“Ro!” calls my dad from inside the house. “We’re leaving in a minute. I gotta get Hattie off the couch.”
“Okay!” I call back, and pop up from the swing. “It was nice of Agnes to have us over tonight.” I’m one step away from babbling to fill the silence.
Freddie stands. He’s only an inch or two shorter than me. My eyes have adjusted to the darkness out here so that now when I look at him, he’s more than a silhouette. I can see all the little details, like the dusting of orange freckles across the bridge of his nose and the scar above his right eyebrow. The gap in his teeth. All the things that make him Freddie.
“And thanks for what you said. At dinner,” I add. “I feel the same, just so you know.” The unlit porch makes it a little easier to say what I’ve been feeling out loud. The dark has a way of doing that. “A lot of the good I’ve got goingon right now is because of you.”
Again, he’s quiet. Freddie, who always has something to say, says nothing as he takes a step toward me. We’re so close that as we exhale in unison, our bodies press together.
Freddie tilts his head to the side and kisses me lightly. On the lips.
I gasp at first and he pulls back an inch. My heart feels like a fire alarm in my chest.Freddie. Freddie kissed me, and I don’t think it was an act of friendship.
Maybe it’s that I’ve missed touch—any touch—so much that I can’t stop myself, but I loop an arm around his waist, pulling him even closer to me. This time, I kiss him.
And to my surprise, my first thought isn’t that I’m gay or that Freddie is a boy or that he’s one of my best friends. His lips are lips. They’re soft and they taste like pumpkin pie and whiskey.
He deepens the kiss. Or maybe I do. But either way our bodies curl together like vines.
I lose myself in the kiss for only a moment before I remember who these lips are attached to.Freddie.I pull away, panting into the space between us. “You’re supposed to be swearing off girls,” I remind him. “And I’m supposed to be... well, you know... doing that, too.”
He wipes his thumb across his lips. I wonder what I tasted like to him. “I’m sorry,” he says. He’s breathing as heavy as I am. “I mean, if that’s something you want me to be sorry for.”
My heart is beating in my ears, and I don’t respond, because I’m freaked out. I’m confused. I don’t know what’shappening at all. I’d just found some sort of balance in my world, and now the entire universe has shifted.
“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I really am.”
“Ro!” calls my dad. “Time to motor!”
Freddie looks to me, and I can see the slightest fear in his eyes, like he’s realized what this kiss might cost us. “I won’t do it again. Not unless you tell me to.”
“I’ll call you later.”
I run around the side of the house and meet my dad on the front porch. The three of us pile into his truck, with me in the middle as usual. Saul waves, stifling a yawn, as he gets into his Jeep beside us.
On the way home Hattie falls asleep on my shoulder, and the possibility of waking her up is the only thing stopping me from pulling every blue hair out of my head. I want to scream into the jacket I’ve balled up in my lap. I want to cut this one moment out of my life and put it in my chocolate box to store under my bed, because all I can see is the domino effect this is bound to have on our friendship.
And yet, I didn’t pull away from him. Instead, I kissed him. This is as much my fault as it is his.
When we get home, Tyler is asleep on the couch, watching free HBO. It’s a holiday weekend, so all the premium channels are free, meaning we can actually watch our favorite shows on TV instead of on sketchy websites.
“What are you doing?” spits Hattie. “You were supposed to come to our Thanksgiving dinner when you were done.”
Tyler stands and rubs the heels of his palms in his eyes.“I’m wiped, babe. Did you know they put, like, a serum in turkey to make you sleepy?”
“Is that some kind of conspiracy theory?” I ask.
“You know, we never actually landed on the moon either,” he says.
“I can’t believe you bailed on Thanksgiving dinner,” Hattie tells him.
Hattie and I look to my dad, like he should somehow referee this conversation.
Dad shakes his head. “Off to bed, girls.” He turns to Tyler and gives him one firm nod.
“We’re supposed to be a family, you know?” my sister says. “We’re supposed to be that for this baby.”
“I can’t do this tonight.” Tyler walks back to his and Hattie’s room and closes the door.
