Love Blind (5 page)

I shrugged. “Not my thing.”

She slid her boots onto the dash and I gave her a sideways look. She didn't even notice, just shimmied and wiggled into a more comfortable position.

“Deejaying's not your thing or talking's not your thing?”

I eyed her again. The green bra was sort of ridiculous. Over-the-top and too expected for a lead singer of a girl band. But Jesus, I kept looking at it, like she'd worn it for me. Which was stupid. And not that my opinion mattered, but the day in the studio, when she wasn't all done up, she was hotter. Of course, she hadn't been tongue-fucking some random bouncer then.

“Both,” I answered.

“You should have a list. And deejaying your own show should be the first thing on it. Well, that and maybe not freaking out every time someone says something to you. But that's
sort of too general for the list. Deejaying is a very specific fear.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

She stomped her boot on the dash.

“Jesus, take it easy, will you?” Mom didn't have the money to fix the car if Drunk Hailey broke it. I didn't want to be a dick, but I was doing her a favor and the least she could do was not break the car.

“Sorry.”

“S'okay. So you were saying?”

“Oh my God, haven't I told you about the list? Shit. Of course not. We don't talk. Well, we're talking now, but we're just acquaintances. Only my close friends and the moms know about it.”

The list. Did I really want to know about the list?

“But maybe we'll be good friends now because I puked on your shoes and shit like that brings people closer.”

I laughed, surprised. “Keep telling yourself that.”

She grinned at me. “I knew I could get you to laugh. So anyway, the list. It's this thing I started last year. My moms wanted me to do it. Write down all the things I was afraid of and then start tackling them.”

“Huh.” Weird. Nothing my mom would ever suggest or, honestly, even care about. Her lists were very specific:
buy toilet paper, take out trash, pick up my Xanax . . .

“Yeah, I know. It's kinda dumb, but it's sort of a rush when you actually do something on it.”

“What have you done?” I blurted out.

“Well, nothing really great so far. But I sang on the radio. And tonight I had my first tongue kiss.”

“Yeah. I caught that. Must have tasted outstanding.”

She chuckled. “I thought you weren't interested in me.”

Fuck.
“I'm not.”

“Then why do you give a shit what my first tongue kiss tasted like?”

I opened and closed my mouth. This was why I didn't get into friendly conversations. My brain screamed answers at me, but I couldn't articulate any of them without bumbling the whole thing. Or coming across as too interested. And I couldn't be into her. Could. Not. There were days when I thought my brain would explode just thinking about the shit Pavel had gone through. And Mom was a time bomb. Two people were enough. Mostly.

“It was just an observation,” I settled on. “So singing on the radio and tongue-kissing. What else is on the list?”

She squinted at me. The greenness of her glasses made her eyes sort of sparkle bright green. Either that or the darkness of the night made the blue disappear. Stupid thing to notice, but her messed-up eyes intrigued me. Or maybe the fact that she was the only girl since second grade to be near me, curious about me—maybe that was the intriguing part.

“Nah,” she said. “I don't think I'm gonna tell you. I think we should focus on your list.”

“I don't have a list.”

She shoved my shoulder. I gripped the steering wheel tighter.

“The point is that you
need
a list. You, of all people, need to start overcoming your fears or you're gonna have one hell of an effed-up life.”

“You don't even know me,” I snapped. Too harsh, but who the hell did this girl think she was to be making any sort of comment on my life?
I
couldn't objectively comment on my life, and I'd been stuck with myself for almost seventeen years.

“True. So tell me something that'd be on your list. If you had one. Something you're afraid of. Something that maybe no one knows about. Something different from deejaying.”

“That's kind of an invasive question.”

She nodded. “Hey. I puked on your shoes. I think we've moved past invasive.”

I kept my gaze forward. Was I really gonna do this? I was so distracted I ended up blowing a stop sign.

But Hailey just laughed. Still drunk, then. Which was good. Fine. Safer to say whatever I wanted to. She'd forget.

“I'm afraid of going away to college.”

She tilted her head. “Really? Yeah, I can see that. What else?”

