Sealed with a Wish (19 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

A few minutes later, I was cowering in front of Natalie’s bedroom door. Crumpling my hand into a nervous fist, I rapped the softest possible knock, half-hoping she wouldn’t hear me so I could slink away unnoticed.

“Come in!” Nat called from the other side. At the sound of her voice, a flashback of her angry wolverine sounds hit me in full force.

Choking back the urge to run like hell, I opened the door. It felt like forever since I had been in Natalie’s room. As I stepped in, the familiar sight of her old records tacked on the wall like artwork made me smile, despite the nervous flutter in my stomach.

Nat sat cross-legged on her bed, her guitar sprawled across her lap. I caught her in mid-note. When she saw me, her mouth fell open. “What are you doing here?” she asked, though not unpleasantly. She sounded more surprised than annoyed.

“Your mom said I could come up.” I cleared my throat. “Can I, umm, talk to you?”

She gave a little bob of a nod--not exactly enthusiastic, but at least she didn’t fling her guitar pick into my eye like a ninja’s throwing star. “You weren’t in school today,” she said.

“Yeah, I was feeling kind of crappy.” I shut the door behind me and settled on the floor near Nat’s vintage record player, nestling into one of the fluffy cushions tossed beside it. “But I’m better now. I think.”

“Oh,” was all she said.

I realized it probably would have been kind of uncool to tell her how miserable I’d be if she told me to go away and stop stalking her, so (for once) I kept my ramblings to myself. I bit my lip, wondering what else I could say.

“Well,” said Nat, “I got your homework for you.”

“Huh?”

“It’s no big deal. I thought you could work on it over the weekend or something.” She shrugged.

“Wow. Thanks. That was cool of you.”

“I guess.” Nat looked away and plucked at a guitar string, sending out a law, lazy note that hung in the silence that followed.

Well, it was now or never. “Listen, I’m sorry about--” I started.

“Layla, I’ve been really--” said Nat.

Our voices blended together, blotting each other out. I raised my hand and asked, “Me first?”

“Go ahead.”

“Nat, I’m sorry about like,
everything
. Going out with Sean, lying about Sean, telling him about you.” The last part made me flinch. “I don’t know why I did that. It was so stupid.”

Nat’s face puckered with thought. She was probably remembering how she had felt that day, finding me there with Sean, spilling her secrets. Thinking about it made my chest tighten again.

“I wish I could just take it--Ugh, no. Crap!” I cried.

Yikes. That had been a close one. One more word and I might have created some weird time loop. The last two weeks had royally sucked for me, but I didn’t want to think about how changing things might affect everyone else.

Meanwhile, Nat stared at me, her eyes wide as she wondered why her mother had let a crazy person into the house.

I sighed. “What I meant was: I made a mistake. Actually, make that
mistakes
. Plural. Probably more than I can count. And I’m sorry about all of them.”

Nat looked at me for a long moment, her big eyes difficult to read. After about five seconds, I was ready to throw my hands in the air and beg for forgiveness, but then she said, “I know.”

I gulped. “You... What?”

She slid the guitar off her lap and leaned forward. “I know you’re sorry, Layla. And it’s okay. I mean, mostly.” Her mouth twisted to one side. “I still have a lot of questions, but I know that you feel bad about it and I’d honestly rather forgive you.”

Now it was
my
turn to stare with my mouth hanging open. “Really?” I managed.

Nat smiled. “Being mad takes a lot of effort. I don’t think I’ve got that kind of stamina.” She laughed.

Then I laughed. No,
we
laughed--Natalie and I were a
we
again. Relief rushed through me like a dam bursting water, and, without another thought, I crossed the room and pulled Nat into a lung-crushing hug. She made a sound like an accordion being squeezed, and I laughed again.

As I sank down beside her, I sighed. “Thanks. For forgiving me, I mean.”

“It’s cool. I’m glad you came over, actually. I know I haven’t been very nice lately.”

I scoffed. “Dude, you don’t exactly owe me an explanation. I’m the screw-up here, remember?”

“Uh-huh. We’ll talk about that in a second,” she said lightly. “I’m just saying: you’re my friend. Sure, I’ve liked Sean for a long time, but you and I have been friends for way longer. I should have at least
tried
to talk to you.”

I smirked. “You should have tried to punch me in the nose.”

“Layla.”

“Okay, okay.” I held my hands up. “I’ll acknowledge that maybe you could have tried discussing this with me.
Maybe.
Like, on some kind of alien planet where best friends share boys and--”

Natalie snorted and rolled her eyes. “About that. So, you and Sean. What’s up?”

