My prediction of having a most painful sitting experience throughout the day had come true, and it was only first period. I couldn’t image an entire rest of the day with this pain. If it was more socially acceptable to view calc class from a standing position, I would have been a much happier camper for that hour.
I couldn’t stand up fast enough when the bell rang. The sweet relief of taking pressure off my backside was enough to make happy tears sting my eyes. Grace sidled up next to me as we merged out into the student traffic in the hallway.
“So, I have a proposition for you,” she said.
“Nothing good ever starts with your propositions,” I said.
She glowered at me. “I’m going to let that one slide since you’re injured. Anyway, Ben is planning on having a party at his house tonight. Nothing too wild, but a chance to blow off a little steam after the game. I think you should invite George.”
I started to object, but she held up her hand.
“You obviously have some tension going on there that neither of you is willing to admit right now, but with the right atmosphere, things could just be … easier,” she said.
“Easier?” I asked.
“Parties are made for admitting your crushes. Plus, I’ll be there the whole time to back you up. It’s foolproof,” she said.
“I don’t know—”
“George!” she yelled, waving to a very startled George from down the hallway. I became super aware of the distance between George and me, and as he got closer, my body responded accordingly. I was trying to remember everything Grace had told me about intentionally pushing people away before they had the chance to reject me. I had maybe possibly jumped to the wrong conclusion during the Clarinet Incident, and I was going to try my best to go back into my ideas of more-than-friendship with George without the fear of rejection.
“Hey,” he said, his eyes sliding to meet mine. His half smile absolutely killed me, the way his dimple formed just on top of it … the feeling of needing his face on mine was coming back in full force.
“Hi,” I said, trying to sound like I wasn’t imagining what his lips felt like in a very dramatic fantasy going on in my head.
“You know what? Ben mentioned that there was a party going on at his house tonight. You two should come!” she said.
I tilted my head, and she smiled at me, waggling her eyebrows. My eyes widened, begging her to stop. But George had seen it. He was officially blushing.
“Uh, sure, maybe!” I said. I wanted to die that Grace was being so obvious. Maybe George really wasn’t as on the same page as I had hoped.
“I’ll go if you go,” he said, looking at me. “Both of you—I mean I don’t know that many people.”
“Yeah, we’ll be there!” Grace said. The warning bell rang and she pulled me off with her. She yelled a quick “I’ll text you with the address!” over her shoulder, and I followed along in a daze.
“You’re trouble, Grace Moreno. I’m serious,” I said. I would never admit to her the thrill that went down my spine thinking about hanging out with George in a party setting. Maybe this would be the moment that I could finally give into my overwhelming desire to kiss him.
I couldn’t pay attention to anything the rest of the day—my brain was already in party-preparation mode. What would I wear? How was I getting there? Would I have to drink to fit in? Would I like it? All of these questions bounced around like loose Ping-Pong balls in my brain and made me feel dizzy and overwhelmed.
I landed on a floral print dress that made me look tanner than I actually was. It cut right under my boobs and pushed them up to make them more pronounced. I’d never actually had a venue to wear the dress out, but I figured it would get the job done. My hair was a complete disaster and being entirely uncooperative, so I pulled it into a messy braid that came down to my right side. Little loose ends of hair jutted out here and there within the braid, but it looked pretty decent for a girl who’d learned to fishtail her own hair from a YouTube tutorial.
My phone buzzed angrily on my bathroom counter. I picked it up and found five texts from Grace saying that she was outside.
The last text read:
Grace: Get down here or I’m going to call George and tell him how badly you want to see him at this party.
That got my still-bruised butt moving. I put the last touch of bubble gum lip gloss on that I’d had since I was in middle school, and surprisingly it still looked decent (even if it was a little bit clumpy). I ran downstairs and saw Grace, phone in hand, waving to me from the front seat of her car.
“You better not have called him,” I said when I opened the door.
“Of course not,” she said. “But I knew it would make you get here quicker if I threatened to. By the way, you look hot.”
“The hair isn’t too much?” I asked.
“Absolutely not,” she said, touching my carefully crafted fishtail braid. It had only taken me five tries. I think I accounted for one thousand of the views on the tutorial video I watched. “If my hair was long enough to do this, I would do it all the time.”
