by Nina Beck
“Huh?”
“Kiss me before it’s too late,” I say again, but this time it sounds a little sad. Not sad-weepy, but sad-pathetic. I give my head a good shake and sit there quietly, holding my breath waiting to hear his response.
“I don’t know if this is a good idea, Ri—”
“I don’t care. If you don’t do it now, it’ll never happen,” I say.
“I don’t…I mean, what happens if it changes things? I think our friendship is really important and I don’t want anything to change that.”
“If you don’t do it now, I will never have the guts to bring it up again,” I explain. “I’ll always be thinking about how the first time I asked you to kiss me, you said no, and I’ll never be able to look you in the eyes again if I have to keep remembering it, so you either kiss me now or never.”
He looks upset. I don’t care.
We’re both standing on the sidewalk. There isn’t anyone near us. There isn’t a lot of noise. It’s a bright night, though—there must be a lot of midtown glow flowing uptown. He stands in front of me and bends his head just a little, his lips on mine.
And it’s all wrong.
He leans back, a relieved look crossing his face.
“Wait,” I say, and put my hands on either side of his face, drawing it closer to mine. I kiss him gently, and then again, and again, and again.
I feel everything for a moment. How close I’m standing to him, how far apart we are…
And then my brain clicks on. My hand is in his hair, I pull it down to his shoulders, I’ve always liked his shoulders. I tilt my head so our noses aren’t bumping against each other. I lean back a little so my bazongas aren’t pressed up against his chest. I thank God that I brushed my teeth before coming downstairs. I fidget in my shoes a little as his mouth opens against mine. I make this weird little noise that I make to show the guy I’m kissing that I like what he’s doing…
As quickly as it all began, it ends.
He steps back. Actually, he takes a big step back, his hands on my shoulders so I can’t take the step with him, and he looks scared. I can’t tell if I should be offended or not so I just rest my fingers against my lips and wait. He’ll say something.
This was the thing I’ve been dreaming about for months, years, really…But I don’t feel anything more than when I kissed Timothy. I feel void. I feel scattered. I feel like it was a big…
“That was good,” he says.
I begin to smile.
“…I think that was a mistake,” he finishes, and my smile breaks.
“Why? Because you liked it?” I asked. My voice sounds husky—like I’m trying to be sexy. This is me, this is what I do. This is Riley. Riley with all the other boys—the flirt, the tease, the plus-size (whatever) seductress. But I know something is wrong because this isn’t how it’s supposed to be with D. With D, it’s supposed to be sweet, romantic, slow, life-changing.
“Yes,” he says simply, looking at me.
There is a moment where you know something bad is going to come out of your mouth and you have a split second to turn around and walk away before you do something you can never undo. Instead, because I’m hurt by what he’s saying (and everything he isn’t saying), I stand my ground and smile, flick my hip out a little, and say, “I can think of a few other things you might like.”
He looks pissed, but I can’t tell if it’s because he’s reacting to my words or because I’m saying them to begin with.
“Riley,” he says, and I feel a lecture coming on, so I just sigh and tell him to forget it. To go home, it was all a dream (la, la) and that he would forget about it come morning (la, la). He warns that we’ll “talk about this soon.”
Not if I can help it.
I walk inside and watch as he walks away.
I go to bed, again, replaying the kiss in my head that has already faded to absolutely nothing. It’s gone before I even had a chance to really think about it. But what’s left is the moments afterward. The way I treated him, the way he treated me, and how I reacted to it. And I realize, perhaps for the first time in the history of knowing D, that I might not be in love with him after all. I don’t even know what to do with that, so I’m not going to think about it.
It was probably just the timing, or the situation. Perhaps it was the setting. The street in front of my building is not the most romantic setting. I should be happy and elated, actually.
He finally kissed me. Why am I so unhappy?
STEP INTO THE KILL ZONE
The car is coming to pick me up and take me to the train station in five minutes. The porter will be loading my bags in the back of the Lincoln, or whatever they are driving these days. I’ll leave here alone.
