Love and Other Theories (25 page)

G
uilt is a funny emotion. It’s an emotion I never expected to feel toward Trip, but now I’m swimming in it so deep, I don’t know how I’ll ever see above the surface.

“Thanks for being there for me last night,” I say to Trip as he drives me to get my car at Leila’s after dinner. I’m glad that’s where I left it and I don’t have to go back to Sam’s. It’d be like returning to the scene of the crime. I stare out the window when I thank him because it comes out sounding so cheesy.

“I’m not even going to ask why in your drunken stupor you wanted me to come get you. I’m just glad you did.”

If possible, his reply is even cheesier.

“Okay.
Right
,” I say. So he knows I’m not fooled.

“I’m serious, Housing,” he says. “I’ve missed that . . . you needing me.”

I whip my head around to stare at him. “I never needed you.” It’s so absurd. What with the theories and making him constantly pursue me last year—how could he possibly think that I ever
needed
him?

Trip smiles and his eyebrows hike up slightly. “Yes, you did, Aubrey.”

There’s a dip in my stomach.

“We needed each other,” he says, readjusting himself and leaning back so he’s closer to me.

I want to scoot closer too, and tilt my head so it’s resting on his shoulder, the way I used to. But I don’t. We just sit there barely touching for the rest of the drive.

When we arrive at Leila’s, Trip waits for me to get in my car before he drives away, honking as he leaves. I’m about to put my car in reverse when I notice Shelby in my rearview mirror. She’s walking toward me from Leila’s open front door. Hanging out at Leila’s on Saturday night isn’t unusual; I should have known she might be here. I roll down my window and take a deep breath.

“Trip Chapman, huh?” she says, smiling. She looks just like my best friend. Talks like her, too. I feel a smile creep across my face. It’s not scary to see Shelby. Even after I’m nearly positive she’s been with Nathan. But if it
wasn’t her, it would have been someone else.

“You know . . .” I rub my head. “It’s just . . . whatever . . .”

“Oh, I
know
. I’m a pro at the
whatevers
.” She glances at her feet, shaking her head.

“Do you need a ride?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “I’ve got a ride coming. I heard honking and thought it was him.”

The BMW horn and the horn on Trip’s old pickup sound nothing alike. Still, I’ve got a hunch. “Nathan?” I’m glad my voice is steady. I’m going to get through this, and the right way this time. I’ve known this day was coming, after all.

She nods quickly, waves her hand.
Whatever
. “I’m glad you’re here, though. No one could get ahold of you. Not last night or today. Now I know why.”

“The thing with Trip . . . it’s nothing, really. We’re not—”

But Shelby doesn’t need an explanation and she doesn’t want one. She interrupts me, asking how many weeks until the series finale of
Mercy Rose
. It’s in three weeks, so that’s what I tell her.

There’s still something sad about sitting here talking to her about the parts of our lives that don’t directly involve us, and skimming over Nathan’s name. But there’s comfort in knowing we can talk like this. Like nothing has changed between us. No matter what happens, we
don’t have to be hurt, we don’t have to wage a war. No one has to know what I did last night, how I handled myself. I can earn back all the points I lost.

We get to keep each other and that’s really the most important thing.

The theories weren’t created so we could keep boys. Forever was never an option with them. The theories exist so that we could have them in the first place. So they would be happy to stay, and free of the burdens of commitment, defining the relationship, and answering the question
What does all this mean?
And we would be happy too, because we would be spared from expectations and disappointment and heartbreak, and all those things that no girl wants to feel.

So it might seem at times like the theories were for them, but they weren’t. They were for us.

AS IT TURNS out, I’m a pro at
whatevers
too. I flirt with Tommy Rizzo. I let myself warm to the idea of tasting his Wintermint breath again. I tease Sam about our kiss during spin the bottle. I don’t correct Robert whenever he says something implying that I have a thriving sexual relationship with Trip Chapman.

A game. That’s all life is; that’s all it feels like. Everyone waiting for their turn to spin the bottle or for the bottle to finally choose them. “Who would you rather?” is real. We can be erased, that’s real too.

Nathan and Shelby are happy. She looks natural sitting in the front seat of his car with her hair blowing in the spring breeze and a smirk on her face. Nathan’s always alive, laughing at her inappropriate jokes, smiling and nodding whenever she asks for a ride to
anywhere but here
.

