Love and Other Theories (10 page)

T
he abnormality of my new life is easy to adjust to. I know it hasn’t really been that long; I’ve known Nathan for only two weeks, but I’m actually having trouble remembering what life was like when I wasn’t spending all of Drama class searching for opportunities to make out with him, and every hour after school either talking with my friends about making out with him or actually making out with him, in the backseat of his car or in his bedroom that precious hour before his mother comes home from work. I used to have student council meetings or debate team or study sessions with Ella and Marnie after school. All those things seem so strange and foreign now.

Nathan and I do spend a lot of time studying. Because being accepted into Barron means you still have to take a few AP classes your senior year.

With Nathan, it’s enjoyable, though. Not that I didn’t find some pleasure in it before, but I’m pretty positive that without Barron to motivate me, any academic obligation this semester would seem like just that. Obligation. There are some things that almost never go together—i.e., boys and studying—but when they do, it’s surprisingly spectacular. Like bacon ice cream, for example. Shelby dared me to order a scoop one afternoon when we were bored, and we fought over who would take the first bite, then fought over who got to finish it off because it turned out to be outrageously delicious.

“You’re falling asleep,” Nathan says into my ear. We go parking during lunch. The word
parking
, like we’re living in the fifties, makes us laugh every time. But that’s really the most accurate description for what we’re doing.

“This book.” I sigh. I have to have it finished by Monday. It’s Friday. Nathan’s the only one who understands this urgency, who knows without my having to explain it that I want to finish the book today so I can write notes on Saturday and spend Sunday evening reviewing them.

“Here,” he says, helping me sit up. “Come here.” He puts his arm around me. My body battles with itself for a second: the heat of his skin versus the chills (the good kind) I get whenever he touches me.

He takes the worn school copy of
As I Lay Dying
and holds it out in front of us.

“Where’d you leave off?”

I point to the end of the second paragraph on the right page, curious whether he’s going to do what I think he’s going to do. And he does. He reads to me.

At first I want to laugh. I know that’s what Shelby would do. But the truth is, I like it.

It feels personal. Everything Nathan does feels personal.

AFTER SCHOOL I’M meeting Nathan at his house. His parents will be gone until seven. He’s sure this time.

“Bring him to Robert’s when you’re done with him,” Shelby says to me. That’s where all the fun is happening tonight.

I nod at her. “All right.”

“
Somebody’s
a little eager,” Shelby says in Melissa’s ear, but loud enough that I can hear.

“She can hardly wait—look at her.” Melissa giggles.

I grin, despite myself.

I’m outlasting the two-week mark with Nathan. Trip was mine for a long, long time, thanks to the theories. But that’s also because he wasn’t entirely mine. And I was never entirely his. After I take Nathan to Robert’s tonight more people will know what I know: that Nathan is perfect. And he’ll start to learn about them, too.

“You know what?” I interrupt Shelby in the middle of a story about Leila and lost girl points. “I don’t think Nathan and I are going to make it tonight, after all.”

“That’s bullshit!” she says, then gasps. “Wait! Are you finally going to do the deed?”

“Probably,” I tell her. It’s not the truth, although I suppose it could be. Nathan and I have always kept one layer of clothing—even it was just underwear—between us and
the deed
. We’ve never even attempted to cross that barrier.

The two of them proceed with the usual screaming and cheering, along with “Get it!” and “Remember to wrap the pickle!” and “No glove, no love!” Because, as Shelby always says, we’re “condom advocates.”

“Calm down!” I yell at them. My heart has already started to race. They laugh, so I laugh too. Just the thought of having sex with Nathan makes my palms sweaty.

“Have fun, be safe” are Shelby’s parting words.

NATHAN GREETS ME at the front door with a kiss. “There you are.”

“Here I am.” Then Nathan is kissing me again. And pulling me up the stairs, into his bedroom.

I fall back onto his bed while he locks the door, and I stare up through the skylight. The snow has melted, and the sky is gray and cloudy. Nathan lies down next to me
on his side; he puts his hand on my stomach as he kisses me. Night comes faster in the winter, but it feels better, more romantic, more intense, being with him like this while the world outside is dark and sleepy and cold.

When we’ve reached the point of one layer and he’s kissing my neck, I whisper in his ear. “Do you have something?”

He rolls to his side, keeping one hand resting on my rib cage.

“What?” But I can tell by his face that he understood me.

He doesn’t move, so I do. I sit up. My purse is across the room, and yes, I’ve got a condom in it. Shelby gave them to us last year when she told us we should always have one on us because you never know when you might need it. She was right. “I have something, I think—”

Nathan puts his hand on my shoulder, stopping me.

