Rise (7 page)

“So you want them to play hard to get?”

“Not necessarily hard to get, but there’s nothing attractive about easy to get. If I like a girl, which of course I do … ” He looked at me and winked. “I’m gonna let her know.”

“That’s true. You did tell me.”

“See.”

“And what about once they get the guy? How should they act then?” Marme asked.

“The same as they did before. Why should it change?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.”

“Nothing should change. Attie didn’t change how she acts.” He looked over at me again. “Did you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I mean, if I liked you enough to ask you to be my girlfriend, why would I want you to change once I got you? It wouldn’t make any sense. Are we done now?”

“Why? You don’t like all the questions?” Marme asked.

“I just don’t see the point. Attie’s got me. Why does she need to know how to get me?”

“I don’t need to know how to get you. I need to know how to keep you.”

His forehead creased. “Why are you worried about that?”

I shrugged.

“Charlie, I’m not gonna go anywhere. If you haven’t scared me off up to this point, why on earth would you think you would now?”

“I don’t know.”

He jumped off the counter and sat in the chair next to me. “Mom, give us a sec.”

Without saying a word, Marme left us alone in the kitchen, and I got the sinking suspicion that our impending conversation wasn’t going to be a good one.

“Okay, I thought of something you do that annoys me.”

“What?” I regretted asking him in the first place and most certainly didn’t want to hear what he was about to say.

“You doubt us all the time, or at least me and my feelings for you, anyway. That I don’t like, and if you do it enough, it could cause problems. Insecurity is not attractive, especially coming from someone who has nothing to be insecure about.”

I felt my face start to crumble.

He softly rubbed his thumb on my forehead as if he were trying to erase the lines caused by my emotions. “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”

“You’ve never come right out and told me something you didn’t like about me before.”

“First off, you asked. And second, it’s not something I don’t like; it’s something that irks me sometimes.”

“I asked if there was anything I do around your friends to annoy you, not for just anything in general. That was an in-general statement, and I wasn’t prepared for it.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to upset you.”

I was in full-blown pout mode, and his apology wasn’t helping. I think he knew he was in trouble.

“Why don’t you tell me something that I do that irks you and that way we’ll be even?”

“You don’t do anything that irks me.”

“Sure I do. Nobody’s perfect.”

“You practically are.”

“Come on. There’s gotta be something.”

I searched the crevasses of my mind, and within seconds, one popped up. “I got it.”

“For not thinking I had any, that sure did come to you fast. What is it?”

“Straws.”

His eyebrows arched high. “Straws?”

“Yes. You walk around chewing on straws all the time, and it totally grosses me out.”

“Straws?”

“You chew them until there’s hardly anything left, and then you leave them lying around the house or in your car. I can’t even stand to look at them.”

“Well—”

“And sometimes you coil them up and stick the whole thing in your mouth at once, and then when you finally spit it out and put it somewhere, it slowly starts unraveling. Seriously, it makes me want to vomit.”

“I get the point.”

“They have your teeth marks all over them and saliva and stuff. Really, it’s—”

“I get it!”

“Oh.”

“No more straws. Got it.”

“Or toothpicks.”

“Forget I asked.” He jumped out of his seat, stomped to the refrigerator, and threw open the door.

“I’m just saying that you do it with toothpicks too. Maybe it’s a nervous tick or something. Chewing gum might help, and it’s not nearly as gross.”

“I get the point, for cryin’ out loud. Enough already.”

“You’re not mad, are you?”

“Not mad. I’m annoyed!”

Marme sheepishly walked back into the kitchen and looked over at me with wide eyes. “Evidently you two annoy each other a little more than you thought.”

Riley slammed the refrigerator door and looked fiercely at his mother. “This is your fault. You started it.”

“My fault? I was trying to help.”

“Don’t you get on to her, Riley Bennett. I hate it when you talk to Marme like that.”

“Oh really?” His face turned crimson. “Since you’re getting it all out in the open, why don’t you just keep on going? What else don’t you like about me?”

“Nothing!”

“It sure doesn’t sound like it.”

“I just don’t like it when you disrespect your mother like that. You should be nicer to her. You’re lucky you have a mother at all.”

