Rhode Island
Senior Year
Ryan’s fingers crept around my waist seconds before his lips brushed against my jawbone.
“Excited about staying over tonight?” he asked.
I smiled and nodded, attempting to concentrate on the chunks of pumpernickel I was arranging around a bowl of spinach dip. Ryan had decided to throw a Saint Patrick’s Day party, the same way he had last year when his parents took off for New York to see the parade. Remembering how trashed our friends had gotten, I’d insisted on having more than chips and Cheetos to serve with the alcohol. Preferably something that would absorb some of it, and limit the number of pukers and passer-outers.
From the slight slur in Ryan’s words, I had a feeling my plan wasn’t working very well.
I put the last of the bread on the platter and turned to face him, wrapping my arms around his neck.
“Remember what happened last Saint Patrick’s Day?” he said, his dimple popping out with a mischievous smile.
Of course I remembered. Before the party got into full swing, he pulled me into his bedroom and closed the door. He immediately started pacing back and forth, adjusting and readjusting his baseball cap like it didn’t fit his head anymore.
“Um, Kelse, I sort of have something to tell you,” he said.
He looked so nervous that my first thought was, Oh crap, he’s going to dump me.
My mouth went bone dry. “What’s wrong, Ry?”
He let out a nervous breath, continuing to leave tracks in his carpet. “Okay, so there’s gonna be drinking tonight, and what I have to say, I don’t want it to come out while I’m drunk, because I want you to know I mean it.”
“Mean what?” I squeaked.
Ryan finally stopped pacing. He stood in front of me and took my hands. “I mean, I don’t know, because I’ve never really—but—you’re fun and you’re smart and you’re smoking hot and I think—I think I might . . .” He paused and drew a sharp breath, blowing it out with a rush of words. “IthinkIloveyou.”
A grin big enough to hurt my cheeks split my face. The old me never would’ve considered dating a guy like Ryan. I would’ve dismissed him as an immature, hard-partying jock, and moved on. And I would’ve missed out on so much. Like knowing he had a soft spot for animals, especially cats, and they loved him right back. Or that he still made cards by hand for Mother’s Day every year. And that he could make me feel like the prettiest girl in the world by kissing my hand and smiling at me.
In that moment, watching him gather his nerve to put his heart on the line, giving myself permission to do stupid things felt like the smartest thing I’d ever done.
I wound up losing my virginity to him that night. Then I’d spent the rest of it sitting by his toilet, certain I was about to yak my guts up—not from what we’d done, but from the consumption of a little too much liquid courage. Not exactly the way I’d envisioned my first time, but hey.
I nodded, smiling at the memory as I kissed him. “Can you take it easy tonight? It’s bad enough that I lied to my parents about sleeping at Candy’s. I want you to be coherent when everyone leaves.”
“It’s Saint Patrick’s Day, babe. You’re asking me to curb my Irish pride?”
“You can have pride without a hangover. Paint a shamrock on your face, like I did. See?”
I turned my cheek to give him a better view of the small green-and-gold shamrock Candy had painted just beneath my right eye.
“Cute.” He kissed my forehead. “One more game of beer pong and then I’ll stop, okay?”
“Fair enough.” I kissed him again and grabbed the bread platter. “Can you handle bringing this downstairs?”
“Aren’t you coming?”
“In a minute. I want to clean up the deck a little. Your buddies are slobs.”
Ryan leaned in and kissed me again, the smell of beer mixing with his cinnamon gum. “You were more fun when you drank,” he teased.
I lingered by the door to the basement, listening for thuds or crashes as Ryan made his way down. When I heard Crowley yell, “Food!” I knew he’d made it, and relaxed a little. I headed into the darkened dining room, where I had a view of the beer pong game in progress in the side yard.
When I first moved to Rhode Island, I’d tried to convince myself that I loved these kinds of parties, that I’d missed out by not jumping on the bandwagon sooner. At first, copious amounts of alcohol helped me believe it. But ever since I’d realized booze still held no real appeal for me, the glamour had quickly faded on the rest of it as well. I would’ve been perfectly content to curl up next to Ryan and watch a movie tonight, rather than watch my friends lose their inhibitions and fine motor skills inside big red plastic cups.
