Love and Other Theories (18 page)

“You know why.” There’s a long pause before he continues. “But you’re the first person I thought of—”

“When you were failing out?” My voice is weak, but there’s still an edge to it.

I imagine him nodding when I hear him say, “Uh-hmm. You’re always the first person I think of.”

I want to ask him what he means. But everything feels foggy and thick, and all I want to do is give in to the comfort of his bed and lose myself there.

“W
ho do you think you are, Little Susie?” my mother shouts at me over the phone. I have the urge to call her a dork for saying that, for referencing that ridiculous old song that she hums along to in the kitchen, “Wake Up Little Susie,” about a girl and boy who fall asleep together by mistake. But calling her names will only hurt my cause.

“I’m sorry, Mom, it was an accident! I swear!”

I’m standing in Trip’s dining room staring out the window, waiting for Melissa to pull into the driveway with clothes and deodorant and makeup, while my mother tells me over the phone again how worried she
was and how mad she is. I don’t point out that she knew exactly where I was and that if she was as worried as she claimed to be in the voice mail she left me last night, she could have just come over and gotten me.

I don’t dare go home this morning. If my mother were to see me like this, with bed head and smelling like cedar and Trip’s aftershave, it would only make things worse for me.

Melissa’s white car tears through the trees and pulls up the gravel driveway.

“Okay, Mom, I have to go. Can we talk about this tonight?”

“Come straight home after school. I mean it. This isn’t over!”

Melissa storms inside, and I’m so quick to greet her we practically bump into each other. Shelby’s with her, but she’s in no rush. She hasn’t even made it to the porch when Melissa and I scurry into the bathroom. Melissa’s brought a hair dryer, which she blows at me in the Chapmans’ tiny bathroom while I attempt to change into the clothing she’s brought. I’ve managed to shower this morning. It would have been nice if the Chapmans used conditioner.

Shelby doesn’t join us in the bathroom. We can hear her in hallway teasing Zane, speaking to him through the crack in his door.

“Zane, get up and entertain me.”

“I’ve missed you.”

“Do you sleep in the nude?”

“Zaaannnnee, are you dreaming about me?”

“Where’s your little girlfriend?”

When I’m finally fit to be seen—wearing a pair of Shelby’s jeans, which are just a little too long, and one of Melissa’s long-sleeve tees, with dryish hair and a made-up face—we find Shelby in the living room chatting with Trip, hunched over the coffee table as he eats cereal.

He smiles when he sees me. “Is the fire out?”

Only Shelby laughs, since Melissa and I took this whole getting-me-to-school-looking-normal-and-not-as-if-I’ve-just-slept-over-at-Trip-Chapman’s-house mission very seriously.

Trip was a zombie when I woke up this morning. At seven a.m. Less than an hour before the first bell. I screamed and ran around the room, called Melissa, jumped in the shower, then finally called my mother. Trip, still fully clothed with his shoes on, mumbled something like “Oh, shit,” but fell right back asleep.

“Are you going to be okay?” Trip asks me, leaning around Shelby so he can see me.

It’s not fair, the way Trip’s looking at me right now. Like he cares about me, like he’s waiting for me to tell him I’m okay so he’ll be okay too. The first thing I loved about Trip was this—the way he seemed so exposed, like I was unknotting him slowly and he was unraveling, but
happy to do so because I would be the one to hold the pieces of him.

What’s even more unfair is that aside from that, he’s wearing a thin white undershirt that shows off the shape of his chest and the definition in his arms. His hair is messy, and everything about his face is alluring.

“I’ll be fine,” I tell him, but my voice catches.

“Stop drooling—we’re taking her away now.” Shelby says this to Trip, but I flinch like she’s talking to me.

“Come on.” Melissa turns the doorknob. She’s pulling on my arm with her other hand.

“Yoooouuuu,”
Shelby sings, pinching my waist as we walk down Trip’s driveway. “You couldn’t help yourself, could you?”

“I told you, nothing happened.”

“I believe you.” Melissa nods at me.

Shelby climbs into the front passenger seat of my car. Melissa frowns. She might be jealous that Shelby’s not riding with her. Or she might be worried for me, because if Shelby thinks I’ve hooked up with Trip, she’s never going to let up.

“Seriously, Shelby,” I tell her.

“Okay, okay. You didn’t hook up with him. Why the hell not?”

I pretend to concentrate on pulling out of the driveway and onto the road. Then on switching lanes.

The answer I have is not the one I’m supposed to have.

“Oh, come on,” she says, as if I said “Nathan Diggs” out loud.

“It wasn’t like that,” I try to explain. “It’s not like Trip and I were . . .”
Going back to the way we were
is how I want to finish the sentence. I can’t bring myself to.

“Don’t sound so sad about it.”

But I am sad about it. I feel the loneliness again. For passing out in Trip’s bed and knowing that’s the closest I’ll ever be to him again. For being fine with it. For being fine with never again getting what I used to want more than anything, because now I have something else, someone else, I want more. Even though, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter.

“We just fell asleep.” This makes me feel better. This makes me feel worse.

