“Your cheeks are flushed.” She got up and made her way toward me, glancing toward Ms. Rodriquez’s empty office as she crossed the room.
I laughed. “It just feels good.”
“What does?”
“Doing something. Anything.”
She’d looked at me, a question in her eyes, but it didn’t make its way to her mouth. Instead, she reached out her hand to cup my chin. “I’m really proud of you.”
Such a simple statement. But something in those words pulled me over the slowly blurring line in our relationship. Maybe it was the adrenaline. Maybe it was the fact that we’d created something powerful and beautiful, said something important, and we’d done it together. Maybe it was always going to happen, like Owen said.
Whatever it was, the distance between us kept shrinking, smaller and smaller, until our lips met. Immediately, she smiled against my mouth and hooked her arm around my waist, her other hand soft on my cheek. My own hands were more unsure. She was only the second girl I’d ever kissed. The first girl was a one-time thing at a party near the end of sophomore year, and even then it was anxiety-laced. With that girl, I faked a headache and proceeded to have a panic attack in the bathroom that lasted fifteen minutes. I wasn’t sure I could ever kiss anyone again. It was supposed to be so fun and it ended up being so terrifying.
But with Charlie, it was different. When I finally registered what was happening, I locked up and she pulled back, worried eyes searching mine. I was dizzy and nervous, but I also felt safe and turned on as hell. So I smiled at her and my fingers found their way to her slim hips and I pulled her back to me, deepening the kiss. She tasted like cinnamon gum, her lips soft against mine, tongue gentle and slow, seeking and finding mine over and over. For the first time in a long time—?maybe ever—?I really wanted someone.
And that was the beginning, such a natural transition from what we had been to what we were always becoming. For a while it was good. So good. I was shocked by how good it was. And then my mom kept casting us worried glances and Owen would crack a joke about how the world would theoretically end if we ever broke up. But the real problem wasn’t that our friendship was changing. Not really. Charlie was absolutely fine with whatever we did or didn’t do physically, but I know she must have wondered why I never let her hands wander below my waist and why I never touched her like that either. I couldn’t be her girlfriend the way I wanted to be. The way she deserved. I felt my control slipping, the worry that I’d ruin everything a palpable weight on my chest.
Because who was I without Charlie? Who was she? How did we get so entangled that I couldn’t imagine a life without her? And how fair was it to her that I couldn’t touch her, couldn’t be touched?
Three weeks ago, the ship went down, and I’m the one who blew a hole in the port side.
We were eating tacos at my house, the evening light fading from a vibrant orange to a delicate lavender, the night growing soft around the edges. Mom and Dad were on an overnight trip to Chattanooga, hoping to descend upon some estate sale at the crack of dawn and acquire yet another four-poster bed or antique desk for their furniture shop. Owen was probably at the lake with Hannah, soaking in the last of the warm sun. I don’t even remember now. I do remember glancing up at Charlie, her pretty pale skin almost violet in the twilight, and all of those worries finally overflowed.
So I told her I missed my best friend.
She said the same, even though she had to know there was more to it.
But I miss her even more now.
Pebblebrook is a big school, but in our tiny little program full of dramatic artistes, it doesn’t take long for a whisper to snake through the halls, eating everything in its path until it’s a shout. I’m halfway through a notation in second-period music theory when the murmuring starts.
I spent the first ninety minutes of school forcing my eyes straight ahead in the halls and on my own papers in class. I’m on a different schedule than both Owen and Hannah, so I don’t know if either of them came to school. I’m not sure what I’d do with that information even if I did know.
Now Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” plays gloomily through Dr. Baylor’s sound system while I scribble on my composition paper, straining to catch every chord and quarter rest. I’ve just added a crescendo symbol when I hear them.
Voices, whispering.
“For real?”
“That’s what I heard.”
“What a bitch.”
I turn my head toward the hissing. A group of orchestra kids huddle over their desks, heads bent together, notation paper forgotten between them. All of them are wearing matching disgusted expressions, a tinge of hunger underneath.
“This morning, Owen told me they had a fight after they . . . you know,” Jaden Abbot says, waggling his eyebrows. I want to rip them off. “Then he told her maybe they should take a break. Just a breather, you know? She freaked and now she’s crying rape.”
My heart stutters and my eyes instinctively look for Charlie. She’s a few rows over, already staring at me, her mouth a little circle of shock.
“No way,” Rachel Nix says. “They’ve been together for months. You’re telling me they haven’t already done it?”
Jaden grins. “That’s exactly what I’m not telling you.”
“There’s no way he hasn’t already been in her very tiny skirt,” says Peter Muldano.
“Multiple times,” Jaden adds, and the group devolves into laughter.
“Enough,” Dr. Baylor snaps as she circles the room. “This assignment is due at the end of class. I suggest you listen and write.”
