The Start of Me and You (18 page)

“No problem.”

There were a few beats of silence as we pulled out onto the main road. Now that we knew each other a little and had some mutual friends, our conversation would probably come much more easily. My mind flashed back to the Talking about Hot Dogs Incident, and I shuddered.

“So,” I said, resting my hands in my lap, “where is Max, anyway?”

“Babysitting.”

“Babysitting?” Max had only told me that he was meeting up with everyone later and that Ryan said he would pick me up.

“Yeah.” Ryan chuckled. “He didn’t tell you?”

I shook my head.

“He babysits for a family in his neighborhood. He has since we were thirteen.”

“Huh,” I said. “I didn’t even know he had a job.”

“Well, it’s barely a job. I swear—he’d probably do it for free. They’re good kids, and he just goes over and goofs around with them for a few hours.”

“You go over with him sometimes?”

“Once in a while.”

I smiled back at him, knowing my next comment would
teeter between complimentary and flirty. “I bet they love getting to hang out with a track star.”

“Ha,” Ryan said. “They prefer Max. He reads them stories, and he knows a lot about airplanes.”

“Yeah, what is the
deal
with the airplanes?” I’d been wondering since his first paper airplane note in class. “Is it just paper airplanes? Or, like, all airplanes?”

“All airplanes. It’s always been a thing with him. You should have seen his bedroom when we were kids. Airplane wallpaper, airplane comforter. Craziness.”

I kept it to myself that I had seen Max’s bedroom once, with the airplanes soaring over his bed.

“He never grew out of that phase. He says that even though airplanes are now a commonplace form of transportation, they’re still a baffling feat of science and human will.”

I laughed. It sounded like he was quoting Max exactly. “You’ve heard that speech more than once, I take it?”

“More than twice.” Ryan grinned. “One time, when we were little, he ate birdseed because he thought it would make him fly like a plane.”

“No way,” I said, giggling. “No. Way.”

He looked over at me, his expression fading to a small smile. “It’s nice to hear you laugh.”

I felt hot all over. What did my laugh even sound like? Was it dorky?

“You seem like you’re doin’ good,” Ryan continued.
Doing well
, I corrected in my mind.

“I feel better than I have in a while,” I admitted. “Which makes me feel guilty sometimes, but … I’m working on it.”

We were in Alcott’s parking lot by then, and Ryan pulled into a parking spot.

“You know, Aaron and I had Spanish together freshman year.” He looked over at me, hesitating. “I didn’t know him that well, but I really liked him. And … I’m sure he’d want you to be happy again.”

This wasn’t pity and, furthermore, it was true. Aaron’s mom even told me this, before they moved to Georgia. She hugged me good-bye and said,
He’d want you to be happy again, sweetie. I hope you will be
.

“I’m sure, too,” I told Ryan. “Aaron could make anything fun, so I try to remind myself that having fun again is—”

“A good way to honor his memory,” Ryan finished.

“Exactly. It can be hard, though.”

“Yeah.” He frowned, looking down at the steering wheel. “I remember, after my grandpa died, one of the hardest parts was all the firsts without him. The first ski trip, trying to remember that he wasn’t back at the lodge complaining about the weak coffee. The first family wedding without him. I kept looking around for him, kept forgetting.”

I didn’t know Aaron well enough to have mile markers like that. We’d never celebrated a holiday together. But I
still knew exactly what Ryan meant. The first time I went to Snyder’s Diner, where Aaron and I had our first real date, I had to get up and wipe my eyes in the bathroom twice.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m still working on that.”

“What firsts do you have left?” he asked. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

“I—uh …” My heart had its very own panic attack. I couldn’t think of a single lie. “Well, I haven’t gone out with anyone since Aaron. So, that’s probably the biggest one.”

Yep
, my brain said.
You just said that to Ryan Chase. Out loud.

“You’re out with me!” Ryan said.

Mortified, I tried to make my laugh sound natural and relaxed. I probably sounded like a mental patient cackling over a joke that a bird told her. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I do,” he said, smiling. “And I get it. You have to promise not to tell anyone this, but I still haven’t kissed anyone since Leanne.”

“Really?”

“Really. I went out with a few girls over the summer—mostly to spite Leanne. Terrible, I know. But, when it came down to it, I couldn’t kiss any of them because it just—”

“Wasn’t for the right reason.” I hoped that God—or Cupid—took notice that Ryan Chase and I were finishing each other’s sentences. “I understand. I think I’ve accidentally built everything up too much after Aaron. I wish I
would have gotten it over with—just kissed someone early on and freed myself from the who and when.”

“Me, too,” Ryan said. “You know what?”

“What?” I asked, looking over at him.

Before I could even register what was happening, he leaned across the car and pressed his lips against my cheek. I almost jerked back in surprise.

“All right,” he said, pointing at his cheek. “Lay one on me.”

Before I could think twice, I planted a kiss right on his cheek. He smelled like pine trees.

“There.” He grinned, sitting back just as fast as he’d leaned over. “That fixes it for both of us. Which seems like exactly the right reason.”

And that’s when I fainted.

Okay, I didn’t really faint. But something inside me snapped like an elevator cable, my heart plummeting to my feet. I felt light-headed and combustible, my neck hot beneath my collar.

“Thanks,” I said, laughing a little.
Thanks?! Someone kisses you and you say thanks?! Did you learn nothing from Rory Gilmore?
“That takes the pressure off.”

