“Better not go into the FBI,” he said. “You’d suck at that job. No offense.”
“Like that was ever a plan,” I scoffed, then fixed the sleeves again. “Your mom has good taste.”
Oliver gave a half nod, half shrug, then looked back to the party. “So those are your friends,” he said, gesturing back toward the noise and light.
“Some of them. But Caro and Drew more than anyone, though. And, well, you,” I added hastily. “You’re my friend, obviously.”
“Yeah?” Oliver turned to look at me and in the faint light from the party, filtered through the gazebo’s lattice, his eyes seemed grayer, softer.
“Of course we’re friends, Ollie.” My voice was scratchier than I meant it to sound and I coughed a little. “I’ve had this . . . thing.”
“Thing?” Oliver repeated. “What thing?”
Stop talking, Emmy. Stop. Talking.
“It’s this note. I’ve had it since you . . . since your dad, that day.”
Oliver frowned a little and scooted even closer to me. “What note?”
“Caro gave you a note that day. She passed it to you in class.”
“What did it say?”
I smiled, suddenly embarrassed. Why did I keep it for ten years? We were just dumb little kids, it didn’t matter. Why was I even bringing it up?
“It said, ‘Do you like Emmy, Yes No?’” Now I couldn’t even bring myself to look at Oliver, I was so mortified. I was never drinking again, not if it made me start blabbering about ten-year-old memories.
Oliver, however, had a curious smile on his face, almost like he was fond of this note he didn’t even remember. “Well, what did I say?” he asked.
“You circled yes,” I whispered. “I mean, it’s stupid, it’s so stupid. We were seven years old, it doesn’t—”
“It matters,” Oliver murmured. “You kept it?”
I nodded again.
“I’m glad I circled yes, then,” he said.
I smiled back at him, and I realized that our faces were closer than they had been before, and the party sounded more muted, almost like we were drifting away from it. The stars tilted, the moon spun, and then my mouth was on his and we were kissing.
He tasted like beer, like warm apple cider. I realized that my hand was moving on its own, up to his sleeve and then cupping his shoulder. I hung on to Oliver as we kissed again because this time, he wasn’t going anywhere.
“Sorry,” was the first thing he said when we parted. “I’m sorry, Emmy, I didn’t—”
“Why the hell are you apologizing?” I whispered. My heart was a pinball trapped in my rib cage, my lungs a broken accordion.
“Because we’re friends. I don’t know. I don’t want to screw this up.” He was leaning in again, though, his pulse strumming like a hummingbird’s heart under my fingertips, and I leaned up to kiss him again before he could say anything else.
After a minute, I climbed into his lap. I had kissed a couple of boys before, but those kisses had been perfunctory and self-conscious. A quick peck for Josh back in seventh grade because everyone else was making out during the slow dance and I didn’t want us to be left out. A weird, clumsy make-out session on the bus on the way home from a field trip with Brian G. (We had seven Brians in our class that year. It got confusing. Not that I made out with all of them. Whatever, you know what I mean.)
But kissing Oliver? That was different.
Oliver had always been different.
His hands held my waist like I was going to fall, his arms locked around mine and kept me steady as I cupped his face in my hands. “Still sorry?” I whispered to him, and he laughed against my mouth.
“Not really, no,” he admitted. “This isn’t high on my list of regrets.”
“Good,” I said, then kissed the side of his mouth. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Did you get jealous about Brandon? Because he’s, like, nothing. He’s nothing to me. I didn’t want you to think that.”
“I wasn’t jealous,” Oliver said. “But I didn’t like that he was making you feel bad about something you like to do. That’s a shitty thing to do to anyone, but I didn’t like that he was doing it to you.”
“So you didn’t make out with me because of Brandon?”
“Um, no. I kissed you despite the douche canoe.”
