“Go away.”
“No. Come out.”
“No.”
He gave a big shove just as I was letting go, and the door smacked me in the nose.
“Crap!”
He barged in behind the door. “Oh God. I’m so sorry. I didn’t do that on purpose. You know that, right? Are you okay?” His voice sounded tinny and far away. And getting further.
No words would form. All I could do was moan and hold my face as I leaned against the stall. I squinted against the flashing lights that were probably only in my head but hurt my eyes just the same. I was afraid I was going to throw up, and I wasn’t sure, exactly, which direction the toilet was.
“You’re bleeding.”
Foster steadied me and then pulled me out of the stall and to the sinks. He plopped me up onto the counter like I weighed nothing. Which would have seemed kind of manly if I hadn’t already been on the receiving end of his testosterone driven door push. And if the counter hadn’t been full of standing water and soggy paper towels.
I wouldn’t let him pull my hands away from my nose. “It hurts,” I whined.
“I know, I know. I’m so sorry. I just want to see it.”
I dropped my hands, and he tipped my head back. “Crap.”
“What is it?”
“You’re a mess.” He wet some fresh paper towels and held them directly on my nose. “Seriously. You are a mess.”
“It’s your fault. You did this to me.”
His eyes widened, and I felt like I should say something more to clarify. Because all of the sudden, it wasn’t just my bloody nose that we were talking—or not talking—about. And while I’d justifiably blamed him for everything all those years, it felt kind of shitty to tell him that while he was trying to be nice.
“I never wanted you to get hurt.”
“I know.”
He pulled away the towel, grimaced, and promptly put it back. “I think we need to get the nurse.”
“She’s only here on Wednesdays.”
“What? Why?”
“Budget cutbacks.”
“But people don’t only get hurt on Wednesdays. That’s so stupid.”
I shrugged. “You wouldn’t believe how many girls get cramps only on Wednesdays now, though.”
He looked puzzled.
“So they can go home early.” His expression didn’t change. “Never mind.”
“Keep you chin tilted up.” He started wiping up my face. “Why have you been avoiding me?”
“I haven’t.”
He stopped wiping and shot me a look of disbelief.
“Okay. Maybe I’ve been a little unavailable. I just…” What? What was I just? “I guess I just didn’t want to talk about…
you know
.”
“Well we can’t pretend it didn’t happen.”
“Why not?”
“Because it did happen. And it could happen again.”
“It could?”
“Sure. And we’ll never know when. We’ll be going about our business and all of the sudden we’ll be kissing.”
“We will?”
“And all because we never talked about it.”
“So you are trying to tell me that if we don’t talk about it, then it will happen again.” Maybe I could just transfer schools instead.
“Yeah. Except it will probably happen again even if we do talk about it.”
“But why?”
He stopped mopping my face and leaned in very close. “Because it didn’t suck. If it had sucked, we could have the ‘let’s never talk about that again’ conversation and be done with it. You stopped bleeding, by the way.”
Why do people always think talking about things makes them better? I didn’t subscribe to that channel. “Why do we have to have any conversation about it at all?”
“We don’t. But be prepared for the consequences.”
“But you said that we’d kiss again either way, so why do we have to
talk
about it?”
“You’re right. We don’t. We can just get straight to the action if you want.”
I never felt less like kissing anyone than I did as I sat there on a counter in the girls’ bathroom surrounded by bloody paper towels, my nose throbbing, and my ass in a puddle of what I hoped was water.
And then he kissed me.
His mouth slanted over mine and I wrapped my arms around his neck. Some protest, huh? Foster splayed his hands on my hips, and my knees made room for him to lean in closer, and he couldn’t get close enough if you had asked me.
The anger was missing this time. The change was subtle because we still weren’t kissing in the Hilary Duff/Chad Michael Murray at the end of a Disney movie kind of way. The intensity hadn’t lessened, just the fury.
And passion filled the vacuum the anger had created. The bitterness I knew a thing or two about. This passion stuff sneaked up on me. It was as if I wanted to take from him and give to him at the same time—and like my body was so happy to finally circumvent my brain that it unleashed all the hormones I’d kept at bay all these teen years.
