CHAPTER 36
Nastya
Josh’s garage is open when I drive by on my way home from Drew’s. He’s on a stool hand sanding a piece of wood. He must be desperate to get whatever it is done, because he usually leaves the sanding for me.
“Done?” he asks when I take the sandpaper out of his hand to check the grit before handing it back. I pull another sheet of it out of the cabinet and sit down next to him.
“For tonight.” I hold a piece of wood up to him. “With or against?”
“With the grain on all of these.” He motions to the wood pieces between us on the work bench.
“What’s it going to be?” I tilt my head toward the pile of cut wood while I attach the paper to a sanding block.
“Bookshelf. For Sarah’s birthday.” I nod and start working on one of the shelf pieces.
“You changed,” he says, after a few minutes of listening to nothing but the lullaby of sandpaper on wood.
I look down at the jeans and black t-shirt I put on after he dropped me off and shrug.
“Probably a good idea. Drew would never have been able to concentrate with you in that dress.”
“Can
you
blame
him?
I
am
distractingly pretty.” I deadpan, just to get him off of the subject of Drew and me. It never ends well. Besides, the dress was for Josh, not Drew.
“You’re not going to forget about that are you?”
“Why would I want to?” I have a list of things I’d like to forget, but that isn’t on it. I’ve replayed it in my head a thousand times. Maybe because he didn’t say beautiful, or stunning, or gorgeous or any crap like that. He said pretty, and pretty I might actually be able to believe.
“Because it’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever said and I’d like you to,” he half-snaps and it slingshots my mind back to the picture of him disappearing down the hall last night with one of the most beautiful girls I’ve ever seen. Blonde, tan, all lit up and everything I’m not.
“Consider it forgotten.” I finish sanding one side of the shelf I had been working on and place it back on the counter. I step off the stool and brush the dust off my pants and I can feel him watching. “It’s late. I should go.” I didn’t stay here after last night and I’m sure as hell not staying here tonight.
“See you tomorrow?” he says as I walk toward my car.
I wave over my shoulder, but I don’t look back.
***
Josh
I’m in her driveway before she can get her key in the door. I left my house as soon as she was off my street, because f*ck if I can do this anymore.
“Can I come in?”
She opens the door and steps inside and I follow her.
“Don’t say things if you don’t mean them. I’m not that pathetic that I need empty compliments.” She locks the door behind me and throws her purse onto the front table along with a can of pepper spray and that baton key holder thing she always carries around.
“I did mean it. It was just stupid.”
“Wow. Even better. You’re on a roll.
Keep going.”
“You’re not going to make this easy are you?”
“That was the nicest thing anyone’s said to me since I’ve been here and you took it away. So, no.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“But you did.”
I know I did. I can tell. She can’t cover the hurt in her expression, even though I know she’s trying.
“You know I meant it. I am human.
And male. And not remotely blind. Do you want me to say it again? You are distractingly,
even-if-that-is-not-a-real-
word, pretty. You are so pretty that I bullied Clay Whitaker into drawing me a picture of you so I could look at you when you aren’t around. You are so pretty that one of these days I’m going to lose a finger in my garage because I can’t concentrate with you so close to me. You are so pretty that I wish you weren’t so I wouldn’t want to hit every guy at school who looks at you, especially my best friend.” I stop to catch my breath. “More? I can keep going.” I can keep going, but even as I say all of this, I know it’s not quite true. She’s not just distractingly pretty. She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen and I want to touch her so badly right now that it’s almost impossible to keep my hands from reaching out and doing it.
“How?” Her eyes are searching mine like she doesn’t quite believe me and they’re so wide that I think I could walk right into them if she’d let me. “I’ve changed my clothes at your house a hundred times. You never try to look. I sleep in your bed. You never come near me.”
“I didn’t know I was allowed.”
“You were waiting for permission?” She looks at me like I’m insane and I wonder if I am.
“I said I was male. I didn’t say I was an a*shole.” The silence that used to be so comfortable is torture right now so I fill it.
“I’m not Drew.”
She picks up the baton thing and starts swinging it around and I realize that it’s a weapon. Her keys are attached to one end of it and they’re spinning so fast that they’re nothing but a blur. I want to reach out and still it, but I think if it hit me it would seriously hurt. “Drew’s not really an a*shole; he just plays one on TV,” she says, shaking her head and wincing.
“Sorry. That wasn’t even remotely funny.”
“Not even a little,” I smile. “But you’re right. He’s really not an a*shole.” I don’t know why it makes me happy that she sees that about him, but it does.
“Why are we talking about Drew?” Good question, Sunshine. Because it’s easy. Because if we stop, we’re going to have to deal with what we’re doing here and neither of us knows how. We suck at this.
“Will you have dinner with me tomorrow night?” I spit the words out before I can talk myself out of them.
“It’s Sunday. We always have dinner together.”
“No. Just us.”
“You don’t want to go to Drew’s?” She looks confused.
“No.” I definitely do not want to go to Drew’s.
“Why not? Are you still pissed about the sex thing? He said he told you it wasn’t true.”