It’s raining. There are too many obvious references to make here, but let’s just say that it’s gross out and I am happier for it. I couldn’t imagine leaving NYC on the most beautiful spring day ever. Plus, I know that the rain will keep Elizabitch inside with her frizzy, overly processed hair. She gets twitchy whenever she even hears it is going to rain. So she stands just inside the double doors while the doorman offers her an umbrella, and she just crinkles up her face and shakes her head, fiddling with her hair in a nervous birdlike way.
Elizabitch didn’t start out as an evil bitch. I mean, she seemed nice enough the first time I met her, but since then all of my dad’s free time (all twenty-two minutes a week) have revolved around Elizabitch and their wedding plans. It’s hard to dislike her completely…She is a nervous wreck of a woman. She comes from a good family (so say the private investigators—kidding), but her hands shake a little when she talks to strangers so she is always clasping them together or fidgeting with her hair. Dad says that’s because she gets nervous.
When I asked him if he’d like me to set him up with someone who wasn’t a twitcher (I mean really, he made me get rid of my Chihuahua because she kept getting so nervous she’d pee on the Persian rug—shouldn’t I have the same option with Elizabitch?), he yelled at me. He had never yelled at me before, and the first time he did it, he did it right in front of Elizabitch and she had the nerve to be angry with me and pout at my father.
Now whenever I do anything she doesn’t like, she goes and tattles to my father about my behavior or my “meanheartedness.” Which is really overdoing it.
My dad is under one of those huge navy blue umbrellas, and he has his arm around my shoulders. It is one of the rare times that I see him without his newspaper or his BlackBerry. I can see he is itching to pull it out and get a quick fix. Like a crack addict. I can feel it buzzing inside his jacket pocket when I stand close enough. It must be driving him insane—he has this weird, slightly disassociated look on his face.
Or it might’ve been that he just didn’t care that I was leaving.
“You ready to go, tiger?” he says, smiling somewhere over my head. He gives me a tight squeeze, knocking me a little off-kilter. I refuse to look at him because I know that if I do, I’d beg him not to send me away. Worse—he may make me go anyway.
Elizabitch first talked with my dad about the New Horizons place and then he talked about it with me. Saying how he thought it was a great idea and how he was wondering if I’d want to go. He seemed really uncomfortable and then I felt really uncomfortable—and to put us both out of our misery I just said yes so he would go away. Thinking that he couldn’t really be serious. He never seemed to care about how I looked or what I did. It had to be Elizabitch. I could smell her evilness all over this.
So what could I say at this point? “Um…Dad—I’d rather be fat and in Manhattan (even if my new stepmother looks like she’s about to pull all her hair slowly out of her head while you’re checking your BlackBerry) than go out in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of fat geeks”? Not so much.
“Yeah, I’m ready!”
He gives me another squeeze and shifts the box back into both arms before carrying it over to the truck.
“You’ll have a fabulous time!”
I turn around
and Elizabitch is standing on the stoop to our building. The rain has stopped. When my father notices, he smiles at her and closes the umbrella. She’s wearing some pastel-yellow suit that washes her out completely. What I wouldn’t do if I could just have five minutes with her wardrobe and stylist. What does my father see in her?
“Thanks, Elizabeth,” I say, smiling as wide as I can. I can see her bright eyes. She thinks she’s won! “By the way, I wouldn’t use that hair iron of yours—I just saw a special report on CNN that said those things can suddenly short and burst into flames.”
Her eyes narrow in suspicion and her hands begin to shake as she walks back in, slamming the door behind her. But I know that she won’t be using that hair iron again.
Elizabitch—1, Riley—1.
“Riley,” Dad says from behind me. I turn around and he’s giving me that sad, tired look again.
“Sorry, Dad. I was just kidding.”
He just sighs. I hate when he sighs like that.
“You really have to show her a little respect,” he says.
“I do show her a little. Very little,” I mumble.
