Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute

Well, I do realize that. It just feels like a crime to have any feelings at all—like I should be okay no matter what. My dad doesn’t rattle me. I can prove it.

A voice that sounds very like Giselle’s asks, By letting him shape your whole life?

“What am I supposed to do?” I demand. “Just…forget about him? Let him get away with what he did? How is that fair?”

A sad little line forms between Brad’s eyebrows. “It’s not.”

Something inside me that was venomous and ready to bite stands down. Now I feel deflated and directionless.

“But you know what I care about?” Brad’s eyes are huge and lovely behind his glasses, like a cow angling for gourmet daisies. “Whether or not you’re happy with your bitter, vengeful choices. Are you? Happy?”

I open my mouth, then close it.

“Ah, ah! No thinking. Do you want to be an overachieving corporate lawyer who goes camping with Katharine Breakspeare on the weekends? Yes or no? Answer quickly.”

“I mean…I want some of those things.”

“You’re talking about the Katharine Breakspeare part,” he says, “aren’t you?”

I roll my eyes. “Shut up.” I think I’ve had enough public self-reflection for one day. I feel uncertain, now—in my decisions, in myself. And if I can’t be sure of me, what exactly do I have to hold on to? But I can’t dump all that on Brad. I can’t dump it on anyone. “Do you want to be an overachieving hotshot lawyer who goes camping with Katharine Breakspeare?” I ask, trying for a smile, trying to tease.

“No,” Brad says instantly, thoughtlessly. Then his throat flushes brick-red.

I blink. “You mean no to the camping part.”

He shifts awkwardly. “Yeah?”

Is he lying to me? He is. He definitely is. But that means…“You…don’t want to be a lawyer?”

He doesn’t reply. I see a muscle move in his jaw, clenching it shut.

“Brad?”

He winces. “I don’t not want to be a lawyer.”

What would Minnie do in a moment like this? Be sensitive. “But you don’t not not want to be a lawyer?”

“No,” he says, “I do. I do. It’ll be fun.” But I recognize the hopeful tone in his voice, like he’s negotiating with himself—I recognize it because sometimes I use it, too.

“It’ll be fun,” I repeat carefully. “But not as fun as…?”

He huffs out a breath like a frustrated horse.

“Come on. I showed you mine; now show me yours.”

“God, Celine,” he laughs, and flops back onto the bed, then sits up again. Takes his glasses off, then puts them on again. Rubs his jaw, then mutters, “Sometimes I think I’d like to write a book or two?”

A little chain reaction goes off in my brain and a memory unlocks. “Oh yeah. Oh yeah! You wanted to be an author.”

He groans and squeezes his eyes shut. “When I was ten!”

“But not anymore?”

“It’s…not that easy.”

“Why not?”

Brad bites his lip. I really wish he’d stop doing that; it’s deeply inconsiderate to me, a person who can see him and is tragically vulnerable to the sight of an excellent mouth.

“Because,” he says, and stands up abruptly. “Just…look at this.” He fetches his laptop from the desk and sits beside me again, cracking it open. His screensaver is John Boyega being criminally hot in Star Wars. Then he opens a series of folders and I’m faced with a page full of Word files. The labels start small: Draft 1. Draft 4. Draft 9. Before long, letters are introduced. Roman numerals. Bradley has written a lot of drafts.

“I can’t finish anything,” he announces, then slaps the laptop shut and puts it on his bedside table.

I blink. “Oh my God.”

“I know!” He is disgusted with himself. “I keep trying, but—”

“No, Brad, that’s what I’m saying. How many times have you tried to write this book?”

He glares at me like I just trod on his already-broken toe. “About a thousand, thank you, Celine.”

“And you’re still going?”

“I realize it’s pointless, but you know what they say about the definition of insanity.”

“Are you allowed to say things like that?”

“Hang on, let me consult with the mentally ill council.” Brad pauses. “Yes.”

“You want to know what I think?”

“Unfortunately,” he sighs, “I do.”

“I think you’ve got this all wrong. You think it’s a bad thing that you’ve written so much. I don’t.”