“Nothing. Everything’s sort of... down.” I shook my head. “It was a mistake. A huge, gigantic, moronically epic, colossal--”

“Okay. Big mistake. I get it.” She smiled. “Just tell me how it happened.”

I paused, studying Nat’s easy expression. For someone who was about to hear about how her best friend had been semi-dating her object of (unrequited) affection, she looked oddly relaxed. Cheerful, even. Natalie raised an eyebrow, impatient for me to go on, so I took a deep breath and said, “Remember the soccer game?”

From there, I told her everything--except for the genie stuff, obviously. I was surprised to find that my story held up pretty well without it. It just sounded like Sean and I had been hanging out casually for a couple of weeks, then things had taken a turn for the weird after we had kissed. Not so far from the truth, really.

Throughout this, all Natalie did was nod, her face totally placid. She only spoke up at the end, when she finally asked, “Is he a good kisser?”

I couldn’t stop the smirk from denting my face as I quoted my second-favorite John Hughes movie. “Yeah. He must practice on melons or something.”

It came out more like an accusation than a compliment, but hadn’t it been those very same lip-locking skills that had gotten me into this mess in the first place?

Well,
part
of this mess, at least.

As she noticed my distaste, Natalie shook her head, swiping away the kiss-laden clouds floating in her eyes. She squinted at me, concerned. “When did you break up?”

“Not soon enough, dude. It should have been over a long time ago, I was just too much of an idiot to realize it.”

“Layla, relax. I’m not mad, okay? I mean, yeah, I was,” said Natalie. “But I don’t
own
Sean Fabry. And I’m not in love with him or anything. Really.”

“Wait, what? You’re not...?” I made several strangled attempts at speaking. Eventually, I settled for a simple, “Huh?” to convey the rich tapestry of
WTF?!
-type questions that had bubbled into my mind.

Nat shrugged, as calm as ever. “I don’t know. I was really into him when we were twelve, but I don’t
know
him, Layla. We’ve never even had a conversation.”

I bobbed my head up and down, because that seemed like an appropriate response. Meanwhile, it felt like my brain had disappeared, only to be replaced with cotton. “Huh?” I uttered again, the only syllable that I could manage.

Funny how caveman sounds could still be so expressive.

“He’s just this cute guy that I’ve been fixating on for way too long,” Nat said. “I’ve just been using Sean as an excuse not to do other stuff. You know, I haven’t even
tried
to date because I kept telling myself I already liked someone. How stupid is that?”

“Right. So you... don’t like Sean?” I said. (Of course, the only way I would
really
believe it was if Nat provided a signed affidavit, but a verbal confirmation would do for now.)

“Well, I like
looking
at him, sometimes.” She chuckled. “Well, a lot of the time. But I don’t think I’d know what to do if he ever asked me out. We don’t really have much in common.”

“Yeah...” I stared at my cheerful friend, my brain slowly revving back to life. At this point, Chace Crawford could have burst through the door and done a striptease and I would barely have noticed.

So Nat didn’t like Sean anymore. Something excited and hopeful flitted through me, but then I remembered... Sean and Diana.

Kissing.

Last night, I must have fainted right as their lips met. An image of them joined in a perfect, movie kiss (complete with romantic music screeching in the background) flared inside my mind. I hoped they had both had incredibly bad breath, something in an onion-and-garlic blend, maybe.

“Well, I’m glad you’re over Sean,” I said. “He’s totally not even worth it.” But even
I
could hear how pitiful that sounded. Biting my lip, I stared down at my lap.

Nat rested a hand on my shoulder. “Layla, I’m really, really sorry. Maybe things could have worked between you guys if I hadn’t--”

“No.” I jerked my head up. “It wouldn’t have. I don’t think he really even liked me.” The last words made my chest wobble.

“Still,” said Nat, “I’m sorry.”

“Who cares, right? He’s going out with Diana Bukowski now.” I forced myself to shrug. “Like it matters to me, anyway.”

Natalie just nodded, a sympathetic wince tightening her mouth. At that moment, I could have hugged her all over again.

Instead, I rolled my eyes and said, “Let’s talk about something less annoying. Like... Mr. Lopez’s secret shoe-lifts?”

“Well...” Nat raised an eyebrow, her eyes glinting. “I may have some dating news for you.”

I gasped. “You and Raj?”

She nodded, a grin spreading over her face.

Immediately, a picture of a shirtless Rajesh blipped into my mind. Was it uncool to think of your friend’s boyfriend with no shirt on? I pushed away that thought, focusing on Natalie’s bright face. I smiled. “Finally. I thought you’d never wake up.”

