fun. I mean, good luck. I mean . . . I don’t know what I mean.”
Dad sort of pats my shoulder and then walks down the hallway to his and Mom’s room. He leaves only a few minutes later, and I walk down the hall to make sure everything’s still as it was before. Mom’s perfume is still on her dresser, and I spray a tiny bit into the air to make myself remember what it was like when she was still in our house. I pass the brand on the shelf whenever I’m at Sephora, but it’s only something I want to remember at home, alone.
Dad can’t care that much, for real, about this woman Stacey knows if the perfume and the dresser and jewelry (minus her necklace that I haven’t taken off since Dad gave it to me after the funeral) are all still here. I slip her rings on my fingers, but they spin around pointlessly on my smaller hands.
It’s silly to think something like kissing Quinn can change everything when everything changed anyway, two years ago.
I take one more sniff of Diorissimo before backing out of the room and closing the door.
James texts back.
James doesn’t reply, but I know that before Mom was gone I was hardly eager to talk about my parents’ love life, either.
I frown at my screen because I don’t necessarily think that it is. This feels like huge and major news, and I might as well have told James I got a good-not-great grade on my latest humanities project for all she’s reacting.
Is that how James sees it? How James sees me?
I hear the front door open and close. Dad is home.
I make a face at my phone and then creep down the hallway and into the living room. “Hey.”
He looks up with a start at me. “Hey, you’re up late.”
“Dad, it’s, like, ten thirty.”
“Sorry, guess it is. Is your homework done?”
“Of course,” I say. “How was the woman? Terrible?”
Dad sighs and shakes his head. “She’s . . . pretty nice.”
“Oh,” I say like a balloon popping, but then I recover. “That’s super great. I’m so glad.”
“Well, you should probably get to bed,” Dad tells me, as if we haven’t just discussed the fact that it’s too early for that. But I say good night anyway because if I think about this not terrible woman too much I might burst into tears right in front of him.
I manage to make it to my room before I do.
Quinn texts in the morning to see if she can walk with me to school. It’s not that we haven’t walked to school together before—lately almost every single day—but I know it’s all different now, sort of. It’s also the same because she hasn’t stopped being the most exciting person I’ve met in a long time.
“Ainsley helped me with my homework,” she tells me as I walk out of the house. “I think I know what I’m doing now. More, at least.”
“Isn’t your sister, like, fourteen?” I ask.
“Fifteen, and she’s”—Quinn makes air quotes—“‘gifted.’ Also my sister doesn’t wildly distract me with her good looks.”
“I don’t”—I make air quotes, too—“‘wildly distract’ anyone.”
“Mmmhmm.”
I take her hand and lace my fingers through hers, feeling in my fluttery heart how long it’s been since someone held my hand for the first time. Matty and I were in the cafeteria and I needed to rush to my geometry class, and even though we’d known each other since middle school, suddenly he was a boy I’d been kissing. And then, just as suddenly, everyone knew.
So I know that Quinn and I might be only hours into whatever this is, and hand-holding is a statement for the rest of the world. But I’m totally ready to make it.
We swing by James’s, and I see how her eyes go to our hands and then swiftly away. Should I have texted her that Quinn was walking with us today? Logan was also in walking distance of school, unlike Matty, and so up until he graduated he was always part of our morning routine.
I wonder if it’s weird that I miss Logan. I think about texting him, to yell at him for dumping James, to see if he’s OK, to ask what college is like and if he misses our weirdly quaint little neighborhood. He’s been a huge part of my life, and now he’s just gone. I unfollowed him on social media in solidarity for James, but I sort of wish I hadn’t.
Also I wish that Quinn and James would become amazing friends, and I can already feel that it’s not going to happen. Quinn isn’t going to be to James who Logan was to me, and it’s strange to know something sad so deep in my heart.
“So humanities class is kinda dorky, right?” I ask, and even though I’m hoping they’ll both jump in with examples, they just nod.
“Quinn, did you know that James runs T&F and is, like, super fast?” I ask.
“My friend Gretchen’s on the team, so I did know that.”
I wait for more, but they’re both quiet.
“OMG, James, when Quinn made this lasagna for us, the top got all browned and crispy like you see on famous foodie Instagrams.”
James nods. “Yeah. You literally posted that on your Instagram.”
I keep throwing out facts as we get closer to school. I’d love to successfully force a friendship on Quinn and James, but I know it’s something else, too. I’m obviously choosing to be this visible with Quinn, almost before I even know what’s going on with us, but the visibility feels like a bigger thing the closer we get to school. Staying distracted is easier than, well, not.
My fingers automatically find my necklace and pull on it like it might bring Mom a little closer. I wonder what she would think of Quinn, but I don’t, really, because Mom would like the lasagna and like that I was happy and like that no one would ever describe Quinn as a douchebag.
I think Dad feels that way, too, he just doesn’t know how to say things sometimes.
“We don’t have to do this,” Quinn whispers to me, letting go of my hand as we arrive on campus, and James heads off to her locker.
I grab her hand right back. “We do have to do this. I mean, you’re out, right?”
“I was never really . . . in.” She gestures to herself. “I think people just assume. I’m not well-known enough for it to be a topic of interest, though.”
“You’re known,” I say, which makes her laugh.
“You barely knew me when this year started,” she says, but she keeps hold of my hand.
There are eyes on us, for sure. I’ve sort of had a roller coaster of visibility at school. I guess I’ve never been invisible, but being in a relationship with Matty made me the most conspicuous I’ve ever been, especially at the beginning, when I was the girl that made Matty Evans settle down.
But, of course, that was nothing compared with having a very public breakup in a schoo
l hallway. Two months ago, it felt like I was all anyone could see. Matty was the one who ignored the rules of our relationship—of most relationships—but Kat Rydell was the one people wanted to watch afterward. It was like if you were lucky enough, you might get to see me tear another alleged door off of another alleged locker.
I feel eyes slide past me, and eyes focus on me, and while no one says anything to me, I can hear whispers. Is this because of Matty? and Of anyone I wouldn’t have guessed Kat Rydell and That girl does have great hair.
“I think this is what it’s like to be famous,” Quinn murmurs to me. “But maybe it’s always like this for you.”
“It is definitely not always like this for me,” I say, though I guess it is, a little. “And I hope you know this—us—isn’t because of Matty. But, duh, you do have great hair. That rumor is true.”
She smiles almost a little smugly. “I’ll see you in third period, OK?”
I hug my arms around her tightly. “Why do you always smell like chai, by the way? I’ve never even seen you drink even, like, generic tea.”
Quinn pulls a tube of lip balm out of her pocket and shows me that it’s chai-flavored. “Now you know my secret. I don’t naturally just smell that way.”
“I’ll keep pretending you do.”
I’m still smiling when Matty intercepts me on my way into AP Lit and Comp.
“What the fuck, Kat?”
“I’m really not required to answer your questions anymore,” I say. “Actually I was never required. They just used to be less rude.”
He folds his arms across his broad chest. I can’t lie; Matty is pure dreamboat material. There’s a reason being his girlfriend brought me so much attention. He’s tall and works out just because he thinks it’s fun. He’s been a vegan since he was fifteen, and he bikes everywhere he can because he doesn’t want to rely on fuel. On the surface, Matty is the best person I’ve ever known.
Also, if it doesn’t go without saying, he is gorgeous, in the way old-time movie stars were. He’s good at kissing and good in bed and knows exactly how to hold your waist when you’re slow-dancing.
