So Totally (12 page)

O
KAY, so I went upstairs. Don’t judge. You know you would have too.

When he was sure I wasn’t going to bolt out the door, he grabbed a couple of Cokes from the little fridge.

My can was different than his. “This is the classic one.”

He shrugged. “You don’t like the new one. I bought you a couple cans.”

I set the unopened can on the counter.

“Now you’re mad that I bought you—”

“No. I’m mad because you’re playing games with my head.” I crossed the room, moving seemed to help the sensation that I was going to explode. “You do all these…
things
…that make me think you like me. The daily coffee, the Coke…”

“The kissing?” he added.

“The kissing,” I agreed. Definitely the kissing. “Nate, what happened? What did I do wrong?”
You know, when you trampled my heart
. “Because everything was fine and then you turned singularly frosty.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, hanging his head low. “I know. I’m sorry.”

I brushed my hands together. “Great. That takes care of that. I’m glad everything is back to normal now.”

He looked up hopefully. I squashed his hope with an eye roll.

“Please. You know I’m not serious. Sorry is better than not sorry, but not as good as sorry-plus-logical-explanation.”

He went to the window, crossing his arms over his chest and gritting his teeth. “I don’t have a logical explanation. Life has sort of flipped me around a little too much lately for logical anything.”

“Really? Did you recently travel backwards one-fourth of a century?”

“No.”

“I win.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s not a contest, Carrington. I know your life is weird right now, but you aren’t the only one this is affecting.”

“I’m not picking up your broadcast, Nate.” When he didn’t say anything, my mind shifted into overdrive again. “Look, I know I’m chronologically impaired, but I’m not stupid. If you don’t want to do this anymore, whatever
this
is, just tell me. If I’ve misread your—”

“That’s not it. The mixed signals yesterday…I guess it’s my way of not dealing.”

“Dealing with what? Just tell me what changed, because you were dealing with everything just fine before that.”

He gestured for me to sit on the love seat, which I wasn’t sure I wanted to do. Sitting meant I couldn’t storm around the room if he pissed me off again. It meant I couldn’t just run out the door if things got too heavy.

“You’ve sort of complicated my life.”

Oh, I definitely needed an easy out of there.

“Not in a bad way,” he went on. “I’ve never really felt like I belonged here, if that makes sense. It’s like I got plunked down in the middle of someone else’s life.
The part of Nate Berliss is now being played by Nate Berliss…
I chalked it up to growing pains or just growing, I guess. I had girlfriends, kind of, I have friends, and I have more family than any one person could ever need—but I never connect. Not really.” He paced. It was a small room—pacing was a little on the pointless side if you ask me, but I didn’t interrupt. “Then one night I wake up with the urge to draw a girl. You. I connected to my life like somebody finally plugged me in. It was wild. I draw comics all the time, but I never felt it like that.

“The next night, you show up at my door. And you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. And you’re funny and so goddamned smart. Being with you, it’s like—what was that movie with the midgets and the yellow bricks?”

“
Wizard of Oz
?” I answered. Did he just call me the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen? My heart blossomed like a flower inside my rib cage.

“Yeah. Remember how it was all black and white and then it was suddenly color? That’s how it was. When I met you.”

His description overwhelmed me. I’d prepared myself for a lot of things, being told I put the color into Technicolor wasn’t one of them. Still, it didn’t explain what happened to make him change his mind.

He gauged my reaction before starting again. “You’ve been like this force of nature in my life—a whirlwind with red hair.” He sat next to me, taking my hands. “And then you offered to take Kevin’s detention.”

The lines of my forehead wrinkled in confusion. “For the record, you had me at ‘the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen’ but lost me at ‘you offered to take Kevin’s detention.’”

“I knew you were smart, funny, and beautiful. I didn’t know for sure, until that moment, that you’re honorable and brave too.”

“So naturally that meant you had to cut out my heart and chop it into a million pieces. Because you think I’m brave and honorable?” I yanked my hands back because it was too hard to be angry when he was touching me. “Nate—”

He covered my mouth. “Let me finish, Red. I realized that you could be gone at any minute. I mean, I’ve known that all along—but it hit me you are going to leave this huge hole in my life when you go. I guess I just freaked out.” He’d softened me up enough to take my hands back into his. “And I’ll never know when it will take place. You’ll at least know what happens to you. I won’t. One day, I’ll wake up and you’ll just be gone and I won’t even know if you’re okay.” He clenched his jaw tightly and rose, needing the distance again, I guess. “And then what? I wait ten years and catch a glimpse of you at the hospital nursery?” He paced again, heaven help us both. “So I freaked out. I thought it would be better if I shut you out now than wait until…until whenever.” Back to the window he went, leaning against the sill.

Silence consumed the room, magnifying the thoughts yet unsaid. I’d done everything wrong. I wasn’t brave or honorable. If I were, I wouldn’t have dragged the people I care about into the quicksand that was my life. Nate was the smart one. He’d thrown me a life preserver by cutting things off, and instead I discarded it so I could worry about drowning.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. He turned back to look at me. He wasn’t crying, but his eyes were rimmed in angry red. My tears, on the other hand, rolled freely down my cheeks. “I’m so self-absorbed I didn’t stop and think about what I was doing to you or even to Heather. I didn’t realize that you felt…the way you feel. The other girls told me you’d never really had girlfriends, but you’d
had
a lot of girls. A serial dater. I assumed you’d break my heart because you would never care about me the way I care about you. It never occurred to me that I could hurt you. I never wanted that.” I wiped my nose on my sleeve. Heather’s sleeve. Wearing borrowed clothes and living on borrowed time.

