I texted Brooke immediately, since she was taking her time to come outside, as usual. She told me to Go! Go! Have fun! Try not to forget any good gossip!
As we sat and chatted at the spa, I became grateful that Alexa was the kind of girl who was mostly interested in talking about herself. She was likable, so it didn’t come off as annoying, and I didn’t want to talk too much about myself, anyway.
But eventually the conversation did turn to me.
“So,” she said, “I heard you hooked up with Eric last weekend!”
Judging by her openmouthed smile and the devilish gleam in her eye, this was not a problem to her.
“Oh, yeah. Is he telling people that?”
“God, no, honey, he’s the perfect gentleman. People saw you guys making out and flirting and all and sort of put two and two together. And...okay, to be frank, someone saw a condom wrapper in the bathroom, and that was kind of the guess.... I hope you’re not mad, but you know, people love to talk.”
I hadn’t thought the gossip I would take home to Brooke would be about me. At least it was...good news? Thank God I hadn’t been that stupid.
My little spa date with Alexa wasn’t the only social change for me.
After going to one party—well, and one slightly ’90s-teen-movie-ish makeover/spa night—it was like I had moved up from the role of an extra at my school to a recurring guest star. I hadn’t noticed how little eye contact I had been granted previously until suddenly everyone was locking eyes with me in the halls, either waving with a smile, giving a passing glance or looking at me like they were also wondering what the big deal about me was.
It was as if someone had called, “Action!” in my life, and I hadn’t been expecting it, and now I was scrambling around trying to find and memorize the lines I was supposed to say.
This feeling really hit home when I ran into Eric in between classes the next week in school. I hadn’t seen him much. All of my classes were pretty much in the same corner of the school, so I didn’t do a lot of wandering around, and since I didn’t usually eat lunch in the cafeteria, I didn’t have much opportunity.
As soon as he saw me coming down the hall, he readjusted his backpack and gave me one of his red-carpet smiles. I smiled back, feeling slightly nauseated. I knew butterflies. And that was not what was happening in my stomach.
I was suddenly feeling the full extent of the weirdness about what had happened between us. This guy, this basic stranger—never mind that I had “known” him for years—had seen me naked. Had kissed me and touched me, and...God...had been inside me. I had fumbled drunkenly around in the dark with this person I hardly knew. On the one hand, I was still surprised that a guy as nice (and nonwasted) as Eric had actually followed through and allowed me to make such a mistake. It wasn’t all on him, of course; it was my fault for being out of my own wits. But it still shocked me. He was renowned for his goodness.
I noticed that as he smiled at me, the people around us became mildly engaged in the scene. No one was whispering about us, as far as I could tell, but people seemed to be wondering. Who is Eric smiling at? Why is he smiling at her? I heard they hooked up at Alexa’s last party!
“Hey, you,” he said as he quickened to walk in step with me. That expression had always seemed sweet to me. Fond and comfortable, and something about it made it seem like the “you” in question was a relevant sort of person. It was a stupid and small thing, but I’d always kind of hoped for a guy to say it to me. And here one was.
“Hey,” I said. What was I supposed to say now? “Um, so what’s been going on?”
More glances from passersby.
“Not too much,” he said. “Do you want to grab some lunch with me today? I’ve kept my eyes peeled for you, but I haven’t seen you in the lunchroom or anywhere.”
I imagined handsome, obsessed-over Eric standing in the middle of a crowded cafeteria, scanning the faces of girls who would die to be with him, looking for me.
“Oh, I’ve had a lot of work to do. I was in the library.”
He gave a look of understanding. “I’ve been doing a lot of homework, too. All this crap about second semester senior year being a breeze is bullshit.”
I didn’t actually agree with him. My course load had dropped off considerably. But considering that I had lied about studying in the library and not admitted to what I’d actually been doing, I felt like I had to nod and say, “Totally.”
I had actually spent the past lunchtimes in an empty classroom watching His Girl Friday on my dad’s iPad—which he had let me borrow and purchase my movie on with the promise that I would finally join him in watching Moneyball this weekend. Though I didn’t in any way need to be bribed, I had accepted the trade, also promising to make the fried buffalo chicken cheese balls that I knew he loved.
“So...do you want to?”
“Want to what?” I asked, completely forgetting what he had asked.
“Grab some lunch with me today?”
“Oh, um...” I imagined Brooke’s face if I told her I had said no because I wanted to start my next movie. “Sure.”
“Awesome. I’ll meet you out by the parking lot.”
“Cool.”
* * *
MY NEXT TWO classes seemed to go by quicker than ever, even though all I wanted was to slow down time and not find myself outside with Eric, wondering what we were supposed to talk about for the next forty-five minutes. The only topic I could think to bring up, was, So...did we have sex? And did we in fact use and sloppily dispose of a condom?
