We stayed on the couch like that for a while, talking and kissing both; it had thunderstormed that afternoon and the sky outside the window still hung dark and heavy, a greenish tinge to the air. On the tape deck, my mix switched over to “Tangerine,” the Led Zeppelin song that was my favorite. “Listen to this,” I told Alex, lacing my fingers through his.
“Well, Olivia is right about one thing,” he said after a moment, tipping his chin up thoughtfully. “This is, in fact, a sad, clangy, old-man song about a breakup.”
“I didn’t tell you that so you could use it against me!” I said, swatting him in the bicep. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“Of course I’m on your side,” Alex told me. “Just, maybe, you know, not about this particular wailer.”
“Jerk,” I said, both of us quiet for a moment as I listened along with him. “I don’t think it’s about a breakup,” I said slowly. “Or maybe it is, but it’s actually about, like, one perfect moment.”
“One perfect moment, huh?” Alex asked, leaning in to kiss me again, his mouth soft and surprisingly tentative. “I like the sound of that.”
His warm hands slid up the back of my shirt, and I breathed in, my whole body buzzing like my bones were full of neon. I’d made out with guys before—I’d done more than that—but I’d never really understood what the big deal was, what made people write songs and wage wars and generally act like idiots. I’d seen my mom get bogged down and tangled up by her own emotions, and I’d always sworn I’d never let that happen to me.
But with Alex, I got it.
He touched my hair now, my cheek, running his thumb along my jaw before sliding off the couch and lifting his blond head to face me, kneeling on the floor between my knees. “Can I?” he asked, one finger at the zipper on my shorts, looking shyer than I would have thought possible. “I mean—”
“What, like—?” I blinked as it registered what he was after. “On me?”
Alex grinned at that, like I was being funny on purpose. “Yeah, Dana. On you.”
I hesitated. “Is that gross?” I asked uncertainly. I wasn’t used to feeling inexperienced around him, but it wasn’t anything I knew about, not really. “I mean—”
“It’s not gross.” Alex’s eyes were wide, shaking his head at me. “It’s . . . yeah. I promise it’s not gross.”
I nodded slowly, thinking about it. “If you want,” I said finally.
Alex laughed. “Do you want?”
“I—yeah,” I said. “Okay.”
I wriggled out of my shorts and sat back on the sofa, my heart doing a kicky bit of choreography inside my chest. All the muscles in my thighs were rubber-band tense.
“It’s me,” Alex said after a moment, pressing a kiss against the inside of my knee. “Hey. It’s just me.”
I relaxed some after that—enough to enjoy it a little and, after a few minutes, to enjoy it a lot. I gasped and ran my fingers through his hair, my whole body shaking. The feeling of it rolled over me in waves.
“Um,” I said after, sitting up a little, tugging at Alex’s T-shirt until he looked up at my face. “Okay. Wow.”
Alex laughed. “You like that?” he asked, sounding pleased with himself.
“I—yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I liked it.”
“Good,” he said. “I liked it, too.”
I grabbed Alex’s shoulder and yanked until he crawled up the couch to be next to me, the two of us smashed side by side on the cushions in a flushed, sweaty mess. I pressed my cheek against the flat expanse of his chest, rubbing my nose against the cotton and feeling calm and wrung out and safe somehow, just the two of us, far away from Guy and the coaches and the world outside. The light was changing in the apartment as the sun sank behind the complex—everything getting purpler, shadows appearing where there hadn’t been any before.
I turned my face to look up at him, felt his heart thudding under my hand. “We don’t have to go anywhere yet, do we?” I asked hopefully. “Nobody’s going to catch us?”
Alex shook his head, smoothed my hair down. “We can stay here for a while,” he promised. “We’re good.”
I got back to the apartment that night and found Olivia sitting bolt upright on top of her bed, fully dressed, like she’d been waiting. “Where were you?” she asked, before hello or anything else.
I took a deep breath, but before I could say anything: “Were you with Alex?” she asked.
My heart dropped thirty stories at once. “Olivia,” I said. “I—”
“You were,” she said, eyes narrowing. “I knew it. I knew there was something going on between you guys, Kristin tried to tell me she saw you together—”
“Yeah,” I said honestly. “I was. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I want to talk to you about it. I’ve been wanting to talk to you about it—”
“Oh, now you want to talk to me about it, now that I freaking caught you—”
“I’m sorry,” I said again, coming toward her, perching on the edge of her mattress. “It was fucked up of me. It just kind of happened, I never meant to steal him or anything like—”
“Of course you didn’t,” Olivia said, crossing her arms over her chest. “You never mean to steal anything.”
My eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t even care about Alex anymore. You get that, right? I had a crush on him a million years ago, we’ve talked like three times since I got here, it’s fine. Frankly, I think he’s kind of stupid-looking now. What I care about is that you were too chickenshit to tell me about it.”
“I tried,” I said, struck by the unfairness of it. “I’ve been trying for weeks and weeks to have a conversation with you, but—”
“When?”
“The very first day anything happened, first of all,” I said. “I told you I needed to talk to you and you totally blew me off.”
“Whatever,” Olivia said. “That was one time. We live together. I’m pretty sure you could have carved out two seconds to mention you’re boning my middle-school crush.” She shook her head. “At least I finally understand why you’re still here.”
“I want this just as much as you do,” I said hotly. “Just because my whole life hasn’t been about some regional production of Cinderella that I did when I was twelve, that doesn’t mean—”
Olivia snorted. “Okay, Dana. Do whatever you want, keep on Single White Female–ing me. For your next trick you’ll probably murder me in my bed so you can just take over my life entirely, how about that?”
“Now you’re being ridiculous.”
“That’s what Ash and Kristin think, you know that, right? That you’re obsessed with me?”
“You’re acting insane.” I was crying now, not bothering to try to hide it. “Why is it so hard to believe I might want something for once in my life?”
“It’s not hard at all,” Olivia shot back. “Clearly when you want something, you go right ahead and take it, never mind who it actually belongs to.”
“This doesn’t belong to you!” I shouted. “Alex didn’t belong to you; Daisy Chain doesn’t belong to you! You don’t have blanket ownership over the whole world, Olivia.”