“That's . . . it.”

“Okay. Going to college: scary. All right. But, honestly, Kyle. Think about it. It might be good for you. Break you out of your shell or whatever. Okay, stop. Here's my house.”

I pulled in front of a yellow house with a massive porch and a small detached garage. The glass front of the garage was a window into a pottery shop—Pottery Rox. I put the car in park but didn't turn off the ignition.

“This is it?”

She nodded and I noticed her hand shaking as she gripped the handle. Not so fearless when it came to her moms, then. Truthfully, I was curious about her moms. What kind of women raised a girl like Hailey? I hadn't met too many moms in my life. Mine, who was, well . . . yeah. And Pavel's mostly scolded, huffed, and cooked.

I considered leaving Hailey on the curb. Let her get out and then drive away. But I couldn't. I wasn't that guy. Never had been. Except maybe once.

“Dammit,” she said. “I'm such an idiot. I'm so fucked.”

“You want me to walk you inside?” I said. “Maybe it'll help distract them . . . ?”

She blinked at me and swallowed a few times, then whispered, “Thanks.”

Her moms had the door open before we even got halfway from the car to the porch.

“You are so grounded,” the blond mom said. Her face was open but held the small creases of mom worry. She had on flannel pj bottoms and a tank top. Thin and kind of muscly. “And who the hell is this? Where are Tess and Mira?”

“Um.”

I looked at Hailey. Her fingers twisted in front of her. She'd suddenly lost her power of speech. The girl who'd spent twenty minutes talking nonstop in my car couldn't pull off anything other than “um.” I wanted to laugh but didn't think it would help her case much.

“Hi,” I said. “I'm Kyle,” I added. The moms just stared, like that wasn't enough. “We know each other from school.”

Hailey's dark-haired mom squinted at me, and I looked down. I didn't suck at talking to adults in the same way I did with people my own age, but it still wasn't easy.

The dark-haired mom sighed. I looked up and saw her touch the blonde's shoulder. Then she said, “Thanks for bringing her home, Kyle. We appreciate it.”

I nodded and turned back to my car.

“Kyle,” Hailey's low voice called out before I got into my car. I glanced back. “Sorry again about the shoes. Size eleven?”

I glanced at my bare feet. “Ten,” I answered, and then slipped into the driver's seat. I couldn't look at her. Didn't want to know if she was looking at me. Didn't want to really hope for it.

All the way home, I ran through my night. I'd been puked on. Babbled at. Almost interrogated by two lesbians. And for a few minutes, it had felt like I had a real friend. I couldn't trust it. But I wanted to.

I walked into my lonely house and pulled out the journal I scribbled my overwhelming thoughts into. Lyrics from
songs. Lines from poems. Quotes from philosophy I didn't understand but one day hoped to. Band names, podcast titles, ramblings from my own brain. Pages and pages of it. It was my third journal in eighteen months. I flipped to a new page and rubbed my fingers over the smooth paper. Then, before I could stop myself, I started my own list of fears.

I
found Kyle in the sound booth at the radio station. I was right to guess he probably hid there before school. It sucked because the place had crap for lighting, but he was the only one there. Big surprise.

“Hey, Friend Kyle.” I smiled, wondering if he was still pissed about driving me home this past weekend. But maybe over the past few days, his annoyance had faded.

Kyle turned and stared. Solidly unreadable.

I was crap at apologizing, so I sat close enough to see his face better, which was pretty close—knees almost touching—and pulled out the box from my pack. Flipping off the lid with a flourish, I grinned.

“They're bright.” He stared at the shoes I held between us, size ten, because I'm good like that and remembered.

We sat in silence for a moment.

But he still hadn't touched the shoes.

“I know. Green. Awesome, right? It's for you to remember the night we moved past acquaintances into friendship territory.” I leaned forward on the small chair I'd scooted next to him. “This is good, sentimental stuff, Kyle. You should be more appreciative.”

