by Misa Sugiura
I’m just wondering. It makes sense to wonder where her girlfriend is, doesn’t it?
“She’s over there with the band,” says Arden, and nods vaguely in the direction of the back of the room: there’s two hapa guys, one tall and lanky, and one in flip-flops; a purple-haired white guy; a Black girl with plaid paper-bag pants . . . and finally, Dela, in overdyed, cuffed jeans and a white button-down shirt. She tosses her bangs out of her eyes, and a rush of butterflies swoops unexpectedly into my chest. I do love a bangs-toss.
“She’s so cute, isn’t she?” says Arden.
Cute is not exactly the word I would use to describe Dela or her look, but then again, I’m not an Amazonian warrior princess from Themiscyra.
Actually, I remind myself, thanks to Willow and her magic, I am. Or I look like one, anyway. A little bit. I wish Dela would look over; I want to see her face when she sees the new me. Though let’s be honest, it’s more like the temporary me—I could never replicate this face on my own. Cinderella’s dress only lasted until midnight, after all.
Though it was enough to get the attention of the prince.
Who is obviously Willow in this scenario, except that she’s a princess. All the pieces are finally falling into place, and I intend to see this through.
Arden’s attention shifts to a clutch of friends who want to talk about the guy with the purple hair—does Arden know if he’s gay? Or maybe bi? If he’s single? Because he is so hot! Will she introduce them? Arden leads them over, and Willow and I go to the bar and order sodas from a surly bartender in a black band T-shirt.
We lean against the side wall and watch the band climb up on the stage. Purple Hair and Flip-Flops pick up guitars; Plaid Pants goes to the keyboard; Tall and Lanky sits behind the drums.
“Hey,” Willow says suddenly. “You really meant it just now, didn’t you. When you said I was amazing.”
“Well, yeah,” I say. Did I let too much of my real feelings show? Only—that’s good, right? That’s what tonight is for. “Why?”
She looks down and smiles. “No reason,” she says, but before we can say any more, Arden climbs onstage, stands in front of the mic, and starts addressing the crowd.
What is the reason, though? There has to be a reason.
“Hey, everyone! Thanks for coming to my birthday party,” says Arden. A cheer goes up from the assembled. “This is Ruse, my cousin Olivia’s band.” She gestures at the keyboardist. “Before they get going, I want to start the night with an original song for my girlfriend. Where’s Dela?”
Purple Hair’s fan club cheers and points to Dela, who’s still with them. Dela’s mouth makes a smile, though her eyes look a little deer-in-the-headlights.
Arden looks at her and says, “This song is inspired by a Langston Hughes poem about loving without regrets. This one’s for you, Dela Mayumi Benedict.”
The band plays an intro, and she croons,
Out of love, no regrets
So put your trust in me
Out of love, no regrets
I think we’re meant to be
We don’t know where we’ll go
Next year, next week, or even tomorrow
So let’s love with no regrets
’Cause it’s the only way I know.
Wow. If a girl like Arden was directing that smoldering gaze at me and singing those words to me, I’d be so happy, I’d be lighting up the room. But Dela’s smile looks unsure—which doesn’t surprise me, I guess. She’s so private, I’m sure she hates all this attention.
“I used to beg her to sing to me from the stage. Beg her,” Willow says glumly. But she’s not furious, which is what she would have been only a month ago. So glum is an improvement.
“You’ll be okay,” I say, and after a moment’s hesitation, I put my arm around her and give her an encouraging squeeze. “I’d offer to sing to you, but I think that might make you feel worse.” Holding my breath, I leave my arm where it is.
Willow responds by laughing, and then threading her arm around me, pulling me close, and leaning her head against mine. “You can’t be that bad. And thank you.”
I think I might faint. Or float away like a helium balloon. Or both—they’ll have to chase down my unconscious body as it drifts out of the club and down the street.
Now seems as good a time as any to say the thing.
Just kidding. I still have to figure out what to say.
Okay. Just one second, and then I’ll do it.
Okay, now.
No, wait.
All right. Here we go.
For real this time.
Aghh, just say it, already!
“Hey,” I say. “Can I talk to you about something?”
“Sure. What?” Willow says. Is it my imagination, or is she tensing up?
“I know you’re not all the way over Arden,” I start to say, but I only make it through “I know you’re not” before we’re slammed by a wall of sound from the stage and the rest of my sentence is swallowed by the opening notes of “May the Odds Be in Your Favor” by Meet Me @ The Altar.
“WHAT WERE YOU SAYING?” she shouts.
“NEVER MIND! I’LL TELL YOU LATER!” I was so close. So close.
“OKAY! YOU WANNA DANCE?” Willow nods her head toward the dance floor.
