“Dude, everyone knows it.” He looked at me like it was all so obvious. “We’re friends,” he said. “We always have been. And I want … I don’t know. To fucking … protect your feelings, or whatever. Because I know you have them. I do. And so does everyone else, so just … why can’t you just say it?”
All of a sudden, like an out-of-body experience, I saw myself saving tables for us in the cafeteria. Grabbing an extra side of something I knew he liked as I went through the lunch line. Calling him before bed—it really was always me that called him, wasn’t it?—making him mixed CDs for Valentine’s Day and pretending I didn’t care that he never gave me anything back. All those times I sat in the bleachers at practice: faithful, hopeful, deluded. Cas was a lot of things to me, and maybe I was a lot of things to Cas, too, but he didn’t love me. All at once, I realized that truth that my mom, chocolate milk in hand, was trying to get me to see in eighth grade. I couldn’t change myself to get Cas to like me. I couldn’t change Cas, either. And even if I could—would I want to? Would I want someone that I had to make love me?
And all the while, Cas stood there as “Everyone knows it” hung between us, and I could see it on his face—this obnoxious confidence. And I knew that he knew, that he had known all along, and here he was, pitying me. Poor Devon and her feelings.
I could feel my cheeks flushing, white hot tears of embarrassment pricking my eyes. If I blinked, they would fall. So I didn’t blink.
“It’s not true,” I said. “Everyone’s wrong.”
“Dev. Come on.”
“Cas,” I said. “Geez. You’re usually pretty full of shit, but tonight you’re like especially full of shit.”
“Why are you acting like this?” he said.
I wanted to yell. Rail long and hard at Cas, but I was just as mad at myself. So I let my hands relax. Took a breath. And patted him on the cheek and said, “I’m sure Gracie misses you.” And then I turned and walked into the gym.
30
Jordan met me inside the door. Cas was right behind me. The last thing I wanted to do was stay in Cas’s presence, but Jordan cornered us both, slapping hands with Cas and putting his other arm around me.
“Next dance is mine, okay?” he said in my ear. “Nice suit, Kincaid,” he called to Cas over the pound of the speakers. Cas gave him a nod, avoiding my eyes, and disappeared back into the crowd, I suppose in search of his pubescent girlfriend.
When the next pop ballad broke through the speakers, Jordan came and led me out onto the floor.
“Are you okay?” he said, when we began moving to the beat.
“Uh-huh.” I was scanning the crowd for Ezra and Lindsay over Jordan’s shoulder, hoping desperately not to see them but looking all the same.
“I told him not to go with her.”
“I didn’t know they even liked each other.”
“Just because you go to a dance together doesn’t mean you like each other.”
Doesn’t it? Ezra had asked me. That meant something, or so I had thought. So I had come to hope, at least.
“She’s way too young anyway,” Jordan continued.
“Lindsay?”
Jordan gave me a funny look. “Gracie.” There was a pause. “You were talking about our man Ezra.”
There was that twinge again. “No, I wasn’t.”
“Now let’s not go telling lies. This is your pal Jordan you’re talking to.”
“My pal Jordan,” I murmured. “Champion of my heart.”
“No, you’re the champion of my heart.”
“Can we be each other’s champions?”
“Yeah.” He smiled. “I’d like that.”
I returned the smile as best I could, but then my attention was drawn over his shoulder again. I thought I caught a twirl of cream-colored fabric in the crowd.
“I told him to talk to you, you know,” he said after a moment. “I told him a million times. But I counsel a lot of folk, and they don’t always take my advice. I don’t know why. I’m very wise.”
I smiled a little. “You are.” I swallowed. “Lindsay’s … Lindsay’s great, though.” That was the thing. She was. And they looked … picture perfect together, like someone’s dream notion of a high school dance. They could print that shit, sell it. I’d probably buy it myself.
“She is,” Jordan said. “So are you.”