She and Brooks weren’t like that. They’d messed up the other day by trying to pretend they were. Maybe Brooks thought that after kissing her he had to say he liked her, that she’d be upset if he pretended it meant nothing.
Eureka pictured the Himalayas, told herself she wouldn’t fall. “You don’t have to say that to make up with me. We can go back to being friends.”
“You don’t believe me.” He exhaled and looked down, muttering something Eureka couldn’t understand. “You’re right. Maybe it’s best to wait. I’ve been waiting so long already, what’s another eternity?”
“Waiting for what?” She shook her head. “Brooks, that kiss—”
“It was a blue note,” he said, and she almost knew exactly what he meant.
Technically, a certain sound could be all wrong, out of key. But when you find the blue note—Eureka knew this from the YouTube blues videos she’d watched trying to teach herself guitar—everything felt right in a surprising way.
“You’re really going to try to get away with that bad jazz metaphor?” Eureka teased, because—honestly?—the kiss itself hadn’t been wrong. One might even use the word “miraculous” to describe that kiss. It was the people doing the kissing that were wrong. It was the line they’d crossed.
“I’m used to you not feeling for me the way I feel for you,” Brooks said. “On Saturday, I couldn’t believe that you might …”
Stop, Eureka wanted to say. If he kept talking, she’d start to believe him, decide they should kiss again, maybe frequently, definitely soon. She couldn’t seem to find her voice.
“Then you made that joke about what took me so long, when I had been wanting to kiss you forever. I snapped.”
“I screwed it up.”
“I shouldn’t have lashed out like that,” Brooks said. Notes from a saxophone in the Band Room floated into the courtyard. “Did I hurt you?”
“I’ll recover. We both will, right?”
“I hope I didn’t make you cry.”
Eureka squinted at him. The truth was, she’d been close to tears watching him drive away, imagining him heading straight to Maya Cayce’s house for comfort.
“Did you?” he asked again. “Cry?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” She tried to say it lightly.
“I was worried that I went too far.” He paused. “No tears. I’m glad.”
She shrugged.
“Eureka.” Brooks wrapped her in an unexpected hug. His body was warm against the wind, but she couldn’t breathe. “It’d be okay if you broke down. You know that, right?”
“Yes.”
“Every member of my family cries at patriotic commercials. You didn’t even cry when your mother died.”
She pushed him back, palms on his chest. “What does that have to do with us?”
“Vulnerability isn’t the worst thing in the world. You have a support system. You can trust me. I’m here if you need a shoulder to lean on, someone to pass the tissues.”
“I’m not made out of stone.” She grew defensive again. “I cry.”
“No you don’t.”
“I cried last week.”
Brooks looked shocked. “Why?”
“Do you want me to cry?”
Brooks’s eyes had a coldness in them. “Was it when your car got hit? I should have known you wouldn’t cry for me.”
His gaze pinned her, made her claustrophobic. The urge to kiss him faded. She looked at her watch. “The bell’s about to ring.”
“Not for ten minutes.” He paused. “Are we … friends?”
She laughed. “Of course we’re friends.”
“I mean, are we just friends?”
Eureka rubbed her bad ear. She found it difficult to look at him. “I don’t know. Look, I’ve got a presentation on Sonnet Sixty-Four next period. I should look over my notes. ‘Time will come and take my love away,’ ” she said in a British accent intended to make him laugh. It didn’t. “We’re cool again,” she said. “That’s all that matters.”
“Yeah,” he said stiffly.
She didn’t know what he wanted her to say. They couldn’t lurch from kissing to arguing back to kissing just like that. They were great at being friends. Eureka intended to keep it that way.