“You know where to find it.” He picks up his pencil again. “Good to see you, Suzette.”
I don’t need to use the bathroom, but I figure that’s where Emil headed, so I walk down the hall and around the corner and—he’s not there. I double back the way I came, branching off into the living room, but it’s empty, and he’s not in the family room, either. He wouldn’t leave without telling me, but maybe he went to sit in his Jeep, even though it’s baking under the afternoon sun. I cross the foyer, open the front door, and find him sitting on the curb, his towel draped over his shoulders. I close the door behind me and walk out to meet him.
“Hey.” I use my towel to cover the curb and sit on top of it.
“I thought about leaving, like, a hundred times, but my keys are back there,” he says, staring at the steep embankment that faces DeeDee’s house. He pauses. “And so were you.”
I try not to think about the way his voice changed when he said you. I try to ignore the shiver that runs up my legs, so close to his, because that’s not why we’re sitting here, at the opposite end of the house from our friends.
I glance at him. “Thanks… for saying what you did.”
He bends his knees and rests his arms on them, elbows poking out from beneath the towel. “I didn’t know I was going to. I mean, not until you said something. That helped.”
“I didn’t do anything.” I focus on the cracked pavement.
“You did.” He looks at me now, his eyebrows furrowed. “You called her out on it. It made something inside me snap and—I didn’t know I was going to go off like that, but I’m not sorry I did.”
“That’s the part that sucks. When you feel bad for telling someone they were wrong.”
Emil sighs. “Maybe it gets easier the more you do it.”
The part of the curb where the Sullivans’ house number is spray-painted sits squarely between us, but the digits are too faded to read. I trace the incomprehensible shapes. “Maybe it would be easier if people didn’t say shitty things.”
Emil smiles a familiar smile, one that I’ve seen too often on my mom and Saul and Emil’s parents—black and Jewish and Korean, every one of us all too aware of the stupid things people say without thinking. A smile that says the only alternative is screaming with rage.
“I really don’t want to go back there.” He cocks his head toward the house. “But—”
“Your keys. And my clothes.” I don’t want to go back there, either. Dee must be mortified, and I don’t hear anything from the backyard: no talking or splashing or shrieks of laughter. The whole vibe changed as soon as those words left Grace’s mouth.
“Right. And maybe we shouldn’t leave. This is our turf. She can’t run us out of your best friend’s house.”
“True.” I may have been gone for the past year, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let Grace start running things around here. “We have to go back there together.”
“It’s the only way,” he says with a quick nod.
He reaches the door first and puts his hand on the knob but stops before he opens it. He looks at me. “Listen, I know we didn’t hang out a lot before… I mean, not alone, but… would you want to, um, grab a bite sometime? Just you and me?”
The warmth I felt earlier returns, creeping from my chest all the way to my cheeks this time. Emil has never actually asked me out, but I have the feeling that he would have, if I’d paid him more attention. Has he realized that I’m noticing him in a different way now?
“Yeah,” I say, hoping my voice doesn’t give away my trepidation—not because I don’t want to go out with him but because I very much do, and it’s still a surprise, the way I see Emil now. Not only because I’ve always kept him at arm’s length but because I like him more than I’ve liked any other guy, and it feels the way it did with Iris, like it could be something real. “Can we do sushi? That place over on Hyperion?”
He grins. “We can go wherever you want.”
We won’t leave Dee’s for a while but we’ve still got a car ride ahead of us, and if the way I feel now is any indication, there’s a possibility I might flush furiously the whole way home.
When we get back to the pool, Alicia and Grace are sitting off to the side, away from everyone. Alicia has her arms crossed while Grace silently picks at the grass. Part of me wants her to leave already, but another part is satisfied that she’s forced to live with the uncomfortable aftermath.
The game of chicken fighting has stopped, but a few people are back in the pool again, throwing around an inflatable ball. DeeDee included. She sees us and sort of waves, but makes no attempt to get out and join us, which annoys me.
“Getting back in,” Emil says. His tone is a little defiant, like he’s still intent on proving Grace wrong, even though she saw us swimming long before she made her comment. “Coming?”
“I’m gonna talk to DeeDee for a minute. But promise you won’t leave me here.”
“Never that,” he says, and he’s smiling again.
I sit on the edge of the pool and dip only my feet in. DeeDee swims over a few seconds later, clearly aware that I’m here for her.
“Well, that was awkward,” she says, wiping the water from her eyes.
“Yeah, I mean, who’d’ve thought someone could actually be worse than Catie?” I try to say it lightly, but there’s an edge to my tone.
DeeDee swallows. “Are you mad? I don’t think… I mean, Grace wasn’t thinking. Clearly.”
“What made it really awkward was that nobody said anything besides me and Emil.” I keep my voice low, because this isn’t a conversation we need to be having with anyone else. I wish someone had spoken up, but DeeDee is my best friend, not them. I don’t expect as much from them as I do her.
She looks down at the pool and over at Alicia and Grace before she meets my eye. “I guess… I didn’t know what to say. Nothing like that has really happened in front of me. Grace has never said anything like that when I was around.”
“Well.” I pause. Sigh. Maybe nothing she said could have made it better, but I want to know she cares enough to try. “I need you to have my back. I know Grace is your friend, but I’m your best friend.”
She blinks at me a couple of times and I wonder if she’s going to cry, but she doesn’t. And I’m glad. That would make this more about her than me, and that wouldn’t be fair. She lifts herself out of the pool and plops down next to me and wraps her dripping arms around me until my skin is almost as wet as hers.
“You are my best friend and I always have your back and I’m sorry.” She pulls away to look at me, her hands still pressed against my spine. “Want me to kick her out? I’m getting pretty good at that, you know.”
“Alicia would kill you. And no, I don’t want to make things worse. She looks pretty miserable anyway.” I swish my feet through the water. “Maybe one good thing came of it.… Emil asked me out.”
DeeDee’s grin is so big it makes me smile, like a reflex. “Finally, you guys are getting together!”
“Finally?”
“Don’t play dumb. You know he’s always had a thing for you.”