by Amanda Grace
The jealousy creeps into my voice and I hate myself a little more. How has he not figured me out yet? I’m not even doing a very good job at hiding it these days, which only makes me feel more pathetic. Truth is, it’s impossible to hide it. Every time I’m near him, I just want to hug him. Touch him. Say the words that seem forever lodged in my throat. But all I ever do is stand there.
I want him to know. But then again I don’t.
“What? I looked everywhere when I was ready to go, but you were already gone. I asked every one there, and Michelle Pattison said she saw you leaving. How is it my fault you walked home?”
Michelle Pattison. Oh God, she saw me leave in tears. This is not good. Michelle has this goody-two-shoes persona, but she’s a terrible gossip. My stomach clenches again. I don’t want people to know what happened in Carter’s room. Did I close the door when I walked in? Or did she hear the whole thing? I wonder if she laughed. I wonder if she thought I went in there to throw myself
at him.
I wonder if Nick heard anything. He must not have, or why would he be acting so normal right now?
“Oh, whatever,” I say. “Obviously you were too into Scarlett to care what I was up to.” There it is again, that little edge to my voice.
“How’d things go with Carter?” Nick says, in an obvious attempt to change the topic.
I sigh, my ugly curly bangs fluffing in the breeze of it. Obviously Nick didn’t hear about my moment of glory. Seems I really am a two-bagger. That’s why guys never ask me out, why Nick is happy to be friends with me and doesn’t see me any other way.
“Okay,” I lie. “We were in his room for a while.”
Nick gives me a sharp look, and I nearly blurt out the truth. “You were?”
“Uh-huh.” I pick at my toenails and hope he doesn’t ask any more questions. I can bluff for about thirty seconds, but I don’t think I can keep this up if he pushes it.
He rolls over onto his back and laces his fingers behind his head, staring upward at the glow-in-the-dark stars we applied five years ago. I remember how we rolled my bed around the room and then stood on it and spent all afternoon jumping up and down, placing stars all over the place. Half of them have already fallen off. Just like most things in my life. Halfway between perfect and a total failure.
“Do you want to go to Olympia?” he asks, still staring at the ceiling.
I grin. He actually is irritated at the idea that I was with Carter in his room. Maybe it isn’t hopeless. Maybe, for one millisecond, he pictured me with Carter and didn’t like it.
“No thanks,” I say. “I’d rather wear a miniskirt.”
“You did—last night.” I can almost hear his sly smile. He’s mocking me. I probably looked just as comfortable in that thing as I felt.
“That was a one-time occurrence. It’ll be going in the trash can later today.” I want to throw something at him. I eyeball the big plastic stapler on my desk. It’s holding down a magazine, under which I’ve hidden my acceptance paperwork for University of Washington. It’s not just a few sheets of paper. It’s my key to freedom.
“Good, because it’s kind of irritating.”
I narrow my eyes. Before he said that, I’d never wanted to wear another miniskirt. But now I want to put one on just to spite him. “What the hell?” I snap. “Just don’t look at me, then.”
“I didn’t. But jeez, everyone else did.”
My lips twitch. Maybe I hadn’t needed Carter after all. Maybe I just needed a mini and heels. Maybe there’s a reason the popular crowd dresses like that. I kind of like the idea of guys checking me out.
“Really?” I ask.
“Right, like you didn’t notice.” He picks his head up just enough to see the pleased grin that must be lighting up my face.
“Who was looking?”
“I am not going there with you.”
“Whatever, Saint Nick,” I say, grinning even wider. Was Nick checking me out? Is that even possible?
“I hate it when you call me that.” He picks up the small pillow next to his head and lobs it at me without looking. I snag it out of the air and throw it back before he can react, and it nails him in the face. He grins, and I know it’s on. He grabs all three pillows off my bed and I shriek and dive to the floor, but they still hit me, falling around me like atomic bombs.