His jaw tightened, and his eyes practically burned holes right through my body. I wanted to shrink away into nothingness and avoid his glare altogether, but all I could manage to do was squirm in my seat.

After what felt like forever, he finally released his hostile glare and stomped out of the room. “I’m leaving so I don’t say or do something I’ll regret.”

Marme followed behind him. “You get back here. Dinner’s ready.”

“Leave me alone. I’m not hungry.”

I listened to his feet clomp all the way up the stairs, across the hallway, and finally into the room where he slammed his door shut.

Pops promptly followed behind, made him walk back down the stairs, apologize to his mother and me, then quietly walk up the stairs and close his door properly.

After that, I didn’t see him the rest of the night.

chapter 8

(Riley)

The first four classes of the day were horrible. I hadn’t laid eyes on Attie all day, which meant she was avoiding me. The fact that I hadn’t run into her once in the hallways made it obvious that she was somehow making it to each class without taking her normal routes or stopping by her locker. Not that I cared what other people thought, but let’s just say I wasn’t the only person to notice. At least a dozen people asked if we were all right or if we’d broken up. News, or non-news in our particular case, moved very fast in our school, and the last thing I needed was for Attie to get a whiff of the rumor and have it throw her into a panic.

Chalk the entire episode up to another big screw-up and overreaction on my part. I’d just told her that insecurity was something that could cause problems between us, and then I turned around and gave her even more to be insecure about. What was meant to be a conversation to make her feel better ended up making her feel worse. Not smart.

When I made it to our lunch table, she was nowhere to be seen. I went ahead and sat down with the group, but when she hadn’t shown up in ten minutes, I went searching for her and finally found her in the very last place I looked—my mother’s classroom. They were eating lunch together at one of the food prep stations.

As soon as Mom saw me, she got out of her chair, left the room, and shut the door behind her. Of course, she didn’t leave without giving me the all-too-familiar “I’m not happy with you” stare-down that mothers give their kids when they can’t full-out yell or hit them due to the fact that other people are around. Between seeing Attie slumped over her lunch and Mom look at me like I was pond scum, I felt like a complete heel.

“I’m a jerk,” I announced.

Attie didn’t look up and didn’t say anything.

“I went and took something small and turned it into something bigger than it needed to be. I’m sorry. But babe, there’s no need to avoid me.”

She didn’t look up at me but at least spoke. “I’m not a big fan of confrontation.” I was happy to hear her voice, even if it was squeaky from stress.

“What makes you think there woulda been a confrontation?”

She shrugged and kept her gaze on the counter.

“Charlie, just ’cause we’re crazy about each other doesn’t mean we aren’t gonna argue. Everyone argues every once in a while.”

I took the seat my mother left empty and looked over at her. She wouldn’t look back.

“Plus, given your dramatics and my overreactions, we’re bound to have it out every once in a while.” The silence was deafening, and I wanted to know what was going on in her crazy blonde head. “Talk to me. Will you look at me please?”

When she didn’t lift her head, I climbed onto the counter, sat cross-legged, and waited for her to join me. She didn’t move.

“Charlie, please—”

She sighed but gave in, climbed onto the counter, sat with her knees touching mine, and let me take her hands in mine. She still wasn’t looking at me, although I wasn’t surprised. She hated to look at me when we used the “knee-to-knee technique.”

“What if I can’t stop being insecure?”

Her sudden talking shocked me. I lowered my face to hers. “What?”

“What if I can’t stop being insecure? I’m actually so insecure that I’m insecure about being insecure, and you said that my being insecure could cause us problems, so now I’m insecure about that too.”

“I need to clarify already ‘cause I didn’t catch all that. All I heard was the word insecure about ten times.”

“Never mind.”

“No, no, no, don’t say never mind. Just say it again, a little bit slower this time so I know what it is you’re so upset about.”

She finally looked me in the eyes. “If I can’t stop being insecure, what then?”

“I shouldn’t have brought it up. All it did was make matters worse.”

“No, you were absolutely right. I’m totally insecure, and I don’t know what to do about it. Trust me, I don’t want to be that way. Insecure people make me nuts … more nuts than usual. I’m not normally a needy person, and being insecure makes it seem like I am.”