I laughed, loud and sharp against the quiet night air. “I thought you were really cute when I saw you on TV, that first night.” The words sounded odd when I said them out loud, like I had a tabloid news fetish. “I mean, I was glad you were home, not that—”
His fingers intertwined at the base of my spine. “I know. I thought you were cute, too. You stuck your tongue out at me.”
I groaned and dropped my head against his shoulder, hiding my face in shame. “I felt like the biggest dork in the world after I did that. Ask Caro. She’ll tell you. I was in agony.”
“I don’t think Caro can answer too many questions right now,” Oliver said, then shrugged his shoulders so I had to sit back up again. “At least, not while she’s asleep on the floor.”
“She’ll wake up soon,” I told him. “She gets her second wind after about thirty minutes or so.”
I slipped off his lap so I could curl up against his side. He put his arm around me, like a hug, like a wing, like a home. “That’s what I meant earlier,” Oliver said, “about wishing I could have been here. You know things about one another. They know things about you.”
“Too much,” I groaned.
“No, I’m serious. I don’t have that with anyone except . . .”
When I looked up, Oliver was staring straight ahead, his jaw tight, his face suddenly a secret to me. “Your dad,” I finished for him.
“Yeah,” Oliver said after a few seconds had passed. “My dad. We were—” He cleared his throat. “He’s my best friend. Or he was. I don’t really know what he is—or was—anymore.”
I pulled his arm around me even tighter, then put my arm around his waist. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
He hugged me against his side, then kissed the top of my head. “Thanks,” he said. “No one else has said that.”
“But your mom . . . ?”
“My mom doesn’t know what she wants.” I could hear the anger as it reverberated in his chest, low like a drum. “I think she spent so much time looking for me and now that I’m home, she doesn’t know what to do with me. I disrupted her life. She was totally fine without me.”
I shook my head, more to myself than Oliver. “When you went missing, she never stopped looking for you,” I said. “She didn’t focus on anything else except you.”
“Yeah. Except for getting remarried and having more kids.”
“Hey!” I sat up. “That’s not fair.”
“Yeah, well. Sometimes I don’t feel like playing fair. Nobody was playing fair with me.”
“Your mom had one focus, one cause. And that cause had such momentum, you know? It’s all she did. It’s all she thought and breathed. And now suddenly, you’re back. It’s over. She got you back. But, if you’re driving a semi at sixty miles an hour, you can’t just stop on a dime, you know?”
“Did she say that?”
“Well, no, but I’ve known her longer than you have. I watched her, Ollie. I saw . . .” My voice trailed off as I remembered Maureen’s panic, how she used to walk with her arms out in front of her, as if to break a fall or embrace a child that was just out of reach. “Everyone’s different because of what happened,” I finally said. “Especially her. And you.”
“I feel like even if I did talk to her, she wouldn’t want to hear what I really have to say.” Oliver had rested his head on top of mine, his words rumbling down through my skull.
“Well, I do,” I said. “You can say anything to me.” But I didn’t carry it further. I didn’t ask what he really wanted to say. Because the truth was that I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it, either.
“Emmy!”
Oliver
and I jerked apart, our arms suddenly back against our own bodies and not wrapped around each other’s. “Yeah?” I yelled, even though the person was in silhouette against the lit-up patio and I couldn’t really see who it was. “Who is that?” I asked.
“I have no idea who anyone is,” Oliver replied. “Except Caro and Drew.”
“Caro’s ready to go home!” the person—male—yelled back.
“Of course she is,” I muttered, starting to stand up. Sitting outside with Oliver had sobered me up and this time when I stood, my head managed to keep up with my body. “Coming!” I yelled. “Who are you?”
“Kevin!”
“Oh my God! It’s Kevin!” I whispered to Oliver. “That’s Drew’s boyfriend!”
Oliver squinted, trying to see better. “They’re dating?”
“Well, I don’t know if they’re dating yet, but Drew wants to make out with him and I think Kevin feels the same.”
“Got it.” Oliver held on to my arm as I climbed down the stairs, then we navigated our way back to the house, our shoes making soft swish-swish-swish sounds against the dewy grass.