Brad seems deeply skeptical—but, because he is sweet down to the bone, he props his elbows on his knees, props his chin on his hands, and listens. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. You only do something this much if you love it. And if you love it, you should go for it. Plus, I have no idea what it takes to write a book”—actually, I think I’d die of boredom—“but I’m pretty sure you have to be exactly this committed. You know, to finish it.”

Brad’s eyes bug out. “But, Celine. Here is the point you are missing. I. HAVEN’T. FINISHED IT!”

My laughter spills out without permission. “Yes, Bradley, and here is the point you’re missing: ONE. DAY. YOU. WILL.”

That brings him up short. He opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. “You…you don’t know that.”

“You don’t know that,” I counter. “I’m positive. You’re Brad Fucking Graeme. I’d bet on you any day.”

His smile is the softest, sweetest thing, like a spilled bottle of relief. “God, Celine. You’re so lovely.”

I blink. “What.”

“Do you know what you just said to me? Or were you, like, in an emotional fugue state and you’re going to snap out of it and forget the entire thing?” He pats my knee reassuringly. “That’s okay. I’ll remember.”

Now that he mentions it, everything I just said was hideously mushy. And sentimental. And possibly revealed certain things about my…my unreasonable fondness for certain aspects of his character. Okay, fine, my unreasonable fondness for literally everything about him.

“Um,” I croak. “Never mind. Pretend I never said anything. You’re too tall and you get on my nerves, how’s that?”

Apparently, it’s hilarious, because Brad bursts out laughing. “You are so repressed.” He sounds like a warm little brook hidden partway through a hike on a summer’s day, an unexpected delight. And I don’t think I’m repressed at all because I look at him and my heart does a very deliberate jump and I know exactly how I feel.

But why choose to dwell on that when it won’t go anywhere? What am I going to do, put my hands on his cheeks and kiss his annoying face? Of course I’m not. You have to be sensible about feelings like this, or they’ll run away with you. Liking someone this much is a dangerous game because what do you do when they’re gone?

I don’t know what to do with myself, so I pull a pillow out from behind his back and whack him with it.

“Hey!” He laughs harder, tugs it out of my grip, and whacks me back.

“Ow!” I yelp.

His amusement is replaced, instantly, by concern. “Shit, are you—”

Which gives me enough time to grab another pillow.

“Ah! Stop.” Brad wraps burning fingers around my wrist and says sternly, “Violence is not the answer.”

“You just whacked me!”

“That,” he says loftily, “was self-defense.”

When I transfer the pillow to my other hand, he grabs that wrist too. I try to shake him off; it does not work. He looks quite smug. So I lunge at him, which does not go how I’d hoped, since he’s still holding both my wrists.

He falls back on his elbows, and I end up leaning quite heavily over him. If I were choosing to be interested in Bradley, this would be the perfect situation. I could take the weight off my right knee and let more of myself rest on him, and our mouths would be very close, and he would be in the ideal position to notice that I smell beguilingly of my lime shower gel and coconut edge control. Then he’d put his tongue in my mouth and come away with an enduring passion for fruit salad.

I let myself imagine that scenario for a few dangerous seconds before remembering that I’m not allowed to be interested in Bradley. So I keep all my weight on my right knee. The mattress sinks a bit, and I wobble and bite my lip.

Then Brad falls all the way onto his back and pulls me down with him.





SUNDAY, 2:04 P.M.


Jordan: what’s going on man keep me updated





Jordan: Brad





Jordan: BRAD! TF yall doing over there????





Jordan:





CHAPTER ELEVEN





BRAD


Is this a bad idea? It might be a bad idea. But I’m like 18 percent sure I just caught a vibe, which is actually very sure, for me, and while I’m certainly not in love with Celine—that would be ridiculous, Jordan is deranged—I am definitely a tiny bit obsessed with the idea of kissing her. I think about it all the time. Like when we’re arguing in Philosophy or when we all go into town to get frappes. Pretty soon she’s going to notice how much time I waste thinking about her mouth—unless I can get ahead of the issue by getting at the mouth in question.