Learning to Fall (24 page)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Pizza

“What took you so long?” Not looking the least bit apologetic, Whitney took a long sip of her soda before she sat back and crossed her arms. “I’ve been waiting for
ever
.”

The smell of freshly baked pizza dough hung heavily in the air, making my stomach growl as I slid into the booth across from Whitney and summoned my very best I-am-
extremely
-annoyed-at-you glare. It was a glare I reserved for very special occasions, which made it all the more potent. The first time I’d used it had been when I’d come back to our dorm room  after a late night of studying to find Whitney making out with the captain of the lacrosse team…on
my
bed. I’d used it again when she’d taken Roo without my permission and once more on the morning of graduation (a story so horrible and embarrassing I’d vowed never to think about it again). I had thought the days of having to use The Glare were far behind us, but after wandering around CVS and Goodwill for nearly an hour searching for Whitney I couldn’t think of a better time for it to make a reappearance. 

“
You’ve
been waiting forever?” Disbelief raised my voice a full octave. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming here?” Indicating the tiny pizza shop with a sweep of my arm, I straightened my spine and set my jaw. If I hadn’t been angry with Whitney before, I definitely was now, if only for the sole reason I still didn’t know why
she
was angry at
me
.

Whitney’s mouth tightened. “I didn’t know I had to.”

“I tried to call you! Three times!”

Her scowl turned sulky. “I turned my phone off. The battery’s almost dead.”

“Then you should have checked with me before you left Eastern Sports.”

“Who are you, my mother?”  

“No of course not, I - I don’t want to fight.” My shoulders slumped as all of my anger drained away in one surging wave. Whitney was my best friend. More than that, she was the sister I’d never had. The mother who actually cared. The one person I could always trust to be there for me, no matter what. I didn’t want to yell at her and I didn’t want to fight in the middle of a crowded pizza shop with two dozen eavesdroppers listening in on our conversation. Lowering my voice, I leaned towards her across the red and white checkered tablecloth and said, “If you’re mad at me for something I did or said, just
tell
me. I can’t read your mind, Whit.”

“I’m not mad at you,” she muttered under her breath, toying with a corner of her paper placemat.

“Really?” I said skeptically. “Because that’s not what it seems like.”

“Why can’t you just let it go?” Reluctantly lifting her gaze to mine, Whitney huffed out a breath. “Forget about it. It’s nothing. I’m not mad, I swear. Everything’s fine.”

I had never completely understood the nuances of female communication where ‘
nothing
’ really meant ‘
everything
’ and ‘
fine
’ translated directly into ‘
I’m going to kill you the second your back is turned
’. Both of my parents had always been very upfront with me, and I was required to be the same in return. If I was unhappy, I needed to have a reason. If I was angry, I needed to explain why. There were never any slammed doors. No ‘
I don’t want to talk about it right now!
’. As a result, I’d learned how to speak my mind at an early age which had served me fairly well up until the ninth grade when Mia Rodgers, head cheerleader and homecoming queen, asked me if the skirt she was wearing made her thighs look big…and I said yes. That social faux pas taught me two valuable lessons: there was a time and a place to tell the truth, and when a cheerleader asked you if she looked fat the answer was
always
no.

“Whitney, I know you.” Grabbing her menu before she could tear it to shreds, I set it aside and stared her straight in the eye. “And I know you’re upset about something. Please tell me what it is.”

For a moment I thought she wasn’t going to. For a moment I thought she was going to get up and leave. But with a long, gusty sigh she rolled her eyes and grudgingly admitted, “I’m pissed off about the muffins.”

It wasn’t often I found myself caught completely off guard, but Whitney had managed to do it. Biting the inside of my cheek, I struggled to think of a suitable response. Fortunately a young, pimple-faced waiter with a shock of greasy black hair and bored brown eyes chose that exact moment to take our order.

“Welcome to DeMarco’s,” he said in a monotone voice. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“Another diet,” Whitney said, nudging her empty glass to the edge of the table.

“Um…a water for me, please. No lemon.”

“She thinks the lemons in restaurants have traces of fecal matter on them,” Whitney informed the waiter.

“Only because I read a study in the
Environmental Journal of Health
that said seventy percent of the lemons they tested contained microbial growth,” I said defensively.

The waiter glanced uncertainly between us. “Uh, is that like, true?”

“Ask her,” Whitney said sullenly. “She’s the genius.”

I frowned at her before I looked up at the waiter. “It’s true. They tested seventy different restaurants and found over thirty-seven different microorganisms on the lemons, including bacteria from the human digestive system and respiratory tract.”

“Dude,” the waiter breathed as his eyes widened with equal parts disgust and fascination. “That’s
nasty
. I’m never eating a lemon again!”

“As long as you thoroughly wash the lemon and make sure your hands are clean before touching it, there’s no reason to stop putting lemons in your water. They’re actually quite beneficial. Could we place our order now?” Besides being hungry, I wanted to talk to Whitney in private, something that was rather hard to do with a waiter hovering over us.

“Yeah, sure.” He pulled a white pad out of his front pocket and flipped to an empty page. “What do you want?”

The specials had been written on a sign outside the pizza shop and I didn’t hesitate before I said, “Two slices of pepperoni and a garden salad.”

“What kind of dressing?”

“Blue cheese. On the side.”

Biting his tongue, he muttered my order out loud as he scribbled it down on his pad. “Two pepperoni…salad…blue cheese. You got it.” He looked at Whitney expectantly.

“The same thing,” she said, “but ranch instead of blue cheese.”