The party had definitely wound down, and people were either half asleep on couches and chairs or, like Caro, standing up and slumped against whatever upright objects could keep them steady.
For Caro, that object was Drew.
“Hi,” she said when she saw me. “I’m ready to go.” Then she pointed at Drew. “He totally made out with Kevin.” She announced it in a stage whisper so that both Drew and Kevin blushed.
“Um, yes, you’re ready to go,” Drew said, trying to shove her off onto me. “Please leave my house and come back when you can be discreet.” But his cheeks were pink and Kevin was smiling in that way you smile when someone you like kisses you back.
“Well played,” I murmured to Drew.
“Hi, I’m Oliver,” Oliver said to Kevin, waving a little.
“I know,” Kevin said. “I’m Kevin. We went to preschool together.”
“Oh, cool. Yeah.”
“Call one of your siblings,” I said to Caro. “I can’t drive like this.”
Caro pulled her phone out of her hoodie pocket, her finger hovering over the screen. “Which one should I call?” she muttered to herself.
“Grumpy, Happy, Dopey, whoever,” I told her, then leaned against the kitchen table. “Just pick one.”
She eventually called Jessica, her oldest sister, and the two of them had a quick conversation that seemed to focus on all the times Caro had covered for Jessica in the past. “You owe me,” Caro kept saying, and apparently she won the argument because she hung up and said, “Jess’ll be here in five minutes.”
“Great,” I said. “Let’s wait outside. I need fresh air.”
“M’fine,” she mumbled. “Sleepy. Home. Bed. Heather.” That last word sounded more like a threat and she frowned.
“Yeah, okay.” I pulled Caro back from Drew, who seemed more than happy to shove her away and get back to more important things, like a boy who showed up at his house just to spend time with him.
Oliver and I got Caro around the corner and into the backseat of Jessica’s car. “If you puke, you’re dead to me, Caro,” Jessica said, but Caro just ignored her and said, “But I want to ride in the front.”
“Drunk people in the back,” I told her. “It’s a cardinal rule.”
“I’ve never heard of that rule,” Oliver said with a grin.
“Yeah.” Caro was now trying to lie down, even as Oliver and I were climbing in next to her. “You made that up.”
“Shove over,” I told her. “Your shoes are taking up way too much room.”
“They have a big personality,” she slurred, and I saw Jessica giving us all the evil eye in the rearview mirror. I couldn’t blame her, though. If I had a sister who woke me up in the middle of the night to pick up her and her drunk friends, I’d be pissed, too.
“Do you have enough room?” I asked Oliver once we left Drew’s neighborhood, back down the hill toward our boring, everyday suburban sprawl, the mansions in the rearview mirror. Next to me, Caro’s eyes were closed and she was propped up against the window.
“I’m fine,” he said. The window was open a little, making his hair dance across his forehead. “You can move closer if you want,” he added, gesturing to Caro’s feet. “You could get hurt.”
I curled up next to him, my knees tucked into my chest and my head against his shoulder. “For safety’s sake,” I said, and felt him smile against my hair as he wrapped his arm around me. The streets were empty and we watched as the buildings and houses flew past us.
I had Jessica pull up a few blocks away from our houses so she could let Oliver out. I was pretty sure my parents were asleep, but I didn’t want to risk being seen. “Sorry,” I said again to him. “Curbside service next time.”
“Byyyyyye, Oliver,” Caro said from the backseat. “Did you have a nice time? I hope you had a nice time.”
“Caro,” he said, “this was the best party I’ve ever been to in my life.”
It was the only party he’d ever been to in his life. And I was the only one who knew it. I looked away to hide my smile.
“Text me later?” he asked me.
“Okay,” I said. “Sleep well.”
“Yeah. You too.”
He didn’t shut the door, though. “Bye,” he said.
“See you later.”
“Okay.” He slammed the door and I rolled down the window so I could lean out. I could hear Jessica’s annoyed sigh, but I ignored her.
