She came out with a second plate of food and set it down across from me. “Of course I’m talking about wine. What else would I be talking about?”
“When it comes to that stuff,” I told her, squirming in my chair, “you’re gonna have to dumb it down a little. All I know is red or white.”
She stood there, staring at me. “Well, they’re both white. White goes with fish.”
“So, that settles it then,” I said. “We’ll go with the white.”
“I know, but—oh, forget it.” She went back into the kitchen and came back with a bottle of wine and poured our glasses full. “Cheers,” she said, holding up her glass.
“Salud,” I said, the way my old man always does.
We clinked glasses.
After the half dozen muffins I’d wolfed down for breakfast—that’s right, I ate every last one of those bastards—I was no longer desperate. But my entire body came alive when I started putting down Haley’s perfectly grilled fish. This was real food. With real nutritional value. I felt like I was turning from a floppy, stuffed bear into an actual human being.
The wine wasn’t hurting, either, and Haley was quick to refill our glasses.
“Oh, and don’t think you’re getting off the hook,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“The truth game,” she said. “Just because I didn’t take a shower tonight doesn’t mean we’re not sharing.”
“This dinner’s amazing,” I said, pointing at my half-empty plate.
“It’s just baked cod.” Haley paused for a few seconds before adding: “But thank you. I need to be better at taking compliments.”
“You go first this time.” I stabbed another piece of long-stemmed broccoli. I don’t know why, but I was excited to hear what Haley had to share. Maybe I was kind of getting into her corny game.
“Okay.” Haley took a sip of wine and then just sat there, holding her glass, like she was thinking. “Sometimes I worry. About myself, I mean. I don’t have a … ‘thing.’ I got good grades all through high school, right? Strike that. I got very good grades. I was valedictorian. And I scored high on the SATs. And I had all the extracurriculars my counselor said I should have for my college applications. I volunteered at a mental health clinic during sophomore year, but I only did it because I knew it would look good. Messed up, right?”
It was at that moment that I realized how truly beautiful Haley was. She had a perfect complexion and high cheekbones and there were these cute little freckles surrounding her nose. But I don’t just mean physically. A lot of girls look good to me—I have what you might call a flexible aesthetic. But there was something about Haley that went beyond looks. Like how she had these dimples whenever she grinned. And when she said something self-effacing, she’d shrug her shoulders a little and tilt her head and glance at her feet. And sometimes when her light brown eyes locked on to my dark brown ones, it was like she was reaching a hand all the way into my chest, like she was digging around in there for the most honest thing she could find. It made me want to quit hiding, even though I’d be taking the chance of her not liking what she discovered.
“The problem is,” Haley went on, “I never understood why I was doing anything—other than I knew it was expected.” She refilled both our glasses again. “And I’m not even saying my parents pushed me. Or my counselors at school. It was me. I wanted to excel. But every decision I made through high school was based on how I thought it might make me look on paper. I never once stopped to think about what I actually liked to do. That’s kind of sad, don’t you think?”
“More like honest.” Usually, I liked to keep quiet. I liked to listen. But the wine was just reaching my head, and I felt oddly comfortable, so I let myself talk. “Here’s a question,” I told her. “Would you rather be great at something you like, or just okay at something you love?”
“Jesus, I don’t know,” Haley said. “That’s hard. What about you? Sounds like this is coming from a personal place.”
I stuck my silverware on my empty plate and leaned back with my wineglass. I felt like I was in a movie or something. One about rich British people, like the show Haley had mentioned before. Talking all deep in a beautiful New York apartment. Swirling damn wine in an actual wineglass. The only other time I’d had wine, me and Jessica drank it out of shot glasses, because that’s all we could find at her stepdad’s place. “The one thing I know I love,” I said, “besides my family, is music. Guitar. But I also know I’m not that good at it.”
“You play down there sometimes, don’t you?”