My legs crossed behind him, pulling him toward me, and he groaned, a sound that reverberated in my veins like a choir during a crescendo. Shamelessly, I tugged and pulled at him, forcing his fingers to dig into my hips harder and mercilessly.
I angled to the right at the same time he angled to his left, and we bumped noses, setting fire to my sore one. I gasped and pulled back.
“Shit!” Stars, stars, everywhere I looked, stars. I covered my poor schnoz with my hands.
“Oh God, not again. I’m really sorry, Layney.”
“It’s okay.” I said through my hands. “I probably deserve to get smacked in the face every time I kiss you.”
He pried my fingers away from my nose. “Oh jeez. I think we really should go find out where the nurse is the other four days of the week.”
“Is it bleeding again?”
“A little. And, um, your eyes are looking a little…swollen. And somewhat discolored.”
“Are you freaking kidding me? You gave me a black eye?”
“No…I think I gave you two black eyes. I’m really, really sorry.”
An errant, vain thought flitted through my head—I didn’t want him to see me with two black eyes. I wanted him to see me…pretty.
Stop it, Layney.
I tentatively touched my nose. What if it was broken? “I knew you were evil. I didn’t realize you were physically dangerous too.”
He winced. “Seriously. We should go get you checked out.”
“Nobody is going to believe I got hit with a door. I don’t even want to know what the rumor mill is going to churn out.”
“Layney, I’m not kidding. That color under your eyes isn’t one you see in a rainbow. It’s not natural.”
He took a step back and I slid off my perch. Only the rest of the room kind of slid with me, and I slumped against Foster.
“God. I am the worst kind of ass,” he said as he picked me up and carried me toward the door. “Your butt is wet.”
“I know. You sat me down in a puddle. Foster, don’t I have a date tonight?”
* * *
I did have a date that night.
And the preparations were not going well at all.
“Can’t you do your own makeup?” Tyler asked me with a makeup sponge in one hand and a jar of cover-up in the other.
“You’re supposed to be my best friend.”
“Yeah, sure. But I don’t know how to do this stuff.”
“The makeup was your idea.”
“All I said was that they used stage makeup when I was in the all-school play last year, and that it covered Tommy’s black eye. I didn’t say I knew how to apply it.”
I suppose we looked ridiculous. I’ll give my mom credit—she didn’t bat an eye when she found me and the Hawaiian in her bedroom using her vanity table. I think she was just glad I had a friend finally. She worried.
Tyler set the jar down. “I need to watch ESPN or something. I’m feeling all weird.”
“I promise you won’t turn into a girl by holding a makeup sponge for too long.”
Ty didn’t answer and instead he sat on my parents’ bed behind me. “Are you sure it was just a door, Layney?”
Our eyes met in the mirror. “I promise it was just a door.”
“You know if anyone ever tries to hurt you, I’m your guy, right?”
A smile stretched across my face and my heart swelled with genuine love for my BFF. “I know.”
And I did know. Okay, so he wasn’t so good at shopping or date preparation. And yeah, he actually thought a French manicure had something to do with tongue. But he was mine. I trusted Tyler the instant I met him. We were meant to be friends.
So it sort of slipped out, “I made out with Logan after he beamed me with the door in the girls’ bathroom today.”
“You’re joking, right?”
I shook my head.
“What happened to ‘Jimmy Foster is the spawn of Satan’?”
I shrugged. “I think it’s a hex. Someone in our school has been practicing the dark arts or something.”
Tyler scratched his head. He was either wondering what was wrong with me or how he ended up with the dubious position of riding shotgun in my life. “What did Jimmy say?”
“About what?”
“About making out.”
“He didn’t say anything. So this makeup is making me look kind of orange. Kind of like a bruised orange, actually.”
“Am I hearing this right? You guys kissed in the girls’ bathroom for the first time since middle school and neither of you said anything?”
I spun the stool slowly to face him, shooting him really big, really fake smile. “It was sort of the second time since middle school. We might have kissed for a minute the other day before the karaoke date.”
“Oh you might have, huh?”
“It happened very fast, but that was the impression that I got.”
