“Fine. You want fake; here it is.” He smiled at me with almost vicious politeness. “I hope you’re very, very happy with Isaac,” he said. He drained his mug and lifted it to me. “Cheers.”
And he walked away, leaving me feeling both furious and like I was going to cry.
So that had gone very badly, very quickly.
I moved through the party in a whirl of confusion and rage. I hadn’t meant to tell Tyler he was fake. But he shouldn’t have told me I didn’t know what I was doing with Isaac. Which, in fact, I didn’t, but it wasn’t any of Tyler’s business. And if Tyler wanted something, if he was—god forbid—jealous, he could damn well say something instead of putting it on me.
And actually, even if he was jealous, who cared? He didn’t want to date me, so what could he possibly want? Simply for me not to be with someone else? For me to spend all my life obsessed with him, like he’d wanted the Barbanel girl to wait for her sailor lover forever?
I decided to get drunk and hook up with Isaac.
Isaac had been cornered by the Avillezes. They were enthusiastically grilling him about Columbia, and I waited until they’d been beckoned away by a couple across the room before swooping in. “Want to go for a walk? Unless you’d like another set of adults to ask about your major.”
“A walk would be great,” he said with much relief, and followed me into the foyer so we could grab our coats. We passed Tyler, talking to Ethan and David, and I smiled at him sharply. He straightened, face blank, and looked away.
Don’t think about Tyler, I told myself. Tyler was incidental. Isaac was the point. Isaac had always been the point.
Tension coiled through my body as we wrapped ourselves in outerwear and circled back into the gardens. I was painfully aware of our arms, close to brushing. Okay. Focus. I wanted this to happen. I wanted to be open with Isaac. I wanted to create a romantic moment and a genuine connection.
We walked through the garden, the stars and moon sliding silvery light over the pines and juniper trees and dormant flower bushes. The air tasted cold and crisp. When the path approachedthe edge of the cliff, I took us over to a stone bench some distant ancestor had installed, which had a view of the sand and the sea and the sky.
We sat. In the past, I would have been painfully awkward, utterly silent. Anything to keep the boy beside me from knowing I liked him. Now I crossed my knees, leaning them to the left so I angled toward Isaac. “Chilly.”
“Yeah. But very pretty,” he offered.
We could, potentially, have sat there forever in silence, drowning in the wind and cold, the moon bright, the sea black. But I had to make my own moments. I looked at him, focusing on the curve of his jaw, the line of his lips; holding the moment out; urging him to fall into it. This wasIsaac. I wanted Isaac.
He looked at me quickly, then away, then back again, and offered a slightly nervous smile. “What?”
I tried to smile. The nerves within me coiled and banked, like frantic animals trying to escape confinement. Why wouldn’t he kiss me? Should I kiss him? What if he didn’twantto kiss? Maybe he regretted last night. “Nothing.”
I was too much in my own head. I needed to think like Tyler—more confidently. Or thinkless. Try to live, instead of letting the possibility of failure and embarrassment freeze me.
Isaac smiled awkwardly. Maybe the same nervous energy darted through his body. Though now, oddly, my energy had begun to rebound, my pulse slowing enough I thought I might gointo hibernation. Maybe I’d used up all the energy I had and only had seconds left before collapsing.
If so, I needed to use them.
I lifted my head, scooched an inch closer, and kissed Isaac.
He kissed me back, pressing his soft, closed lips to mine. Then he pulled away and smiled, the same hesitant smile. I smiled back, mortification starting to uncurl in my belly. “Is this—I wanted—is this okay?”
“Yeah,” he said, and touched his lips back to mine.
Okay. Yes. Good. Exhilaration shot through me. We were kissing! We were kissing.
It was... fine?
His mouth was warm, the pressure from his lips pleasant. His hands stayed by his side, and I wasn’t sure what to do with mine, so I placed one on his shoulder and kept my lips on his. Okay. Now what? How long did we do this for? Why hadn’t I madesomeonetell me about noses?
Actually, our noses seemed to be fine.
Weren’t tongues supposed to be involved? My tongue remained quite firmly in my mouth, and to be honest, I couldn’t argue with its placement. The books I’d read always went for “mimicking another dance” imagery, but our tongues mimicked no dance, and I for one did not plan to induce it.
So I was a touch surprised when Isaac slid his hand up the front of my dress coat. I shied back slightly, and now it was myturn to smile awkwardly, then look away at the moon and the sea. My heart raced and I wasn’t sure what to do, wasn’t sure why I wasn’t more into this, wasn’t sure where Isaac’s head was at.
“Oh, wow, sorry!”
I looked up and saw Abby staring at us, before she made an apologetic moue and vanished in a blur of flying brown hair. Mortification rushed through me. Isaac jerked back so violently he almost fell off the bench even though we were alone again. I stared at him, then after Abby as though to make sure she’d really vanished, then back at Isaac. “Oops.”
