For Keeps (11 page)

Twelve

“DO YOU WANT
a ride?” my mother asks.

It’s Saturday morning and we’re standing in the driveway, watching Jonathan unload and reload the trunk of his car. Because the two of them are off on their New Hampshire adventure—their jazzy little jaunt. In a way, I’m glad they’re going. Now I won’t have to think about them for thirty-six hours.

“Do you want us to drop you off ?” my mom asks again.

“No, thanks,” I say.

“Fiorello’s is on our way. We’d be happy to.”

“That’s OK.”

“I’m sure Jonathan would let you drive, if you want. You could get in a little practice. . . .”

Since I got my permit, my mom has barely taken me driving at all. She gets too nervous. It kills me to say no right now, but I do. I tell her I’ll take the bus.

“Why would you take the bus when you come with us?”

“Mom! God! Why are you pushing me to go with you?”

She sighs, exasperated. Then her face softens slightly and she says, “Why do we keep fighting?”

“I don’t know,” I say, which is half true. When she looks at me, I shrug. “What do you want me to say?”

She shakes her head. “I just . . . hate this.”

“Yeah,” I tell her. “Me too.”

After they leave, I am upstairs packing because I have to go to my game from work, and Riggs’s house from my game. There’s a shirt of my mom’s I want to borrow, this black scoop neck, so I go in her room to look for it.

The place is a mess. Clothes everywhere. It looks like a cyclone hit, but after a lot of digging I find the shirt. I sit on the edge of my mom’s bed to put it on, and my butt hits something hard. I look under the covers, and what do I find? The yearbook.

The
yearbook.

I pick it up, of course. I pick it up and I flip to page 102, which is dog-eared for instant access. I stare at Paul Tucci’s senior portrait, shake my head. Think:
My mother is still sleeping with my father.

Five thirty-five p.m. I am riding shotgun in the Riggsmobile, which smells like cleats and French fries. We are on our way to Casa Rigby, to eat Becky’s lasagna.

There’s no reason to be nervous, is what my head is saying. It’s just dinner. They’re just people.

But no. I am not convincing myself.

Riggs is steering with one hand, twining my fingers with the other. When he asks for the play-by-play of my game, I tell him that we won four to three. I scored one goal (corner kick), Schuyler scored one goal (penalty), and Liv scored two (both headers). I leave out the fact that thirteen minutes into the second half, Liv called a time-out to use the Porta-John. And that once she got inside, the whole team could hear her yelling for a tampon. And that after I ran over to give her one, we hugged, jumping up and down behind the Porta-John, whooping quietly for joy.

“So,” Matt says now, squeezing my hand. “Are you ready for this?”

“Yes,” I say. Even though I know his family is going to compare me to Missy Travers. Missy Travers, Blonde Bombshell. Missy Travers, Merit Scholar.

We slow down, turn into the driveway of 7 Geneseo Lane. Matt runs around the car to open the passenger door.

“I thought chivalry was dead,” I say.

“Nope.” He holds out his hand.

“I’m nervous,” I blurt.

He pulls me to my feet and kisses me, right there in his parents’ driveway. Sweet and slow. “Better?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Good,” he says, pulling me toward the house. “Let’s go.”

At dinner, Matt sits next to me. Every so often he touches me under the table—foot on foot, hand on knee—and I’m glad he does. His stepsister, Kylie, a moonfaced brunette in a boy-band sweatshirt, doesn’t stop staring at me for a second, like I’m some strange new species of bug she’s never laid eyes on before. I try to ignore her and focus on the parents.

In response to Becky’s questions, I tell everyone that my favorite subject in school is English, the girls’ soccer team is five and one, and my mom works in a bookstore. When Becky asks about my father, I keep my answer simple: “He lives in North Carolina. He works with at-risk youth.”

Under the table, Matt squeezes my hand. I squeeze back.

Becky—an older, doughier version of Kylie—thinks this is wonderful. “Isn’t that wonderful, Hank?” she says to Matt’s dad—a balding, mustached version of Matt. “Josie’s father works with at-risk youth!”

“Wonderful,” Mr. Rigby says dryly. “Used to be an at-risk youth myself.”