The fact that I didn’t know the answer to those questions—well, I pretty much knew the answer to the first one—was becoming more and more mortifying, particularly since I have a knack for believing that I imagine things. Like every time someone flirts with me, I start to think I made it up. It was seeming more embarrassingly unlikely that I had kissed Eric outside and somehow ended up having sex with him, and more likely that I had maybe been wasted, kissed him, fallen over something and injured my Brazilian territories, then scrambled stupidly and uninvited into bed with Aiden. If I were admitting any of this to Brooke, this is where she would give me a look like I was borderline committable and ask why, then, was he asking me to get lunch. To which I would respond, Probably to talk to me about how awkward I was, and to make sure I don’t accost him in the future.
Brooke, I knew, would then tell me I was an idiot. But since I wasn’t telling her any of this, I had to roll my own eyes and force myself out the door to meet him. Which was where I found myself now. He wasn’t outside when I got there, and it took a huge effort to keep my feet planted on the chilly concrete and not to run inside and pretend that I had never come out. As I was weighing my options, he walked up.
“You all set?” he asked.
“Yep.”
His car was, of course, parked right in front of the doors. This was just one of the lucky things that came with being one of life’s A-listers, it seemed. The one and only time I had borrowed my dad’s car and driven to school by myself, I had ended up having to park behind the tennis courts on the grass. I had then spent the rest of the day imagining how embarrassing it was going to be if my car got towed from my own high school. It hadn’t happened, but it had seemed like a possibility.
Eric’s car was a sleek black thing with dark brown leather seats and a nice audio system. Knowing nothing about cars, I wouldn’t have appreciated it even if he had told me what kind it was—which he might have, I can’t remember now—but I knew that it was a very nice car that probably cost an amount so large I would barely be able to fathom it.
I almost complimented it, but stopped myself when the words about to come out of my mouth were, Your car is really pretty.
“How does Panera sound for lunch?”
“Oh...”
It was the part of the invitation that had made me hesitate. Where mos
t of the people I knew could afford a day or two (or more) going out to lunch, I couldn’t. I didn’t have an allowance, because my dad didn’t have the money to give it to me. I worked summers at a restaurant nearby, but during the school year I couldn’t. It was too much driving to ask of my dad or of Brooke, and I couldn’t afford a car.
As if he’d read my mind—or maybe he knew I was broke—Eric added, “If that doesn’t sound good, pick anywhere. It’s on me, and I like just about everything. Except Indian food. Don’t pick curry.” He smiled.
“Panera sounds perfect—I was just thinking...if we had enough time to get there and back before next period.”
“Don’t worry about it, we do it all the time.”
I didn’t ask who “we” was. Just assumed it was people I envied. People with money, options and probably a plan for the coming fall.
He started talking about the lacrosse team. The fact that the game didn’t interest me, and he didn’t know it, was my fault, since I had feigned caring about it before. I couldn’t listen, though. Not only did I hardly understand what he was describing, but I was distracted by my own thoughts and his hands on the steering wheel.
Had they been on my body last weekend? Something about it seemed improbable, but that might have been my insecurities. I looked at his mouth as he spoke. It was a really nice mouth. My vague memory of kissing him wasn’t bad. I had kissed only a few boys in my time, but I knew there was nothing about his kissing that wouldn’t make a girl want to do it again.
Suddenly a flash came into my head of kissing in the bedroom, not just on the patio by the hot tub. A hand on my back, lifting me slightly off the mattress and into his kiss. That had been a good kiss. That had been the kind that made my knees go weak. Which wasn’t a problem, I supposed, since I’d already been horizontal on a mattress.
I cringed a little. I had hooked up in a dark room, drunk, at a party. Again. Why had I been so stupid? Twice?
We got to Panera and parked. It was blindingly cold outside today, despite the sunshine, and as soon as we opened the door—actually, he opened it for me—a cozy gust of warm, heated air made me glad I had come.
I was a girl of simple joys.
He waited for me to order first, and then followed with his own order. I didn’t know how to react when he pulled out his card and really did pay.
“Oh, you don’t have to—”
“Hey. I asked you to lunch. And besides, I think the least I can do is buy you a meal.”
Was that the going rate for blackout sex? And Aiden’s ten-dollar throwdown at my diner...was that the price of a regrettable flirtation in a basement?
We settled at a table next to a fireplace, and I couldn’t help but imagine how much I would love to be sitting here with someone I was severely crushing on.
Which made me even more aware of the fact that I was not severely crushing on Eric.
Which sucked, because as I looked at his gorgeous face, I could see that he seemed into me.
“So, I hope that was okay the other night....”
Was he asking me if he was good? How was I going to keep him from realizing that I had no recollection whatsoever?
“Oh, yeah, I mean...”
“I didn’t mean to be too forward. I never do that, you know. I don’t just hook up with girls to hook up with them.”
I knew this to be true. Part of his appeal to all the girls at school was his unavailability. He’d had two girlfriends in high school, one for about eight months last year, and one freshman year, but besides that he was ungettable. He was flirtatious and obviously liked girls, but didn’t date just to have a girlfriend. The first girl he’d dated had cheated on him and had gone on to weep endlessly for the next year or so. The girl he’d dated during our junior year was named Mandy, and she’d seemed really smart and interesting. She was a senior at the time, though, and had gone off to college in Indiana or somewhere to be smart and interesting there.
“I don’t do that, either. And I know you don’t. You don’t need to apologize or worry about it.” I shrugged. “It happened, it’s fine.”
