Meet Me at Midnight

by Jessica Pennington

  I should move—every reasonable cell in my body says that I should—but I don’t want to. And before another breath can pass between us, his lips are on mine. Maybe I’m in shock, or just nearing exhaustion, but all I can think is that Asher Marin is kissing me. Again. Totally not drunk. And I’m just … frozen. My lips are still.

  What are we doing? Do I want this? For the last few weeks I haven’t been sure what I want. I missed the pranks at first. The teasing and the attention. But so quickly, that was replaced by a different kind of attention. New, exciting, scary. Now I’m not sure what I want.

  When Asher pulls back, there’s a worried look etched across his face. The loss of his lips definitely doesn’t make me happy. I don’t know what I want, but that isn’t it. And before I can even process it, or tell myself what an idiot I am, my hand is sliding behind his neck. My lips are on his again, and we’re kissing.

  Like everything we do, this kiss feels like a battle. His was soft; mine is harder. He brushes my lip with his tongue, and I bite his. He’s still beside the bed with me twisted toward him, and as he pushes himself up, closer to me, one arm snakes behind my back. The other plants alongside me on the mattress. I shift a little, making room for him. My shirt has shifted up, and his hand is on the bare skin of my back, his fingertips pressing into my skin there.

  As one knee pushes into the mattress beside me, a loud squeak cuts through the silence so thoroughly, I’m sure my parents have heard it two rooms down. It’s a bucket of ice water spilling over me, and I still. Over me, Asher is frozen as well, but he doesn’t take his eyes off of me; they’re roaming over me like he’s never seen me before. Or like he’s about to dive in for a second round.

  What the hell are we doing? We are in my bedroom, at four o’clock in the morning, making out just a few doors down from our parents. On my bed. This is the most un-Sidney-like thing I have ever done, and my face flushes thinking of how ridiculous I am. Right place, right time. That’s all I am, convenient summer fun in an adjoining room. I try to push the thought away, but it keeps popping back up.

  Asher pushes himself off of the bed with another soft squeak, and squats beside me again. He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, but instead he stands up, looming over me at his full height. “Good night, Sid.” He turns to the bathroom door—his escape back to his own room—and he’s halfway there when my voice finally breaks free.

  “I…” I’m dying to cut the tension in the room, the heaviness. “I thought you were going to ask for pancakes,” I admit, wishing I had something more eloquent to say, or that I had just kept my mouth shut and let him leave. Wishing I had the headspace to determine if I was giddy, or confused, or mad. But all I can let myself think about right now is pancakes. One kiss, and his lips have completely warped my mind.

  Asher’s mouth tips up into a smile. “I was.” He’s walking backward toward the door, not taking his eyes off of me for a single second. He shrugs as he says, “But then you kissed me.”

  A defiant little huff of air escapes me.

  “I’m still open to pancakes, though.” He grins.

  I can’t remember the last time I was lacking a witty comeback for Asher. What do I want to say? You shouldn’t have kissed me? I shouldn’t have kissed you? Come back here, so I can kiss you again? I fear it would be the last one. Only seconds pass before he’s slipping through the bathroom door, a whispered “good night” gliding into my room as he glides out.

  What the hell happened tonight?

  DAY 25

  Sidney

  It’s one o’clock before I finally decide that starving in my room would not be a great life choice. Even if it would teach Asher a lesson. I bet most girls don’t complain about being kissed by Asher; letting myself starve would be some next-level payback. But I don’t have the dedication to starve myself, or the luxury of avoiding Asher indefinitely, when we live in the same house. Controlling when I see him is probably the best scenario I can ask for.

  Asher is always sticking his clothes into random loads of laundry, so there’s always a pile of his miscellaneous clean clothing sitting in the little laundry room between his room and Sylvie and Greg’s. Maybe he does his laundry like that on purpose—if each of us thinks it’s a mistake, we just fold the few pieces, and by the end of the week Asher has a full load of clean laundry. I wouldn’t put it past him, it’s sort of brilliant. So I’m not surprised to see a little stack of his T-shirts when I open the laundry room doors.