As soon as it stops, I leap to my feet and launch myself at him, and somehow I end up straddling him with a pillow in each hand. He grins and tries to block his face, but I bombard him from both sides. Before I know what’s happening, he bucks violently and I end up twisted, under him. His eyes are sparkling, the brightest shade of blue I’ve ever seen them. Brilliant, like the spring skyline on a cloudless day.
“You’re such an ass,” I say. Egging Nick on is the best part of my life. The best part of our relationship. There aren’t many things I’m good at, but with Nick, I always win. It’s why I can’t stop wanting to be around him, why I can’t stop dreaming there could be something beyond this. This dancing around it, this best-friends-who-wrestle, this tension I’m afraid that only I feel.
Why does it have to be so damned complicated?
And why isn’t it complicated to him?
He rolls his eyes, but for one long, lingering moment he continues to hover there, not saying anything, not moving, not anything. I swallow, my breathing turned shallow.
The moment stretches on long enough to make me suddenly aware of the way our chests are heaving, the intensity in his stare, the way one of his legs is lying against mine in a way that makes our thighs touch.
He furrows his brow and leans in. “Why are you wearing so much makeup?”
So you won’t see my bruise. Instead of saying it, though, I shove him off of me. “Why, do I look like a clown or something?”
I climb to my feet, reining my breathing in as I go to the bathroom and flip on the light, leaning in to peer at my reflection. I don’t look that bad, do I? I mean, I don’t normally wear this much, but I so don’t want to explain the bruise to Nick or anyone else.
He steps up behind me, watches me survey myself in the mirror. “No, you look really good.” His voice lowers. “Actually … pretty.”
My mouth goes dry. What does that mean? “Actually pretty” like … for once I actually look pretty? Or, “Actually, you look really pretty.” I want to ask, but that would be pathetic. Fishing for compliments.
Nick has never called me pretty. So I roll my eyes and flip the light off. “And you obviously need to get laid,” I say, leaving the bathroom.
He follows me out to my room. “I did. Last night.”
My heart plunges into my stomach and it takes everything I have to give him a flippant look. “Ewww, don’t want to know!” I plug my ears and start humming a tune, as if the mere idea of hearing it is too disgusting to deal with. If only he knew.
He gets a devilish gleam to his eyes and I unplug my ears. “Are you sure? Because she was … ”
I plug my ears again, my heart jammed into my throat. “No! Seriously, go tell your guy friends. TMI, Nick, TMI.”
Sometimes I just don’t want to be one of the guys. Well, most of the time.
All of the time.
He shrugs. “Hey, you asked.”
I pull my fingers out of my ears. “Whatever. Do you want to play the Wii or what?”
“Obviously.”
We leave my bedroom, heading to the den downstairs. My grandma gave me this thing for Christmas last year, and Nick and I have racked up countless hours playing it.
I toss a remote to Nick, and he bumbles and drops it. Nick has the athletic ability of a giraffe, all flying limbs and bad coordination. Thank God for that because otherwise I’d be convinced he’s some kind of teenage cyborg. Knowing he has one thing he’s terrible at is what makes it possible to not hate him for being so perfect.
“So, who did you hook up with?” I ask, navigating the curser on the screen until it selects a ridiculous Mii that has perfect blond hair, wide blue ey
es, and pretty, perfect eyebrows. She’s the me I’d be if I knew my way around a makeup counter.
“I thought it was TMI,” he says, raising a brow.
“Was it Reyna?”
“Yeah.” Nick clicks on the dark-haired Mii that he created the day we unpacked the console. He has at least six different avatars to choose from. Sometimes we spend hours playing this stupid tennis game. Yale-bound Nick probably needs as much mindless activity as I do.
I cross my arms. “So you’re not broken up.”
“On a break.”
“A break that includes sleeping together?” I give him a look and then go back to the screen and select the tennis game, pretending like we’re talking about the weather and not something that wrenches my gut.
The court rolls on screen.
“We’re friends with benefits.” Nick seems awfully busy adjusting the wrist strap on his controller. I want to study him but instead I pretend to be concentrating on positioning my fingers over the buttons.
