A recap:
- Hope and I have kissed.
- Neither of us has a boyfriend/girlfriend.
- I have no idea what to do next.
Naturally, my next move is to involve Paul. I follow him downstairs to his basement to play foosball, which I’m pretty sure is a homeopathic therapy for relationship problems. I move slowly, gingerly, careful about how I apply weight to my ankle (which is, thankfully, not broken or even sprained, just like, badly bruised or something).
“I don’t see why you’re freaking out,” he says. “Based on everything you just told me about what happened in the tree house—”
“Tree stand.”
“Whatever. You should be totally fine.”
“Ah, but then there’s two hours ago.”
He swivels his little wooden man back and forth, trying to get the ball out of a corner. “What happened two hours ago?”
“I saw her when I was leaving the house, and I was like ‘Hey, Hope.’ But she seemed really flustered, and she was all, ‘Hey, sorry, I can’t talk right now. I have to meet my dad so we can pick up some stuff for the trip, and I’m already late.’ And I was all—”
Paul jerks one of his handles and the ball shoots across the table and hits the back of my goal with a thwack. “Terminator!”
I raise my eyebrows.
“Sorry. What?”
I roll my eyes, but I’m laughing. “She was leaving, and I was all, ‘Oh, okay, well what about . . .?’ And then she smiled and squeezed my shoulder and said, ‘Later. I gotta go.’”
“Huh. ‘I gotta go.’”
“But it wasn’t necessarily a bad ‘I gotta go.’”
Paul is more skeptical. “Is there any such thing as a good ‘I gotta go’?”
“I don’t know.” He scores. Again. “You’re not helping!”
“Helping beat your ass at foosball.”
“Ha.”
I could ask Dean—he has tons of experience with girls. My desperate brain tries to forget for a second that Hope is included in that “tons of experience.” I shudder.
Paul is pretty unhelpful, despite his recent influx of experience in the girl department, but getting creamed three times in a row at foosball has a surprisingly positive effect on my mood. I’m definitely not freaking out anymore (well, not more than a little bit) on the drive home.
I keep coming back to Dean. What if I don’t tell him it’s Hope? If I just say “a girl.” I’d still feel pretty gross, though. Maybe I should just ask Hope herself. Yeah, or at least say hi. Make sure she’s okay.
I get out of the truck and stand on my front porch, keys in hand, debating.
Then I see Hope leave her house. She’s walking this way! This is even better! But before she can get to the stepping-stone path that leads to the porch, she veers off like she’s going to the side of the house. I run to the edge of the porch. No, she IS going to the side of the house. She kneels in front of Dean’s window. Wedges her hands in the space where he keeps the window permanently cracked.
This isn’t happening.
She didn’t just open his window and slip into his room. And I am not hopping the porch railing and trailing after her like some kind of pathetic stray dog. I hear the creak of her landing on his bed. He hears it, too, because he turns from where he’s digging through his closet, and his face lights up. I freeze because I don’t want him to see me. I freeze because the girl I love, the girl I thought might finally feel something back, is on my brother’s bed, and it turns me to stone.
They don’t seem angry at each other. She’s saying something, but I can’t hear what. And then he says something back, and her arms wrap around his neck, and he pulls her against him by the waist like they’ve done this a hundred times. Because of course they have.
I can’t watch anymore.
I don’t know what to do with myself. I go to my room and lie on my bed with the knowledge that Hope is still in my house right this second doing who knows what with my brother. I don’t understand how she could kiss me one minute and want him the next. I keep turning over all the information in my head, trying to organize our feelings and classify what we are to each other, but there is no solution. I can’t make any sense of it. Unless. I don’t even want to admit it to myself. Unless the kiss in the tree was an anomaly. Because Dean always gets the girl. That’s the pattern, right? Of course, Hope would pick him over me. Again. Anyone would. Everyone does. These are things I already know, but they hurt more this time than they ever have before.
“Spence?” She’s in my doorway.
Hope is in my doorway, and she’s smiling so big (of course she is), and then she’s sitting beside me on my bed. I’m reminded of that time in my attic. I know how this plays out. Except I don’t think I can handle another dose of her pity/happiness cocktail.
“Hi,” she says. Again with the smiling. She’s practically bouncing.
“Hi.” My arms are crossed over my chest, but it’s like she can’t even detect my sourness.
“Sorry I had to run off before.” She grins again. Her face is going to hurt tomorrow if she doesn’t cut it out. “But I’m here now.”
Now. As opposed to where she was five minutes ago.
The smile train finally stops. “You seem really bummed out. Are you okay?”
She tries to arrange her face into an expression that is appropriately sympathetic. It bugs me how much she fails.
“No. You know what? I’m not okay. I’m sick of you stringing me along for the past five years. And I’m really sick of seeing you screwing around with Dean.”
“What are you talking about? I—”
There is searing rage tunneling through the space where my heart used to be. I’m not about to listen to her excuses.
“Just stop. I am done with you and your bullshit. Congrats on being one of Dean’s girls.”
Hope is curling up and dying on the inside, I can see it on her face. Which is good. Because now maybe we’re even.
She stands there and stares at me for a good five seconds.
“I can’t believe you,” she finally says. Her voice cracks, and she’s gone.
I think all our chances are gone, too.