“I’m not a serial dater. I just never got close enough to anyone to have a relationship.”

“You got close enough to do other things,” I said. He raised his eyebrows. I guess he didn’t know that word got around. “You have a reputation. You don’t exactly love them and leave them, because you keep them around as friends…but there are stories. Apparently you
really
know what you’re doing. And yes, I am jealous. But that doesn’t really matter now anyway, does it?”

“I like that you’re jealous.”

I rolled my eyes. “Let’s focus. I’m about to be added to the stockpile of friends.” And I needed to get out of there and blow my nose and eat a ginormous amount of ice cream.

“I don’t think so.”

My heart plummeted to the arch of my foot. We couldn’t even be friends? God, this day totally sucked.

“Carrington, I don’t want to be your friend.”

“Right.” He was absolutely right. Clean break equals better for everyone. I stood up. “I need to go now.”

“Will you never let me finish what I’m saying?” He grabbed my arm. Mr. Intense had returned. “I want to be more than friends. I want you to be my girlfriend.”

If they made a horror movie about my life, it would be called
I Was a Teenage Yo-Yo.

“Didn’t we just decide that this was a mistake?” I asked.

“Maybe it’s not.” My blank stare must have prompted him to keep going. “I kind of think that I’d rather take the pain later and get the good stuff now.”

My eyes widened.

He smiled and stood next to me. “Er…that came out badly. By good stuff, I just meant you and me together stuff…not…”

“Right. But what if I disappear tomorrow…next month…ten years from now?”

“What if I get hit by bus next Tuesday?”

“You should stick to dating nice girls like Macaroni and Sleaze.” I gestured to the direction Joy had left in. “The only way we can end is badly.”

He reached for my hand. “I have to believe that we aren’t just some happy accident. I
dreamed
of you.” He put my hand on his heart. “Can we work it out somehow?”

How do you say no to a boy with eyelashes long enough to paint a house?

“We need ground rules,” I said.

“Ground rules?”

I nodded. “If…when…it happens. That’s it. I don’t want you hanging out watching me at recess—and I won’t interfere with the grown-up life you have either.” Because…ewww on both counts.

“All right.” He turned on his heel and, with my hand still in his, crossed the room, dragging me with him. His sketch pad was on the counter, next to my unopened Coke. He flipped through it, finding the page with me on it and tearing it out. “You should keep this.”

I was a little bummed that he didn’t want it.

He folded it and put it in my hand. “Can you keep it with you all the time?”

I nodded. “Why?”

“The money you had in your pocket made the journey with you. Maybe this will too. And then you’ll always know it was real. We were real. Whatever happens, or doesn’t happen from here on out—we were real.”

H
EATHER was really sweet when I’d told her Nate and I had gotten back together. I know how hard it is when your friends do that “I hate him, I love him” deal. You listen to them angst about how terrible the guy is, then have to smile and be happy when they go back to him. Even if you don’t like him. I wasn’t nearly as bad as Sissy and her on-again-off-again-I-hate-his-guts boyfriend Jake. Those two gave teen love a bad name.

“So, he’s really your
boyfriend
?” Heather asked on the way to school the next day.

I knew what she was thinking. Nate Berliss was not the boyfriend type. Nobody was more surprised than me. And maybe Nate. He probably didn’t see it coming either.

“He’s really my boyfriend,” I answered. “I understand what he was going through on Friday, why he pushed me away; I’m not really a safe bet for a girlfriend or even a friend.”

She pulled her Honda into the lot. “What are you talking about? You are a great friend and he’s totally lucky to have you.”

She killed the engine and we looked at each other. “I might not get to say goodbye,” I said. “If something happens and I have to move, I’ll have to just leave. So, I want you to know how much your friendship means to me, in case I don’t get a chance to tell you again. You and your family…I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

She applied a last coat of mascara using the rearview mirror. “We should totally do like a blood-sister thing.”

I grimaced. “We should?”

“Don’t you think? Like we’d always be tied to each other by blood. Sisters.”

“You know,” I hedged. “I think it already feels like we are bonded by blood. We don’t have to involve sharp objects.”

She laughed. “You are a chicken.”

“Totally.”

We got out and my boyfriend was waiting on the path, with java. My cheeks actually hurt from smiling.

“I have to work after school,” he told me.

“Oh.” Here we go again.

“I thought maybe would could do the research thing at the shop instead of the library.”

“Oh, okay,” I answered. “Won’t your boss care?”

“I work in a comic book store slash head shop. It’s a pretty relaxed atmosphere.”

“I can’t believe your parents don’t care that you work there.”

He laughed and called out, “Hey, Heather!”

She turned and walked back to us. “Yeah?”

“Would you ever let your kid work in a head shop when they were in high school?”

She shrugged. “Sure, I guess. I think I’ll trust my kids. I’m not going to be one of those wacky overprotective moms. I gotta go catch up with Tommy.”

She took off and I elbowed Nate. “That was not cool.”

“No, but it was funny.”