“I think she’s getting robbed in the benefits department.” I grin, masking my pain, and then slam the remote down and the ball sails past Nick before he can move.
He pretends to be outraged by my maneuver, his
eyebrows raised in a mock-look of haughtiness. “You’re
just jealous.”
“Of what? I get to be friends with you and I don’t have to give it up.” I try to fake a laugh and seem to choke on it.
“Plenty of women would pay for this.” He slams the ball back to me and I jump to the side in time to send it skittering across the top of the net. We volley the digital ball back and forth a few times in silence.
My phone beeps, so I pull it out of my pocket. A text message. The only person who ever texts me is Nick,
and I’m standing right next to him. I click on the envelope icon.
Hey, just wanted to make sure ur ok—u looked super upset last nite. Let me know if u need anything. X, Michelle.
Huh? How did she even get my phone number?
I read the text again. Why does she even care? We’re not friends or anything.
“What’s up?” Nick asks, glancing down at my phone.
“Huh? Oh. Nothing.” I shove the phone back into my pocket.
Nick gives me a lingering look, but doesn’t push it. “So, are you nervous?”
“About?”
“School.” He shrugs.
I miss the ball and scowl. Nick’s limbs fly around as he tries to serve and misses. “What, like finals?” I ask. “All I have left is Chemistry.”
He shakes his head. “No, college.”
“Oh.” I chew on my lip, picturing myself at UW, walking the rolling hills as the crimson leaves fall from nearby trees. In the distance, the sparkling water of Lake Washington beckons. For the first time, my dad isn’t seconds away. He won’t round the corner and send my heart slamming into my throat. He won’t lecture me every night about grades, about clothes, about everything.
He won’t anything. It’ll be the first time in my life he won’t be breathing down my neck. I wonder if I’ll finally figure out who I am, forge some kind of identity that doesn’t forever skate under the radar.
It’s always a melancholy picture, though, because I’m totally alone and Nick is on the other side of the country. I’ll finally know what it’s like without him buffering me from the extreme silence of having no friends, no allies,
no one.
“Not really,” I say. “I mean, it’ll just be general education requirements at first. English, math, that kind
of stuff.”
“I didn’t mean the courses. Why is it always the academics you think of first?”
I snort. “Uh, because that’s sort of the point of going to college?”
He shrugs. “There’s more to it, though. There’s a reason everyone calls it the college experience.” There’s a little bit of an edge to his voice.
I turn and furrow my brows, giving him a long look. I am freaked out about the social aspect, but I’ll never tell Nick that. And he’s the guy who can charm the parka off an Eskimo, so what’s he concerned about?
“Nicholas Davis, are you nervous you won’t make any frieeeeennnnnnnds?” I say, stretching the word out so it sounds all singsong, unable to contain my grin. Nick is never nervous.
He glares at me and I realize I’ve struck a chord.
“Oh stop giving me that look. You’re just worried because you’re all big fish in a small pond now, but give me a break. When it comes to college, you’ll have no problem. I give you forty-two minutes on campus before someone has signed up to replace me.”
He gives me a sharp look. “No one is replacing you.”
I shrug. “Not like I’m going to be around to fill the position.”
“Sam, we’re best friends. That’s not going to change just because a few miles separate us.”
“Try a few thousand.”
“Still. We’ll be home for Thanksgiving and Christmas and all summer long. And you can come out east for spring break.”
I look down at my remote. Sorrow swirls through me. I’m not as smart as Nick. He knew when he applied to the ivies that I wouldn’t be going there. I can’t blame him, but the hurt won’t go away, either. Sometimes I think about telling him I’ll go to some silly community college on the East Coast just to be with him. We’ll get a two-bedroom apartment, and the two-dozen yards currently between our bedrooms will become about two feet, and we won’t have to part ways at all. And maybe, eventually, we won’t need two bedrooms.
But every time I want to tell him this, I just get choked up.