“Me? No way, not at Mike’s. I’m talking about at my own place.” Stop lying! “Okay, maybe I mess around a little. Not for real, though.”
“I knew it,” Haley said. “At first I thought it was the radio, which must mean you’re pretty good.”
I shook my head, embarrassed. “Anyways, let’s just move on.”
Haley laughed. “Looks like I’m not the only one who could be better at taking compliments.”
After a short stretch of silence, one that didn’t even feel that awkward, I said, “I guess I don’t really know what I want to do, either. Sometimes I feel like a shook-up bottle of soda. Like, I have all this passion that wants to explode, but I don’t know where to aim it yet. Is that kind of what you mean?”
“Exactly. And sometimes I get worried I’ll never know where to aim it.” Haley emptied the rest of the wine bottle into our glasses, but there were only a few drops left so she got up and opened the second one.
We talked for hours after dinner. When the second bottle of wine was gone, I raced downstairs to grab Mike’s bottle of vodka. When I came back, Haley fixed us vodka cranberries and we sat on the couch in the living room and we talked and talked and talked. Haley told me what it was like growing up in Oregon. I told her about life near the Mexican border. Haley described what she’d be doing back home right now—dinner at a fancy restaurant with her mom, dad, and little sister, followed by each of them opening one gift by the fire—and I told her about Christmas Eve at my grandma’s.
By midnight I was officially drunk, and as much as I liked talking to Haley, I also wondered what it would be like to kiss Haley, so I started down a very different road. “Hey, Haley,” I said.
“Hey, Shy.”
“Maybe it’s my turn to make up the rules.”
“Uh-oh.” Haley looked away from me, sensing where I was going. “This isn’t my game anymore, though. This is just two people talking. Please tell me you know the difference.”
“I know,” I said. “But I just maybe … sort of…”
“What?”
“I wonder how it would feel to, like, you know, hold your hand. That’s all.” I set down my wineglass and faced her. “Like if we were on an actual date.”
Haley forced a laugh. “We wouldn’t be on an actual date, though. Because I have a boyfriend back home, remember?”
“Oh, shit,” I said. “The patient guy. I almost forgot about him.”
It was true. I’d gotten so caught up in the moment I completely forgot about the world outside of the apartment complex. I picked up my wineglass again, sipped a little more vodka cranberry.
That’s when Haley did something that surprised me. She set down her glass, then took my glass out of my hand and set it down, too. “But it’s not like you’re talking about getting married, right? You’re talking about holding hands. Hypothetically.”
I swallowed hard. “To test the feel.”
“Which I suppose is pretty harmless in the grand scheme of things.”
“Though, I’ll be honest.” I touched Haley’s bare ankle. “A small part of me might also be talking about marrying you.”
She slapped my hand away. “See, this is why I never should’ve taken a shower down there. Showers can lead to hand-holding, which can lead to.… People are better off growing Christmas dreads.”
Haley smoothed her pretty hair behind her ears and reached for my hand.
I could barely breathe.
It was everything I wanted, but at the same time, it was scary as shit, too. Because I knew myself. I felt the “unbalanced thing” to the point that I couldn’t even think straight. Haley’s eyes locked inside mine. Her hand in my hand, which was making my whole arm tingle, my whole body.
“It’s a pretty good fit,” I managed to say.
She made it so our fingers were linked and, for a few long seconds, we just looked at each other. I glanced at her lips before forcing myself back to her eyes. Her face grew more serious, and she cleared her throat softly. “I have to admit something. It’s kind of bad.”
“Uh-oh,” I said, nervous she was going to pull the plug.
“I didn’t really procrastinate. I bought my plane ticket home weeks ago.”
In my drunken state it took me a few seconds to realize what she was saying. She’d chosen not to go home. Which meant she was avoiding something. Possibly someone. My heart pounded against the inside of my chest.
“I just never went to the airport,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because I’m a coward.” She scooted a little closer to me on the couch. “Do you think less of me now?”
“Why would I?” I said.