Kiss Me Again (6 page)

“But not just George. I also like …”

“Who else?”

“Clarity,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m sorry, but I do. Maybe that’s uncool, but there it is. Things were so much easier before it got all murky.”

“Murky.”

“Yes,” I said. “I like things to be defined. I don’t want to sneak around. It’s not fair to George, or to you or me, either. Also, I mean, we did that, and—look how it turned out.”

“How is what we do any of anybody’s business? Especially if you’re not officially …”

“Kevin.”

“Look, if you don’t like me, that’s fine. Tell me. If you like George better than me, just say so and I will leave you alone, I swear.”

I stood there in front of him, not answering. Not knowing the answer.

His eyes searched mine.

“
Keep it undefined
,” I said instead of answering. “What does that even mean,
undefined
?”

He smirked.

“What?”

“You want me to define
undefined
.”

I smirked back.

“And you didn’t answer.”

My smirk melted away.

“You do like me,” he said.

“I’m trying not to.”

“How’s that going?”

“Not so well, right now,” I admitted.

“Good.”

“Kevin. It’s just—a bad idea,” I whispered. “I mean, complicated doesn’t begin …”

“Absolutely.” He stepped toward me again.

“Gotta go,” I said, bolting from his room. I needed to get out of there. Not need like sometimes I need gum if I’ve eaten a loaf of garlic bread, but need like air, if a pillow is being shoved onto your face.

“CHARLIE!”

“Oh! Hi, George.” He had come up behind me at my locker. I pulled the earbuds he’d bought me out of my ears. “What’s up?”

“Want to go sit on the upper field for lunch?”

“Uh …”

“She can’t,” Tess interrupted, coming around the corner.

“I can’t,” I agreed.

“She promised to hang with me,” Tess explained.

George looked back and forth between us. “Hell froze over? Pigs flew?”

“Haha,” Tess said, and grabbed my arm. “Come on, Charlie.”

We walked down the hall to the back doors, arms linked. Out on the steps, we sat right next to each other, shoulders occasionally bumping, like old times.

“He’s a great guy,” I said in between purposely tiny bites of sandwich. “George.”

“The best,” Tess agreed.

“So why did you—”

“You just looked like you wanted to be rescued.”

I chewed and thought. “I guess.” We watched Jen and the boys shoot hoops.

“You should break up with him.”

“We’re not officially going out.”

“Break up unofficially, then. It’s mean to string him along. He loves you, but you don’t love him.”

I groaned. “How do you know?”

“I know you. I can tell. So, trust me. Like a Band-Aid—fast, ouch, done.”

“You think?” I asked.

She smiled. “Sometimes, but it gives my brain a cramp, so I have to stop.”

“I hate ripping off Band-Aids.”

“Who doesn’t? Still.” She looked me straight in the eye, my mirror image with slightly finer features and longer hair. “You were right, what you said.”

“I was? When?”

“At Darlene’s party.”

That I kissed Kevin?
“What—which—why …”

“You said it was always like you came in second place,” Tess explained. “It’s true. I wanted to deny it, but you were right. And that I used you. And maybe I used Kevin, too. I knew how much you both liked me and maybe took advantage of that.”

“Oh.”

“You were right, and I was blind to all that. Or maybe just didn’t want to know. But, whatever. I’m over it. You and Kevin kind of used each other to get back at me. That’s all it ever was between you. I get that now.”

I had no words.

“Also …”

I turned to look at her again. Her eyes were even more sparkly than usual. She blinked twice, swallowed, cleared her throat. Her pretty mouth curved down into a frown as she whispered, “I miss you.”

“I miss you, too, Tess.”

“So, we rescue each other.” She sniffed once, hard, and forced a brave smile.

“We …”

“I rescue you from lunch with your boyfriend, who loves you, and you rescue me from lunch with the Pop-Tarts, who are so damn boring with all their giggling and backhanded compliments, I want to put a fork through my eye.”

I laughed. Tess laughed. And right then, the sun came out from behind a cloud and shined down hard on us. “Wow,” I said. “No subtlety at all, huh, sun?”

“If you were made of explosions,” Tess said, “you’d be unsubtle, too.”

“You mean I’m not made of explosions?”

“Good point. We’re both made of explosions, too, aren’t we? Explains a lot.”

I tossed my lunch garbage toward the trash can, and for the first time in my life, it went in. Deciding to take it all as a good omen, I leaned my shoulder against Tess’s. She leaned back.

“So it’s weird, living with Kevin?” she asked.

“Weird doesn’t begin to cover it.”

She laughed her wicked laugh, and all felt right with the world. Mostly.

BECAUSE I AM
a wimp, I did not launch into my speech until after we got our ice-cream cones. When we sat on the bench together, George put his arm on the bench behind me. My ice cream started to drip onto my fingers.

At least I paid for the cones, was my pathetic self-commiseration.

Though even then, I did say okay, that he could buy next time. Which made starting the conversation that much worse. I stalled by concentrating on my ice cream.

He licked around the bottom of his scoop to keep any of his Cookie Dough Dynamo from dripping, then asked, “How’s life in the new blended family?”

“Um, I, it, what? Good, I guess.”

“What’s wrong, Charlie? You seem … weird.”

“I am weird.”

“True, but usually in a good way. Hey, did Tess say something mean again?”

“No,” I said. “We’re actually, things are better.”

“Good,” he said. “Just be careful.”

“Of what?”

“In general.”

“Of falling in a hole? Stepping in poop? What are you talking about, George? Be careful in general? What the heck kind of thing is that to say to a person?” I was shrieking. It was unsettling us both.