They called our number, and he got up to get our food. I had ordered a bowl of soup, fearing the wrath of lettuce from a salad ending up wrapped around my teeth.
“So, anyway,” he said, after we did the whole “yeah, your soup looks good, oh, yeah, so does your sandwich” thing, “I wanted to make sure that wasn’t too weird for you, or that I totally turned you off or anything.”
“No, no, of course not, it’s fine,” I said. “I guess...I guess in my ideal scenario, I wouldn’t have been that wasted....”
“You don’t usually party, and I know that,” he scrambled to say. “I felt so weird about that. But I didn’t want to seem...however. I don’t know. I was drinking, too, and I like you. I didn’t do too good a job holding back. I know I haven’t gotten to know you very well yet—”
Or, really, at all, I thought.
“—but, we’ve been around each other forever, and you’re obviously beautiful and incredibly intelligent. I would really like the chance to get to know you.”
I’d heard that he was going to school for advertising—everyone had started calling him Don Draper when he’d announced his major to friends—and I could see now that he would be good at closing deals. I felt like I was a company, and he had told me that he really liked my work and hoped we could move forward with a project.
“That would be nice,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say. Maybe we could like each other, and I wasn’t giving him a chance. He liked me. For whatever reason. Maybe the only reason I didn’t think I was into him was that I had never even considered the possibility that he was...well, a possibility. And I had slept with him. Didn’t I owe him, and myself, the opportunity to get to know each other?
After that he asked me questions about myself—all the right questions, doing exactly what you’re supposed to do when you’re getting to know someone. I answered honestly, if dully, and tried to ask questions back when they occurred to me. I didn’t like having all the pressure on me to come up with interesting answers.
When we arrived back at school, we walked in just as everyone else was walking out of the cafeteria. The stares we got were now incredibly obvious.
I wanted to say something to acknowledge the attention but didn’t know what. Thankfully, Brooke came out of the cafeteria a few seconds later. When she was around, the burden to make conversation went to her. And she was fine with that, so it worked. Aiden emerged a second later. I felt an immediate urge to leap away from Eric.
Brooke took Aiden’s hand and they came over to us.
My eyes landed on their interlocked fingers, and I started to say hi in about ten different ways before clearing my throat and shifting my gaze to the tile flooring.
“Hey, guys,” said Brooke. She looked at my coat and then smiled. “Where have you two been?”
“We grabbed some lunch at Panera,” Eric answered for us.
Brooke and Aiden both raised their eyebrows, Brooke in glee, Aiden merely in surprise.
“Yeah, they have good soup,” I explained stupidly.
Aiden chuckled, and I shot him a look.
“They sure do,” said Brooke, as if the words had meant something more than that I really liked their soup. “Maybe we should all go sometime, the four of us. That’d be fun, wouldn’t it, babe?”
Aiden shrugged. “Yeah, they have good sandwiches as well as good soup.”
I knew he was teasing me, in the way he often did. It was this weird under-the-table joking we did that Brooke never really picked up on. Unlike usual, however, his new thing of seeming slightly irritated with me was laced into his tone.
“Well, Nattie and I have to head to English, so we’ll see you boys later.”
Brooke let go of Aiden’s hand and grabbed mi
ne, pulling me away.
“Bye, thanks for lunch,” I said as Brooke led me into the crowd of people. I glanced at Aiden once before turning back.
“So oh-my-God tell me everything, are you guys totally in love?”
“I think...I think I had sex with him.”
The words came out of my mouth, and I think I was expecting them even less than she was.
She stopped dead in the hall, not minding that people had to maneuver to stop from running into her. “What in the fuck?” She laughed, looking baffled. “Just now? What do you mean you think you...what?”
I groaned and pulled her out of the throng and into the theater hallway, which was less populated, but louder.
“What are you talking about?” she asked again.
“At the party. I was making out with him—as you know—and I kind of remember that, and then...I have some blacked-out flashes of hooking up with him in a dark room after that.”
“Did you, like...could you tell the next morning?”
“Yeah, I mean, I was kind of sore and...” I shrugged. “I guess I’m sure it happened.”
“Holy whore, are you kidding?” She laughed. “This is incredible. You, like, totally fucked our school’s white whale. You fucked Moby Dick!”
She was thrilled by her own play on words, but I bit my lip and covered my eyes. “Oh, my God...”
“This is crazy.”
“Okay, but you really can’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t! But how did you not tell me? I even asked you the other day!”
“I know. But it’s kind of weird since I’m not totally sure it happened? And I...I don’t want anyone to know.”
“That’s fine. Okay, sure.”
“No, I don’t mean you can’t tell anyone, but then you tell Aiden because he’s your boyfriend and you tell each other everything. I mean no one.”
“Nattie, I get it. And I don’t tell Aiden everything.”
“I mean, because...what if I didn’t, and I’m just wrong? There’s definitely a chance that I’m wrong and nothing happened, and that I am completely losing my mind. Can you imagine anything more incredibly mortifying than thinking I had sex with someone when I didn’t, and him finding out that I thought that?”
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