“And the dress? Is it too much?” I asked.
“You look great, babe. Stop all this worrying and let yourself have some fun,” she said.
Easier said than done, Gracie. “And Ben is okay with us crashing his party with ulterior motives?”
“More than okay,” she said. “He likes to invite a bunch of different groups of people from school to his parties, not just the football team. Plus, I let him in on my secret plan, and he’s all for setting you and George up.”
“Oh, great,” I said.
“Isn’t it?” she said, ignoring my sarcasm. “The universe obviously wants you and George to be a thing.”
We pulled up to Ben’s house within a few minutes, and there was already a line of cars dotting the street. Apparently, Grace got driveway priority as the girlfriend of the host, so we were able to hop out of the car and into the party quickly.
Ben’s house reminded me of mine—every house in our town was developed by the same builder, to be fair—but bigger. It also looked like his parents had done renovations so that the wood floor was different than the one built into the house originally, along with the beige-painted walls. There were kids taking shots in the office, and a couple making out on the stairs who we almost fell on top of as people pushed in the front door behind us. So this was the kind of party it was going to be. I hadn’t mentally prepared myself enough for this.
“I’m going to go find Ben,” she said. “Want to come with me?”
“Sure!” I said. Anything to get away from the massive amounts of alcohol.
We wove through our classmates who stood in their normal, cliquey groups. It seemed like everyone was pretty well represented—the athletes, drama kids, debate team—they were all here, but only speaking to those who orbited in their same social circle. I guess the newspaper kids were one circle removed from being invited to parties.
Before we could find Ben, my eyes locked on an extremely tall strawberry blond guy in the corner of the room. He was on his phone, not daring to look up. My heart leaped into my throat when I realized that he did, in fact, come. When he looked up and saw me, the smile that followed turned my insides into goop.
“Hey, you go on and find Ben. I’m going to talk to George,” I said, motioning toward her cousin. He waved at both of us, and I smiled. I suddenly wished we weren’t surrounded by all our classmates who were gauging everyone else’s interactions. I felt their eyes on me, not only because I never came to parties, but because I was interacting with the super-cute new guy. I didn’t want to be the gossip at school on Monday.
He met me in the middle of the living room, and we hung in that awkward should-we-hug-or-not limbo again. I ended up going in for the hug, knowing that I’d kick myself later if I didn’t. When I pulled back I looked around us to see if people were watching. To my surprise, no one could care less. They were wrapped up in their own conversations, and no one was balking at the fact that Savannah Alverson just hugged a boy.
“I’m glad you came,” I said. I could feel my blush creeping up on my face and decided I needed to justify my statement in a way that was less Oh my God, I want to kiss your face. “Otherwise I would have had to sit in the corner all night while Grace and Ben made out.”
“That would have been uncomfortable,” he said.
“Totally,” I said. My brain was fishing for any way to change the conversation, any way to start a conversation at least, but just being in his presence after we’d left things on Saturday was filled with so much tension.
“Did you want a drink or anything?” I asked.
“I’m good,” he said. Phew. Relief. “How about you?”
“I’m good, too,” I said.
“Do you want to sit down?” he asked, motioning toward the couch. The same couch where two kids from my AP lit class were currently on top of each other in a way that could not be comfortable or enjoyable. Was this my invitation to make out with him? How did this kind of thing work? I should have asked Grace for more details before the party started.
“Sure,” I said. I tugged at the bottom of my braid, making sure that it was out of the way in case of potential lip-locking. I crossed my leg toward him, our legs almost touching. I could feel electricity striking between us, which made me even more self-conscious. Did he feel it, too?
“Guess who got an A on their polynomial functions quiz?” he asked.
“Really?” I said, giving him a high five. “Even though we didn’t actually study on Monday? That’s epic.”
“I have this really cool tutor who taught me some new studying techniques so that I can practice on my own now,” he said.
“Oh no, have you been seeing another tutor behind my back?” I said.