No, it doesn’t! Now I have no idea what’s going on! Do you like me or are you just being a good friend in the most confusing, lip-touching possible way?!

“Hey,” he said. “What are friends for, right?”

Not this!
I climbed out of the car onto shaky legs. Ryan Chase kissed me. Ryan. Chase. Kissed. Me.

An hour later, I found myself searching through the fiction aisles in Alcott’s while everyone else sat in the coffee shop part of the store. Max had arrived a few minutes before, but he immediately excused himself to pick out a novel before the book counter closed. In my seat at the corner booth, I couldn’t hear myself think. Ryan was making Tessa laugh despite herself, Morgan was batting her eyelashes at Tyler, and I was in a confused near panic. Ryan Chase had kissed me. What did that even mean?

I needed what Kayleigh called my “Introvert Time-out”—a few minutes to reenergize and collect my thoughts.

I passed most of the alphabetical-by-author shelves before I found Max sitting on the floor. He was leaning against the shelf, long legs crossed in front of him. There was a small pile of books at his side, presumably those that were under consideration for purchase.

“Hey,” I said, turning into the aisle.

He looked up from the book he was holding. “Hey, girl.”

The first time he said this to me—in his simple, cheerful way—the phrase struck me. It was something I expected to hear from Morgan or Kayleigh, not from a cerebral teenage guy.

“Can I sit?”

“Of course,” he said. He slid the pile of books to his other side, making room for me. “Is Ryan boring you with sports talk?”

My face flushed at the mention of his name. I sat down, wondering if Ryan would tell Max about kissing me. He seemed so casual about it—he probably wouldn’t even
think
about it again. “Nope. I just need a little quiet for a minute.”

My eyes followed the spines of the books across from us. I had always found comfort between rows and rows of books: some familiar, some foreign, stacks of old friends and piles of new friends to be found. I looked at the book in Max’s lap.

“
The Amateur Marriage
,” I read out loud. “I didn’t know Anne Tyler wrote a book about my parents!”

Max laughed that delighted laugh of his. I felt that rush of pride, like a tiny shock to my system—a flashbulb going off.

“How’s that going?” he asked. His voice went quiet, and even though I was still glancing down at the books, I could feel his eyes on me. “Your parents, I mean.”

I shrugged, glancing up at him. “Still weird. I can’t think about it too hard or the entire universe shifts a degree, like everything’s a smidge off.”

He nodded. “Makes sense. It’s disorienting.”

“Yeah. A divorce is supposed to be final. Period.”

“No semicolons.”

“Precisely,” I said, unsurprised that he’d get it. “No ellipses either.”

I pulled my knees up against my chest, content to sit still. Max continued flipping through his stack of books, occasionally pausing to put one back.

After a while, Max scooped up
The Accidental Tourist
.

“Ready?” he asked, but I wasn’t—not quite.

“In a minute,” I said. And so we stayed.

Ryan went home early to rest up for a morning workout, and I left with Max, feeling dejected. I was banking on Ryan driving me home, so I could figure out where the hell that kiss had come from. Now Max and I were in my driveway, engine running. We’d spent most of our conversation talking about his airplane obsession—Newton’s third law of motion! Bernoulli’s equation! The Wright brothers! But we’d moved on to discussing my other Max revelation of the night.

“I can’t believe you kept babysitting a secret from me,” I told him, leaning back against the headrest.

He made a face at me. “I wasn’t keeping a secret. I was just … not mentioning.”

“Same thing.”

“Not the same thing at all.”

I rested my legs against the dashboard, relaxing against the seat. “Not telling is a secret, period.”

He arched one eyebrow. “Stated like someone who keeps some good secrets.”

I smiled and shrugged my shoulders.

“So you admit it?”

I thought about this for a moment. Of course I kept secrets, but I wasn’t sure if I was willing to own up to it. There was something about Max’s expression that made me talk, though. Like he already knew anyway. “Yes.”

“You have secrets you don’t even tell Tessa? Like
no one
knows?”

“I tell my grandmother everything,” I said, tilting the vent until the heat blasted against my face. “But she has Alzheimer’s, so she doesn’t remember half the time.”

This seemed to catch Max off guard. The look on his face was one I’d seen a hundred times from Tessa—a focused gaze, gauging whether she should change the subject to keep me from getting upset. In an attempt to lighten the mood, I said, “You tell me a secret.”

“You already got one. Max Watson, Babysitter.”

“Oh yeah.” I smiled over at him, still completely tickled by this new information.

He turned his face to me. “You tell
me
a secret.”

“Umm …” I searched my mind for a good one. “Okay. I did not like
Indiana Jones
.”

“
What?
Which one?”

“There’s more than one?”

Max pressed his face into his hands and groaned.

“It starts in a temple or something? I don’t know. I watched it with my dad when I was little, and I fell asleep.”

He swiped his hands through the air, making a pronouncement. “All right, it’s settled. I own all of them, and you at least have to give
Raiders of the Lost Ark
a chance.”

“No way!” I said, laughing. “This is why it’s a secret! So no one tries to make me watch it!”

He gave me a challenging look. “But maybe you’ll
love
it. What happened to beginner’s mind?”

I wished I hadn’t told him about that. “Your turn. Secret: go.”

“Hmm,” he said. “Okay. I hate all hot tea. I think it tastes like bathwater.”