  I suppose I don’t need an excuse to talk to Asher—kissing me with no warning last night seems like excuse enough—but it wouldn’t hurt to have one. Just in case he has no intention of addressing the elephant in the room. Sigh. I still miss Edith. If I have to, I’m not above throwing his laundry at him and claiming that’s the only reason I came. As I make the harrowing six-foot journey to his bedroom, I hope I won’t have to resort to the drive-by laundry-bomb method. Laundry flinging seems immature, even for us.

  I knock at Asher’s door, but it’s quiet. Probably I should just take his clothes back to the laundry room. But something makes me twist the knob and go inside. Dump them and run, my brain screams. The rest of me has different ideas, though, because my heart knows I’m not here for laundry. If my brain was in control, I wouldn’t have stayed in my room half the day, thinking about all of the reasons kissing Asher is a train wreck waiting to happen.

  Mainly, the fact that Asher’s only looking for summer fun. And there’s nothing about me that would make me think I could handle a friends-with-benefits kind of situation. We’re barely friends, for one. As far as I can tell, Asher goes from one girlfriend to the other, every school year. Every summer he seems to be fresh off a breakup. That’s months of dating. I mean, sure, I have a horrible track record with guys, but I don’t keep them around long enough to smash their hearts. Months is heartbreak territory. It’s crying-in-your-room-wondering-what-you-did-wrong territory. How-am-I-going-to-face-him-every-day-or-see-him-with-someone-else territory. My pulse is thrumming in my ears just standing in his room, thinking through all of this again. Asher Marin isn’t just some guy who wanted to kiss me. Twice. He’s the guy who has been finding ways to get into my head, and get back at me for years. There’s no way there isn’t something else going on here. You were so so stupid, Sidney.

  I walk into Asher’s room, past his bed—rumpled and torn apart, like a wild animal slept in it—and set his clothes on the chair next to his dresser. It’s clean and white and tall. And covered in his things.

  I poke around the cluttered surface—at the little bottle of cologne I can’t help but lift to my nose, at the brown leather wallet that he never carries because he hates the way it feels in his pocket. I open his top drawer and the left side is stuffed with wads of gray and black and red, the black elastic waistbands stopping my hand from reaching down. On the right is his toothbrush, a black comb, and two bottles of shampoo and conditioner. Are the bottles in the shower just decoys? Apparently Asher doesn’t 100 percent trust the truce, either. Smart boy. Maybe he knows how addicted I am to his body wash, and that I’d never tamper with it, and that’s why it has no decoy. I’m pretty sure I’d protect that body wash with my life.

  I’m not sure what I’m looking for—maybe I’m just in snooping withdrawal—but just before I close the drawer, I notice the little box. I trace my finger over delicate veins of gold foil that run across the blue box, and I know I shouldn’t, but I pluck it out and pop the lid off. There’s a necklace inside—a pretty one, with charms and beads and a long dangling chain—and I suddenly wish I hadn’t opened the box or this drawer, or his bedroom door. Because I came in here looking for answers, and now all I have is more questions. Just one question, really: Does Asher have a girlfriend? He and Jordan broke up, but that was months ago—plenty of time for a new girl to come into the picture. I think about all of the sweet things Asher does—why wouldn’t he have a girlfriend? And what else don’t I know about him? But more importantly, why do I even care? A
nd why did he kiss me?

  My phone buzzes in my pocket and I close the dresser drawer before pulling it out. It’s just my mom reminding me that the parents will be gone for dinner tonight and we’re on our own. Below my mom’s text is one from Kara, and then, as if written in neon, I see Caleb’s name. My fingers move faster than my brain when I start typing.

  It’s at least a minute before the shimmering three dots appear, letting me know he’s replying. My stomach clenches. I’m not sure if I’m worried he’ll say no, or that he’ll say yes.

  Ugh. This is the problem with being in a small town. Our options are limited. And I suppose I shouldn’t be picky when I haven’t talked to Caleb since I told him I just wanted to be friends. But this is what friends do, right? Friends hang out. They swoop in when you need a rescue. And right now I really need to get out of this house.