“Shut up.” He laughed. He pushed my leg lightly, letting his hand linger for a few beats before sliding it back into his lap. My leg burned where he touched it. We stared at each other for a few more moments, and I felt the oh-my-God-I-want-to-kiss-your-face sensation again, but on steroids. My body started leaning toward him involuntarily. I closed my eyes, letting whatever was going to happen next, happen.
And then, I gasped out in pain, which made George’s eyes shoot open and meet mine.
“Did I do something wrong?” he asked.
I put my head into my hands, not wanting to admit that the subtle shift to kiss George had sent a shooting pain up my bruised backside that made stars form in my vision.
“Not at all,” I groaned. “I fell off a ladder yesterday when I was doing research for my story with Grace and hurt my … butt.”
He held back a laugh. “You hurt your butt?”
“Like, really badly,” I said.
“How come you didn’t tell me you got hurt?” he asked.
“Because it was embarrassing!” I said. “I want to permanently erase the memories of that whole day forever.”
“I could have—I don’t know I could have, like, brought you some baked goods or something,” he said.
“Brought me some baked goods?” I pressed.
“I don’t know, it just would have been nice to know that you were hurt!”
I smiled, realizing in that moment that maybe Grace had been a little right. That maybe George cared about my well-being as more than just a friend, and we were both actually on the same page. I let my knee fall to touch his, and just the pressure of our knees touching was enough to make my entire body sparkle with anticipation.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have told you.”
“It’s okay,” he said, staring at me for a few seconds too long. This had to be it. This had to be the moment that we’d both held back on out of politeness or fear. George and I were about to kiss, and every part of me ached for him to just reach out already and—
“I actually could use a drink,” he said, standing up abruptly. He was halfway to the kitchen before I could even respond.
I sat there, blinking in the wake of another George rejection, wondering how I could keep being so wrong about all the signals I thought I was picking up on. Maybe this whole time I’d been exaggerating what this could be. Maybe he just thought of me as a really close friend who he’d like to know wasn’t feeling 100 percent so he could be supportive but not romantic.
I felt the fabric on the arm of the make-out couch move, and I looked up to see who had joined me.
“So! How’s it going?” Grace asked, leaning down to whisper in my ear.
“I’m so confused, Grace! He said that he was upset that I didn’t tell him that I got hurt yesterday at the gym, and we were having a kissing vibe, I think, and then he stood up and said he needed a drink and left me in the dust!” I said.
“He’s just nervous! Maybe he doesn’t like PDA. Maybe you need to go somewhere that’s more private,” she said.
“What do I do? Should I wait for him to come back or go find him and ask him to go somewhere else?” I asked.
“Let’s go find him!” she said. I could tell that Grace might be a little tipsy at this point, and that should have been my first sign not to follow her advice. She grabbed my hand and led me through a group of our classmates to the kitchen, where the drinks were. We scanned the crowd for an übertall kid with strawberry blond hair, but saw no one in sight.
“Maybe we missed him when he was going back to the couch?” Grace suggested.
We continued to push and shove our way through the crowd until we made it back to the living room, where I could finally spot George and his hair, which had become his major identifying feature from afar. George was still where I left him on the make-out couch, but now he was accompanied by a girl with the shiniest, most perfectly curled black hair I’d ever seen. I froze, taking in George laugh with Elaine Lawson on the make-out couch, with George’s arm resting on the back of the couch behind her. He reached up and grabbed a piece of her hair while they each started to laugh. I couldn’t look away fast enough, embarrassed that I’d seen what seemed like a special moment between them.
The adrenaline from the anticipation of our kiss left my body in a gust, like someone had blown out a candle. In its place was a sense of disappointment that made my bones ache. I couldn’t move with the force of it. It was one of those disappointments that confirmed your every fear that you’d somehow kept at bay with the tiniest sliver of hope. The part of me that always feared that George didn’t like me back in the same way was right, and that realization hurt. Bad.
Grace came upon the scene closely after I did, and she wrapped her arm around my waist.
“Damn it, George,” she whispered.
“I think I want to go home,” I said, diverting my eyes from George and Elaine Lawson. Even though I wasn’t looking at them, I could still picture them behind my eyes.
“You have to drive, but we can take my car,” she said, handing me her keys. I was suddenly glad for Grace’s driveway privilege at the party. It made for the perfect getaway car.