“Wait,” he says. “Are you sure?” He sounds calm, which I expected, but he also doesn’t sound like he really believes I want to have sex, or that I have a condom in my purse.

“I’m sure,” I tell him. He takes his hand off my shoulder, but he uses it to rub under his chin. He doesn’t look at all excited that I’m ready to give him the one thing
everyone
wants. “Do you not want to?” I sound irritated. I was trying for confident.

“It’s not that.” His lips turn up a little, and I’m glad.

“I know. I mean, I
know
you want to.”

He looks at me, confused, so I let my eyes travel down. He’s only wearing one layer, after all. He blushes, but he also smiles.

“You got me,” he says, laughing lightly. “Us guys, we’re all so transparent.”

“You all are, actually.”

He stops me again when I move to stand.

I stare at him. Waiting. He looks flushed—
flustered
, maybe—and he takes a deep breath. So I just ask him. “Have you never . . . before—”

“No, I have. Once. Have you?”

“Well, yeah.” It shocks me a little that he thinks I haven’t.

He nods and looks to the ground.

“With just one person,” I add, even though it shouldn’t matter to him. There’s a pull to tell him I have a
one
in the equation of experience too. Just like he does.

He nods again. “Your ex-boyfriend?”

“No, not exactly.” I fix my eyes on my purse across the room. We’re not supposed to be discussing it like this, explaining ourselves. It’s supposed to be one of the impulsive moments that we get to keep after time and high school have pulled us apart.

“Aubrey.” I feel his hand brush against my cheek and I look at him. “I want to . . . but—not—”

“But not tonight.”

He shakes his head. “I’m too afr—I’m apprehensive. My mom could come home early again. And I want it to be perfect.” He’s holding my hand, and I don’t even remember when he grabbed it. His thumb traces circles on the inside of my wrist. It’s one of his nervous tics, but it is romantic sometimes too.

It feels like my whole body is smiling. “Okay,” I say. “Another time.” After a moment I add, “When you’re not afraid.” I can’t help myself.

Nathan covers his face with his free hand, but he’s grinning so wide I can see his teeth. He playfully pushes me back, and then he’s hovering over me, kissing my neck, my cheeks. “I said
apprehensive
,” he says. “I was very careful.”

I laugh. It’s nice this once to feel like the reckless one.

“I
’m bored!” Shelby proclaims on Saturday night. We’re doing what people do when they’re bored on Saturday nights. We’re wandering the mall drinking cherry Slurpees mixed with vodka and waiting for something to miraculously entertain us. But this time Nathan is with us.

“We could go to Paul’s,” Patrick says. The first time he said this, we pretended we didn’t hear him. This time we don’t give him that same courtesy. Shelby groans and Melissa gasps like he’s just suggested we spend the night committing murder. Danica sighs and puts her hands on her hips. Paul Detrick wasn’t cool when he went to
Lincoln High two years ago, and he still isn’t cool. But now he has his own apartment and buys a keg every weekend. His parties are always heavily attended when there’s absolutely nothing else to do, which is why Shelby named him Last-Resort Paul.

“I’m never going to another one of Last-Resort Paul’s parties again,” Melissa says loudly. “I made a vow, remember?”

It’s true. In November she got doused with beer by one of Paul’s loser friends and vowed loudly and officially, with one finger in the air, that she would never set foot inside Paul Detrick’s apartment again. None of us took her seriously, of course. She goes where we go, and none of us made that vow. Although we probably should have. The one and only time I’ve been to Paul’s, my feet stuck to the linoleum floor.

“You could take us, right, man?” Patrick nudges Nathan.

Nathan picked us up from Shelby’s and drove us here, where we met Robert and Patrick.

“You could drive my car,” Patrick says, addressing the problem of how seven people would fit in one BMW, since Patrick drives an SUV.

When Nathan declined a vodka-laced Slurpee, I thought about declining too. Then he jingled his keys to explain, and I knew staying sober would make me look loyal in the worst way possible. But it’s been much too
long since someone’s told me I’m charming when I’m drunk who wasn’t also drunk, so I sip my drink slowly.

It’s Shelby who comes to Nathan’s rescue. “Drop it, Patrick. If you want to go to Last-Resort Paul’s, go by yourself.”

Patrick gives Shelby one of those extremely perverted smiles that are not at all subtle. “I’ll stay for you, Shels.”

“You’ve had too much of this,” Shelby says flatly, not looking at him. She yanks the Slurpee out of his hand and gives it to Robert, who lets out a small hoot of joy as he dumps Patrick’s Slurpee into his cup.

