Real Live Boyfriends (21 page)

“Yeah. I just didn’t dwel on it and fall apart like some people,” he said, still moving fast. “I walked away.”

“Is that what you’re doing now?” I said. “You’re walking away from this conversation?”

“I wanted to be happy,” he nearly barked at me. “Is that such a hard thing to understand?”

“But how could you be happy? Booth died right in front of you!” I cried.

Noel winced. “Why are you bringing all this up, Ruby? It’s history.”

“Because you and I had something,” I said, on the edge of tears. We were walking through the parking lot now. Noel headed toward his Vespa and unlocked his helmet. “We were close,” I went on. “I mean, I thought we were close—but you didn’t tell me this horrible, horrible thing that happened.”

“I didn’t tell you because I wanted to forget,” said Noel. “And I still want to. Can you please just leave it alone?”

He sat on the scooter but he didn’t put the helmet on.

“How can you forget that?” I said. “You can’t forget that. You have to deal with it.”

“Listen,” said Noel. “I came back and I wanted to be with you. It was you who kept being unhappy all the time. You were always complaining that things weren’t right.”

“Because things were obviously not right!” I cried.

“How could you not trust me enough to tell me what happened?”

“I didn’t tell anyone, okay, Ruby? I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t even talk about it with my parents.

Like I said, I wanted to forget.”

“But I’m not a forgetting person,” I said. “I’m not an ignoring person. You should have known it wouldn’t work.”

“What?”

“I can’t forget things, or ignore them—bad things that happen,” I said. “I’m a lay-it-all-out person, a dwell-on-it person, an obsess-about-it person. If I hold things in and try to forget or pretend, I become a madman and have panic attacks. I have to talk.”

“Okay. That’s you,” said Noel, tapping his helmet with his fingers. “That’s not me.”

“Well, if you wanted some forget-about-it girlfriend, you should have stuck with Ariel Olivieri, or found some freshman who would think it was cool you were so emo and would never ask you anything about anything,” I said heatedly. “But you picked me, and I have to understand things. It was like torture to me that you had this huge secret, even though I didn’t
know
you had it, because somehow I could
feel
it there, distracting you, hurting you and—” I started crying then, and clapped my hand over my mouth.

“I didn’t mean to torture you.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry I went out on the lake with Gideon, I’m sorry I didn’t know how to be there for you—”

Noel interrupted. “I didn’t want anybody there for me.”

“I know it’s so stupid,” I went on, the words gushing out. “But when I saw what you wrote on the peer

questionnaire just now, I thought maybe you could love me again. I mean, not love, maybe not love, because we never said
love
, so that’s not the right word, but—

oh crap, all this is coming out wrong—you wrote such nice things, about me caring and about how I was witty. You said I made the world seem shiny—so I thought—I thought maybe you still felt the way I do and

—”

My throat closed up and I felt so, so stupid I could barely talk. I rubbed my sleeve across my face and tried to get my breathing under control.

Then, as we stood in silence for just that quick moment, I realized I didn’t have to be there anymore. I didn’t have to humiliate myself this way, begging for Noel to want me again.

I could just end this horrible situation right now.

“I have to go,” I said, and spun around.

“Bye.”

I walked on shaky legs to the trail that led from the parking lot back to the main campus of Tate. My pack felt heavy on my shoulder.

It was only as I started down the path that I heard Noel’s Vespa pull up behind me.

“Ruby,” he called.

“What?” I turned. He had his helmet under his arm still, and his face was extremely pale in the cold November light. We were about six feet apart.

“
Love
was the right word,” he said.

I stared at him.

“It was definitely the right word,” he said. “For what we used to have.”

Then he drove away.

“It sounds to me as if he’s immature,” said Doctor Z, chewing a piece of Nicorette. “And possibly

limited.”

“What do you mean?”

“Has he had a girlfriend before?”

I shook my head. “Not a serious one, anyway.”

“He’s inexperienced.”

“We’re seventeen. Of course we’re inexperienced.”

“Well,” said Doctor Z. “You have more history than a lot of teenagers do in terms of having a romantic relationship that lasts more than a couple weeks.” Oh. “What do you mean, Noel is limited?”

“It sounds like there are limits to what he’s willing to risk. To where he’s willing to go, emotionally,” said Doctor Z.

“The whole parking lot debacle was completely humiliating,” I told her. “When we started talking, I meant to be sympathetic about Booth and thank him for the nice things he wrote in the peer questionnaire.