“I’m trying to ask you out and you’re making it really impossible.”
She stops spinning the baton. “Why would you ask me out?”
“Isn’t that what people do? Go on dates?” People still do that, right? Leigh never expected movies and dinner first, so I really don’t have a clue.
“I don’t know. I’ve never been on a date.” And it’s swinging again.
“Never?”
“Sorry, no. Never really had a chance. My life hasn’t exactly been what you’d classify as normal. How many dates have you been on?” Her defensiveness is kicking in.
“None.” My life hasn’t been quite normal, either. “Guess we’re both freaks.”
“I think we established that a while ago.”
“So let’s pretend. One night. We’ll go out and pretend we’re normal.” We never even left the foyer, so I’m still right next to the door, but I’m not ready to open it yet.
She looks scared. Like she thinks this is a very bad idea and any second now she’s going to say so. I put my hands on either side of her face so she has to look at me.
“One night,” I repeat, not giving her a chance to formulate an excuse. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow.” I press my lips to her forehead, even though that’s not where I want them at all.
“Are you still with her?” she whispers, and I can’t believe I didn’t think to tell her. Actually, I can, because I’ve never discussed Leigh with her. Not once.
I wonder if it’s been in her head this whole conversation.
“No,” I say.
“Not even just for—” she stops and looks uncomfortable and I kind of want to laugh because some of the conversations she has with Drew would make a porn star blush, but she can’t spit this out. Looking at her now, I’m forced to admit to the vulnerability that she’s always been hiding behind every sexual innuendo and under every tight black dress.
“Not for anything. I promise.” I trace my thumb under her bottom lip and back away before I let myself kiss her, because I’ve been waiting to kiss her for months and I don’t want to do it standing in the foyer while she has a weapon in her hand and we just got done talking about Leigh.
She nods and looks embarrassed for asking, but she shouldn’t be. I would have needed to know if it was the other way around.
“So, tomorrow. You and me. Normal.
All right?”
“All right.” She smiles, but it’s not even a real smile, just the vague idea of one.
I turn toward the door, but she stops me.
“What am I supposed to wear?”
I shrug because I don’t even know where we’re going yet.
“Wear something normal.”
***
I pull up to my house just in time to see Clay Whitaker walking back to his car in my driveway. He looks nervous when he sees me.
“What’s up?” I ask. I didn’t even know he knew where I lived.
“You never told me what you thought of the picture.” Nice try, Clay, but that’s not why you’re here.
“Picture was perfect, Clay. You know it was. What do you want? Because you don’t do subtle well.”
“Why’d you have me draw it?”
I feel like every single person I know wants a confession from me tonight.
“I’m going to walk in that house right now and give you your damn picture back so I never have to hear a f*cking word about it again.” I start toward the front porch and the motion sensors kick the lights on.
“You didn’t see her face.” He’s not talking about the picture anymore. He’s talking about at Drew’s when I walked away with Leigh and he’s wrong. I did see her face and it was awful and it would be nice if everyone would let me forget it.
“What is it about that girl that makes everyone think they have some sort of ownership or obligation to protect her?” Me, included. “In case you haven’t noticed she should probably be the one protecting all of us.”
“Drew and I maybe. Not sure about you.” He’s kicking an invisible rock back and forth with his foot and I start looking around for one of my own.
“Fine, Clay. Tell me what to do.”
“You’re asking me?” He’s shocked.
So am I. “You do realize that gay teenage boys and straight teenage girls are not interchangeable, right? Same strategies don’t really work.”
“I get it. I’ve never done this before.” I’m trying to figure out how I got to the point where I’m standing in my driveway, asking Clay Whitaker for advice. How is it that with everything that’s happened in my life, this girl is going to be the thing that undoes me?
“You’ve never done this before?” he asks with more than a little disbelief.
I look at him like the insulting idiot that he is, especially in light of what he thinks I was doing last night with Leigh.
“I’ve done that before. I just haven’t done this before.” I motion back and forth between myself and the direction of Nastya’s house even though he probably has no idea what I’m doing.
“You’ve never just gone out with a girl?” He laughs but I’m not seeing the humor and I make sure my expression tells him so. “OK, not funny. Seriously, why don’t you just ask Drew for advice?” He considers that for a moment. “Scratch that.
Never mind.” He walks over and leans up against the door of his car. “Okay, then.
What does she like?”
“Running and ice cream. And hitting things. And names.”
“Names?”
“Don’t ask.”
“Well,
the
whole
sweat
and
adrenaline rush from the running might be nice for foreplay but I don’t think it’s going to play well on a first date. You’d be better off going with ice cream. Very chaste. Like her.” He smirks.
“I thought you were going to be serious.”
“I was being serious.” He stops and I can tell he’s trying to decide something.
“How do you know so much about her anyway? She doesn’t even talk.” It’s almost like what I said to Mrs. Leighton, but Clay’s intentions are different.
“Already did the ice cream thing.” I ignore his question.
“Then it looks like you’re down to hitting things.”