Veronica

Friends. Drew Remi wanted to be friends. A full twenty-four hours later and I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around this new turn of events.

I sat in Trent’s basement with him and Margo. They’d insisted that I come over to hang out on Sunday night before school began. Some of the guys were coming over too—Sunday nights at Trent’s was a longstanding tradition, just like videogames after school was tradition. But Sunday nights involved Doctor Who marathons or binge-watching the Marvel movies. They were a night to camp out in front of his family’s old TV and forget the Sunday blues.

My Sunday blues should have been through-the-roof bad. I mean, tomorrow morning I was going to have to face the people who’d laughed at me, like Melody and her friends. Not to mention Alex and Tina, the stars of last night’s melodrama.

Maybe Drew was right. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe they really had forgotten and I was the only one who was obsessing over it.

To be fair, I was only obsessing over the beer-in-face incident when I wasn’t obsessing over my conversation with Drew Remi.

In the grand scope of things, it was hard to say which was more surreal—living the kind of horrifying high school party moment I thought only took place in cheesy teen movies or having a one-on-one bonding night with Drew Remi.

Drew Remi. He was not just another former classmate, he was the former classmate. He was the kid who’d been too cool for the rest of us. He’d been the one who led the high school baseball team to championships when he was a freshman.

This was the alpha male who every guy wanted to be and every girl secretly wanted to date. No one could admit it, of course, because every girl was at least a little bit afraid of April Ramsey.

Including me.

Oh, I wasn’t scared-scared. I knew I could take her in a fight, just like I could take Tina. But she was intimidating in her own way. She was socially powerful, if not physically terrifying.

Kind of like Tina.

Margo sank down onto the seat next to me. “Want to talk about it?”

I cringed, not because Margo had bad breath or something but because she was such a girl. And I don’t mean that in a mean way, I mean it in an “I’m a weirdo” way, because I wished it came easily to me, opening up like that. To see a friend hanging out and be like “hey, want to talk?”

No. I’d spent too much time with Trent and the other guys. Even my former teammates and I didn’t do that kind of thing. We razzed each other, we had inside jokes and sat silently and played video games beside one another for hours on end. But have deep, meaningful one-on-one talks?

I don’t think so.

Not until Margo came into my life. And now, apparently, Drew Remi. Because whether I could fully wrap my head around it or not, he and I had talked. Like seriously talked. Like, he’d opened up to me about past relationships kind of talked.

My mind was still blown.

And Margo was still watching me. If there was anyone who could make sense of any of this, it was her. She might not be crazy popular like Drew or insanely trying to reinvent herself like me, but she definitely had more emotional intelligence than I did.

Heck, she had more emotional intelligence than the rest of us in this room combined.

As if sensing my weakness, she grabbed me by the hand and tugged, leading me upstairs to Trent’s room.

It was weird being in this room with Margo. It was a room from my past and when I looked around all I saw was the Lego’s Millennium Falcon that I’d helped him build and the poster for Lord of the Rings, which always reminds me of that weekend we thought it would be fun to watch the extended cuts for all the movies.

Twenty-something hours of non-stop hobbits wasn’t so much fun as it was a serious undertaking, but we’d discovered an odd sense of pride by the end, like we’d accomplished something huge.

All of that I was used to. But being here with Margo I saw it through her point of view. I noticed the framed picture of the two of them in a place of prominence on his nightstand. I noticed the old movie tickets that were probably from their first date or something—Trent was alarmingly romantic about that kind of stuff. And then my gaze fell on his bed, which I realized was where they probably kissed and made out and stuff.

I looked away quickly. Ew.

I mean, making out isn’t gross and part of my whole “new Veronica” experiment was so I could have my first kiss, finally, and maybe even have a boyfriend. But still, thinking of Trent like that made me uncomfortable and being here with Margo made it impossible to ignore.

We were growing up. We were changing. Trent was in love and in an actual relationship. And me? Well, apparently I was friends with Drew Remi.

And I wasn’t sure that was what I wanted. Let me rephrase—I wasn’t sure that was all I wanted. Obviously I found Drew attractive. Every girl with functioning eyes found Drew attractive. But I’d never thought of him like that—not until last night.

