Emily caught me as I was walking into fifth period. “You want to talk?”
She looked nervous, like I might tell her to get lost. Instead, I barely resisted the urge to fling myself at her, sobbing and begging her to be my friend again.
“You’ll be late to class,” I said.
Emily shrugged. “My GPA can handle an occasional tardy.”
We wandered to a hallway that was mostly empty, and I slumped against the wall.
“It’s not that bad,” Emily said.
“Are you sure?”
“It was a kiss. We’re seventeen, not seven.”
“It’s not about the kiss,” I said. “It’s the way I described it that’s mortifying.”
“No one really cares. The only reason anyone’s acting interested is because Mychelle Adler told them to.”
“I guess you’re right.” Emily had always been the voice of reason in my life, something I’d seriously been lacking since we stopped hanging out. It was a relief to have her back, even if only for a few minutes between classes.
“Remember when the hippie caravan showed up? You thought everyone was going to make fun of you for forever. Or when you got drunk at the party. Or freshman year when that thing happened with Amy.”
“Are you trying to remind me of all my worst moments?”
“No. Sorry. It’s just that nothing is as big of a deal as it seems at the time.”
I took a deep breath. She was right. Why should I be ashamed of a kiss? Why should I be ashamed that I wrote about it?
“We should get to class,” Emily said.
I nodded.
“And about you and Enzo…well, congratulations, I guess.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
We smiled at each other and went to class. It wasn’t like the old days when we spent hours dissecting a situation, looking at it from every angle. But our brief talk in the hall was definitely better than drunkenly screaming at each other in public. It was progress.
? ? ?
I was pretty sure I’d never been so happy to have a day end. Until I remembered that I either needed to walk home or take the school bus. Which meant I was walking.
I sighed, shifted the weight of my backpack, then started heading in the direction of home.
“Hawthorn!”
I looked up to find Enzo hurrying toward me. Enzo. At my school. For a second, I thought that I was seeing things, that I’d fallen asleep in my last period class and was having some sort of very realistic dream.
Before I could ask what he was doing here, Enzo’s hands were on my shoulders, holding me too tight. “Is everything OK?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?” I twisted away from his grip.
“Why wouldn’t it be? Are you serious? I go outside, and your car is sitting in front of my apartment, and you aren’t with it.”
Oh. That.
“It wouldn’t start last night,” I explained.
“Do you think you could have let me know?”
“I thought you’d figure it out.”
The worry on Enzo’s face had morphed into relief but was starting to become anger. “Well, when your last girlfriend disappears, it’s not really comforting to see your new girlfriend’s car abandoned in a parking lot.”
For a second, the entire world tilted. I tried to care about how annoyed Enzo was, but I could only concentrate on that one word. Girlfriend.
I swallowed hard and did my best to speak levelly, to not let on how much a stupid word had affected me. “So I’m your girlfriend now?”
“I don’t know what you are. That’s not the point.”
It was for me. He’d said it so casually, as if the title didn’t mean anything at all. As if it was a simple transition to make. One second, someone is your friend; the next, they’re your girlfriend.
“Sorry I freaked you out.”
“Just think before you do something like that again.” Enzo reached into his pocket and pulled out his tobacco, so it seemed OK to move the conversation in a different direction.
“I need to get my car towed. I was gonna call from home and have one of my parents drive me over to unlock the car and stuff. But I could just go there with you now.”
“Yeah, that’s fine,” Enzo said. He put his cigarette between his lips and flicked his lighter to life.
“OK then.”
“I rode the bus here,” he said with his cigarette dangling from his mouth.
“I figured.”
So we turned in the opposite direction and walked toward the bus stop together, which was pretty lame but not nearly as lame as the school bus would have been. At least I wasn’t alone.
We didn’t talk much on the way to Enzo’s apartment. But in my mind, I was asking him if he really thought of me as his girlfriend. And then I asked myself if that was something I wanted.
? ? ?
The guy who answered the phone at the towing company said it would be at least an hour before he arrived. So I settled myself on Enzo’s bed, prepared for the long wait.
“How will you get home?”
I shrugged. “One of my parents. Or I can get a lift to the mechanic’s from the tow truck guy. The auto shop’s not far from my house.”
“I can’t believe you walked home last night.”
“It was pretty stupid,” I admitted, my mom’s list of worst-case scenarios still fresh in my mind.