He proceeds to tell the story of how he and his high-school buddies would drive around their town at night, removing all the pink flamingos and garden gnomes and Mary-on-a-half-shells off people’s front lawns, and then replant them on the lawn in front of their principal’s house.

“My father the juvie,” Riggs says, shaking his head.

Matt’s dad claps him on the shoulder. “Takes one to know one.”

Then, of course, I have to ask, “Is this a family tradition?”

Matt shrugs, embarrassed.

“Absolutely!” Mr. Rigby booms.

“OK,” Matt says to me. “I
have
been known to replant the occasional garden gnome. . . .” But then he immediately changes the subject back to soccer.

I can tell he doesn’t want me to think badly of him, but in a way, picturing him sneaking around in the middle of the night with his friends, rearranging lawn ornaments, only makes me like him more. It makes me wonder what else I don’t know about Matt Rigby.

There’s only one embarrassing moment the whole dinner, at the very end, when Matt says he and I are going upstairs and Becky reminds him of the house rule:
Thou shalt not close thy bedroom door
. It makes me wonder how many times Matt brought Missy Travers to his room, and what they did while they were up here.

I am trying not to think about that right now.

Matt and I are collapsed on the oversize foam chair in his room. My stomach is bursting with lasagna. And salad. And garlic bread. And chocolate mousse. “I can’t believe how good that was,” I say.

“I told you Becky could cook,” Matt says, pulling me closer.

“Yeah. . . . They were really nice. And funny. Your dad’s high-school stories? I almost peed my pants.”

“That’s Dad.” He smiles, leans in to kiss my cheek. I love it when he smiles. There’s this little dimple on the right side of his mouth, every time.

“They made me feel completely comfortable,” I babble on. “I mean, completely. It wasn’t awkward at all. . . .”

“Good.”

“Your dad and Becky seem to have a really good relationship. . . . Like, I
get
now how Darlene could come for Christmas and it wouldn’t be weird. . . .” At first when Matt told me about his mother having holidays with his dad and step-mom, it sounded crazy. But now it doesn’t. “It’s really cool, when you think about it,” I say.

“Josie?” Matt says.

“Yeah?”

“Could we stop talking about my family?”

I move my eyes to his eyes, and there is that look, the one Liv always finds so amusing.
Come hither, Hester Prynne
. Heat surges up my neck and onto my cheeks.

“OK,” I say.

We kiss.

This is something I could do for hours: kiss Matt Rigby. He has a knack for making every nerve in my body stand at full attention. It starts with my lips, then moves to my tongue, then it slides down and down and down until—“Wait,” I say, pulling back. “What about the door rule?”

“What about it?” Riggs murmurs, pressing his mouth to mine.

We have followed Becky’s instructions, but barely. The door to Matt’s room is cracked about a centimeter.

“Well . . .” I start to say, “if you think . . .”

But then I shut up. Everything feels too good. Anyway, the door rule is probably just a reminder not to go completely nuts up here; it’s not a literal—

“Oh my
God
!” squeals a voice from the doorway. It’s Kylie.

Riggs bolts upright, launching his death gaze across the room. “Beat it, Kylie.
Now
.”

Kylie shakes her head, sending her ponytail swinging.
“Uh-uhhh,”
she singsongs.

“Kylie, I’m warning you . . .” Riggs takes one menacing step toward the door. Then another.

“Mommmmm!” She runs, screaming down the hall. “Mommmmmmm! They’re totally going at it up here!”

Riggs turns to me. His cheeks are two flames.

I smile. “There
are
advantages to being an only child.”

He shakes his head, swears.

“Hey.” I stand up, walk over and wrap both my arms around his waist. “It’s OK.”

“No, it’s not.”

I kiss him softly on the chin. “Yes. It is.” Then again. “It’s fine.”

“I just want to be alone with you,” he murmurs into my neck. “Just you. And me. And no interruptions.”

His breath is hot.

I have goose bumps all over.

I try to suppress the realization that there is a place we could go right now—a place where no one would be. “Let’s go for a drive,” I suggest. “We can park somewhere and—”

He sighs. “Not the car.”

“OK.” I take a deep breath, let it out slowly. “My house, then.”

“Your house?”

“No one’s home. My mom’s in New Hampshire, remember?”

Riggs looks at me. “Are you sure?”

“About my mom being in New Hampshire?”

“About going to your house.”