But as soon as I got near him and we were talking, all these feelings started spilling out uncontrollably.”

“The thing to consider,” said Doctor Z, “is whether a relationship with a limited person of this type is something you want to pursue.”

“The thing to consider,” I said, “is why I don’t seem to be able to keep my mouth shut when it would really, really be to my advantage to do so.”

“The thing to consider,” said Meghan, the next day at the B&O, “is who else you can go out with.”

“What? I don’t want to go out with anyone else. If I did, I wouldn’t have broken up with Gideon.”

“Gideon obviously wasn’t doing it for you,” said Meghan, licking her coffee spoon provocatively.

“Gideon is a great guy.”

“Yawn. I’m sure he is. But you need to fall in love with someone other than Noel, and obviously you

couldn’t fall in love with Gideon.”

“I think I need to be
Noboyfriend
if I can’t be with Noel.”

“How much fun is that?” said Meghan.

“It’s not fun. It’s just—” I broke off.

“He’s the one you want,” said Meghan. Suddenly understanding.

I nodded.

Meghan pushed her chocolate cheesecake across the table to me. I hadn’t gotten paid yet for November, so I had only ordered coffee. “Here,” she said.

“Don’t you want it?”

“Sure I want it. I ordered it. But I’m giving it to you.”

“Why?”

Meghan stood up and got me a fork. “Remember what Nora said about love? In your movie?”

“Love is when you have a really amazing piece of cake, and it’s the very last piece, but you let him have it,” I said.

“So it’s really amazing cake,” said Meghan. “And I want you to have it.”

“The thing to consider,” said Nora, “is that boys are not the most important things in life.” She was running the bake sale this year. Varsha from swim team and I were sitting in her kitchen, helping her make “magic cookies” for the recruiting table.

“I mean, I’m sad for Gideon that you don’t want to go out with him anymore,” Nora went on, “but let’s face it. He’ll recover. He always has one girlfriend or another.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And now you’re free to concentrate on what’s really important.”

“Like what?”

“Roo!” Varsha rolled her eyes at me.

“Seriously. Like what?”

“It’s senior year. hello. college apps?” said Varsha.

“Or the bake sale—raising money for Happy Paws,” said Nora.

“And sports,” said Varsha. “You are like this close to being a serious contender. If you worked out more, you could get your time down.”

Nora added: “Plus you’ll probably make varsity goalie in lacrosse this year if you go back on the team.”

I knew I was supposed to care about these things. I
did
actually care about them.

I just couldn’t concentrate on them.

I still had a broken heart, I guess.

It wasn’t healing, and the fact that Noel had said he loved me—all right,
used to
love me—I couldn’t get it out of my head.

“I broke up with Happy, by the way,” said Nora. “In case you are doubting whether I practice what I preach.”

“By the way?” I squealed. “How can you just mention that as a ‘by the way’? That’s a serious thing.”

Nora shrugged. “He’s too much of a party boy. He’s going to get to college and join a frat. You know he is.” I nodded. Fraternities were in Happy’s future. There was no denying it.

“Now you have time to run the bake sale,” I said to Nora. “Which, according to you and Varsha, is more fulfilling than having a boyfriend.”

Nora laughed and ate a spoonful of cookie dough.

“More filling, at least.”

I said earlier that Hutch and I never spoke about Noel and me. Only now: I wrote him an e-mail explaining the whole debacle. The sordid details of the breakup, the Hall oween party, the argument in the parking lot. Plus everything Claude had told me: the accident, Booth, Noel’s wanting to forget.

Because Hutch is my friend.

And he’s my only friend who’s really and truly Noel’s friend.

I needed my friends just then.

I thought maybe Hutch would freak out at the excess emotion and hysteria in my note, and do a typical guy thing and ignore it. But he didn’t. He wrote back three days later.

The thing to consider
, said Hutch,
is that Noel is
one of the most outstanding people on the planet
.

Then, after several paragraphs about his Parisian adventures, he wrote:

P.S. After I got your note, I e-mailed
DuBoise. Didn’t mention Booth or Claude
or you, but said (among many other things)
that I heard a rumor he was going out with a
sexy college vampire girl
.

His reply, pasted in:

Nah. Am single
.

True, did kiss a vampire at that guy
Hsaio’s Halloween party
.

It was okay, but no repeat was necessary
.

Confession: I did it to make Ruby
jealous
.

She was staring at me across the room
and it was a doltish move but the situation
was tense and I couldn’t deal so I macked
on the vampire
.