So yeah. Trent was in a real relationship and I was having feelings for Drew Remi.

We were officially in new territory here, folks. Life was changing. I know that’s what I’d wanted, but right now it all seemed to be happening too fast.

Margo, apparently not sharing my ick factor over the unmade bed, sat down on its edge and patted the spot next to her.

I sat beside her with a sigh. I was officially defeated. My head and my heart were in turmoil and I needed girl guidance in a bad way.

“Okay, spill,” she said. When I didn’t start immediately, she persisted. “What happened at the party? You’ve been weirdly tight-lipped.”

I wanted to tell her, I really did. But talking about this stuff was hard. It meant reliving that awful moment.

Now it was her turn to sigh as she shifted so she was fully facing me, pulling her legs up beneath her. “Ronnie, after all the time I spent helping you get ready, I swear to God you owe me this.”

She was teasing, but it worked. No one deserved to hear the end result of all that work more than Margo. I shifted so I was facing her too and told her everything…about the party. I wasn’t ready to dive into Drew territory yet. I didn’t want to tell her, or anyone, for that matter, all that he’d told me about April and his parents and I wasn’t sure how to talk about our bonding over pizza without mentioning that stuff.

So I focused on the party, actually getting into it as I realized I had a rapt audience in Margo. She stared wide-eyed as I told her about the confrontation, and then her eyes grew impossibly wide when I told her about the beer being thrown in my face. She even gasped in outrage, which was incredibly satisfying as a storyteller.

“She didn’t!” Margo said.

I nodded. “She did.”

Margo leaned forward. “Then what happened?”

I hesitated for half a second before the words tumbled out and I filled her in on Drew’s rescue.

She seemed even more stunned by that than by the Tina showdown. A silence followed once I stopped talking and Margo was not only wide-eyed, but her mouth was partially open. I now knew what the term dumbstruck meant.

Finally, she blinked. “Oh my God,” she said, her voice syrupy sweet. “That is so romantic.”

I frowned at her. What? No. Clearly she’d misunderstood. “Margo, he wasn’t really my date. He just said that to—”

“To save you,” Margo cut in. “He was your knight in shining armor.” She clutched her hands to her chest. “That is so sweet.”

Knight in shining what? No. Just no.

Hells no.

I wasn’t a romantic and I absolutely didn’t need a knight, in shining armor or any other type of armor. Yes, he’d come to my rescue… in a sense. But he was just being nice. And there sure as hell wasn’t anything romantic about it.

But try telling Margo that. If we were in a cartoon, little hearts would be swirling in those big blue eyes of hers. One would think she was the damsel in distress who’d been rescued from a tower, not me.

Not that I was a damsel in distress.

Oh crap. Now she had me thinking in those stupid, misogynistic fairytale metaphors. That more than anything had me crossing my arms and scowling at her. “It’s not like that,” I said. I had a vivid memory of the way our talk had ended. Friends. We were friends.

“He was just helping me out,” I said. “As a friend.”

The words stuck in my throat. It felt even weirder to say it aloud. Friends. Me and Drew, best buds.

Something in me refused to buy it. It was like trying to convince myself that I liked brussel sprouts.

Okay, so it wasn’t exactly like that. Drew and brussel sprouts had zero in common. One was hot, sexy, charming, and shockingly nice. The other smelled as bad as it tasted.

Maybe that wasn’t the best comparison, but the point was—no matter how much I tried to sell myself on the idea, the thought of me and Drew being friends didn’t sit right.

Why?

Because I liked him.

I groaned softly as the truth of it hit me and there was no denying it any longer.

I had a crush on Drew Remi.

Why, God, why? I’d resisted his allure for years. Years! I’d prided myself on being the only girl at Atwater who didn’t harbor a crush on the untouchable baseball star. So why now?

Maybe because he was no longer untouchable. I had a vision of Drew with those warm brown eyes and that ridiculously adorable grin. Of the sad tinge to his gaze as he’d opened up about his ex and his family.

He’d seemed so real. So normal, albeit stupidly attractive.

“What’s wrong?” Margo asked, most likely because my groan had sounded more like a wail.

I turned my pathetic gaze to her and told her the truth. “I think I like Drew Remi.”

