But she forced herself to push through the kitchen door behind them.
She hated herself for being so nervous, for losing herself so completely in the wanting that she wasn’t even sure what it was she wanted.
Lu immediately marched up to the bar table and began pouring some kind of mixture of vodka and lemonade, while Nathaniel hovered by the wall between the door and the table. Tiny watched as people milled around the edges of the kitchen in small clusters, brushing up against the chrome refrigerator, the marble countertops, the shelves of expensive-looking copper pots and pans. It looked like the kind of kitchen that was more for show than for actually cooking in. All of the appliances looked spotless. Like a movie set.
She reminded herself that she wanted this. She had needed to go out tonight; she had agreed to it. If she’d stayed at home, she would have melted into that puddle of water on the floor, and no one would ever have seen her again.
“Here.” Lu broke into her thoughts by shoving a red cup in her face. Tiny was still feeling woozy from the courage shots they took before they’d left her apartment, but when it came to Lu, she had to pick her battles.
So, she drank. She drank and drank because she didn’t know what else she should do. Then she grabbed Lu’s cup and drank that down too. She didn’t taste a thing.
Lu’s mouth hung open.
“Whoa,” she said. “There was a lot of vodka in there.” She eyed Tiny carefully. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” Tiny said, her smile bright and her speech only slightly slurred.
“Do you want some water?”
“Yes,” Tiny said. “I love water.”
“Ooookay.”
The tap was running. A new red plastic cup was shoved into her hands. The water was cold and tasted slightly like lemonade.
“Sorry,” said Lu. “There were no clean ones left.”
Tiny shook her head. “It’s okay. It’s fine.” The room tilted on its side, then righted itself. She blinked. She was going to be brave tonight. She was.
“Ready?” Without waiting for a response, Lu turned and pushed her way back through the swinging kitchen door.
Tiny sighed. She wondered where she would be without Lu and her what ifs, but sometimes that also came along with some impossible expectations.
She turned to follow—everything swaying sort of imperceptibly—but as she did, the swinging door smacked into her from the other side.
“Ow,” said Tiny. “Hey!”
“Oh shit,” a voice said at the same time. “I’m so sorry. I—”
Tiny looked up and then realized she was staring, her mouth open, at Josh. His black, black hair, his dark brown eyes. Those broody eyebrows. His mouth that turned up slightly on one side, maybe judging you, maybe smiling at some secret joke—it was impossible to say. It was the first time he had ever looked directly at her.
“Hey,” she said. She was doing it! She was talking to him. It was like riding a bike for the first time without training wheels, exhilarating and terrifying and—
“Uh, hi.” He scratched his stubble. He had stubble. “Are you okay? Did I hit you hard?”
“I’m okay,” Tiny said, venturing a smile. “Possibly concussed, but . . .”
Josh frowned. “How many fingers?”
“Four.”
“Nailed it. You’re fine.”
He patted her on the shoulder and then started to walk away.
“Oh, um!” Tiny basically shouted at him. “What did you think of lit mag today?”
Josh squinted at her. “You’re in Calamity?”
“Uh,” she said, waiting for him to recognize her. The pause grew unbearable. “Yeah.”
“Yeah, well, listen, you should write something good for us. The quality of submissions is really going downhill lately. Today was brutal.”
Tiny felt a jolt rip through her.
“I thought you liked today’s poem? You said—you said it felt emotionally, um, authentic.”
“Hm? Oh no. I just had to jump in with something otherwise Jordan Brewster would never have shut up.” He looked right at her again, and smiled.
“What did you say your name was?”
“Tiny,” Tiny said hoarsely.
“Right. Well, seriously, Tiny. Write something good. Save us all.”
Just like that, he was gone, and Tiny was left standing there. It was like someone had ripped the beautiful hardwood floor right out from under her and she was falling through the gaping abyss, down, down, down, beneath the ground into the dark under-depths of the city.
Her one chance to finally get over her first kiss. Crushed.
There was a door on the other side of the kitchen. Leading away from Josh, away from Lu and Nathaniel, away from the rest of the party. She didn’t care where it went. She just had to get out of there.
She pushed through it and took the stairs on the other side two at a time, her face burning.
Lu
“Tiny?” Lu turned around, but Tiny was gone. She lifted her eyes to scan the room, and her heart froze.
Standing directly across from her, separated by a sea of bodies, was Will. She knew he had seen her because he was frozen too. They locked eyes.
Immediately Lu spun around and began intently studying the framed photographs on the wall behind her. Just her luck, the first one she saw was of baby Will, splashing around in a kiddie pool. Naked.
“Fuck my life,” she muttered under her breath.
“My parents put those up. Embarrassing, right?”
She didn’t turn around.
“You really couldn’t keep your clothes on as a kid, could you?” Lu tried to smirk, but it was as if she hadn’t used her smirking muscles in a while and they kept twitching in the most uncool way.