Mostly I wanted him in the damn shoes. They screamed Kyle. That color of green wasn't easy to find, and I'd had to beg the moms, telling them I was righting a wrong from my horrible night of mistakes and misfortunes, before they let me out of the house. Sadly, it hadn't been alone.

“Um . . .” His head still bent forward so far I couldn't see his eyes.

“I shopped with
two moms
for you. My very pissed two moms.” Ungrateful. Seriously. His shoes could have been washed. They didn't need to be
replaced
. Why couldn't he see I was being nice?

“Oh.”

“I get your whole blending thing, but maybe now you could sort of cheat and put ‘Wearing bright shoes' on your fear list, and then you can get the high from crossing it off a minute later. Not every fear needs to be a huge one, you know?” I even waggled my brows for him, trying to get a reaction. And I knew I was probably sitting too close for whatever football-stadium-size comfort zone he had, but still. There was something fascinating about Kyle's disturbing silence, and I wanted
him to talk. Give me clues as to what made him Kyle. “ 'Cause I know you wanna do it with me . . .”

“What?” He blushed. A bright-pink-cheeks-on-pale-skin kind of blush that made me realize I'd just innuendoed him.

I grinned. “The
list
, Kyle. Do the
list
.”

I'd never convinced Tess or Mira, but at least they knew about my list. Kyle had to be desperate enough for friends that he'd join me. Or maybe he was a more hard-core loner than I'd given him credit for, which was fascinating in its own way.

“Kyle! I bought you new frickin' shoes. You drove me home, for shit's sake! I told you about my list! Like it or not, we're friends. Put on the damn shoes, and I'll see you later.” I shoved them onto his lap and took off.

I sucked at finding non-annoying friends.

◊ ◊ ◊

“Hailey! What the hell? I called you all weekend.” Tess walked toward me, boots clomping, mouth in a scowl, and I knew I was screwed. Her short black hair stuck out on all sides today. Probably on purpose, but it was hard to tell with her. She had no problems rolling out of bed, putting on black, adding to the one- or three-day-old eyeliner, and coming to school.

In the whole Kyle/puke/shoe/car mess, I forgot to call. Or text. And the moms actually laughed when I asked if I could keep my phone.

“I got busted, and if you hadn't taken off under the arm of
that random guy, you would have known where I was.” Arguing back was better than telling her I screwed up and should have called.

“I did know where you were. You were grinding with the bouncer guy, who was way hot. . . .” A small smile escaped before she found her pissed face again. Tess didn't just dress emo. She
was
emo. “And then you
bailed
!”

“You know I can't see well when it's dark like that. I had to be home at eleven, and when I found the bathroom, it was already after curfew. I didn't have time to find you. If you didn't need to wear black all the time, I might have been able to pick you out of the crowd.” I knew that harassing her about her clothes was probably not the thing to do, but once I was on a roll, I kept on running. One of the perks/hazards of being me.

“You didn't have time to
not
find me. How the hell did you get home?” Tess's irritated voice always cracked me up, because she might dress like a bitch, but there was nothing she could do about her kitten voice. Mad Tess usually made me laugh, and that didn't always end well.

“I puked on Kyle's shoes, and he took me home.” That was the easy version, anyway.

“Shit. I bet your moms were pissed.” Tess sat back, hopefully a bit less angry.

“That doesn't even come close. Aside from school and a possible national emergency, I'm not allowed out of the house.” The whole thing sucked, but as soon as I'd missed curfew, I'd
known they'd freak. My being wasted and smelling like alcohol vomit also hadn't helped.

She leaned in. “So Kyle's the bouncer you hooked up with?”

“No. Kyle is the silent guy who does the engineering at the radio station here. He's cool.” I adjusted the guitar on my back, knowing she probably wouldn't get my fascination with him. Hell, I was still figuring out why I hadn't left the guy alone already. Even if he did need to have those shoes.

Tess crossed her arms. “Really?”

“No. Not really.” I laughed. “But he has potential.”

And this is the great thing about Tess. She'd stomped up to me ready to be pissed, but once she'd found out I'd gotten home and that I was okay and in trouble, she wasn't pissed anymore.