* * *
“Elaine Lawson? Seriously?” Grace asked for the millionth time. No matter how many times she talked about how shocked she was on the car ride home, no matter how many times she reiterated that she’d been so sure that we were a done deal, I did not feel any better.
When I got home, I changed into my comfiest pajamas and curled up in my bed, letting the reality of the day sink in. So. It seemed like George and I were just going to be really great friends. The reality of that sentiment weighed heavily on my chest and I felt it trickle throughout my whole body.
* * *
The next morning, when I let Fiyero out of his kennel, he acted like he hadn’t seen the light of day in a decade. He took the opportunity to roll his newly groomed body all over the muddy patches in our backyard, ruining the hard work of the dog groomers who we paid a ridiculous amount of money to tame his fur every other week.
My phone buzzed incessantly in my pocket before I finally took it out to look. Of course, it was the one person I would be very content if he would leave me alone and stop sending me mixed messages, thank you very much.
George: I missed you leave last night.
George: Did you make it home all right?
George: Savannah, please answer before I send out a search party.
Well, I couldn’t have him think I was stranded on the side of the road somewhere.
Me: I’m fine.
George: How did I miss you leaving? I was sitting right next to the door.
George: Parties aren’t really my thing either, so I get why you would leave.
George: Why did you leave?
I tapped my phone against my forehead, trying to decide how honest I wanted to be with him. If Ashley were here, she would tell me to call him, to tell him exactly how I felt last night at the party, and be honest with him. But honesty was freaking terrifying.
Me: I didn’t feel that great.
George: How are you feeling today?
George: Sorry, I’m not trying to 20 question you.
Me: Fine.
The three bubbles kept furiously bouncing up and down as he formulated his response. He must have restarted his thoughts eight times before the three dots stopped moving at all.
I shoved my phone back in my pocket, determined to forget that George had ever reached out to me. And what could be a more perfect distraction than a poodle monster who needed to burn off some morning energy?
Fiyero excitedly brought me his rope toy again and again until his tongue started to fall out of the side of his mouth in exhaustion. I knelt down to rub his belly, and he flopped down immediately.
I heard the front door slam, assuming Mom had returned from a morning run. Since we’d perfected the whole “avoiding each other at all costs” thing for the past week, I assumed that she would head up to her room without acknowledging my presence. The last thing I expected was for someone to call my name from the sliding doors.
“Savannah?” a deep male voice said, making me lift my head.
“Dad,” I said. “How did you get in here?”
“Your mom gave me a key for emergencies,” he said, shaking his keys for emphasis. “I finally watched the show. Thought you might need a friend in your corner.”
“You’re the friend Mom would be the least excited to see hanging out in my corner. I’m trying to get back in her good graces, not push it back even more,” I said.
“Savannah,” he said. “I drove all the way here to see you. Could you at least pretend to be excited to see me?”
I forced on a smile. “See? Super excited.”
“Let’s go grab a bite. My treat. We can get whatever you want, dessert, the whole shebang,” he said.
I shook my head. “You can’t just show up here and demand that I go hang out with you and pretend that everything is okay.”
“Where is this coming from, Savannah? I thought we’d made peace with my decision to continue my relationship with Sheri. I don’t understand where this hostility is coming from again,” he said.
I ran my hands through my hair, fighting the urge to rip them out from my scalp. “Because. You ruined everything. For Mom.”
“We hadn’t been happy for a long time—”
“Stop. I’ll be sick if you try to sell me that again,” I said. “You breaking her heart absolutely broke her. It made me lose the mom I grew up with. What part of that don’t you understand?”
For once, my father, who had an answer for everything, stood silently in my presence. He hung his head for a few moments before looking back up to the sky. Fiyero had head-butted himself in between my legs, stopping my anger from circulating around my entire body. I patted Fiyero’s head, my eyes never leaving Dad’s.
“I’m sorry to hear that you think that,” he said.
I snorted. Of course he would try out a backhanded apology. Could he seriously have no remorse for what he put my mom through? For what he put this whole family through? Sure, I’d learned to deal with Dad and Sheri’s relationship when Ashley and I lived with them while Shake the Weight filmed, but that didn’t take away from the struggles I watched Mom go through as a result. No matter if Mom and I were fighting at the moment, I was very much on Team Mom in the whole Mom-versus-Dad debate.
