? ? ?
A new routine grew out of the lunch hour. Dhaval walked Delilah to the edge of the lawn and then thought of some reason or another why he needed to go hang out with his friends near the basketball courts, when there wasn’t a single bone in his body that had any natural inclination for the sport. Delilah would walk the rest of the way over to where Gavin sat, reading beneath the tree.
And over time, Gavin stopped reading during her approach and would instead watch her walk from the lawn’s edge to where his feet rested, practically miles from his smile. Her journey would feel like it was happening in stop-action; with his eyes on her like that, she would turn into the most awkward girl alive.
Looking at Gavin on a hazy Tuesday afternoon, Delilah felt like she was behind in the race to shed her childhood skin. He was tall, with stretching, growing muscles. The hair on his arms was dark. She could see a hint of chest hair beneath the collar of his shirt. Chest hair! She was so scrawny. She barely had boobs.
It seemed like Gavin finally couldn’t take it any longer. “Delilah?”
“Mmm?”
He wiped a hand over his face. “Are you. . . staring at my chest?”
Delilah nodded, moving her eyes up his neck to his face. “Yeah. Why?”
“Well. . . shouldn’t it be the other way around?”
Oh. Delilah almost choked on her tongue.
“I mean—” he started, backtracking.
But Delilah didn’t want him to take it back. “Aren’t girls supposed to mature faster than boys?” she asked, interrupting him. “I feel like I’m sitting next to a man. I’m not even done blossoming.” She considered this and looked down at her own chest. “God, I hope.”
“‘Blossoming’?” Gavin asked, with a slow-growing grin. “I can’t believe you aren’t more embarrassed to say that out loud.”
“And,” she continued, ignoring him, “I think you won the puberty race.”
“The what now?”
“Look at all these high school kids around us; they look tiny compared to you.” Gavin looked away from her face when she said this and out to the distance, where their classmates went about their business of socializing and eating and shooting hoops. “You have chest hair.”
It was his turn to look down at his shirt. He admitted, “Some.”
“And I have demi-boobs.”
Half of a smile flirted with his lips, and when he blinked down to her chest, Delilah thought the skin on her neck and cheeks might ignite. “Your boobs are fine,” he said after a lengthy inspection.
“Fine. Yes. Thank you. Be gone, feeble insecurities. My boobs are fine.”
“More than fine. Stunning. Perfection, even. Better?” He was outright laughing now.
“A little.”
“And puberty race? Really?” He was attempting teasing and skeptical, but he really just looked proud.
Laughing, she mumbled, “Shut up, Gavin.”
He split open a thick collection of short stories, sly eyes slanting a smirk in her direction. “Do I get a trophy?”
“Yes. Made of chest hair.”
? ? ?
But Wednesday afternoon he didn’t watch her walk to him; instead he watched Dhaval walk away. “Why doesn’t Dhaval ever come over here with you?”
“Because he knows I want to be here with you, alone.”
Gavin swallowed awkwardly, as if this weren’t plainly obvious, as if they hadn’t spent their last lunch together talking about puberty and breasts and his body beneath his shirt. He looked past her to the school building. “Do you think he wants to be your boyfriend?”
“Dhaval?” She laughed. “He’s about as straight as a rainbow.”
Gavin’s face scrunched up slightly with confusion. “Rainbows aren’t. . . Oh.” He looked up to where Dhaval walked in the distance. “I had no idea.”
“Then you have the world’s worst gaydar. He practically comes out every time he opens his mouth.”
Gavin was too lost in contemplating this to smile at Delilah. Instead he sat very still, thinking very hard, for what felt like far too long.