“You got it,” he repeated before he snapped his pad closed and strolled away with the long, careless gait of an unruly teenager who hadn’t yet felt the full weight of responsibility.

“So,” Whitney said, pursing her lips.

“So,” I echoed.

Awkward silence filled the space between us. Seconds that felt like minutes ticked by, each one longer than the last until, in a sudden rush of garbled words, we both tried to speak at the same time.

“I’m sorry I’ve been such a bitch-”

“I’m sorry if I did something to hurt-”

Whitney snorted and shook her head. “Just so you know, you are the
worst
person to fight with.”

“I think I’ll take that as a compliment.” Relieved that the unnatural tension between us had been broken, I dropped my chin into my hands and sighed. “And for the record, I’ve
never
thought of you as a - well, you know.” I couldn’t even make myself say the word. “Not once,” I emphasized.   

“I know, I know.” Whitney waved a hand dismissively in the air and rolled her eyes. “I was just being a snarky bitch because I was mad about the muffins.”

The muffins again.

“I don’t understand.”

“Which is why I can’t be angry at you.” Reaching across the table, she grabbed my hand and squeezed. “You’re so adorably clueless sometimes, Mo.”

“I’m not clueless,” I said, even though at the moment that’s exactly what I was since I had absolutely
no
idea what Whitney was talking about. “I thought you liked the muffins.”

“I loved the muffins, but-” she broke off as the waiter returned with our drinks “-that’s not why I was upset. Ew, there’s a lemon in my soda. Am I going to die?”

“Even if there is fecal matter on the lemon, your immune system is more than equipped to deal with it. So no, you’re not going to die.”

Wrinkling her nose, she poked her straw through the middle of the lemon wedge and flipped it up and out of her cup. “There.”

“You contaminated your straw,” I said mildly.

“Oh, whatever.” Dipping her head, she took a big gulp of soda and smacked her lips together. “Live dangerously and all that, right? Besides, if I die of fecal poisoning I’ll just sue this place and become a millionaire.”

“But you’ll be dead.”

“A small detail. I’ll work it out. Anyways, what I was saying…well” - her brow creased - “it’s kind of hard to admit, actually. Well, not technically
hard
. But it’s weird. Definitely weird.”

“We’re best friends.” Nudging my water aside, I rested my forearms on the table and leaned towards her. “You can tell me anything, Whit. I won’t judge you. I promise.”

“I’m not making a confession, for God sakes.” The whites of her eyes flashed as she rolled her eyes again. “I’m…jealous of you, that’s all. And just so you know,” she said, noting my stunned expression, “the way you look right now is exactly how I
feel.”

“But…you have no reason to be jealous of me.”

Growing up with wealth meant jealousy was an emotion I was very familiar with. It had come in all shapes and sizes, from all sorts of people. But it had never come from Whitney. If anything
I
was jealous of
her
. I’d always secretly envied her self-confidence. Her natural beauty. Her ability to walk into a room and strike up a conversation with anyone in it. What could I possibly have that she would be jealous of?

“Um, hello.” Shifting her weight to the side, Whitney crossed her legs under the table. Her ankle bobbed restlessly in the air, keeping time to a tempo no one by Whitney could hear. “You have a man hunk who brings you muffins and cuddles with you in the living room and wants to take you hiking.” Her mouth wobbled into a frown. “I want a man hunk to take
me
hiking.”

“But…you hate the outdoors.”

“So? If someone who looked like Daniel wanted to go climb a mountain with me, I would be game.”

“Okay,” I said slowly, still not completely understanding the point Whitney was trying to make.  Seeing my confusion, she sighed.

“I know it sounds crazy, especially coming from me. I go through boyfriends like popsicles. And that is not a sexual metaphor.” Her lips twitched. “Well, actually it sort of is. Anyways what I’m
trying
to say is that I’ve been dating since I was in freakin’ middle school but I’ve never found a guy who looks at me like Daniel looks at you and it’s not fair and I’m jealous and that’s why I got pissed off. There. The end.”

My mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything.” Her ankle stilled, but only for a moment. “It’s my problem, not yours. I’ll find the perfect guy someday.” Eyes narrowing with determination, she muttered, “I just have to track him down first.”

“Well if it makes you feel any better, Daniel and I aren’t
technically
together. Well, I guess we are. I mean, we definitely are,” I said, recalling what he’d told me only this morning.
You’ll never be a regular twenty-four-year-old. You’ll never be normal. And that’s why I’m in love with you.
“But I don’t know if we should be.”

“Because he’s technically your student?”

“Yes.” I took another sip of water. “And I need to choose between him and my career. I need time to weigh all the pros and cons before I can make a well-informed, thought out decision.”

Whitney snorted. “That is such a you thing to say. ‘
I need time to weigh all the pros and cons before I can make a well-informed, thought out decision’
,” she said in a mocking parody of my own voice. “There are some things you can’t control, Mo. Some things you can’t plan and prepare for, no matter how hard you try. Babies are one of those things, which is why I have an IUD. And falling in love is another. Sometimes you just have to let go and trust your instincts.”

“Maybe.” Pensive, I stirred the ice cubes around counter clockwise in my glass. “We’ll see.” Maybe I did need to simply let go and trust my instincts. But to do that I would need to relinquish control; something I wasn’t exactly that great at doing. I was most comfortable when I had a plan. When I knew how something would start and finish. It was how I’d structured my entire life. How could I be expected to change in the blink of an eye? I didn’t even know if I
wanted
to change. And didn’t that tell me something? If Daniel was worth risking my job for, worth endangering my entire career, wouldn’t I
know
that beyond a shadow of a doubt?