I feel my neck tense the way it does when I have to speak to Matt. Why had I agreed to drive Ringo clear across town? As if I don’t have enough on my plate already, this is hardly the time for charity projects. I blame Penny for this. Or maybe it’s Will. All I know is that before them, I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to talk to anyone. I pull out onto the main road and, at the first stoplight, begin chewing on my thumbnail.
“You can’t just breathe like that and then tell me it’s nothing,” I say at last.
“I can’t breathe?”
“No.” My glance flits sideways. “I said you can’t breathe like that.”
He clucks his tongue and shakes his head. “Okay, then. Your car, your rules.” He starts taking short, shallow breaths like he’s beginning to hyperventilate. I snap my chin in his direction, feeling my eyes bug.
“Jesus, are you all right?”
“Is this a better way to breathe? I want…” He continues to heave. “To make sure…my breathing…is pleasing…to you.”
I relax. If I knew him better, if he’d been Will, I would have punched him in the arm. But I feel the corners of my mouth inch upward. “Is this always how you make a first impression?”
“Ah, but you’re forgetting. It’s not a first impression.”
It sure feels like one, I want to say. But instead I say, “You know what I mean.”
“It depends, then,” he says, thoughtfully. “What kind of impression do you have?”
“One of a smart-ass.”
“Then no. Mostly people just notice my face.”
I stare straight out the windshield, not sure of how to respond. So I decide to say something noncommittal, which turns out to be “Oh?” I think it sounds stupid.
“You did too. Notice my face. First, I mean. Back in elementary. Now. It’s okay, though. Everybody does.”
“That’s not—”
“It is.” He cuts me short. “It’s just a birthmark. In case you were wondering. No real tragedy behind it.” He puts air quotes around the word tragedy and I wonder what that’s supposed to mean. Like, does he think it should be considered a tragedy? “I was born a healthy eight-pound, six-ounce baby boy. No crippling diseases. Ten fingers, ten toes. I just happened to have this big blotch around my eye, so…” He trails off as if I should know how to finish that sentence. “No need for it to be the ugly elephant in the room or the car or wherever.”
I actually do relax and feel a tiny bit less fearful to look at him for longer than a split second. Ringo is so completely changed from when I first met him. If therapy is to thank for his newfound confidence, then Dr. McKenna must be one hell of a good therapist.
I adjust the dial on the air-conditioning. The knots in my shoulders unwind. “It’s not ugly,” I say. “It’s unique. My mom once told me”—I smile at the memory of my mom when she used to be more my mom and not just Matt’s—“that birthmarks are what’s left over from angel kisses.”
And I hope this sounds like a compliment, but worry that what it actually sounds like is a motivational poster that would be taped up in a school nurse’s office. Worse, when my eyes accidentally flit over to his face, all I can see is the marred skin.
He rolls his eyes. “Great, guess an angel decided to make out with my face then.”
“I only meant—”
“I’m kidding. Chill.”
The untouched side of his face is invisible to me. Light catches the blue iris of his eye, turning it glassy and translucent. The curve of his skin from nose to lip forms a small, perfect ski slope. His profile is much more boyish than Will’s square-jawed, salt-sprayed surfer look. In the moment that I’m caught staring, I feel a pool of sadness rise and take shape: that his birthmark had to destroy something so lovely.
My cheeks flush with warmth. What a mean thought to have. Jesus, what’s wrong with me?
I settle back into my seat. “How long have you been seeing Dr. McKenna?” I ask, changing the subject to shared ground.
“About a year.”
I let out a low whistle. “Wow, you must be really messed up.” But I allow a crack to split my voice so that he knows I’m joking.
He laughs. “I wouldn’t throw stones in glass houses.”
There’s a long pause that I don’t know how to fill. We’re cutting through our town’s main drag now. Through a wall of condominiums I can catch glimpses of the ocean. The water looks more green than blue today and not at all gray. There are virtually no whitecaps dancing along the surface. The ocean, I’ve found, has moods. Today it’s turned calm. Serene. And I wonder if it’s doing that to mock me.
Ringo breaks the silence for me. “So…cut the crap. Who are you going to pick?”
I lose the patches of ocean as the balconies of the cheap, non-sea-facing rooms take their place, building after building. Mostly unoccupied this time of year. The summer is the off-season. June through September are too swelteringly hot. It’ll be another few months until the northerners flock to our city for the winter.
“Your boyfriend, right?” Ringo jumps in again. “You’re just going through this whole therapy shtick so that it looks like you actually considered your best friend?”
A lump grows in my throat. “No.”
“I mean, don’t get me wrong,” he says. “I respect it. Go through the motions. Pretend like your best friend actually has a shot at resurrection. But let’s face it. You’re a seventeen-year-old girl with a boyfriend. You’ve probably been practicing your signature with your first name and his last since before you had your first date.” He pauses and glances over and I feel the heat spread all the way up to my hairline.
“That’s so not true.” Except that a part of what he said echoes the feelings that have already been parading through my chest for the past twenty-four hours. I love Will. How could I not bring him back?
My mind conjures an image of the cowlick on the right side of his forehead and how he hated the way I licked my palm and tried to flatten it down.
“That’s what I thought,” Ringo says triumphantly.
And now I’m stuck with him, traveling inside a sixteen-square-foot box, and I’m really, truly starting to loathe my big mouth. “Can we please talk about something else?”
“Sure,” Ringo replies a little flatly. Only he doesn’t volunteer a change of topic and neither do I.
Instead, he eventually begins to hum and I’m tempted to turn on the radio to make him stop, if that wouldn’t seem overtly rude.
I sigh. “What’s that?”
The melody stops. “What’s what?”
“That song that you’re humming. What is it?”
He hums another bar. The melody isn’t familiar. I’m not much of a music buff, though. My selections are basically limited to what plays on the radio.
“Oh, that?” He hums a little louder. “‘Across the Universe.’” I furrow my eyebrows. “Seriously?” he asks. “The Beatles.” I scratch my temple. “You don’t know who the Beatles are?”
“I know who they are! Well, I’ve heard of them, anyway.”
Ringo shakes his head. “Tragic.”
I cock my head, annoyed. “Okay, so what? We don’t share a taste in music. Knock that off the topic of conversation list.”
“As though the Beatles are a matter of taste.”