  I text him my new address. As I shove my phone back in my pocket, I realize I’m still standing in Asher’s room. And I don’t know why it feels like I just did something wrong when he’s hoarding jewelry (and maybe girlfriends), but suddenly I feel like I might break out in hives if I stand in this room for one more second. And when I pass through the bathroom to my room, I can’t help but glance at the mirror. The lipstick is sitting on the counter, but the mirror is empty. The last three weeks feel like a quickly fading dream.

  * * *

  I’m laying clothes out on my bed when there’s a knock on the bathroom door. It isn’t locked, though in retrospect maybe that was stupid of me. “Come in.”

  Asher walks in slowly, with his hands shoved into his pockets. His face is almost blank, unreadable. My brain wants to scream, Why did you kiss me? Do you have a girlfriend? Is this all a giant joke to you? But all my mouth says is, “Hey.” I’m surprised by how normal my voice sounds. My hands keep grabbing at pieces of clothing, picking up and putting them down, moving things around on my bed just to keep from being still.

  His eyes roam over the clothes strewn about my bed, and then to me, in the ratty shorts and tank top I always wear straight from the shower. He looks me up quickly from my toes to my eyes before saying, “Going somewhere?”

  I toss aside the shirt I was holding. “Just the Cherry Bowl.”

  “The movies haven’t changed yet, they’re the same all week.”

  I know this; it’s why I wasn’t thrilled Caleb suggested it. Well, part of the reason. “I know, it’s not a big deal.”

  “You really want to see the same movies twice in a week?” He tips his head to the side, like he’s examining me. “Tell Kara to find someone else. Come with me to Trevor’s house. Game Night 2.0, you can have your own game piece and everything.”

  “I’m not going with Kara.” There’s a long stretch of silence, and I know I should fill it with the information the look on his face is telling me he wants, but I can’t make myself do it. Things feel too weird. There’s a tangible sense of aggression radiating from him as he looks over the clothes strewn around my room, and I have to fight to push away the guilty feeling rising up in me. It’s completely irrational. I have nothing to be sorry for.

  “You’re going with Caleb?” Asher’s brows are twisted in annoyance, and he says his name like it’s something sticky he found on his shoe. His hands move from his pockets to his head, gripping the back of his neck like he has a headache. “Since when?”

  “Since this afternoon?” My voice is rough and harsh, and it matches the scowl on Asher’s face. Why does this feel like an interrogation?

  “Okay, well, you have fun.” Despite the kindness of the words themselves, his voice is still rough and sounds more like, I hope you choke on your popcorn. I’m glad I won’t be there to Heimlich you, even though it’s my lifelong dream.

  “So what, you’re mad?” It sounds like a joke when it comes out of my mouth, but I’m not amused. “I mean, are you even available, Asher?” I fidget with the hem of my tank top and suddenly I wish I hadn’t brought it up. I have just as little right to be jealous as he does. “Whatever, I don’t blame you if you’re still hung up on Jordan, or Lindsay, or … whoever … it’s just that maybe you shouldn’t kiss people if—”

  “What?” To his credit, he looks surprised when he says it. “Why would you even bring up Lindsay?”

  So it’s Jordan, then. I have to decide if I want to admit that I broke the truce and was lurking around in his bedroom. He’s sure to be irritated with me, but he doesn’t look like he’s getting out of here without an explanation. And he’s at max levels of irritation anyway. Might as well just lean into it. “I was putting some stuff in your room earlier and—”

  He folds his arms over his chest and narrows his eyes on me. It’s the look Before Asher would have given me. “What stuff?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” I hesitate, suddenly unsure of how committed I am to dying on this hill. He cocks his head to the side and pins me with a hard stare. “I had laundry for you, okay?”

  Asher raises his eyebrows and I know I’m caught—there’s no reasonable reality where I would bring him his laundry without ulterior motives—but he doesn’t say anything.

  “It doesn’t matter why I was there.” I shake my head, hoping I can shake away the feeling that I’m the one who did something wrong. He’s the one trying to lure me into the meanest prank of all time. “I saw the necklace.”