I nod, feeling about fifty different ways at once. Nervous. Guilty. Excited. “Yeah,” I say. “I’m sure.”

He smiles, then crosses the room to open a drawer on his nightstand.

I watch him take something out—something small, silvery—and stuff it into his backpack. My stomach flips over. “Matt?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s not . . . you’re not . . . I mean, I don’t know if I’m ready yet, to . . . you know . . .” I sound like a blathering idiot.

“Josie?” He walks over to me.

“Yeah?”

“It’s gum.”

“Oh,” I say, nodding.

“For our garlic breath.”

“Right.”

“I have condoms, too. If that’s what you’re wondering.”

“Oh. Uh-huh.”

“But that doesn’t mean we have to use them. We can just . . . you know . . . hang out, if you want.”

“OK,” I say, relieved on two levels. A) Matt’s smart enough to carry condoms, and B) he’s not going to pressure me.

Ten minutes later we are back in his car, driving to my house. In my head—not because I want it to, but because it just pops in there—is a picture of my mom. She is lying on her childhood bed next to Paul Tucci. “So, what do you think, Kate?” he is saying to her, handsome as can be in his North Haven letterman jacket. “Should we go for it?”

Guns N’ Roses is playing on the radio.

The
90210
gang watches from the wall.

Everything lies ahead for the two of them. Every possibility. Every opportunity.

Or not.

Depending on her answer.

“So, you guys finally got naked,” Liv says.

It’s eleven fifteen p.m. and, much to Dodd’s relief, we are both home, reclined on the safety of the Weiss-Longo pullout couch.

“
Partially
naked,” I say.

Already I am regretting opening my mouth. What Riggs and I did—or didn’t do—belongs to us. It’s part of this thing we’re growing, this thing that’s ours and nobody else’s. Whenever I stop to think about it, I can’t help myself, this stupid grin starts pulling at my lips and I have to bury my face in a pillow.

I remember in middle school thinking it was all so disgusting. I would
never
touch a guy like that. I would never let
him
do those things to
me
. And now . . . here I am.

“There’s a lot more to sex than just intercourse,” Liv says, prying the pillow off my face. She looks Boho chic in a velvet beret and tiny paintbrush earrings, in honor of her and Finn’s night at the UMass art gallery, hooking up in the darkroom.

“You should know,” I say. “You’re the sexpert.”

“I am not a
sexpert
. I’ve only had sex with two guys.”

She means Avi, the guy from drama camp, and Finn. But there have been other guys she’s hooked up with, sans intercourse.

“Relatively speaking,” I say, “you’re a sexpert.”

Liv turns, looks at me. “I have to tell you something.”

“What?”

“Finn and I broke up.”

“
What
? . . . But tonight . . . the darkroom . . . I thought you guys . . .”

“We didn’t, actually. We started to, and then I told him about the period thing, and he dumped me.”

“He dumped you
because you got yourperiod
?”

She sighs. “Not exactly. More because it could have gone the other way. I could have
not
gotten it.”

“OK, that makes
no
sense.”

“He phrased it differently. He said there was too much of an age difference—that I couldn’t handle a, quote,
mature sexual partnership
, unquote.”

“That’s bullshit!”

“I know.”

“He’s the one who couldn’t handle it!”

“I
know
, Josie. It’s OK.”

“How? How is it OK?”

“It’s . . . what Finn and I had was never a partnership at all. We were just . . . hooking up. And even though I love hooking up—I mean, I really
love
it—I’ve never had . . . like, I look at Pops and Dodd, and I look at you and Riggs, and I’m jealous. I’ve never had that.
That
, I want.”

“Are you serious?”

She nods.

“You put me and Riggs in the same category as Pops and Dodd?”

“Kind of,” she says. “Yeah.”

I can tell that she means it, and even though I think she’s deluded, I say, “You could have that too, if you really want it.”

Liv flops back on the bed, sighs. “I don’t know.”

I start to say,
What about Kevin Kinnear?—
this funky band-geek guy who was madly in love with Liv in middle school, but then I remember her saying,
Kevin Kinnear has a duck face.
Instead, I say, “There are lots of guys who would love to go out with you, if you’d give them a chance.”

“You mean high-school guys.”

“If you rule out high-school guys, you rule out a lot.”