“Nothing you haven’t seen before,” Will said automatically. Then, as Lu’s shoulders tensed, he quickly added, “Sorry. I don’t know why I said that. I shouldn’t have—”
Lu was dying to see his face. Was he sorry? Curiosity got the better of her. Slowly, she turned around. He was just standing there, his hands in his pockets, and when she met his eyes, his cheeks turned pink, which was a weird look on him. Lu fought with every ounce of self-control she had not to let hers do the same.
Will cleared his throat. “So,” he said, regaining some of his swagger. “You’re at my party.”
“It would seem that way, wouldn’t it?” Lu replied, brushing her hair casually over her shoulder. Will raised an eyebrow.
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“I’ve never seen you at one of my parties before.”
“You’ve never invited me.”
“I didn’t this time either.”
Lu stared longingly back toward the kitchen, and Will followed her gaze, his expression bemused.
“Not that you’re not welcome anytime,” he kept going. “But here you are tonight, of all nights. It’s the magic of Stormpocalypse. Where are all your theater friends? Couldn’t make it?”
“You put a party invite up on Facebook. I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t in the mood to study tonight.”
“Keebler,” he said. “Come on.”
“It’s Lu now, thanks.”
“Lu . . .” He trailed off, getting a look in his eye that Lu hadn’t seen in years, and definitely had not thought she’d see ever again. Her stomach flopped over on itself like a humongous pancake.
“Will,” she said, and by this time she was backing and twisting her way through the crowd—Will behind her every step—and into an empty little alcove behind the spiral staircase. “As hard as it may be for you to believe, I’m not actually here to see you.” It was stupid of her to come, she realized for the first time. Impulsive. It was totally like her, to just do something like this without thinking it through first. What had she thought was going to happen? Had she been thinking at all, other than of a way to lure Tiny out on the night before the SATs with the promise of some fantasy moment with Josh that would never happen? She fe
lt a pang of guilt, and fleetingly wondered where Tiny even was.
“So you say.” Will seemed almost amused—delighted even—as he strode effortlessly to keep up with her. God, he had long legs. He had gotten really freaking tall.
His smirk had widened into this full-blown grin, and he had a bounce in his step she was sure she’d never seen at school. Totally weirded out, she ducked under his arm and made a beeline up the stairs.
“Why are you following me?”
“Why are you running away from me?”
“Don’t you have more important things you could be doing? Where are all your groupies? Where’s your precious team? Aren’t you like so embarrassed to be seen with me?”
“Come on.” He paused mid-staircase, serious. “Hey. Luella. Don’t be like that.”
“It’s Lu. And I really don’t have time for this. I have to go to Central Park to meet my boyfriend. He’s a musician.”
The words flew out of her mouth before she had a chance to think about them. As usual.
For a minute the look on Will’s face betrayed his confidence.
“Who?”
“It’s none of your business.” She paused. “Owen Hoffman.”
“That guy in that band? He’s a pretentious dick,” Will said with a snort.
“Your mom’s a pretentious dick!” Lu snapped.
But Will was grinning, and Lu felt something drop to the pit of her stomach. It had been so many years. It felt like no time had passed at all.
“I can’t do this,” Lu whispered. And even through the noise of the party, she knew Will had heard her, because he didn’t say anything to stop her.
She turned and ran the rest of the way up the stairs. She didn’t even know where she was going, other than away from him. She’d come to the party, yeah. She’d accepted the dare he’d thrown out into the cosmos. Maybe some part of her knew if she came, something like this would happen. Maybe she’d wanted it to.
At the second-floor landing, Lu paused. She was slightly out of breath, and it wasn’t from running as fast as she could up the stairs.
The hallway was deserted.
She was about to double back, when she heard a noise clattering up the back stairs at the opposite end of the hall, and seconds later Will came barreling through the door. She had forgotten there were stairs off the kitchen. The place was basically a palace.
They stood on opposite ends of the hall, facing each other.
“Luella.”
“Lu.”
There was an awkward pause.
“I shouldn’t have said the thing about the bras yesterday.”
“You think?”
“Geez, don’t get your panties in a bunch. I—” Then, off Lu’s furious, blazing stare: “Okay, I shouldn’t have put it that way. Come on. What are you, the language police? I—”
Lu had turned and was storming back down the hall in the direction she’d come from.
“Luella. Lu!” He sprinted after her, coming up around her other side and standing in her way.
“What do you want, Will?”
“I just . . .” He didn’t actually look like he knew. “What are you doing here?”
Lu shrugged.
“That’s not an answer. That’s like five-year-olds who answer you with because.”
“It’s Stormpocalypse.” Lu looked away. “If the world’s going to end tonight, you know, I thought I’d give you one last chance to apologize.”
“Me apologize? I see you have lost none of your tactfulness in the years we haven’t spoken,” Will said.
“Oooh, sarcasm.”
Lu looked at him. He looked right back.
“I’m sorry. About the bra thing. And . . . other things.”
“What other things?”
“Uh-uh, Keebler,” he said, wagging his finger. “That’s all you’re gonna get from me tonight.”
“Typical.”
“Well, what about you?”
“What about me?”
“How about you apologize to me?”
“Me apologize?” she said again.
“It only seems fair.”
“Hardly,” Lu snapped.