Nat made a surprised sound, then punched me in the arm. “You knew about this?”

“Dude. Everyone in the tri-state area knew about it.”

“Wow. Apparently, I’m kind of an idiot.”

“It’s all right.” I patted her shoulder. “I’m only using you for your looks, anyway.”

“Ha ha.” Nat bumped me in the knee with her guitar. “So, you want to hear my new song? It’s for tomorrow.”

“Totally. But what’s tomorrow?” I asked.

“Open mic night.” She smiled as she strummed the first notes. “I signed up last week.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

On Saturday night, I frowned at myself in the bathroom mirror, the mascara wand ready in my hand. “Third time’s a charm,” I sighed.

I leaned forward and tried not to pay attention to the scary caterpillar-thing crawling toward my face. A few swipes later, I had something close to the full, movie star eyelashes that Diana had given me. Normally, I would have given up by now, but tonight was special. Natalie was finally performing in public, at the open mic night Raj had mentioned at Wong’s a few weeks ago.

It would have been nice to think that I’d had some kind of master plan to make everything turn out okay, but truthfully, I was still kind of surprised that I wasn’t wrapped in my Hello Kitty robe tonight, camped out on the sofa and drowning in popcorn.  After all my mistakes, it seemed like things were going to be all right. I was even going to camp this summer--Mom and Dad had told me over breakfast how impressed they were with my “new sense of maturity” and “willingness to compromise.”

I padded back into my bedroom, grimacing when I saw the clock. How long had I been battling that mascara wand? I only had a few minutes until Raj and Natalie came to pick me up.

My camera was still full of a month’s worth of photos, and I needed to clear the memory if I wanted to fill it back up with snaps of Natalie’s big performance. I hooked the camera up to my laptop and watched the images flicker across the screen as they transferred to my hard drive. I had hundreds of pictures to look over, though most of them would probably be too blurry to keep.

Even in the flurry of out-of-focus flowers and bananas that looked like severed fingers, one shot struck a chord of memory. As soon as I noticed it, the picture was gone, leaving me frowning at the screen.

The photo had barely flashed across my eyes, but I knew what it was. As if they had minds of their own, my fingers scrolled through the new photos, not stopping until they found the right one. I double-clicked the thumbnail, my chest fluttering.

Sean smiled at me from the computer screen, his cheek dimpling and his eyes shining. The light in his garage had been dim enough to set off the flash, so his face had an unnatural, almost heavenly glow.

I found myself smiling back at the bright collection of pixels, but then my brain kicked awake again. “Ugh, no. No, no, no,” I scolded myself.

Why was I sitting here, staring at a picture of someone who was probably busy sucking face with his ex-girlfriend right now? My finger hovered on the delete key, ready to send Sean’s photo straight to digital purgatory.

There was no reason to keep the picture. All I had to do was twitch my finger, and I could finally put the last few weeks behind me.

I sighed, staring into the screen for another moment before I snapped shut the lid of my computer. I could always delete Sean later. Right now, all I wanted was to go out and watch my best friend on stage.

Camera in hand, I headed downstairs.

#

I took a sip of my five-dollar latte, wincing at the sweetness. This thing was a cavity in a cup. Maybe Raj had had the right idea with ordering a plain black coffee.

“You’re not playing tonight?” I asked as we sat at one of the tiny tables.

He shook his head. “I’m in Fan Mode. Fans don’t play instruments. We just gawk at the people who do, and maybe throw some boxer briefs at ‘em.”

As Natalie walked up to the “stage” (really just a cleared-off corner with a curtain hanging on the wall), both of us shut up.

I had seen her perform the song yesterday afternoon, but somehow, it sounded even better with the sounds of espresso machines hissing in the background. Nat was only up there for three minutes, but I must have taken a hundred photos, my thumb stuttering over the shutter every few seconds.

When she finished, Raj and I cheered loudly enough for the other customers to give us strange looks.

Nat’s face was flushed with excitement as she joined us at the table. “How’d I do? Was it okay?”

“Are you freaking kidding?” I scoffed.

“It was awesome, dude,” said Rajesh. “You really ripped it in half!”

“Seriously. You were way better than everyone else who had played tonight,” I told her.

That last comment earned me a venomous look from a goth chick who had just finished a passionate acoustic cover of
I Kissed A Girl
on her black guitar. She looked ready to cast a spell on me, or at least dump her hot mocha all over my head.

Oops.

“Hey, are you guys hungry?” I whispered through an off-key performance of James Taylor’s,
Fire and Rain
. “I could use something greasy right about now.”