“Get home safely,” I told him.
“Yeah, sure.” He smiled back. “Hey, um, this might not be the best time to say this . . .”
My heart plummeted. “Okay?”
He tapped his fist against the car door a few times, then looked at me. “I’m glad you never moved.”
It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me.
“Well, I’m glad you finally came back,” I said, and when we finally drove away, he never moved from under the streetlight, his image growing smaller and smaller until I couldn’t see him anymore.
But I knew he was still there.
Back at Caro’s, her brother David was playing Mortal Kombat and didn’t even acknowledge us as Caro and I came in through the front door and started up the stairs.
“Shh, my parents are sleeping,” she whispered, but we all knew that Caro’s parents slept like the dead. (To be fair, they had six kids. They were probably exhausted.) My parents, on the other hand, slept like nervous birds. I once got up to use the bathroom and came out to find both of them in the hallway, my mom behind my dad, each of them clutching one of my mom’s high heels.
“What are you doing?” I cried.
“We thought you were an intruder!” my mom yelled as my dad flipped on the light.
“An intruder who breaks into the house and then stops to use the bathroom?”
That was just one example of why sneaking into or out of my house was not an option. I don’t want to get impaled with an Easy Spirit pump. I don’t know how I plan on dying, but it’s not going to be like that.
Caro and I took turns in the bathroom and she loaned me some clean pajamas. “You’re like a paper doll,” she giggled as I came into the bedroom. Heather’s side was still empty. Either that, or she was just asleep under the clothing explosion and it was impossible to see her through the debris.
“I’m like a what?” I said.
“You keep borrowing my clothes.”
“Well, yours are all nice and clean. Scoot over.”
Caro turned off the light as I climbed into her bed. Sleeping over at Caro’s always meant a foot kicking me in the arm or a hand draped over my face. Back when Caro had her cat, Mr. Pickles, he used to sleep on top of my head, only he’d eventually slide down so that I’d wake up and find myself being smothered by a ten-year-old cat who had no interest in moving.
I don’t really miss Mr. Pickles. Don’t tell Caro.
She wa
s asleep within minutes, but I lay awake, listening to the crickets. It’s funny how, even though Caro doesn’t live on my street, it still sounds the same outside, bugs and distant cars and a silence so loud that it can wake you up, or worse, keep you from falling asleep.
Caro rolled over next to me and slung her arm over my shoulders. Mr. Pickles 2.0. “Caro?” I whispered.
Nothing.
“Caro, get off.” I gave her a shove and she just snuggled down against my arm. I sighed. The things I do for our friendship. “Caro?” I whispered again. “Are you awake?”
She wasn’t, of course, which made it easier to confide in her. “He kissed me,” I murmured. “Outside at the party.”
Caro just snuffled.
“Well, congrats for you,” came a sleepy voice in the direction of Heather’s bed. “Now will you shut up, please?”
“Sweet dreams, Heather,” I said, hoping that my sarcasm was able to reach her through her dirty sheets and probably bedbug-ridden pillows.
“Whatever.”
I rolled over, away from Caro so that I was on the very edge of the bed, my arm pressed against the mattress seam. “But he did,” I whispered, this time to myself, and it was there, dangling on the precipice between awake and asleep, that I finally tumbled over the edge.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Guess who’s invited us over for dinner next week!” my mom said the second I walked in through the back door on Saturday. It was lunchtime, at least I thought it was. We had all—me, Caro, Heather, Heather’s bedbugs—slept late the next morning, then Caro’s oldest brother, Michael, made blueberry pancakes, which we ate while watching cartoons. The fact that we were hungover went unsaid, but the pancakes and coffee had helped.
A little.
“Who?” I said, wincing at her too-perky tone. “The queen? Do I get to wear a tiara?”
“You’re always so cranky after you sleep over at Caro’s,” my mom replied. “What time did you go to bed last night?”
I shrugged. “Dunno. Two?”