“You can’t tell me that after that interview aired that she’s entirely happy with you,” he said.
“First off, don’t try to recruit me into your club of being on the outs with Mom. I will never be so far gone with her that she wouldn’t want to see my face again. And second, they twisted my words with editing. Mom knows that. She heard the actual interview that they recorded,” I said.
“I’m offering you an out. You can come hang out with me in Walcott for a bit, recuperate away from all her weight-loss stuff. I know she’s tough on you about it,” he said.
My mind flashed back to the desperate call to my dad a month ago, begging him to let me crash with him for a while. When he said they couldn’t accommodate guests at the moment.
He never came through. It was like Mom and I created this little pact to hold our shit together while Ashley was gone, but now that Shake the Weight was taking the spotlight, our progress stopped.
“Yet, when I asked you for this same thing a month ago, you said it wouldn’t be possible for me to come out and stay with you,” I said.
“The timing was bad then,” he said. “Sheri was just remodeling the house and starting a new job—I couldn’t ask too much of her.”
“You couldn’t tell her that your daughter was going to come live with you for a little while?” I asked.
“It’s more complicated than that, Savannah,” he said. “I’m going to make the trip up to visit Ashley tonight. Do you want to ride with me?”
As much as I would love to see Ashley again, the thought of spending hours of a car ride with Dad was unbearable. I could barely look at him, let alone try to keep bubbles of silence at bay in between topics.
“I think I’m going to stay here,” I said.
“Suit yourself, kiddo,” he said.
Fiyero broke out from between my legs to race up to my dad. He crouched down to pet the dog, letting him kiss his face. All the memories of times we’d take Fiyero for walks around the trails in our town and the times in this backyard that Dad taught Fiyero to play fetch for the first time flooded back. Fiyero and Dad used to be best friends, especially during all the times that Ashley was out with friends and Dad took on dog duties.
He rested his face in Fiyero’s fur for a moment, leaving a small kiss on his neck. My breath hitched in my throat and the lump of a bout of tears on the verge of erupting formed. Our fur baby didn’t know why Dad had to leave and never came back to visit him. He couldn’t understand why his best friend disappeared almost two years ago and it broke my heart that he could be confused now.
“Bye, sweetheart,” Dad said, standing up and heading back toward the sliding doors.
“Bye,” I managed.
After I heard the front door shut, the lock clicking in a moment of finality, I sank to the ground; I couldn’t control the tears that came for what felt like an eternity. No part of me was ready to see my dad in this house again after so long, let alone seeing him interact with Fiyero. It was absolutely too much for me to handle in one day.
Two arms enveloped my entire body into theirs, and I sank into them, recognizing their hug from anywhere in the world. I hadn’t heard her come home, but I didn’t need to look up to realize that my mom was there, just like she always was.
“Mom,” I started, wiping under my eyes.
“Shhhh, it’s okay, baby,” she said. “We don’t need to talk about it. He’s gone.”
“I’m so sorry for everything,” I said, my shoulders shaking with the effort of trying to hold the little pieces of myself threatening to scatter everywhere.
“It’s okay, shhh,” she said, rubbing my back with small circles. She alternated between stroking my hair and rubbing the comforting circles on my back, helping me calm down and find my center again. The world around me started tipping and turning less, and the anxiety attack I was on the brink of started to drift away.
She kissed the side of my head and turned me around so that I faced her. She put both of her hands on my shoulders so that we were in a deep eye contact. “Savannah. I wanted to apologize for my behavior lately. It hasn’t been fair to you.”
“I—” I started. “Are you sure you’re okay? Mom, some of the things you’ve been doing lately have been pretty scary. I’m worried about you.”
“Kids shouldn’t worry about their parents,” she said. “I’m fine, baby, I promise.”
“Okay … If you’re sure—”
“It won’t ever happen again. I promise,” she said.
I wanted to believe her so badly. But sometimes, even when you’re reaching out with both arms to help someone, they don’t see how much they need it.