“Of Tess,” he said quietly.

“She’s my BEST FRIEND.”

“Oh … kay,” he said, and we both intensely ate our ice cream for a moment.

“Sorry,” I said without looking at him. We licked our cones in silence for a minute, until I took a deep breath and said, “I don’t even know how to say this and not be more of a jerk than I already am.”

“Just say it,” he whispered.

“You are the nicest guy in the world.”

“Oh. Really? That’s the—oh.” He stood up and tossed his half-eaten ice-cream cone into the trash can beside the bench. He wiped his hands clean on his napkin and then tossed that into the can, too, before sitting back down. This time, his arm wasn’t around me. “Fine, go ahead.”

I took a deep breath and launched into my prepared comments. My notes, jotted down during social studies, were in my bag, but I decided against pulling them out and went from memory instead. “You said, at my mother’s wedding, that the one I need to forgive, about the whole mess I created with Tess and Kevin and all that, was myself.”

“Uh-huh,” he said without looking up from his clasped hands, which were between his wide-spread knees. “I did. I said that. It’s true, by the way.”

“Well, maybe you’re right. I don’t know.” I watched my ice cream melt down over the cone and drip onto the sidewalk between my sneakers. First really warm spring day, and this is how I was spending it.

“I am right,” he said. “Go on.”

“Yeah. Or maybe, like my father loves to tell me, I am too quick to let myself off the hook. I don’t know.”

“Your father is a tool. Sorry, just saying.”

“That’s okay. Thanks, actually. But anyway, what I need, I think, is to sort some stuff out. For myself.”

“Fine.”

“But, I can’t do it, I can’t figure out why I did what I did and how to make up for it—to Tess, or to Kevin, even to you …”

“You have nothing to make up to me, Charlie. I told you. Leave me out of your self-flagellation. I wasn’t going out with you at the time of the Great Transgression.”

“Stop calling it that, George, seriously,” I said. “Besides. Still.”

“No,” he said, sounding for the first time ever a little angry at me. “Really, leave me out of that part. You don’t owe me any apologies or reparations or whatever you think you owe everybody. And I am pretty sure you don’t owe Kevin an apology, either. No way. So, what? You were a jerk? Okay, fine, maybe you were. Whatever. Everybody’s a jerk at some point. Get over it.”

“I was a very large jerk,” I pointed out.

“Now we’re just haggling about size,” he said.

“What?”

“Never mind,” he muttered. “Go on. You were in the middle of breaking up with me.”

“Oh, George.”

“I never asked you out, by the way. Just saying. But still. Go ahead.”

“See? This is what I mean. I can’t figure all this out if I’m your sort-of unofficial girlfriend, because you are way too nice and funny and it confuses me.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I’ll work on being less nice, for future unofficial girlfriends.”

“I know you think you’re doing the moral thing by sticking by me …”

“Yeah, that’s why I’ve stuck with you. Making a moral point. If I get a hundred moral points, I can trade them in for valuable merchandise.”

“George.”

“Toasters, pencil sharpeners, dusting cloths …”

“George!”

“Go on. I’ve stuck with you because … ?”

“Because you are very, I don’t know, gallant.”

“Gallant? Really? Gallant? Like a knight?”

“Yes. And I’ve appreciated it, this whole time, so much, but I just, I have to ask you to stop. Okay? Please understand.”

He raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth to say something, but stopped before any words came out. We sat there silent for a minute or three, both miserable.

“I just, I need to be alone for a while,” I said. “To be independent, as you once said I was, but you were wrong then, or at least maybe just … optimistic.”

“Okay.”

“This is my mess, so I have to sleep in it. Or whatever.”

“Yeah, or, are you dumping me because now you’ve suddenly got Tess back? So you don’t need me?”

“George, no.” The ice cream was gurgling around in my clenched stomach. “That’s not it.”

“Or maybe,” he said, “you’re giving me the boot because you’re hot for Kevin Lazarus.”

“No!” Wow, that was loud. “No, George. I swear that’s not why.”

He didn’t say anything, so I forced myself to turn and look at him.

“I mean, I’m not. George, come on. Why are you being so mean suddenly?”

He shrugged. “Somebody really smart who I used to love suggested I should be less nice. Thanks for the ice cream.”

He used to love me?

He stood up, so I did, too. My hands were sticky with radioactive-looking melted mint chip ice cream.

“Hey, George … ,” I said, launching into the conclusion I’d written in the margin of my notebook earlier in the day. “I just, I hope you will know someday that this is a new leaf for me, my first step in trying to do the right thing and be a good friend.”

“It is what it is,” George said, and started to walk away. He turned around after about twenty steps and grinned his lopsided grin at me. “Is it bad that I’m feeling happy you paid for the ice cream?”

I smiled back. “No,” I answered. “Not at all.”

A CAR PULLED
into the driveway. I froze at the window in Samantha’s room, where I was hiding while watching Kevin and his friends throw a football around our yard. The car door slammed. By the time Samantha’s light footsteps approached the second floor, I was in my room, pretending to read, casually, on my bed.

That lasted about a minute before I peeked out into the hallway. Samantha was flopped against the wall like an abandoned stuffed animal.

“You okay?”

“Mmmm,” she said, her eyes closed but fluttering under her eyelids.

“Long day?” I asked. “Playdate?”

She reluctantly opened her eyes to slits. “I get worn out by people sometimes.”

“Me too,” I admitted.

Her eyes closed again.