“Layney, I love you, kiddo. But you are one messed-up little girl.”
“I know. I don’t even like him.”
“So you kissed him because…”
“I was hoping you would be smarter about this kind of stuff and maybe you could tell me.”
“I am smarter than you, that’s true. And the reason you kissed him is because you still have feelings for him.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
Tyler tossed one of my mother’s pillows at me. “You look like you spend every day fake-n-baking at the tanning salon. Who is your date tonight?”
“I don’t know yet. I don’t have feelings for Foster, either. Other than feelings of revulsion and repulsion.”
“What about Micah?”
“What about Micah?” I turned back to the mirror and used Mom’s cold cream to get the dayglow off my face.
“Do you like them both?”
“I don’t like either of them that way.”
“Right.”
“Can we not do this now? I look like a poster for domestic violence awareness.”
And I felt battered on the inside too. Did I like them both? Did that make me a bad person? One of them was bad for me, and I didn’t trust him. The other was probably perfect for me—I really didn’t trust him either.
An hour later, Tyler dropped me off at Hootenanny’s, our small town answer to T.G.I.Fridays. On the way, we had picked up a pair of those ridiculously large sunglasses that Paris Hilton wears. They did the trick, but Hootenanny’s wasn’t brightly lit by any means. I bumped into the hostess podium and a table on the way to meet my date.
He stood when I arrived—score one for Mr. August. “I’m Jake Faraday.”
“Hi Jake, I’m Layney Logan.”
Jake was cute. I think. Hard to say in the dark.
“I’m sorry,” he began. “But your sunglasses are still…um…on. In case you forgot or something.”
“Yeah. I know. I just came from the optometrist. My pupils are dilated. I’m very sensitive.”
“Okay.” He smiled.
I think.
The waitress brought us the special desert the staff had preordered for us—a huge hot fudge sundae for two, with whipped cream and cherries on top. At the risk of sounding like a girl, a dose of chocolate went a long way in soothing the rotten—not to mention confusing—day I’d been through.
“So, Jake, tell me about yourself.”
“I’m a junior. I don’t have a girlfriend…but I’m looking for one. And I’m on the cheer squad.”
The spoon of ice cream stopped short of my mouth. “You’re a cheerleader?” I blurted.
“Yes. And I’m straight. Just to be clear.”
“I would never have…okay, you’re right. I probably would have.”
“It’s okay. Most people do. But cheering isn’t just for gay guys anymore. In fact most are really there to score with the hot girls.”
“Um, oh.”
Jake had this strange way of punctuating the end of his sentences—like it was the last word of a cheer. He startled me several times and drew attention to our table. I wanted to wave to people.
Hey, look, it’s Too Loud Guy and his legally blind, blind date.
“Actually, the first cheerleaders were all men. Did you know that?”
“I had no idea.”
“The first squad was from the University of Minnesota. They were called yell leaders.”
“Well, okay.”
“Females didn’t start participating until 1923.”
“Wow, you sure know your cheer history.”
“It’s my ticket out of this town.”
Jake then proceeded to fill me in on every detail I never needed to know about cheerleading. Including the difference between a Herkie and a hurdler, the correct spelling of pompon, and that he was hoping to get a full-ride scholarship to the state college after competitions next year.
My general disdain for the girls who wore the short, pleated skirts might have lessened a little when I heard how long their practices were every single day. Yeah, a lot of them were snotty and were granted privileges because they were pretty or rich—but it sounded like they also worked really hard. And I respected that. I just wished sometimes they would work a little harder on being less stuck-up.
Jake got louder and louder until I decided I was really glad I was wearing the anonymous dark shades. The further I shrank into the corner of my booth seat, the more gregarious he became. He was nice, really nice. He was just very…excited about his future.
“So, Jake. What do you want to do after college?”
“I’m hoping to get my Master of Library Science.”
A librarian? Mr. Herkie wanted to be a librarian. Once again, the sunglasses shielded my date from my incredulous eyes. I guess, in a strange way, Foster did me a favor by trying to break my nose.
“What about you? What do you want to do after college?” he asked before he shoveled another bite, totally encroaching the boundary between our separate scoops.