My phone rings in my hand and I jump. Noah! Noah is calling me! Maybe he’s the one outside.
“Hello?” I say.
“Hey,” he says. “Uh, sorry to call so late.”
“That’s okay,” I say, my heart pounding. “What’s going on?” I peer through the blinds as the doorbell rings again. “That’s you, right? Ringing the doorbell?”
“No,” he says. “But I’m about to pull into your—oh my God,” he says. “It’s Sebastian. He’s on your porch.”
“Sebastian?”
I run downstairs and peer out the window. I can see Noah’s car in the driveway, the rain falling and making sheets of water that are illuminated by his headlights. And I can see Sebastian standing on the porch, ringing the doorbell over and over. Then he knocks and says, “Hannah! Hannah, wake up!”
I fling the door open. “What are you doing here?” I ask.
“Hannah,” Sebastian says. “I need to talk to you.” His hair is dripping wet, droplets sliding down the strands and onto his thin T-shirt, making the white fabric even thinner.
Noah’s car door slams and in an instant he’s on the porch. “Leave her alone,” he says to Sebastian. “She doesn’t want to talk to you.” For a second, I think maybe they’re going to finish what almost happened in the diner that day. But Sebastian just turns around and looks at Noah.
“I have to talk to her,” he says. And he sounds so sad, and I remember how it felt to kiss him, and he looks desperate, and I just . . . I don’t know. I want to talk to him. But most of all, I want to prove to myself that I don’t care why Noah’s here, at my house, at one a.m. And I want to prove it to Noah, too.
“She doesn’t want to talk to you,” Noah says, and I see his hands clench, becoming fists at his sides.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I’ll . . . I’ll talk to him.”
“You will?” Noah sounds shocked.
“You will?” Sebastian sounds shocked.
“Yes,” I say. “But we have to go inside.” We’re on the porch, but the boys are both soaked just from their walks up the driveway. Sebastian gives Noah one last long look over his shoulder and then ducks into my house. I cross my arms over my chest, suddenly aware that all I’m wearing is a thin T-shirt and a pair of cotton shorts. “Do you, uh . . . Do you wanna come in?”
I want to ask him what he’s doing here, why he’s outside my house at one in the morning, why he didn’t tell me he was going to visit Ava in a few weeks, why I can’t figure out what I feel about him. And for a second, I think maybe he’s going to tell me that he can’t figure out what he feels about me either, but that he wants to figure it all out together.
But finally, all he says is, “No.” And then he turns around and walks back toward his car. I watch him go, then step back inside and shut the front door, ready to deal with Sebastian.
“What was he doing here?” Sebastian asks.
I’m in the kitchen, making us a pot of coffee, and Sebastian’s sitting up on the counter, looking pretty cute with his hair all wet and his T-shirt soaked through. It’s clinging to his biceps and I can see every single muscle.
I pull the can of coffee down and measure out enough for four cups, wondering how to answer that question. Something tells me “I don’t know” isn’t really going to cut it, even though it’s the truth. But in this case, saying “I don’t know” seems almost worse. I mean, if you don’t know why someone is showing up at your house at one in the morning, then it’s almost definitely for a nefarious and/or scandalous purpose.
“Ava’s having drama,” I say, rolling my eyes. “And she wouldn’t answer her phone when Noah called, so he was coming over here to see if I knew what was wrong with her.”
Sebastian nods, accepting this. “You got any Sugar in the Raw?” he asks.
“Yeah.” I reach up into the cupboard and pull it down. I don’t use Sugar in the Raw, but Sebastian loves it, and when we were dating, I always had it around. God, when we were dating. Was that only a month ago? It’s weird, having him here now, when in the past I wouldn’t think anything of it. He’d be here, hanging out with me for hours, watching movies or playing Wii, and then maybe going up to my room to make out if my mom wasn’t home.