  He smiles, and shakes his head like I just said something ridiculous. It’s the kind of smile that tells me there’s something coming. That I’ll wake up to my flip-flops glued to the floor or self-tanner smeared in my swimsuit. It’s a menacing smile, a predator’s smile. It’s the only kind of smile I used to see on his face, but it feels strange and wrong, now that I’ve seen his face look so many other ways.

  “Come here,” he says, pulling me by my hand before I can stop him. I follow him through the bathroom and into his bedroom. With the focus of a heat-seeking missile, he goes right to his dresser and pulls the little box out of his drawer. The lid tumbles to the ground as he flicks it off with his thumb and holds the box out to me. His look is a command and a warning.

  I shake my head, bewildered, and cross my arms over my chest. “That’s it.” I’m not sure what he wants me to say.

  He rolls his eyes. “You don’t recognize it?”

  “Why would I?” But then I look at it again—the strange purple-blue color of the little stones that hang from it. At the delicate silver chain and charm of entangled fish that dangles next to the biggest stone. I hadn’t noticed the charm before. It catches the light and sparkles, and my stomach slowly plummets to my feet as recognition hits me.

  “Yeah.” He smiles but he’s not happy. “You should recognize it, because two summers ago, you were basically obsessed with it.”

  I pull my eyes away from the necklace and look at Asher, whose face has gone from angry to sad.

  “My mom wouldn’t buy it for me. She was on that kick about limiting our material possessions and focusing on experiences, and I had already spent all my money on that stupid wakeboard I never used.” The words trail off as I reach a hand out toward the box.

  Asher moves it back just a hair, and I retreat. “Right,” he says.

  “I don’t…” I shake my head at the little box, at the way he’s looking at me while he holds it. “Why do you have it?”

  “I have it because I was on that miserable shopping trip with you, and I saw how much you wanted it.” He looks away from me, his eyes fixed on something to my left, and then sweeping across the ceiling to land on the other side of me. “So I bought it.” There’s a pause, a long stretch of dead air where I think about bolting for the door. “And every year I told myself I was going to give it to you.” He swallows and his throat bobs. “But every year it was the same, with the pranks and … all of it.”

  His eyes meet mine again, and I don’t know what to do. I just stare at him, feeling like I’m seeing him for the first time. Wondering how I’ve spent so many years pretending he was my enemy. Wondering just how long ago he st
opped feeling like I was his. I bought that stupid wakeboard because I had secretly hoped that he’d take pity on me and show me how to use it. Holy hell, we’re a hopeless pair.

  Asher walks around me, and I can feel him step up behind me. His arm brushes my shoulder, and his hands stretch in front of me, the silver chain hanging there. I’m frozen in place, but it feels like my whole body is lightly buzzing. Asher’s fingers brush my neck as he clasps it and pulls my hair out from beneath the tangle of metal. The necklace is cold on my skin where it falls low on my chest, and it feels heavy, even though it’s dainty and delicate. But I can feel it—the necklace and his words—hanging there, around my neck, pressing in on me and making it hard to breathe.

  We stand there, both of us silent, his front so close to my back that I’m not positive we aren’t still touching. Even breathing feels too loud. Asher sets his hands on my shoulders, and then his breath is at my ear. “Sometimes I think you’ve forgotten how to say anything nice to me.”

  There’s an angry edge to his voice, and the words sting. He’s right, I’ve spent so much time poking at him, convincing myself that he’s nothing but the enemy, that I’ve forgotten what he really is. What I had once hoped he could be. We could be.

  His voice is still a whisper, the hard edge still there as it brushes against my ear. “This is where you say thank you.” His tone is all off. It’s hard again, so different from what I’ve become used to these last few weeks. I hadn’t realized how much it had changed until I heard the old Asher again tonight. No, something so much harder than the old Asher.

  “Thank you.” The words are so soft, I’m not sure I even said them out loud. His hands fall away from me, as if those two words have released him from some kind of spell, but I can’t move. Even as he closes the door, and I hear his footsteps move down the hallway and the screen door slam behind him in the kitchen. I’m still frozen in place in the middle of his bedroom when he walks past the window. There’s a soft rumble of an engine and the crunch of gravel. By the time I reach the window the taillights are just two bright spots in the shadow of the trees. Gone.