Ryan and Crowley ambled over to the beer pong table as David took his turn, sending the little white ball sailing into one of the cups on the other side of the table. Violet flailed and clapped, then threw her arms around his neck and smacked a big kiss on his lips. And another. And then one more for good measure.
As many times as I’d seen them kiss, it still made me gag.
I shuddered and headed back toward the basement door just in time to nearly get hit in the face with it.
“Are you hiding out up here?” Candy said. “I’ve been looking for you. We’re about to take shots.”
I made a face. “No thanks.”
Candy ran her fingers through her hair. “Crowley says if I can down two shots of Hennessy, he’ll let me chase it with his tongue. I told him to dream on.”
“What is with you?” I’d never cared about Candy and Matt’s cat-and-mouse game before, but all of a sudden I felt an overwhelming, inexplicable disgust toward the way she toyed with him. And an equally mysterious inability to keep my mouth shut about it. “Do you think he’s going to wait forever? If you like him, why don’t you just say you like him? Or better yet, act like it?” I snapped.
The second I saw the dumbstruck look on her face, I deflated. “I’m sorry, Can. I don’t know why I said that. I think I need some fresh air. I’m gonna go clean up the deck.”
I started to turn away, but she grabbed my arm. “No, wait. Megabitch attitude aside, you’re right.” A devious smirk slithered across her lips. “I got this. Walk over to the dining room window. I want you to see something.”
A few seconds later I watched her reappear in the side yard and come up behind Crowley, who stood pouring shots into glasses lined up on a bench. She tapped him on the shoulder. When he turned around, she grabbed his face and kissed him full on the lips. At first, he stared dumbly. Then he put his bottle down, grabbed her around the waist, and brought his lips crashing down on hers again.
I had to laugh as drunken shouts and cheers erupted around them. A few seconds later, as I stepped out onto Ryan’s deck, my cell phone chimed with a text message: That was long overdue. Now take your own advice.
I sighed and shoved the phone into the pocket of my green hoodie. One of these days she’d forget this ridiculous idea of David and me as tortured lovers, if I ignored her long enough.
A roll of thunder sounded as I picked up empty and half-empty cups, napkins, gum wrappers, and various other debris. I tried to work faster than the approaching rain, and after a few minutes I had the deck looking fairly presentable. Just as I attempted to hoist a cooler full of half-melted ice over the railing, I heard, “Need some help with that?”
David emerged from the house and started toward me. Without waiting for an answer, he grabbed the other end of the cooler and helped me dump the contents onto the lawn.
“What are you doing out here all by yourself?”
“Cleaning up. What are you doing out here? Shouldn’t you be canoodling with Violet?” I set the cooler down and tried to walk past him, but he blocked my path.
“ ‘Canoodling,’ ” he repeated with a bleary-eyed grin. Then he brushed a stray piece of hair away from my face. “You and I ‘canoodled’ once. Remember?”
Oh boy. My chest caved in on itself and I had to remind myself to breathe. “Sounds like somebody’s had a few too many.” I patted him on the arm. “Yes, David, I remember. Now go back to the party. Go back to your girlfriend.”
I tried to walk past him again, but he grabbed my wrist. “What if I told you I want you to go to prom with me?”
“What if— What?”
He stepped closer. “What if I want you to go to the prom with me?”
I stared at him, waited for him to laugh, to make fun of me for being so gullible. He didn’t. He stared right back, his expression dead serious, and if he hadn’t smelled like a brewery, I would’ve wondered if he wasn’t so much drunk as insane.
“Then I’d say that’s crazy, because you’re going with Violet and I’m going with Ryan,” I said evenly.
“Kelsey.” He took another step closer to me, leaving barely any space between us. “You never even thought about going to the dance with me, did you?”
“Why would I think about going to the prom with you when we’re both—”
“No, not that dance. The Swirl. It never even crossed your mind to go with me, did it?”
I swallowed, knowing I needed to get the hell out of there. But his fingers were twined loosely around mine and I stood frozen to the spot, his face just inches from mine. “You went with Isabel.”
He leaned in, close enough that our noses nearly touched. “I wanted to go with you.”
And that’s when he tried to kiss me.
