Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between

Stella places both hands on the sink, rocking back and forth. “This is why I didn’t want to tell you.”


“What? No. Come on. I think it’s great.”

“You already said that.”

“How long has it been going on?”

Stella straightens again. “A few weeks. Maybe a month.”

“Wow,” Clare says, failing to hide her astonishment. “And nobody knows?”

“Nope,” she says with a faint smile. “Turns out, he’s not always such a bigmouth.”

There’s a sound in the hallway, and they both freeze, listening for footsteps. But when it gets quiet again, Clare hoists herself up onto the sink.

“You and Scotty,” she says, the idea of it still settling over her.

“It’s not that crazy, is it?” Stella asks, absently ripping off a square of toilet paper. She begins to shred it into tiny pieces, which flutter like leaves onto the tiled floor.

For Clare, this is almost more of a shock than finding out about Scotty in the first place: Stella—who never cares what people think of her—seems to be nervously waiting for her approval.

“You really like him,” she says, beginning to understand that this is more than what it seems, that perhaps it goes deeper than it might appear.

Stella drops the last bit of toilet paper, then wipes her hands on her jeans. “I don’t know,” she says, unable to meet Clare’s eyes.

“You do,” she says gently. “I can tell. And I don’t think it’s crazy at all.”

Stella lets out a hoarse laugh. “It’s a little crazy,” she admits. “But there’s just something about him. We’ve been fighting for so many years that I kind of forgot what it was about. And he’s funny, you know? I mean, he drives me nuts, too, but…”

“But you like him.”

She shrugs helplessly. “I like him.”

Clare scoots over, patting the counter, and Stella hops up beside her so that their swaying feet drum in rhythm against the cabinet below. “I know I’ve been a self-involved jerk lately,” she says, relieved to see Stella smile at this. “But I wish you would’ve told me.”

“I know,” she says, glancing down at her hands, which are folded in her lap.

“It’s just that… if we can’t even tell each other the big stuff now, while we’re here together, how are we ever gonna survive being apart next year?”

“I know,” Stella says again. “I guess I just wanted to see what happened with it first. I didn’t realize it would turn into something more than just fun, and then when it did, I didn’t know how everyone else would react. Especially you and Aidan.”

“Well, Aidan will probably just be relieved it isn’t Riley.”

Stella laughs. “Good point.”

“And I actually really like the idea of you guys together,” Clare says, leaning into her a little. “I think it’s kind of perfect. For whatever that’s worth.”

“It’s worth a lot,” Stella says just as the door is nudged open again, and Scotty appears holding a half-filled container of green dish soap.

“What?” he asks, when they both go abruptly quiet. He brings a hand to the blocky stain on his cheek with a sigh. “It can’t have gotten worse.…”

“It’s fine,” Stella says, sliding off the counter and taking the soap from him. “It still looks like a tattoo gone horribly wrong. Sit down. We’ve got our work cut out for us.”

Ten minutes, two towels, one roll of toilet paper, half a bottle of dish soap, and a whole lot of scrubbing later, they give up. As it turns out, the ink is even more stubborn than Scotty, and all their efforts hardly make a dent. There are still thumbprints all over him, not to mention the black square across his swollen face.

“It’s fine,” Scotty says miserably. “When we’re getting to know each other, I’ll just tell all my new friends that my mom is a ladybug and my dad’s a leopard.”