Nathan Diggs has been Shelby’s
whatever
for two weeks. I haven’t been alone with him for two weeks. Robert sits in between us during Drama. If we talk in the hall, we’re part of someone else’s conversation. Lunch is like that too. We don’t make plans to study. He doesn’t offer to drive me anywhere. There’s no reason for us to be alone, so we’re not.

Not until Friday during Drama, when we’re alone together in the middle of the improv circle. We’re surrounded by the class, and Melvin, but in the scene taking place, it’s just us. We’re forced to talk. Just the two of us, pretending to be other people.

Nathan tagged himself in the scene with me. I’m a patient, he’s the doctor.

“Tell me where you’re hurt.” He mimes using a stethoscope on me. Only he doesn’t touch me; he lets his hand hover over my heart.

I look to the improv circle. Certainly any one of these girls wants to tag me out to play doctor with Nathan Diggs.

I lean away from him and his stethoscope pantomime.

“Maybe you could tell me exactly what’s wrong,” Doctor Nathan says. He runs his fingers over his upper lip like he’s stroking a mustache. The class laughs.

“I have smallpox. The really contagious kind. Everyone in this office has been compromised.”

Nathan presses his lips together like he wants to laugh. It’s stupid, but this makes me feel like crying. That he can still do these things he used to do all the time, like laugh at me when I had no idea I was being funny. But he’s not doing it because of me, he’s just doing it because it’s something
he does
.

“Smallpox hasn’t been around since the seventies,” Doctor Nathan says.

“That’s not true,” I say, but because Nathan said it, I know that it probably is.

“You must be feverish.” His hand slowly comes toward my forehead, toward those stupid strands of hair that he always used to pull on.

I jerk away from him and watch his eyes get large. He makes it easy to forget the theories, the way things are. “Don’t touch me.” It just tumbles out. I hear my own voice echo back at me and realize I’ve probably said this very loudly.

Nathan leans forward slightly. “I wasn’t going to,” he says softly, just to me. His hands are folded together and pressed against his chest, like he’s keeping them as far from me as he can without removing them from my sight.

Everyone is silent. Nathan’s eyes dart around the circle, at all the faces watching us. I feel hot and dizzy, and right when I think I’m really going to collapse, someone hits me in the arm. It’s Robert, tagging me out of the circle.

I’m vaguely aware of an improv scene going on behind me as I walk away from the circle, away from the stage. But I don’t even turn around to make sure Mrs. Seymour hasn’t returned to class, or to check if Melvin is watching. I just keep walking until I’m outside and the sunlight is blinding me. Then I run as fast as I can to my car.

I
stay late after school to ask Ms. Martinez some questions about our physics assignment. Studying has been tough lately. Concentrating is hard. Life is a game with exhausting strategies.

Nathan is by my locker, pacing in the quiet, empty hall when I leave the physics lab. He sees me coming and leans against the locker next to mine.

“Hey.” My voice is perfectly indifferent and perfectly friendly even though Nathan’s not smiling.

“Why weren’t you at lunch?” he asks the floor.

“I was studying. Didn’t anyone tell you?” I rarely do things without Shelby, Danica, or Melissa being aware of
them and Nathan knows that. After I left Drama early I went to the French Roll to study and eat lunch, but where I went didn’t stay a secret for long.

Nathan shakes his head. “I didn’t ask.” He moves over slightly. Just enough so I can open my locker.

“So now you’ve asked,” I say, fumbling in my locker to grab the books I didn’t feel like carting to the physics lab but will need to bring home. I don’t expect him to stay now that his question has been answered, but when I close my locker he’s still standing there, staring at the ground.

“So what happened today? During improv?”

I shake my head and shrug, like I don’t know what he’s talking about.

“It kinda seems like you hate me,” he says.

“I don’t.” I’m not lying.
Hate
is too strong and too rigid a word to peg on a guy in high school. Like
loyalty
. Or
commitment
. Or
boyfriend material.

Nathan finally looks at me.

“You’re not angry with me?”

You should be furious
. I’m
furious
. We’re back in the car, driving down the highway, only I’m the one he’s staring at through the review mirror; I’m the one who doesn’t make sense to him.