“Don’t,” I growled, my voice razor sharp. The corners of his mouth turned down and he pulled back a fraction of an inch. Then, before I could stop him, he leaned in and softly kissed the shamrock on my cheek instead.
My knees buckled. How dare he? How dare he breeze back into my life in his stupid green T-shirt that clung to his ridiculously sexy chest and try to act like the last year had never happened? How dare he come to this party, the party he’d only been invited to because he was dating my friend, and touch me so that I couldn’t remember why I wasn’t supposed to want him to?
“Am I interrupting something?”
Ryan.
That was why.
David turned around and I took a step back, glad his body blocked Ryan’s view of me. I prayed he hadn’t been able to see how close David and I had been two seconds ago.
“No,” David said. “I was helping Kelsey empty out the coolers.”
Ryan spit in the grass and folded his arms across his chest. “Vi’s not feeling so hot. You might want to take her home.”
I stepped out in front of David. “He’s wasted, he’s not taking her anywhere. I’ll drive them home.” I turned to David and in a tone of voice that left no room for argument said, “Come back tomorrow and get your car. You’re not in any shape to drive.”
When we got inside, though, it was obvious Violet wasn’t in any shape to leave. She’d curled up on the couch in the basement and passed out, taking a wobbly swipe at Candy’s head when we tried to shake her. Then she immediately zonked out again.
“She’s done,” Ryan said as he covered her with a blanket. “She can crash here tonight. I’ll take Kerrigan home.”
I put my hand on his chest as he came toward me. “No, you won’t. You’re almost as drunk as he is.” I lowered my voice. “I’ll take him, and I’ll come right back. Promise.”
Ryan nodded, though it didn’t stop him from shooting a dirty look over my shoulder at David. I gave him one of my own as I nodded toward the sliding glass doors, indicating he should follow me outside.
The skies had opened up, driving needlelike raindrops into the ground. I threw my hood over my head and scurried to my car as fast as I could with my woven flats getting more waterlogged by the second. David sprinted beside me and we both slammed the car doors behind us, panting. The quiet that engulfed the interior felt deafening, even surrounded by the pounding of the rain.
I planned to avoid speaking, to avoid even looking at David for the entire ride. I threw my soaked hoodie across my headrest before starting the car and staring out the windshield while he stared out the passenger-side window. Then he ruined my plan, the way he’d been ruining everything lately.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for trying to—”
“Forget it,” I cut off as the car backed down the driveway. I didn’t want to hear him say he’d tried to kiss me, and I didn’t want to think about it. “Just forget it.”
“You hate me, don’t you?”
“No. You’re drunk and you weren’t thinking straight. Now please, let’s stop talking about it.”
David nodded and turned back to the window. And even though I’d told him I didn’t want to talk about it, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. About the Winter Swirl, and how jealous I’d been when he’d gone with Isabel. How I’d figured out too late that he’d wanted to go with me, and how my whole life had taken a nosedive right after. How he’d told me Isabel didn’t matter to him, even though he’d defended her when I suspected her of starting rumors about me. How, even after he knew what a spiteful person she truly was, he still sneaked back to Norwood on weekends to see her.
The next words I said detonated like a bomb before I could stop them: “Why are you still seeing Isabel?”
David’s head whipped toward me. “What?”
“Isabel. Why are you still hanging out with her? If she never mattered to you, and if I was the one you wanted to go to the dance with, and if you never would have bothered with her if you’d known what a bitch she was, then why are you still bothering?”
He stared at me with a confused look on his face. “Who said I’m still seeing Isabel?”
“Why else would you go back to Connecticut? Your mother isn’t there, your grandparents aren’t there. What’s the pull, David? Are you cheating on Violet?”
He let out a bewildered snort. “Let me see if I have this right. I tried to kiss you tonight, and you’re all bent out of shape about Isabel ?”
My voice lowered and I couldn’t look at him. “I know you were with her the night before I left. At Maddie’s.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s not important,” I mumbled.
His jaw dropped and he stared at me with a hardened look in his eyes. “Not that it’s any of your business, Kelse, but I didn’t even know she was going to be at Maddie’s that night. I’ve seen Isabel once since I moved here. I applied to her school, and she offered to give me a tour. I haven’t seen her since, and I’ve never cheated on Violet.” He shook his head, his expression now one of disgust. “And for the record? If I do see Isabel again, it’s because the biggest difference between you and her is that she wants me around and you don’t.”
