Kiss Me Again (17 page)

It’s written in Sharpie on my heart
, I was thinking, when Tess slammed open the door of Cuppa.

She glared at me and said, “There you are!”

“Uh-oh,” Penelope said beside me, without moving her lips.

I forced myself to smile. “Hi! Hi, Tess.”

“What are you good at making?” Tess asked me when she got to the counter.

“A mess,” I said.

“True,” Penelope agreed, not budging to let me talk privately with Tess. Tess flicked her eyes at Penelope and then back to me. I microshrugged in response.

“Well, if I order a latte or something, can you give me an employee discount?”

“No,” Penelope answered.

“I was just kidding,” Tess said, and turned back to me. Still hadn’t smiled. “Where the heck have you been all weekend?”

“Nowhere,” I said, hating the quiver in my voice. “Home.”

“Not answering your phone. Not online. What were you doing that you couldn’t even …”

“I lost my phone and …”

“Can you take a break? I have to tell you something.”

I looked at Penelope. “Not really,” she said.

I looked back and forth between them.

“It’s important,” Tess said. “I’ve been calling and texting you all weekend.”

“What happened? Tess, is everything okay?”

“It’s not like you’re being overwhelmed with business. Please? Five minutes.”

“Please?” I asked Penelope. “I’ll take your turn cleaning the bathroom.”

“Men’s room.”

“Yuck,” I said. “Deal. Thanks, seriously, Penelope.”

“Toilet, too,” Penelope answered.

“Vanilla bean java shake,” Tess said. “With extra whipped cream.”

“Whoa,” I said. “What happened?”

As Penelope went to make the shake, I leaned forward across the bar.

“It’s … listen,” Tess whispered. “I’ve been trying to get you all weekend. You disappeared.”

“Sorry. Is everything okay? Your parents?”

“Nothing like that.”

After Penelope handed her the drink and Tess paid, the two of us dashed to our table.

“Five minutes, max,” Penelope said to our backs.

“Not Max,” I called back. “Charlie.”

“And the urinal!” Penelope yelled.

I blew a kiss back at her, then whispered to Tess, “What’s wrong?”

“That girl is so weird,” Tess whispered back. “Can’t believe you have to work with her.”

“Penelope? She’s awesome. She hates me. I love her.”

“You’re weird, too.”

“True,” I admitted. “Tell me.”

“Don’t be mad,” Tess started, then took a long suck on her straw while I tried not to freak out. I hate being told not to get mad. Nobody tells you not to be mad unless she is about to tell you something that would obviously make you mad.

“What?” I tried to be patient while she sipped. “Tess, what?”

“Well, I don’t know your current status with Kevin, so I don’t want to upset you.”

“My current
status
?” She knew. I was screwed. I had no plan. She knew. Obviously she knew. Damn.

“Yeah.” She blinked twice, looking down at the table. “I mean, obviously he lives in your house, but are you, like, best friends with him now or something? Because …”

Wait. Best friends?

“What? No.”

“Seems like you only want to be with him, these days. Inside jokes, and then you go fully off the grid …”

“Tess,” I said, laying my hand lightly on top of hers the way my mom had done to me in the Thai restaurant. “
You’re
my best friend.”

“Well,” Tess said, with the half shrug, half eye-roll that meant
Not so sure that’s true, but anyway.

“You know you are. Since third grade. My best friend.”

“We’re a bit old to be talking about who’s our best friend, like we’re still in Brownies.”

I willed myself not to burn up with humiliation at my own immaturity.

“That’s not the point, obviously,” she quickly continued. “I was talking about Felicity.”

“You were?”

Over behind the counter, Penelope cleared her throat at me. A line of people had queued up while I was sitting with Tess. Penelope was dealing all on her own, back there. I should have at least been running the cash register, it was clear.

“I gotta go, Tess,” I told her.

“I guess it can wait,” she said. “What I had to tell you.”

“No, just—tell me quick.”

Toby sludged into Cuppa, assessing the room through his heavy-lidded eyes. When he saw me, he lifted his chin slightly in greeting, then smirked toward Penelope, saying “S’up.” I was screwing up, and now the only two workers at Cuppa other than me were aware of it. Any second Anya would reappear and, rightly, fire me.

“Who’s that?” Tess whispered. “He’s kind of hot.”

“Nobody. Toby. He’s nice. So what did you want—”

“Just I think we should warn Felicity.”

“About what?”

“Kevin.”

“Kevin? What about—”

“That Kevin is more trouble than she realizes.”

“What makes you think Felicity and Kevin—”

“Friday night.”

“Friday … What happened Friday night?” I asked. “Friday night Kevin was at Brad’s.”

“This is what I mean.”

“What about Felicity?”

“Don’t get mad.”

“Tess! What would I possibly be mad about?” I could feel my eyes bugging out of my head, my face becoming the poster of every definition of madness. “I’m not mad!”

“We were sleeping over at her house, Felicity’s, a few of us—it was already planned before you and I made up, so don’t be insulted.”

That’s what she thought I would be mad about?

Wait, okay, that did make me kind of mad. They were planning to come have a sleepover at my house Saturday after a sleepover Friday at Felicity’s that I wasn’t invited to? And that would not be awkward because … what?

“I knew you were going to take it the wrong way.”

“I didn’t say—”

“Yeah, Charlie. Subtle is definitely your middle name.”