“No, it doesn’t. You don’t ever come off as needy. Trust me, I would know.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. The reason the insecurity irks me is because I feel like no matter what I do, I can’t convince you that we’re good together and that this can work. It’s like you can’t believe we’re good for each other.”

“I know you’re good for me.”

“But you won’t let yourself know that you’re good for me too. Charlie, you’re great for me. You make me happy. The last thing I want is to have you walking around thinking you don’t or that for some weird reason you don’t deserve me. In reality, none of us deserve anything good, but some of us get lucky and get it anyway.”

“And you consider yourself lucky to have me?”

“A thousand percent.”

Her nose scrunched a little as she smirked. “Thank you, Riley.”

“Are we all good now?” I rubbed the top of her hands with my thumbs.

“I guess.”

“That didn’t sound convincing. There’s something else. What is it?”

She shrugged.

“Out with it.”

“It’ll sound like I’m insecure, which we’ve already established I am.”

“Then technically you wouldn’t be sounding insecure; you’d actually be being insecure.”

“Yes. And you hate it when I’m insecure, so why would I do it more?”

“I don’t hate it; it irks me. But for the sake of making you feel better, you might as well just say it. We aren’t leaving here till you do.”

Still holding her hands in mine and figuring I might be waiting for a while for her to get the guts to spit it out, I lowered my elbows to my knees.

She squirmed around on the counter for several seconds before finally talking again. “Last night was the first time since you gave me my ring that I realized you thought we might not last.” The words poured out as if they’d been sitting in her mouth waiting to be freed.

“That’s not at all what I was saying.”

“It is—”

“It isn’t. I said it could cause problems, but my mind never went to the place of believing that it’s something worth breaking up over. It just gets frustrating, that’s all.”

“So you’ve never thought of breaking it off?”

“No. As I’ve said five thousand times, you aren’t getting rid of me that easy.”

“You didn’t even think about it last night when you were avoiding me?”

“I wasn’t avoiding you; I was avoiding my mother. And you’re one to talk—you’ve avoided me all day.”

“Last night you didn’t even come out and say goodnight to me, and then you were gone this morning and you didn’t leave me a note or a drawing. You even left my lunch on the counter.”

“Okay … ?” I didn’t understand her point.

“So I avoided you because I was afraid you were going to break up with me.”

“What?”

“I thought that if you didn’t actually see me, you wouldn’t be able to do it; and maybe by the time you did see me, you would have calmed down and changed your mind.”

“No way. There’s no way that would’ve happened.”

I leaned forward and laid my forehead against hers. “Charlie, being frustrated doesn’t equal wanting to break up. When you love someone, you don’t leave just ‘cause they drive you crazy. Ask my dad. My mom’s a lot crazier than you are, and he hasn’t gone anywhere in almost twenty years.”

“Well, that’s true.”

“If being frustrated made someone wanna break it off, you woulda already broken up with me over all of the disgusting straws I leave lying around.”

“That’s true too.”

“I didn’t say goodnight because I fell asleep before you came upstairs. And I didn’t leave you a note or a drawing and I forgot your lunch because I woke up late and was running behind. I didn’t want to be late to the gym. I wasn’t thinking clearly, and honestly I didn’t realize that me doing those things meant so much to you.”

“Of course they do.”

“I didn’t realize you’d noticed.”

“Riley, I keep every note and picture you leave me.”

“You do?”

“I love them.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

I kissed the tip of her nose and could feel it scrunch under my lips, so either she was smiling or crying. I pulled away enough to take a look and was relieved to see she was smiling.

“So we’re okay?” I asked.

“If you’re okay.”

“I’m perfect. I’m right where I wanna be.”

“Me too. I love you,” she whispered.

It was one of the few times she’d said it first, and hearing her say it gave me the same rush it gave me when I heard it at the playground the first time.

“I love you too.”

I leaned over to kiss her.

“Make room for Jesus to walk through,” my mother announced out of nowhere.

I looked over at her in disgust. “Your timing stinks.”

“My timing’s perfect,” she corrected.

“How’d you know when to come back in?” I asked.

She looked at me and smiled. “I’m a mom, and moms know everything.”