“Then I guess we”—he gestured between them—“are at an impasse.”
Lu’s breath hitched. She had never seen him look this way before. Like someone possessed. He didn’t look like himself, not like the Will she used to know at all. But then, that was years ago. Before . . . everything.
“I hate you so, so much,” Lu said.
Will sighed. “Wait—listen.”
She felt tears spring to her eyes, and she forced them with all her might to stay deep down where they belonged. A deep rage began to bubble up inside her. At the tears, and at Will for making them come.
And then she was running past him, down the hall, to the stairs.
Wil1
Luella.
They didn’t talk anymore, but that didn’t mean Will didn’t notice her. He’d seen every one of her plays, hunched in the back row to avoid someone seeing him and loudly calling his name. He laughed to himself sometimes, in the cafeteria, watching her fill her bowl with Rice Krispies and make a mess over by the cereal dispensers, earning her nickname all over again.
She was some figment of the past who lived in his memory and did dorky things that reminded him of a different time. But she wasn’t, like, real. Sometimes he thought he had made her up to feel better about the asshole he’d become.
Then she just showed up at his party like . . . like all that hard work pretending didn’t even matter. How could she do that? Get at the heart of it all, the truth of something, so quickly? So effortlessly?
She could find the old Will just by looking at him across a stupid crowded room. In his own goddamn house.
He’d fucked up again. Twice in two days. He was going for a new record. Maybe before the end of the night, he’d be three for three.
He was suddenly dizzy. Luella was his last tie to his old self. If he snapped it for good, he’d be done for. He’d go floating off into the darkness of outer space, where he wouldn’t know anyone, least of all himself.
And if he screamed for help, no one would hear him.
“Shit,” said Will. Without Lu, he really did have nothing left to lose. She made him crazy. And now, she was gone. “Lu, wait!”
Gloriously crazy.
He ran down the hall after her.
All he could think about was finding Lu and making things right, and he had already forgotten about the insanity waiting for him downstairs, and Lu was running fast up the stairs that led to the top floor and he caught her arm and then they were standing there, facing each other in the narrow staircase. He could feel her pulse racing through her wrist.
“Just tell me this,” Will said, quietly. “Why did you come to a party at my house if you never wanted to talk to me again?”
Lu fidgeted. “I was hoping to find a way to get back at you for yesterday. Maybe spike your beer with laxatives or something.”
Will looked stricken.
“I didn’t,” Lu said. She looked him hard in the eyes.
Will sighed. “I’m . . . just so tired of everything.” He rubbed his face and pressed his palms into his eyes.
“You made your own bed.”
“You still care about me.” He took his hands away and looked at her, a challenge. “Admit it.”
“No.”
“You made a mistake that night three years ago, Lu. You know you did.”
“I did? I did? What about you? You just . . . you just . . . let me. You walked away.” She looked away.
Will tried to get her to look at him again, but she wasn’t having it. “And it was the biggest mistake of my life. I wish I could take it back. You have no idea how much I wish I could make things right. I think about it every day.”
Lu crossed her arms and looked away. “You do?”
Will nodded.
“You want to be friends again? You want things to be okay between us???
?
“Yes,” Will said simply.
Lu looked up, looked him right in the eye.
“Then prove it.”
Nathaniel
When they were kids, the only person who could cheer Tiny up was Tobias. He would sit with her, sometimes talking and sometimes in silence, until she was smiling again. She always did eventually. Nathaniel used to watch and wish it were him who could make Tiny smile again.
In the kitchen, he watched that stupid scruffy hipster guy leave Tiny standing there bewildered and sad. He felt the same familiar pull to make her smile. He hadn’t felt it in so long—he’d pushed it away with everything else he’d felt that summer—but the muscle memory was there. It snapped right back into place.
Tiny ran through the door on the other side of the kitchen. And so Nathaniel followed her.
By the time he made it across the kitchen, winding his way between people, and through the door, he could see a red Converse sneaker turning left at the second-floor landing. And by the time he’d made it to the landing, a door was closing at the end of the hall. On the other side of that door was some kind of rec room–type lounge. Across the room, another door hadn’t been closed all the way, and it was squeaking back and forth on its hinges in the wind, banging into something, so that the swath of moonlight splicing through the crack winked on and off, like disco lights. There was a couple making out on the couch, and a coffee table with a bong resting on it. A cool wind ruffled his hair. He walked toward the light, and pushed open the door.
Nathaniel blinked. He was standing on the roof, and beyond him, the expansive twinkling lights of the city breathed in and out like stars. The moon was huge and full and orange.
You had to be crazy to sit on a high open point like a roof in the middle of a lightning storm. You didn’t have to be a geophysicist to know that. What was Tiny thinking? Nathaniel should have just gone back downstairs. Maybe even walked straight out the door and made his way back home.
But he couldn’t do that. Now, if something happened to her, he’d blame himself.
So he stayed.
Tiny was sitting, her back against the side of the roof, her knees pulled up to her chest. Nathaniel took a step forward, but his sneaker hit something solid and he tripped and went sprawling. The door slammed shut behind him. Her head snapped up.