Again with the wailing. Margo looked sweetly sympathetic for about half a second. Then she burst out laughing.

“Hey! This isn’t funny.” But watching Margo-the-Kindhearted laugh at me made me laugh too before I reached for a pillow to smack her.

“Ow!” She took the pillow from me, still laughing but not so hard now. “I’m sorry, it’s just… of course you do.”

I opened my mouth to protest and explain just how long I’d resisted his charms, but she was too quick. “Obviously you have a crush. First of all, he’s totally crush-worthy. If you didn’t have at least a little bit of a crush, you wouldn’t have a pulse.”

I tilted my head to one said as I considered that. “Fair point.”

“And second,” she continued. “This totally crush-worthy hottie came to your rescue. Whether you believe in Prince Charming or not, there’s no denying that his heroic rescue in the face of public humiliation was hot.”

I stared at her for a moment. She seemed so sure of herself, and oddly enough her reasoning made me feel better. Maybe this weird, needy longing feeling I had in my chest every time I thought of Drew was really just a side effect of last night’s drama. It would probably fade away, just like my humiliation and anger.

Though none of those emotions showed any signs of fading anytime soon. Just the thought of Tina’s smug face and Melody’s laughter had my hands curling into fists on my lap.

“Okay, where did you just go?” Margo said, cutting into my anger. “One second you were normal Ronnie and then bam—” She thwacked the pillow. “Incredible Hulk Ronnie came out of hiding.”

I let out a surprised laugh at the image of me turning into the Incredible Hulk and made a concerted effort to relax my fists. “Sorry, I’m still furious every time I think about those girls.”

I managed to make those girls sound like a curse word and Margo let out a short laugh. “Yeah, they sound horrible.”

I nodded. They were horrible. Except that… they weren’t. Or they hadn’t been. I’d started to think that Melody was my friend. I’d started to get to know a few of the girls from the team, but Melody was the one I sat with every day, the one who’d sought me out in the hall. “I thought we were friends.” My voice was so gloomy, I cleared my throat and shook my head. “That sounds pathetic, but I guess it’s true.” I shrugged helplessly. “I thought for the first time that I had a real girl friend. Not teammates who I’m friendly with because we have soccer in common, but an honest to God girl friend.”

Margo was quiet for a second and I thought maybe I’d wowed her with my insights. But then I turned to face her and saw the most unexpected sight I could ever have imagined.

Margo looked pissed. “What am I, exactly?”

Oh. Um…oops. “Margo, I didn’t mean—”

Margo held up air quotes as she repeated my words and I felt so guilty I couldn’t even mock her for it. “For the first time I had a girl friend…. An honest-to-God girl friend…” She dropped the air quotes. “What am I, exactly?

I winced and gave her my most apologetic, sheepish grin. It didn’t work. She was staring at me, waiting for an answer.

“Um, you’re Trent’s girlfriend?” And yes, it came out as a question like I was on Jeopardy or something.

She scoffed and folded her arms in front of her chest. “So, what, that’s all I am?”

I tried to make this right. “You’re also my kind, angelic fairy godmother who singlehandedly transformed me from hopeless tomboy to this.” I gestured to my sweatpants and oversized T-shirt and wagged my eyebrows. “This hotness.”

She pinched her lips together, clearly fighting not to laugh.

In my defense, I was about to curl up on an old, smelly couch with a group of loud, smelly boys and watch some truly wonderful and geeky sci-fi while I avoided the emotional turmoil that was my life. I’d assumed mission “new and improved Veronica” was temporarily on hold for the evening.

“You do look hot,” Margo said with a straight face.

We both burst out laughing at the ridiculously false statement. But then she straightened and it was her turn to swat me with the pillow. “For the record, though, I consider you a friend. And not just because you’re Trent’s best friend, either.”

I could feel my cheeks getting hot at her honesty. I also felt a surge of gratitude that this kind, fashionable girl had come into my life. To show her just how grateful I was, I did something totally un-Ronnie-like and leaned forward to give her a hug.

Unlike me, Margo was a hugger so I knew she’d appreciate it. She also knew that I didn’t do touchy feely hugs so she’d know what I was trying to say.

Still, I said it anyway. “Thanks for being my friend.”