I nod back. I guess dancing with my girlfriend—okay, my almost—ugh, fine, my pretend girlfriend—is almost as good as laying bare my soul and professing my undying love.
Turns out, though, it is pretty good. Ruse is talented, and before long, we’re both sweaty from dancing and from the press of bodies around us. Willow’s face is flushed and her hair keeps falling over one eye as we dance, and she keeps flipping it back with a toss of her head, as if she knows that’s a thing with me. I look around for Dela—and Arden—Dela and Arden, but I can’t see them. Halfway through a slower song about bad therapy, Willow shouts, “I HAVE TO PEE.” I follow her off the floor and wait outside the bathroom.
A few minutes later, she emerges, looking stunning—I think she must have taken the opportunity to refresh her lipstick and clean up her eye makeup, and I regret not having done the same. I must look like a raccoon, what with all the sweating I’ve been doing.
“Hey, let’s go in there.” Willow points at a short passageway that leads to another, smaller room that a handwritten sign tells us is RESERVED FOR THE BAND. “They’re onstage. They’ll never notice,” she says, and she pulls me with her. The walls are painted in bold diagonal black and white stripes. There’s a table laden with snacks and a case of Kirkland water bottles in the corner. Feeling slightly criminal, I grab one along with Willow and start drinking. As she points out, though, there’s no way those guys are going to drink forty bottles of water.
She smiles at me. “I know I’ve said this like a million times, but you look gorgeous.”
“Well, I have this great makeup artist,” I say with a grin, and she laughs. Then she stops laughing and her eyes soften. Oh my god. This is the moment. This is when I tell her how I feel.
“So. Um,” I say. “That thing I wanted to talk to you about earlier?”
“Uh-huh?” She looks like she’s getting ready to listen, then stops herself. “Actually, there’s something I want to tell you, too. Do you mind if I go first?”
“Oh! Sure. Go ahead.” I suppress a sigh and resign myself to another Willow therapy session. Not that I mind those. But still.
Willow looks at me and laughs nervously. “I’m about to get into some sensitive territory, so be patient with me, okay?”
I nod, my own nerves suddenly prickling again. She doesn’t usually open like this.
“So. I’m not sure if you remember, or if you saw it the same way, but last week, when we were at Hawk Hill? I felt like we might have had a . . . a moment. Or we almost had one.”
Oh my god.
“It threw me so hard, the next day I almost told you how I felt. I don’t know if you noticed.”
When you started to wonder what it would be like
if things were different and then didn’t say the second part? I’m too excited to speak.
“I’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching since then. And the thing is, doing the whole fake-dating act to make Arden jealous . . . it was a good idea, and it’s been a fun distraction, but the more we’ve been dating—fake dating—the more it’s started to feel . . . well, it’s been starting to feel real. Just like in the movies.” She glances at me briefly, as if to confirm that this is how I feel, too.
Oh. My. God.
Willow takes a sip from her water bottle and says, “But the thing is . . . well, I’m not totally over Arden yet.” She gives me a regretful smile. “But you know that.”
No. This can’t be happening.
And yet it is. I feel like when a cartoon character gets flattened by an anvil that falls out of nowhere. Clang, you’re dead. Gone. Smashed into a pancake.
“So I can’t guarantee that I’ll be a hundred percent available to you, like, emotionally. But I’m ready to try to move on. From Arden.”
Move on . . . from Arden . . . I almost stagger from the whiplash as the words sink in—I actually feel dizzy. I can’t even nod. All I can do is stare at her.
She looks into my eyes and goes on. “And tonight, I just keep looking at you, Nozomi, and it’s like, every time I see you, I get this little—” She shivers a little, and I shiver, too—that same shiver I’ve been getting since Day One.
“And I was kind of hoping you felt the same way about me.” She moves a step closer and takes my hand in hers, looking down as our fingers intertwine.
My mind is reeling and my mouth is dry. I’ve turned into such a quivering, gelatinous mess, I don’t know how I’m even standing upright. But I manage to croak, “I did. I mean, I do,” in a voice that only sounds a little bit like I’m choking to death on my heart, which seems to have lodged itself in my throat. Because I do feel the same way. Obviously.
She lifts her eyes to mine and gives me a small, intensely intimate smile. Then her arms are around my waist, pulling me even closer to her, and my hands slide up her shoulders and around her neck as her lips meet mine, and finally, we kiss for real—a long, sweet, perfect kiss if ever there was one.
Only I can’t concentrate. Don’t get me wrong. It’s amazing: soft, tender, and totally, totally hot. Or it should be. It’s just—I’m a bit nervous, I think.