At school, I’m teased. My story is hilarious to Robert, especially the part about me being so scared to go home that I’m wearing Shelby’s and Melissa’s clothes. Celine cringes with jealousy, so at least there’s that. I can’t look at Nathan. There’s no reason for him to be mad—for him to be anything—about what didn’t happen between Trip and me.

“My mom called me Little Susie,” I tell them at lunch.

The only one who gets the joke is Nathan. He laughs, and I lean into him, but not for long. He’s laughing at something else now, and leaning away from me, talking about something to do with the tournament parties;
something that makes Robert’s eyes grow wide; something that has them high-fiving.

“Let’s leave,” I say to Nathan, tugging on his sleeve.

“Okay, hang on.”

I think he’s going to cut them off to tell them where he’s going. To brag, maybe.

There’s an anxiousness spreading through me. I want us to drive to our housing development and lie together in the backseat. He can tell me what’s so funny and I can tell him again that nothing happened last night.

It’s all I can think about as I watch him with Patrick and Robert. The three of them laughing more at jokes I’ll never get.

Sometimes I forget that Nathan is just another guy. He kissed me before he ever told me the entire truth about himself. And the theories worked on him just like they do on everyone.

So I don’t remind him we were supposed to leave. I sit next to him in the cafeteria and laugh about last weekend like it was epic.

I’M GROUNDED THAT week, including the weekend, and I get a special
talking-to
from my mother about how I should not be having sex, especially not with Trip. At least I don’t have to lie to her about what happened that night.

On Saturday morning I wake up to a series of this-is-what-you-missed drunken text messages. They used to
make me feel special, but it feels bad to be receiving them again.

Some of them are from Nathan. One says
ROBERT AND PATRICK ARE CRAZY
, as if I didn’t know. Another says,
GOOD NIGTT
. I assume this was supposed to say “Good night.” I wonder how drunk and crazy Nathan got with Robert and Patrick while I wasn’t there.

The final text message is from Shelby.
NATHAN DIGGS FINALLY CAME ALIVE TONIGHT
.

M
y lips were stained red the entire summer after fifth grade thanks to all the cherry Popsicles in Shelby’s freezer. We wore bikinis every day that summer, sitting in Shelby’s backyard trying to get tan, running lemon juice over our hair even though only Shelby’s hair ever got any lighter from the sun.

Shelby’s sister, Sienna, had her first boyfriend that summer. His name was Josh and Sienna said his name a lot. Josh was never a
he
or a
him
or a
boyfriend
; he was always Josh.

Shelby could spot the lovesickness early. The desperation of it, the wrongness of it. But I thought it was sweet.
Josh was always touching Sienna. His hand forever on her shoulder, on the small of her back, tickling her palms, tracing hearts into the back of her neck. And he always had secrets to tell her. She always had things to whisper back.

Sandra was dating too, but her dates were always
he
s or
him
s or
date
s; they didn’t have names. And she never let them touch her. She never had much to say to them. All they got was her rehearsed smile followed by the words
Good night
.

This was back when Sandra worked as a secretary for the environmental division at the plant and always had one of the other secretaries, Peggy Lawson, over. They would spend hours at the dining room table with magazines and lemonade talking about men and how there were no good ones left.

“Enjoy it while you’re young,” Peggy used to say to Sienna.

Sandra would sigh and say, “Ah, young love.” And even though it always sounded like she was joking, she and Peggy never laughed.

Then one night Shelby and I were lying in the front yard on an unzipped and unfolded sleeping bag watching the stars, talking about boys like we knew what we were saying, when Josh’s car pulled up. Sienna rushed out of the car and Josh chased her. He caught her when she was halfway up the walkway. Sienna was crying. Josh was
holding her shoulders, then putting his hand under her chin so she would look at him. I couldn’t tell what they were fighting about, what Sienna was crying about. Not exactly. But there was another name bouncing around amid their yelling, Sienna’s sharp tears, Josh’s defensiveness. Hilary. That’s all I can remember about the fight itself, that it wasn’t just about Sienna and Josh, it was also about someone named Hilary.

Sienna stopped crying eventually and let Josh hold her face between his hands and wipe away her tears while he whispered something to her that made her kiss him passionately. Shelby rolled her eyes and flopped back down. I watched a little longer as Josh kissed Sienna, leaning over her, almost overpowering her. She would have tipped backward if her hands weren’t balled into fists gripping his shirt.

Shelby had seen it all along. Something wasn’t right about this love. I could see it now. It was too early, too soon, too much—so fast and furious and eager that it was swallowing Sienna.

For Sandra love was slow. It had contingencies. Money and homeownership and chewing with your mouth closed and keeping your nails clean.
Nonsmoker
.
Nonalcoholic
.
Savings account
.
Employed
. All words that Sandra and Peggy said about men before they said the word
love
. Factors and rules and checklists. Love was less about feelings than it was about so many other things.
Things I couldn’t understand but knew were important too.

I remember wondering if there was a balance—a way to have the rules and the love, if they could ever coexist.