Shelby shoots me a smile. She got Patrick off her back, which was precisely what she wanted. Leila and Patrick are on the outs again, which means he’s looking for someone to hook up with tonight. And since Shelby’s hooked up with him before, he’s playing the odds. Such a wasted effort. Part of the reason Shelby hooked up with him in the first place was because Patrick’s probably the most attractive guy in our class. The other part is that she used to really like him. Her crush on him started in the third grade and, from what I can tell, ended that hot summer night when she hooked up with him in his parents’ bedroom with all the lights on and a party raging on the other side of the door. Shelby’s first time.

I wonder if Nathan’s bored.
If he wishes we were spending tonight how we spent last night. Or if he wishes our Saturday nights were more like how his used to be. If he wishes we were playing Scrabble or that some of us were wearing paraphernalia from a fast-food restaurant.

“What would you normally be doing on a boring Saturday night?” Shelby’s the one who asks him this. Everyone stops walking to listen.

“Maybe he’s never had a dull night.” Danica laughs.

Nathan shakes his head and returns his gaze to me. It almost seems like he’s uncomfortable looking at anyone else. “It was all dull Friday nights,” he says, smiling a little, like maybe he wants us to think he’s joking.

“In that case”—Shelby’s got a stupid grin on her face and the devil in her eyes—“the haunted barn. Or are you too scared, Robert?”

“Please,” Robert says.

“No,” Danica, Melissa, and I whine almost at the same time. “Not the haunted barn.”

“Don’t be such babies!” Shelby groans.

“It’s forty minutes away,” I argue, my eyes falling on Nathan so they get the point: we’re not going to just ask Nathan Diggs to drive us all the way out to the haunted barn, a place you seriously have to be drunk to enjoy.

“I don’t mind,” Nathan says quickly.

“The haunted barn sucks. We’re not going,” Danica says.

“Even Dull Diggs is down to go,” Shelby tells us. “Why are you all acting like such lame-asses?” Shelby puts her hands in her pockets and does
the move,
which
isn’t going to work on me but will probably work on the male members of the group.

“I’m not being a lame-ass; I just don’t want to drive all the way out there.”

“It’s not like you have a curfew tonight. Everyone is staying with me except—”

Before she can give Nathan another awful nickname, I surrender. That’s the only choice, really, when Shelby has her mind made up. “Fine. Let’s just get it over with.”

Nathan turns to Shelby. “So tell me about this . . . haunted barn. Is it as self-explanatory as it seems?”

Shelby’s booming laugh drowns out mine. “Come on, Diggs.” She tilts her head at the exit. “We’ll take you places you’ve never been before.”

We follow Shelby out to the parking lot and search for Patrick’s SUV. Of course he’s forgotten where he parked it.

“You’d better call shotgun,” Nathan says in my ear. It surprises me that he thinks anyone would challenge the front seat when I’m the reason he’s here. For now. When I do say “Shotgun!” once the car is in clear view, everyone ignores me—like this is no surprise. Nathan ignores me too, because he was probably kidding about it all along.

There is only one reason people go to the haunted barn: so they can talk about it the next week at school. So that instead of saying “we walked around the mall drinking until we got bored enough to see a movie, then
passed out at Shelby’s at a very unreasonable hour,” we can say we did something out of town and dangerous.

ONE HOUR LATER the six of us stand on the hard dirt ground in front of the haunted barn, waiting to be haunted. Or freeze to death, whichever happens first.

“This is nice,” Nathan says, eyeing the decrepit old barn.

It really does look like it could fall over at any moment, which would actually be more exciting than what we’re really waiting for. The haunting. There’s something that happens every once in a while. The barn comes to life. The two large doors in front, wide enough for things like tractors and multiple cows to fit through, open slowly, then shut all on their own. While this is happening, the regular-size doors on the right side of the barn are also opening and shutting on their own. My dad, forever the engineer, once told me that it’s the barn’s structure, the way the foundation was laid and the way the unsteady wood framing has shifted with time, that makes the doors do that. Mainly he told me so I would never go inside the barn. As if a possible encounter with a ghost wasn’t enough of a reason to keep me out.

“Just be patient, Diggs,” Shelby tells Nathan.

“We spend so much time waiting,” Robert says. “It feels like this is all there is. It’s like we don’t have to be anywhere ever again.”

Robert is drunk, but I get this. Saturday nights feel like this sometimes when they’re slow. Like they’re going to stretch out forever and ever, giving no real revelations, hitting no spikes, no climaxes, nothing new. Just a flatline of waiting for what is bigger and better and beyond.

Melissa’s voice is small, but full of concern. “My mom will worry if I don’t come home.”

“We have school on Monday,” Danica says. “We do have
somewhere
to be.”

“Fuck school,” Robert replies.

“We need school,” Melissa says, like she’s worried that everything we say out here in the country, in the quiet, is going to be the truth somehow.