“And stop writing to Aaron. He’s not your personal confidante. He’s the head of the company’s legal department—do you know how many billable hours it takes to convince him that Elizabeth isn’t trying to perpetrate some sort of crime?”
So much for lawyer-client confidentiality.
“Dad, really—I don’t have to…”
But Dad doesn’t hear me. Nothing unusual there. He’s looking over my shoulder. “Mr. Hammond.” He smiles, stepping around me, holding out his arm. The blood drains from my face as I turn around to face D. Please God, don’t let my dad say anything embarrassing while D is here.
“Hello, Mr. Swain,” D says, shaking Dad’s hand. Dad grimaces a little at D’s overenthusiastic grip.
“Here to see my little girl off?”
“Yes, sir,” D says, giving me an eyebrow arch. D thinks my entire family is going to this really upscale spa in upstate New York, to bond before Dad and Elizabitch’s wedding. It took me weeks to find an appropriate venue in the general direction of New Horizons that I could pass off as the place I was going to. He also thinks my dad is one of those eccentric rich guys who can’t be trusted to say anything coherent. I’m not sure where he got that idea. I roll my eyes behind my dad’s back and make “crazy man” gestures.
“Well, that’s nice of you. She’s very lucky to have such supportive friends.” Dad turns around and looks at me, shooting me a confused look as I morph the “crazy man” gesture into a scratching-my-temple gesture.
“Huh?” D says, but I step in between them and give my dad the embarrassed-daughter look that makes him laugh and tell us “he’ll leave us to our business.” He heads back inside to give us some space.
“Aren’t they going with you?” D asks, his face all scrunched up as he looks at where my dad just entered the house. There is one thing about D that you should know. He’s an obsessive truth-teller. Obsessive. I think it all stems from some weird thing between his parents (aren’t all of our flaws just a result of some weird thing with our parents?) but ever since I met him, he’s never lied to me, not once. Not even when I really, really wanted him to.
Once, when I told a little white lie to him and he found out about it, it was this huge deal. And he made me swear to never lie to him again. I swore, of course, he was my best friend, of course I’d never lie to him again…
But here I am, in the middle of a lie (once again) that is getting bigger and bigger. And while I’m not sure where that kiss left us…I can’t lose my best friend and the first boy I ever thought I loved all in one swoop.
And you might be wondering why I lied to begin with.
You don’t tell the boy you think you love (even if he is your best friend) that your dad is sending you to fat camp. You just don’t. No matter how close you are. There are some things you keep to yourself.
RILEY’S LIST OF THINGS TO KEEP TO YOURSELF
1. Your parents are sending you to fat camp.
2. You’re addicted to reading Gossip Girl.
3. You once ate a whole gallon of vanilla ice cream by yourself.
“Um, Dad had a last-minute scheduled meeting—so I’m heading up now and he and Elizabitc—Elizabeth will be up tomorrow morning.”
He seems to accept this. His brow smooths and he smiles. “At least you won’t have to ride up with the both of them.” But then his brow seems to crease again. “Um, Riley? About last night.”
“Aren’t you popular?” I hear coming from down the sidewalk.
“Oh, look, there is Marty Diggons’s girl,” Dad says, smiling from the doorway, walking back toward us (MERDE!).
If I have any blood left in my body it is now officially pooled around my toes and the lack of circulation has left my brain without the ability to process the fact that Marley Diggons is standing in front of my building, mere hours after I kissed the boy-she-is-crushing-on, in front of the boy-that-I-will-always-love-who-doesn’t-know-I’m-going-to-fat-camp.
Why do these things happen to me?
“Good morning, Mr. Swain,” Marley says, waving. Dad waves back. I’m going to vomit. She’s wearing yellow (and yellow doesn’t wash Marley out). She’s always said yellow was her power color, ever since Edward Sullivan told her she looked pretty in her yellow Sunday dress in the third grade. She wears yellow when she has a fight to win.
She’s here to ruin me.