“I thought you might . . .” He scratches under his chin, as if that’s enough to finish the sentence. When he realizes that I’m about to leave, he talks quickly. “When you left
the auditorium, I—I went after you. But you were already gone. I thought you might’ve wanted to talk.”

I feel hot prickles of anger. He shouldn’t be pressing this. He should just believe me and leave, and be grateful to do so. He doesn’t walk away, so I do.

“Wait.” He steps in front of me. “What if
I
want to talk?”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

He shakes his head. “Aubrey—”

“Stop.” Nathan is wasting his breath if he thinks he has to talk to bring himself absolution—it’s been his since the day he stumbled late into Lincoln High and I was the one to notice him. I don’t want to know his excuses, his reasoning. That’s the beauty of all of this—we don’t have to know the specifics of why someone decided they didn’t want us anymore. He opens his mouth to speak again, but I only let him get out the first syllable of my name. “It’s nothing,” I tell him.

“Then why did you freak out?”

“I didn’t—”

“Come on, Aubrey. You freaked out. Everyone saw you.”

I make another attempt to leave. He steps in front of me again.

“Look,” he says, his voice is soft. “Are you upset about Shelby and—”

“Shelby and
you?
No, I’m not upset about that.”

“Then why won’t you just talk to me about it? Why do you keep running away?”

“Because there’s nothing to say!”

I move away from him and he grabs my arm. It makes me want to scream, the reminder of how his touch can feel gentle and strong all at the same time.

“Aubrey . . . I never wanted us to have nothing to say to each other. . . . Just because Shelby and I—” This is what he says to me. He’s holding on to my arm to make me listen to
this
. I yank my arm out of his grip and it works—he doesn’t finish. “You don’t understand,” he says instead.

He’s so wrong. I understand perfectly.

I don’t raise my voice. I just shrug. I hope he can see that I mean it when I tell him, “It doesn’t matter to me what you do. I don’t care that you’re hooking up with Shelby.”

He shakes his head. “I’m not—”

It’s the question I’m not supposed to ask, but here I am with the perfect opportunity to ask it. I take it. “You’re not hooking up with her?”

Nathan stares at the ground. He nods. “No, I did.”

I can’t speak.
Did.
It’s all I can think about it.
Did.
He used to. He
did
. He’s not anymore.

“You can’t really be mad about that though, can you?” he says.

“I’m not mad about it.”

“Okay.” His tone is mocking. He shrugs. “I feel like I’ve messed up.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I tell him again.

“It feels like I did. Even though you were doing the same thing.”

He stares at me now, for the first time looking me directly in the eyes. He’s desperate, but I’m not sure which answer he’s more desperate for: that it’s okay he started hooking up with Shelby because I’d been doing the same thing with Trip; or that I was never hooking up with Trip and he’s really the only person I’ve wanted since I met him. Neither answer will make it better or worse for him.

“I wasn’t.” He doesn’t really deserve the truth, but I still give it to him. There’s no reason to lie, according to the theories. He felt like he was doing something wrong—something that would hurt me—but he did it anyway.

He doesn’t look relieved or disappointed. He seems confused.

“Trip is my best friend,” I explain. Trip. Shelby. All my best friends are intimidating. They’re extraordinary. When I think about it like that, it makes me feel weak. But maybe I’m strong in my own way, to have kept people like that in my life. I try to tell myself that I’m strong while I’m standing across from Nathan and he’s giving me the look he gave me on the first day of school.

I’m all yours.

He scratches the back of his head and stares down the hall behind him like he’s thinking about making a quick getaway. I know he won’t go anywhere, though, not now. He opens his mouth a few times. He’s got something to say but he just can’t find the words, or he’s not brave enough to use them.

“What do you want from me?” I finally ask.

His lips stay sealed and he just shakes his head, looking to his feet like he wishes he had something to kick.

But he doesn’t have to answer. I know exactly how he feels. When nothing is defined it’s freeing, but it can also be unsatisfying.

There’s a pull to stay, to wait for him to sort out whatever it is he wants to say—but I don’t give in to it. I go. Exactly like I’m supposed to. The theories can still protect me. They have to. Nothing else will.

Nathan grabs my arm and turns me around so I’m facing him. His face is barely six inches away from mine. I don’t pull away and soon both his hands are on me, gripping my shoulders.

And then I do exactly what I’m not supposed to do. Nathan Diggs is kissing me and I’m kissing him back.