He delivered his words with the precision of a surgeon, slicing me open with each one. Gone were the drowsy eyes and the sloppy enunciation, like he’d never been drunk at all.
Like he’d never . . . and yet he’d tried . . .
I turned to him as we pulled into the familiar gravel driveway of his grandfather’s house. “Were you really even drunk tonight?”
David snorted again. “Right. I faked drunk because getting you alone is the focus of my entire life. Get over yourself, Kelsey.”
“Excuse me, but I wasn’t the one talking crazy about the prom and trying to kiss you tonight.”
“And if I’d been sober, I would have realized it wasn’t worth it. I don’t even know you anymore.”
“I’m so tired of hearing it!” I exploded. “I’m sick of it, David! So my hair color’s a little different. So I’m not sickly, helpless, or pathetic anymore. Is that what’s bothering you? That I’m not a broke nothing anymore? That I don’t need you to play hero? Quit being such a jealous bastard!”
David’s face fell and his eyes darkened. I knew I’d gone too far. I grabbed his arm as he reached for the door handle.
“Wait, David, I’m sorry,” I said desperately. “I didn’t mean it. I’m trying to tell you I’m still me.”
But my voice trailed off as I said it, because I knew it wasn’t true. The girl who’d left him behind a year ago would rather have died than to say something so hurtful.
He didn’t look at me when he spoke. “I don’t know this you. So if this is who you always were”—he turned ever so slightly, enough to let me see the total reproach in his eyes—“then I’m glad you never loved me. I never would have burdened you with my friendship if I’d known what you were really like.”
He opened the door and took off into the rain. The sound of it roared through the car, almost as loud as my heart drumming in my chest.
With my lips set in an angry line, I cut the ignition and threw my door open. I stomped around my car as quickly as my shoes slurping through the mud would allow, and grabbed his arm again.
“How can you say that?” I shouted. “You were everything to me and you knew it! But you waited until the last second to say it, and then you wasted no time at all running back to that bitch! You only wanted me because you couldn’t have me, and just because I didn’t say I loved you on your terms, now I’m some horrible, unfeeling beast?”
Rivers of raindrops ran down our faces, spraying off our lips as we panted from equal parts chill and rage. David’s voice was low and even when he spoke. “You don’t love me. You never did. I’m just glad I know it now, so I won’t keep making a total ass of myself.”
I clenched my fists at my sides and gritted my teeth. “It’s not true!”
Now he raised his voice too. “When you left Norwood, you wanted to forget it. I never thought you meant all of it, me included. I poured my heart out to you like a total asshole that night, and you ignored every message, every call. You cut me out of your life!”
“I was scared!” My lips trembled and I struggled not to cry.
“Well you don’t have to worry about it anymore. Because now I’m cutting you out of mine.”
Some kind of strangled sound escaped me, and I dived at him, my chest colliding against his rib cage with enough force to knock my breath out of me. I captured his rain-soaked face between my hands.
I didn’t even realize I was going to kiss him until he tried to turn away.
My palm dug into his cheek and I stood on my toes, smashing my lips against his.
He didn’t respond, but he didn’t try to pull back. I wound my arms around him and stood higher on my toes, refusing to let him breathe until he kissed me back.
When he finally did, sparks shot through my entire body. His lips parted, and I tasted the rain, the mint of his ChapStick, that other something so specifically David, all mingling with the faint trace of alcohol on his tongue. One of his hands gripped my waist and the other pressed into the small of my back. I barely felt my feet leave the ground when he placed me on the hood of my car, pressing my body between his torso and the cold, wet metal, his lips never leaving mine.
My legs wrapped around him. My hands slipped beneath his soaked T-shirt, slid up his smooth back. I couldn’t get close enough. It was the first time since that morning in the hall that I’d let myself feel this craving, this need to have him close to me. For a moment it was like no time had passed at all. The entire year melted away, and we were back in the woods. How I wished I could relive that night, when it was just me and my best friend, finally acknowledging something else between us.
Before we’d broken each other’s hearts.