I know the truth: in a couple of months, he’s going to walk out of my life and forget to glance back. It’s why I feel a little more panicky every day. I never pictured my life without him in it, and suddenly it’s all I can see, and he doesn’t seem as freaked out by this as I am.
He gives up on playing, letting the remote dangle from his wrist. The spectators on screen bob up and down, cheering over the missed ball. “Why are we even talking about this stuff? I thought we were playing Wii.”
“We were. We can talk and play,” I say. “Well, I can. You, not so much.”
“Give a guy a little credit, would you?” He has the audacity to act hurt. As if his ego needs massaging.
I smirk. How is it so easy for him to turn things around? “Get real. You know your brother soaked up all the athletic genes in your gene pool.”
“You wound me. You really do.” Nick puts a hand to his heart.
I roll my eyes and queue up the game again. “Would you like a Band-Aid? A sippy cup, maybe?”
He sighs, a big dramatic sigh that could win him an Oscar. “Okay, okay, it’s on. You’re going down this time.”
“A sloth could beat you at this game. The sooner you come to terms with this, the sooner we can move on.”
“Never!” He hits the start button and whacks the imaginary ball, hard, and it sails so fast I leap back and thrash at the same time, barely managing to whack it back. It streaks across the net and right past Nick’s Mii, which is failing spectacularly at catching it.
“You were saying?”
His eyes shimmer in that happy, glowing way of his. The way that lights up my dreams. “I’m going to miss you this fall,” he says.
“Yeah. Me too. I’m really going to miss me.”
“Shut up.” He’s smiling at me.
I try to look unimpressed. “You’re such a dork.”
“That’s why you love me,” he says, whacking the ball.
His last words ring over and over again, because sometimes I really wonder if he knows.
Three
On Sunday, I climb into Nick’s car as hard rock blasts from the speakers. He reaches to turn it down, waiting quietly while I buckle my seat belt before shifting into reverse and gliding out of the driveway. For a moment as he pulls away, the throaty rumble of his car competes with the radio, and we glide down the fir-tree-lined streets without
speaking.
“Are you so totally stoked?” he asks, signaling right and heading toward the main drag.
I snort. “I just keep reminding myself this is the last time we have to do this.”
Nick glances over at me as he comes to a stop at the blinking red light. “Aren’t you the one that talked me
into this?”
“Yeah. Three months ago. When I thought we’d be walking dogs, not washing them. And before I got sick of driving all the way to Chehalis just to wash said dogs.”
Our town, Mossyrock, is over twenty miles away from real freeways, tucked up against the evergreen-filled Cascade Mountain range and Riffe Lake, an enormous, sparkling, man-made lake. The closest humane society is in Chehalis, near I-5. It’s a full half-hour drive.
“Now, now, where’s that speech about the greater good of the world?”
I blow out an irritated sigh. “Must you be so high and mighty this early in the morning?”
Nick taps on the radio. “It’s nine thirty.”
“On a Sunday.”
He shrugs. “Still nine thirty.”
“I am so signing up for night classes at UW.”
Nick turns onto Jarvis road and I realize we’re going
to pass right by Carter’s house. I sink further into the seat. I don’t want to even think about what happened in
Carter’s room.
“Jesus, look at Carter’s car.” Nick points as he slows his Mustang. We glide past the black Charger sitting at the curb in front of Carter’s house.
Yellow egg yolks have left streaks down the glossy black paint.
“Wow, that … sucks.” I sit up, stare at the car. I’d think someone was excluded from the guest list, but that’s stupid. Heck, I was there. This is Mossyrock—everyone’s invited everywhere. You can’t have a party and be exclusive in this town.
I can’t help but feel just a little bit smug as I think of Carter insulting me. Maybe he sorta deserves the eggs.
Nick nods. “I’ll text him when we get to the humane society. He’s not gonna want to let that sit.”
I nod, but I secretly hope Nick forgets.
Nick pulls into the parking lot at the humane society. I reluctantly unbuckle as he digs out his phone, fires off a text message, then drops it back into the center console.