“Marley, how nice of you to see me off to Dahlia’s. I thought you had therapy every Saturday morning, and yet here you are!”
I hear her grind her teeth. D looks like he just wants to step back and get himself out of the kill zone. And that’s when my father steps right into the kill zone. Clueless as usual.
“How’s your dad, Marley?”
“Oh, he’s fine, Mr. Swain. Asked about Riley just this morning, actually, so I thought I’d stop by.”
“That’s very nice of you. Well,” he says, turning to me, “I’ll let you say good-bye to your little friends in peace. We’ll miss you. But we’ll see you soon, OK? Call me if you need anything.”
“Yeah, sure, Dad. Love you.”
He pats me on the head and says good-bye to Marley and D.
“Wow, all that for one day? I thought my parents were clingy,” D says, chuckling.
“Yeah,” I agree, looking at Marley, who has a fire suddenly ignite behind her eyes. I don’t want to say that Marley is dumb. But she’s got these huge tits (fake), a blond little tuft of hair on her head (fake), and this little pert nose (fake) and this perfectly shaped ass (fake), and the best wardrobe that Daddy can afford (real)—all usually topped off with a blank look (real). So whenever she is having an actual thought, like an honest-to-goodness spark of brain activity, her eyes light up and she looks…well, sort of like she’s constipated.
She looks pretty backed up at the moment.
I need to get out of here and I can’t let them leave together.
DAMAGE CONTROL IOI: NEVER LEAVE A GIRL WITH INFORMATION ALONE WITH THE BOY YOU LOVE.
“Well, D, thanks for coming. I appreciate you pulling yourself out of bed before noon,” I say, balancing on my toes to give him a hug. I give him an extra squeeze so my boobs press against his chest—and suddenly I realize that whatever he wanted to say about last night, about our kiss, would be lost for now. Which I’m relieved about. Whatever he has to say, I’m not sure I want to hear it yet.
“Bye, Riley,” Marley says, spreading her arms to give me a hug. Ew.
“Actually, why don’t I drop you off—we’re on our way downtown anyway,” I say, holding the car open so she can scoot in.
“Well,” she says, looking over at D expectantly, but D isn’t paying attention or is ignoring her. I’m not sure. Could his behavior have to do with a certain lip-on-lip action? Oh my God.
She definitely won’t be staying with him alone now anyway.
“Come on, Marley, stop shuffling your
feet—D has stuff to do and can’t spend all morning babysitting you.” Sometimes honesty is not only the best policy but it’s also embarrassing as hell. Marley turns bright red, D does his best to cover his smile, and I smirk. Marley gets into the car and scoots to the far side and I get in after her with a small wave in D’s direction.
As the cab pulls away, I have my eyes on him. He has his hands tucked into his back pockets, his shades over his eyes. He looks hung over. He looks hot as hell. Two weeks, that’s all, and then I’ll be back in Manhattan. Back with my friends.
“I know where you’re going.”
Speaking of friends.
“Not exactly surprising, Marley,” I say, rolling my eyes at her and grabbing my bag to look for a pack of gum. “Everyone knows where I’m going.”
“No, I know where you are really going.”
I pause for half a second in my search before I recall myself enough to laugh. But it sounds fake to my ears and I wonder what she knows and how she found out. What she said last night at the party makes me wonder…perhaps I didn’t cover this far enough.
I steady my eyes on the passing sidewalk in an attempt to keep my stomach from flip-flopping, but the garbage cans, dogs being walked, doorman buildings, and the random church flying by my window at twenty miles an hour are not settling anything. Instead I stare straight forward, at my nail beds. I need a manicure.
“I’m going to Dahlia’s Day Spa to relax a little during break and bond with the family,” I say, abandoning my nails and finally finding the gum. I grab a stick and pop it in my mouth. After a few chews, I look at her, raising my eyebrows and putting on my most haute attitude. If nothing else, I need to bitch my way out of this one.
GIRL FIGHT IOI: WHEN IN DOUBT, RELY ON ATTITUDE.