In the silence that follows, Nathan and I exchange a quick glance. We need school so we can leave. So we can find the bigger and better and beyond.

“Can you imagine how sad it would be,” Robert says, “to have all the time in the world to just wait for something that might never happen?”

“So . . . there’s a chance that
nothing
will happen with this barn?” The second the last syllable escapes Nathan’s lips, the barn comes to life. This excites us more than it should. We’re screaming and Patrick is running around in circles like a hyper dog. Nathan and Robert high-five. Melissa jumps up and down. Shelby is wearing that rare smile on her face where her mouth opens so wide, a bird could fly right into it. Danica is howling with laughter.
We’re all so happy not to be waiting anymore. With the moonlight bouncing off the metal hinges of the barn, and the creaking of the doors opening and closing mingling with the chirping crickets, it’s its own kind of spectacular.

Nathan walks close to me on the way back to the car. I feel a headache in place of where I should be feeling drunk and suddenly wish I hadn’t dumped so much of my Slurpee in the garbage. We’re almost to the car when Patrick and Robert yell to Nathan to come over and see something. Melissa shrieks at the ground. Danica’s lip curls up in disgust. It’s something gross, probably a dead rat, so Nathan goes. Shelby and I know better than to follow.

Nathan looks back at me, like he’s checking to make sure my arm’s not extended or I’m not scampering to keep up.

“That’s funny,” Shelby says, noticing. “I think he’s trying to
girlfriend
you.”

“Maybe.” It just slips out.

“Doesn’t he know you’re not like that?”

She means this as a compliment. I laugh and shrug like this is the first time I’ve ever even considered this about Nathan—because why would I?

She laughs too, but she’s studying me. I can tell because her eyes don’t squint like they normally do when she’s really, genuinely laughing. She’s searching me for
weaknesses—signs that I want him to be my boyfriend, that I’m going to say yes to him if he pursues it. She wants to know if I’m turning into the girl we hate right now but know we will become someday.

The girl we will become someday: the this-love-took-me-by-surprise-and-swept-me-away girl, or the I-tried-pushing-him-away-but-failed-because-he’s-so-damn-persistent-and-I-can’t-deny-my-feelings-any-longer girl, and the he-finally-rescued-me-from-my-confusion-and-comforted-all-my-doubts-about-love girl.

The girl we will become someday is just that—a future person. If we were showing symptoms of becoming her right now, it’d mean we were delusional.

The obvious secret that no one ever seems to remember when they’re crying their eyes out over a boy who didn’t want to be their boyfriend: relationships are supposed to be accidents. You don’t find them. They find you. And there is no such thing as love in high school, so playing like there is—even entertaining the thought—is a waste of your time.

“I don’t get him.” This statement was meant to be casual with regard to Nathan, but saying this is like admitting that I’ve been trying to figure him out. Shelby is smiling and I know she’s not fooled for a second. I try again with, “I think he was probably a giant nerd at his old high school”—throwing Nathan under the bus if it means I get to stay in the front seat.

“I have that theory too.”

“You have theories about Nathan?”

Shelby raises her eyebrows.

Of course. She has theories about everybody. “So what are they?”

“Well, originally I thought his problem was that he’s a virgin.” She pauses to let me react. I don’t know if she expects to me laugh or if she just wants me to feel more shame since I didn’t have sex with him last night like I said I would. “I think he’s always been good-looking the way Patrick has always been good-looking, but Patrick has always been cool, so people have always noticed that he’s good-looking. With Nathan . . . it’s like it’s the first time people are aware he’s hot and he doesn’t know what to do now that people are noticing him.”

I nod. It’s not so far from the theories I’ve had about Nathan, I suppose. It might sound like Shelby’s being passive-aggressive, and what she really means is that I was the first to have Nathan Diggs by default. But I know that’s not what she means. One of us would have gotten him. Because we’re evolved, we always get what we want. And Nathan is desirable. There’s no denying that.

“He’s like a lost puppy.” She laughs, and I laugh with her.

I think of the way he kissed me the first day I met him, his hands getting tighter around my waist, his chest
right up against mine. And the way he charmed my parents into smiles, turned my little brothers social, and transformed a tedious book into poetry. “He’s not that lost, though.”

“Right,” Shelby says. “He’s just never had a life before.” She winks at me, so I take the compliment with a smile. I think she can see the ways Nathan and I are alike. The ways I could have ended up being just like him at his old school. All the things she’s saved me from.

“So are you going to see Trip tomorrow?” Shelby asks, testing.

“I don’t know.”

“What would stop you?” she asks, more testing.

“Um, have you met Trip? He can be . . . a pain.”