Sebastian dumps a bunch of sugar packets into his coffee, and I dump some into mine, too. I probably shouldn’t be drinking coffee this late, especially since I’m having trouble sleeping already, but I need something to warm me up.
“Since when do you like Sugar in the Raw?” he asks.
“Since it’s the only thing we have in the house,” I tell him. “I’ve been getting Starbucks most mornings, or having coffee at Cooley’s.”
“With Noah?”
“Um, sometimes.” I take a sip of my coffee. “Or Lacey.”
He nods, then jumps off the counter and comes over to me, wrapping his arms around my waist. Whoa. That’s . . . unexpected.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I miss you,” he says into my neck. And it feels good. Him talking into my neck, I mean. If I was just addicted to the drama, it wouldn’t feel this good, would it? I can feel the beginning of a five o’clock shadow (can you have one of those at one a.m.?) on his face, and it tickles me, and sends heat all through my body.
“I miss you, too,” I say honestly, suddenly really, fiercely missing him so much. Or at least missing how simple things were before we broke up. Yeah, I worried sometimes about how we were getting along, and what he was thinking, but it wasn’t anything like the things I’m worrying about now. He tries to kiss me then, and I let him for a second, but then my brain flashes a picture of him in the pool with that girl, followed by a picture of her car in his driveway.
“Wait,” I say, pulling back. “We can’t just . . . We can’t just make out.”
“Why not?” He’s still close to me, and I’m not sure, but I think I smell alcohol on his breath. Which would make sense since sober people don’t usually show up at your house at one in the morning. Although Noah didn’t appear to be drinking. Noah doesn’t really drink. Why am I thinking about Noah? Sebastian is here, in my kitchen, begging me to take him back. Okay, maybe not begging. And he hasn’t really said anything about us getting back together, but isn’t that where this is going?
“Because we need to talk about what happened.” I duck away from him and lead him out onto the covered part of the deck, where I purposely sit in a chair. He takes the chair across from me and scoots it closer, so that he’s facing me, and our knees are touching. Which is actually worse than if we were sitting next to each other. Much more intimate. The rain’s still falling, but slower now, and the drops bounce off the roof of the deck, sliding down to the ground below, the air thick and humid around us.
“So,” I say, tracing my finger around the rim of my coffee cup. “What did you want to talk about?”
“You’re the one who said you wanted to talk,” he says. His hand is tracing a line on my collarbone, and I shiver and move away. “I just want to be with you.”
“Yeah, but . . . what does that mean?” I ask. “Do you want to get back together?”
“Yes.” He says it so simply, almost like it is that simple, and for a second I almost believe that it would be. That I could just say, “Oh, okay” and we’d go upstairs and maybe do Everything But, and everything would be back to normal and Ava would come back in a few weeks and we’d all start our senior year and it would be just amazing. But then I think of that damn girl in the pool again. And Noah, although I push him out of my thoughts immediately.
“Have you been drinking?” I ask.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“It has a lot to do with anything. If you’ve been drinking, you might not be in your right mind, and you might wake up tomorrow morning and regret this whole thing.”
“I know what I’m saying,” he says, giving me a slow grin. Then he leans in again and kisses me on the lips.
“But Sebastian,” I say, pulling my eyes up to his
. “You cheated on me.”
He sighs, like he was hoping that wouldn’t come up, even though it’s, like, the most important part of the whole conversation. “It wasn’t really cheating,” he says. “We just . . . got carried away.”
“We?” I raise my eyebrows. No way I want him referring to himself and the sophomore who does it better as a “we.” “I,” he quickly corrects. “I got carried away. It was the last day of school, and she . . . she just jumped on top of me.” He shrugs. “And then later, I went to find you and I couldn’t, and someone told me you’d been making out with Jonah Mancuso.”
“Why didn’t you call me?” I ask, not willing to let him off that easily. He’s still close to me, so close that our faces are almost touching, and I can see the plumpness of his lips and remember how it felt when he kissed me just a moment ago.
