Chapter 16

It’s not that I’m mad at Maddie for trying to convince me that I’m smarter than I think I am. It’s that I just don’t understand what she expects of me. Maybe I’m not a lost cause, but I’m not the kind of guy she thinks I am, either. I’m not the guy who’s going to start his own business and grow it into an empire and live in one of the big houses he built. I’m just Jack, and I’m sorry if that’s a disappointment to her, but that’s how it is.

So I do what any guy would do in my shoes. I change the subject. “You pick the genre. And I’ll pick the movie. Or the other way around. I pick the genre, you pick the movie.”

She nods. I’m not sure what the look on her face is. I think I’ve made her feel bad, which was sort of what I set out to do, but now I’m not sure it was really what I wanted to do. What I wanted to do was say, Thank you. For bothering to hold on to your faith in me even though I didn’t earn it.

But then I remember that in the end, she didn’t. Not really. Not when it mattered.

“You pick the genre,” she says.

“Sports.”

She rolls her eyes, thinks for a minute, then smiles slyly. When she smiles like that, I want to kiss the smile off her face. “Bend It Like Beckham.”

She was the one who originally made me watch that movie, so she’s pretty much just messing with me. “That’s not a sports movie.”

She gives me a look. “You made the rules.”

“Okay, okay.”

We find it on Netflix and camp out on the couch. She’s at one end, I’m at the other, with acres of room between us. I can’t help being disappointed. “Accidental” contact during movies is something I will probably still be chasing even when I am crushing on some ninety-year-old lady in the nursing home.

“You mind if I—?” she asks, around the time Jess lies to Joe and tells him her parents know she’s been playing soccer. As she asks it, she hoists her feet up onto the couch, with her knees up so she’s still not touching me.

A little later I feel the bottoms of her feet against my thigh, and a little after that, I scoop her feet up and rest them on my thigh, and then, because that’s actually kind of painful, her heels digging into the muscle, I slide toward her and loop her legs over mine so if I wanted to, I could rest my crossed arms on her knees.

As Jules catches Joe and Jess leaning into their first kiss, I start watching Maddie instead of the movie. She’s just so—into it. Big-eyed, emotions moving over her face, mouth parting and closing as if she’s about to kiss, about to speak. A frown. A smile.

She’s way more interesting than the movie. I could watch her all night, the sparkle in her eyes, the softness of that lower lip.

And then she catches me in the act. She grabs the remote and hits pause.

“What?” she demands.

“You’re just…” I’m not good with words. I’ve never been good with words. “I’m sorry.”

But she doesn’t hit play again. She just sits there, holding the remote, looking at me like I’m a puzzle she’s trying to solve.

“Jack,” she says finally. “Why did you stop talking to me? After you kissed me in the basement?”

I was so not expecting that. We’ve never talked about it. And I had no idea that if she brought it up, I would feel like this, like I’m walking on a tightrope.

“That was fourteen years ago.”

“I know, but I’ve always wanted to know.”

“I just—I was thirteen. Who knows why thirteen-year-old guys do anything? Why not ask me why I kissed you in the first place?”

“Why did you kiss me in the first place?”

Oh, Jesus, I’m an idiot. “Maddie.”

She pins me with her gaze.

“Because I was a teenager and you were a girl and we were in an enclosed space,” I lie. Or, well, not lie precisely, but conveniently simplify.

She looks disappointed. And honestly, I’m kind of disappointed in myself. Here we are, watching a movie where people keep lying about stuff, and I’m doing it too. So I take a deep breath and man up.

“I liked you.” My voice sounds defensive, even to me. “I kissed you because I liked you. I wanted to show you how much.”

I’ve become a student of her expressions, watching her while she watches the movie, but this one is new. So soft and open I want to look away, like she’s too vulnerable and it hurts to see it.

“I liked you, too,” she says, and even though it’s one of those phrases that can mean anything or nothing, my gut knows she means it in the anything way. “So how come you didn’t talk to me after—?”

“I was a thirteen-year-old boy,” I say firmly. “I was embarrassed. And then—”

I stop, abruptly.

“Then your dad left.” She supplies it quietly. Gently.

“Then my dad left.”

“And?”

She’s always been like this. Direct. Asking questions I don’t want to answer, making me face things I don’t want to think about.

And everything fell apart. And the last thing I wanted was for Maddie to tell me it wasn’t my fault and it was all going to be okay when I knew it was and it wouldn’t be.

“There was too much shit,” I say, because that’s the truth, too, the simple truth.

She nods.

Then she picks up the remote control and starts the movie again. And I’m like—Wait!

But I don’t know what I still need to say, or how I’d say it, even if I knew exactly what it was.

We watch the rest of the movie and then she gets up from the couch and says, “Good night, Jack. That was really fun. Thanks for suggesting it.”

And I say, “It was fun. Thanks for hanging out with me.”

One last note on Bend It Like Beckham. I don’t remember this movie being this stressful to watch the last time I saw it, which was admittedly a million years ago.

I don’t remember it being so hard to watch two people who obviously care so much about each other have such a hard time showing it.