“My parents were going through a weird stage back when they named me, not my fault,” I joked back lamely, to show I was still marginally sane even though in fact I might not have been. “And I’m, you know, made of explosions, so …”

“Well, anyway, it’s so not the point, but you know Felicity’s mom is strict about how many people she’s allowed to have over, so she couldn’t invite you even after I told her everything was resolved between us. Though as it turns out, Darlene couldn’t come because she was grounded for smoking, so you probably could’ve been invited at the last minute, but—”

Anya opened the door to Cuppa, saw the long line and just Penelope behind the bar, hustling as fast as she could go to help people while I sat lollygagging at a table with Tess, and Toby was nowhere to be seen, in the back or the uncleaned bathroom or something.

“Tess, I gotta—”

“Fine, but can you let me say what I needed to tell you?”

“There’s more?”

She leaned close and whispered to me, “Kevin and Brad snuck over, and we were playing flashlight tag, right? But then, right in front of us, or, actually, behind that big tree—you know that tree in Felicity’s backyard? It’s like a big pine tree or something?”

“Hemlock,” I said. “Yeah?”

“Hemlock? Isn’t that what Socrates took to kill himself?”

“Him and me both, maybe, but anyway, behind the hemlock
what
?”

Tess leaned in toward me again, like she was going to pass the gum in her mouth directly into mine. I could smell it in all its mintiness. Who drinks a vanilla bean java shake and chews peppermint gum at the same time? Only Tess. “Felicity and Kevin were, you know …”

“Were what?”

“Well, obviously you can guess. So I just think we ought to warn her, out of friendship, that no matter what he says that sounds so convincing and so romantic, we’ve both been there and, you know … we’re like the world’s two great experts on the crappiness of Kevin Lazarus.”

“Felicity and Kevin hooked up?”

“Congratulations, Sherlock. And what do you want to bet he twirled her hair while they were talking? Did he ever do that to you? Whoa, Nellie, I can tell by your face he did. Right? I know you have to live with him and get along, and you deny it, but you’re getting all tight with him. Still—let’s be honest. That boy is a total slut! The fact is, Kevin makes girls think he’s so madly in love with them, and meanwhile he’s off—”

“Charlie?” Anya interrupted, standing over me. “Everything okay?”

I looked up at her, not at all okay. “Yes,” I lied. “Sorry. I just …”

Anya smiled. “Looks like we could use some help at the counter.”

I nodded and stood up.

“Call me later,” Tess said, leaving.

I honestly have only the vaguest idea what happened in the next hour and a half. It felt like I was moving in slow motion through scalding water, shocked as tea leaves in an unprepared pot.

WHEN I WALKED
into the house, Kevin was alone in the kitchen, his arms pretzeled across his chest and his face dead serious, as if he had been anticipating the fight I was bringing in the door, though when he saw me, his face brightened instantly. Damn that sexy smile of his; it wasn’t obliterating my resolve this time.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” I demanded.

His eyebrows crunched together as he squinted at me.

“You’ve just been playing with me? Is this some kind of sick—”

Samantha skidded into the kitchen in her socks. Her hair was all mussed up, her face blotchy and swollen from crying. “I mean it! Where is he?” Samantha demanded of Kevin.

He looked between me and Sam, uncrossed his arms, and shrugged his surrender. “You’re both crazy. All you people are crazy.”

“You people?” I asked. “
You people
as in
girls
?”

“What did you do with him?” Sam screamed as I was saying, “That is rude! And I am not crazy! Tess told me what happened Friday night, and—”

“He was NOT DEAD!” Sam screamed.

“Sam,” Kevin said softly.

“Murderer!” She was pointing at Kevin, her eyes bugging out, her face reddening even more. “Killer! Where did you put his body?”

“Stop it, Sam,” Kevin said, trying to collect her into a hug, but she was not having any of it; she was rabid, flailing, screaming, and crying.

“Murderer! Killer!”

“Sam, come on,” Kevin was cooing in between shooting me nasty looks. “He died. It’s okay. It happens.”

“You killed somebody?” I asked him.

“Shut up, Charlie.”

“Stop telling her to shut up!” Sam screamed. “You always tell her to shut up, and she does not have to shut up, you murderer! Where is the body, you criminal?”

“Sam,” Kevin said, blocking his face from her barrage of fists and flails.

“Yeah,” I said. “Why do you always tell me to shut up?”

“Because you won’t ever frigging shut up!” Kevin yelled. “I flushed him, Sam.”

“You FLUSHED HIM?!”

“He’s gone.”

“DOWN THE TOILET?”

“I—yes. He died. It’s like, down the pipes. That’s …”

“We could have buried him, if he died, which he didn’t!”

“A fish should not be buried, Sam. He’s a water animal.”

“Your fish died?” I asked her. Oh, her fish. Poor thing.

“No!” she screamed.

“Oh,” I said.

“Yeah, he did,” Kevin said, impatience sneaking into his quiet voice. “He died. He had some sort of mold starting to grow out of his side, Sam.”

“That wasn’t mold! It was—he was—sometimes a fish—”

“And he was starting to smell bad,” Kevin said. “You can’t leave a dead fish decomposing for so long.”

“He was sleeping!” Sam wailed, and then, as if all her bones liquefied at once, she melted down onto the floor, weeping.

“Oh, Sam,” I tried. “I’m sorry. I know you really cared about that fish.”

“Alpha,” she sobbed.

Kevin wrapped his arms around shaking Sam on my kitchen floor and started singing the word
okay
, over and over again to her, into her tangled hair.

Not knowing what else to do, and seeing that my own argument with Kevin was going to have to wait in line, I went and got a Diet Pepsi out of the fridge. I popped it open and sat at the counter, trying to be inconspicuous. Also trying to maintain my rage at what a jerk Kevin was, despite the fact that he was singing a soothing song, the only lyrics of which were
okay
, into his distraught little sister’s hair.

My phone was there, beside the sink. Hmm.

“It’s my fault,” Samantha was sobbing. “My fault my fault my fault.”