“I wanted to,” he says. “I really, really wanted to.”
“If you wanted to,” I say, “then you could have.”
“I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Of losing you, of you breaking up with me, of having to hear those words.” I want to believe him. I think about how easy it would be to believe him, to just slip back into the relationship and have everything be the same. Sebastian could even come with me when I go to visit Ava in a couple of weeks. Me, Ava, Sebastian, and Noah hanging out, just like old times. Not that we ever hung out that much, but we did sometimes. And yeah, there would still be some weirdness between me and Noah, but I’m sure it would fade as time went on. Ava would come back, and everything would be the same. Exactly as it always was.
But first I have to ask Sebastian a question. “So it was only that one time?” I say. “That you guys hooked up? That night in the pool, it was just a blip?”
I hold my breath. If he tells me the truth, admits that she was over that day, and comes clean, I might, might think about taking him back. Sebastian’s dark eyes flicker for a second, and then focus on something over my left shoulder. Then he slides his eyes back to mine, and says, “Yes, Hannah, I swear. It was only that one time.”
And just like that, I have my answer.
The First Day of Senior Year
When the bell rings at the end of fifth period, you couldn’t have paid me five million dollars to tell you what the class was about. I mean, I know it was physics, and I’ve somehow acquired a physics book (I’m assuming from the teacher, who according to my schedule is named Ms. Beasley, but I seriously could not tell you anything about her, like what she looks like or what she was wearing or anything she said), but other than that, I’m lost. I hope there wasn’t an assignment or anything, because I definitely will not be doing it.
I stop off at my locker and drop off my physics book (for a book I don’t remember getting, it’s ridiculously heavy—seriously, the thing weighs about twenty pounds which I really hope doesn’t correlate to the amount of work the class is going to entail) before I head to my sixth-period social media class.
I signed up for social media at the suggestion of my guidance counselor, Mr. Davies, because I had a free period and he said it would look good on my college apps. But now that my life is falling apart, I’m cursing myself for not taking a study hall instead, so I decide to head down to guidance and persuade Mr. Davies to let me drop the class. Then I can huddle up in the library and feel sorry for myself until this nightmare of a day is over.
I’m congratulating myself for coming up with such a brilliant plan, but when I get to the guidance office, there are a ton of people waiting to see their counselors (probably a lot of people’s lives are falling apart—I mean, it is sixth period, which means people have had six whole periods plus a homeroom for their lives to turn to shit), and the line snakes out the door. Not that I mind. I’m not in a hurry. But surprisingly, the line moves fast and after only a couple of minutes, I’m standing in front of the secretary, Rosie, who’s kind of a pain in the ass.
“Hello, Rosie,” I say, because I heard somewhere that if you use a person’s name when you speak to them, they’re way more likely to give you what you want.
“Name?” Rosie asks, not sounding all that friendly.
“Uh, Hannah Kaplan,” I say. “I just really need to talk to Mr. Davies. Is he around?”
She looks at me over the top of her super chic Chanel glasses. Rosie’s only about twenty-five and has DD-cup boobs, which plays into pretty much every secretary cliché. She’s also a total fashionista, and wears designer stuff all the time. I think she must have some kind of rich family, and only took this job because she thought it would be easy. Ava’s theory is that Rosie has a rich, older boyfriend. This is because one time we saw Rosie out at a fancy restaurant, and she was with a man who had gray hair and was wearing a smoking jacket. I think it was her father, but Ava insists on the more scandalous theory. Ava. I swallow at the thought of her, then do my best to focus on the task at hand, aka getting past the Guidance Nazi.
“Are you crazy?” Rosie asks. “Of course Mr. Davies is around, it’s the first day of school and he’s a guidance counselor!” Rosie looks like she should sound like a Valley girl, but in actuality she has a very posh voice. It kind of sounds like someone who’s spent some time in England, but hasn’t quite mastered the accent. You know, like Madonna when she’s trying to sound British?
“Thank you, Rosie,” I say, then start walking toward the chairs in the corner.
“Stop right there!” she says. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m going to sit over there,” I say, pointing to the chairs against the wall. “And wait for Mr. Davies.”
“Mr. Davies cannot see you,” she says. “Mr. Davies is very busy. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s the first day of school.”
“But it’s an emergency!” I wail.
“What sort?”
Something tells me “I need to drop my social media class so that I can sit and veg out in study hall because I slept with my best friend’s boyfriend last night and then told her about it” isn’t really going to get me what I want.
“It’s a personal problem,” I say, lowering my eyes and hoping I look like the kind of girl who has a shameful secret. Which, actually, is true. I do have a shameful secret. Well, I guess it’s not really a secret anymore, since I already told the one person I didn’t want to find out. But either way, it’s still shameful.
“What kind of personal problem?” she asks.
“It’s personal.” Duh.
“Fine,” Rosie relents. She looks me up and down and then smirks, probably because she likes it when people are miserable. Maybe she broke up with her rich, older boyfriend and now she wants everyone else to be upset, too. Although she is wearing a Gucci sweater, so I’m assuming her wishing bad things on others is just a personality trait.
I plop myself down on one of the chairs in the corner, across from a girl wearing a pink miniskirt and a boy who’s sleeping. The good thing is that it appears most of the kids trying to get into guidance are getting turned away by Rosie the Guidance Nazi, so there are plenty of chairs for those of us somehow deemed good enough to make it past. Hopefully the wait time won’t be that long, and I can sneak out of here and get to the library in time to spend study hall alone. God, this is really the worst first day of school ever. Only four more periods to go, I tell myself, and then I’ll be out of here.
I decide to pull out my iPod and see if I can get away with secretly listening to a few songs while I wait. I’m thinking no, but then again, there is a boy sleeping over there. Maybe that means Rosie gets drunk with power at the door and then doesn’t really care what goes on inside. (Right now she’s in the process of making a freshman girl almost cry because the girl’s somehow been scheduled for three sections of gym, something Rosie apparently thinks is totally acceptable.)
Still. I don’t want to take any chances, so I look down and try to covertly rummage through my bag and then slip in my ear buds without anyone noticing. Which is why, at first, I don’t notice the
shoes: the beat up, black boots that Sebastian always wears. Followed by the black jeans he always wears. Followed by the black T-shirt he always wears.
“Hey,” he says.
“Oh,” I say. “Um, hi.” Before this morning, I hadn’t talked to Sebastian since that night in July, the night he came over, the night he told me he wanted to get back together. After I caught him in the lie about Jemima being a one-time thing, I kicked him out of my house. He tried calling me a bunch of times after that, but I refused to answer.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, sitting down in the seat next to me like it’s the most natural thing in the world, like the last time we talked he wasn’t at my house at one in the morning, maybe drunk and trying to make out with me, the whole time lying about his cheating being a one time thing. And if he’s wondering why he couldn’t find me this morning after homeroom, he doesn’t say anything.
“Trying to add a study hall,” I say.
“Me too,” he says, grinning.
“Really?” I remember how Sebastian and I met in study hall, how the first time I saw him he was reading Pride and Prejudice, and how I thought that was really sexy. Of course, I would come to find out later that it was the only book he’d read, like, ever, and the only reason he was reading it was to impress some college girl he’d met at a party the weekend before. That should have been a sign that maybe he and I weren’t going to be the best match.
“Yeah. Maybe we’ll be in the same one.”
“Maybe.”
There’s an uncomfortable silence, and I look up and catch the girl who’s sitting across from us trying to listen in on our conversation. Probably she’s a sophomore. Probably she’s friends with Jemima. I remember how I threatened her just a little while ago. Definitely not my best moment. Although she did kind of deserve it for hooking up with my boyfriend. And besides, it’s not like I’m really going to sue her or anything.