It makes no sense. The girl I’ve been swooning over for weeks is finally in my arms, gazing at me with her perfect eyes, grazing my cheek with her perfectly manicured fingernails, and kissing me again and again with her perfect lips. My fantasy has finally become reality. I should be spinning off into the stars in a whirlwind of kisses and moonbeams, totally lost in this perfect moment . . . but the more we kiss, the more I’m worrying about where to put my hands, and how hard to kiss her, and—weirdly—what Dela will think if she sees us. Which should be nothing, obviously. Because I am Willow’s girlfriend, as far as anyone knows. Oh my god, stop! What am I doing? Why am I thinking about . . . Just stop. Think about Willow.
Willow pulls back and looks at me. “Are you okay? Is this okay?” she asks.
Focus, Nozomi, focus. Focus on the moment. Focus on kissing the girl of your dreams!
“Yes! Definitely yes. I just. I’m, um, giddy with joy, that’s all.”
She laughs. “You’re so funny. We don’t have to rush into anything official yet if that’s freaking you out. But I think this could be really good.”
“Me too,” I say, and we go back to kissing, which is really good. Gradually, I relax and begin to enjoy it. Okay. I was just nervous before.
“Uh, is that behavior really appropriate? I think the band and their groupies are the only ones allowed to make out in here,” says a voice behind me, and I jump and bang my teeth into Willow’s. It’s Dela, looking amused.
“Oh. Uh, hi,” I say, feeling caught out and guilty, somehow. It makes no sense. Dela must believe that I kiss Willow all the time. So why do I wish she hadn’t seen me doing it?
“Come on, Nozomi. Let’s go,” says Willow, and stalks out without so much as a glance in Dela’s direction, leaving me a little dumbfounded. I don’t want to go. I feel like I need to tell Dela that the kiss she just saw wasn’t real, that it didn’t mean anything. Which is absurd. Especially because for the first time all summer, it was real. It did mean something.
“I don’t think she likes me very much,” observes Dela. “Though I guess I can’t blame her.”
Speaking of which. “Where’s Arden?” I ask. I know it’s her birthday party and everything, but why haven’t I seen Dela with her all night?
“Out there somewhere.” She takes a long swig of water and says, “Between you and me, I’m not sure we’re going to last much longer.”
What? A dozen scenarios swirl through my head, mostly involving Arden and Willow getting back together. Which . . . isn’t breaking my heart the way it should? A couple of scenarios also involve Dela ending up with me. Faced with those, I discover that the butterflies that were bopping around in my chest earlier have returned. Not only that, but a few have escaped into my head, and I can’t think for all the flittering and fluttering going on in there. Me and Dela? The butterflies threaten to lift my entire body off the ground. An understanding begins to take shape inside me, and I know that I have to say something. I have to tell Dela the truth, that Willow and I aren’t really dating.
“You know, it’s funny you should say that because . . . um. There’s something I need to tell you about me and Willow.”
“Yeah?” There’s something cautious and deliberate about the way she says it, and I’m filled with giddy hope that this is going to turn out well, that I’m making the right choice.
“The thing is, Willow and me—”
“Hey, I’ve been waiting for you! Are you coming?” It’s Willow, looking irritated.
“Oh. Yeah! We were just—we were talking about um, the um . . . the uh . . . ,” I stammer.
“The installation,” Dela cuts in.
“Yes, that’s right. The installation,” I repeat. “Work stuff.”
“Okay, so are you done?”
“Yep!” I say, my heart falling. “All done.”
I take Willow’s outstretched hand, and as we go back to the main room, the understanding solidifies and then bursts open and burns through me like lightning.
It’s not Willow I’m supposed to be with.
It’s Dela.
35
WILLOW AND I SPENT THE REST OF THE PARTY dancing, kissing some more, and drifting around in a blissful little bubble before one last tender kiss good night. All my hopes and dreams and plans for the summer have finally come to fruition. I should be out of my mind with excitement. But I’m not.
All that romance, all that perfect happy-ending energy, everything I always wanted, and I couldn’t enjoy it because the whole time, all I could think about was how to tell Dela that this wasn’t real, and how to break out of this bubble without breaking Willow’s heart. Or if I should. Because what if I do? Where does that leave me and Dela? And what about Arden?
Also, I can’t gloat about it to Max. Winning is meaningless if you don’t want what you’ve won.
And to top it all off, I woke up this morning to the notifications that I’d been waiting for all summer. Helena’s not only liked the photos I posted last night, she’s even commented on a couple with flames and heart-eye emojis and even this: You two look so great together! Wishing you the best. And a DM: Hey
It’s no fun finally getting a message like that when you’ve realized that the girl you look so great with is the wrong girl.
Okay, it’s a little bit fun. I may have spent some time on the way to brunch with Baba this morning entertaining myself by thinking of mean replies to Helena, like, So glad I’m with her and not you, and Wait, who is this? But it’s an empty kind of fun—the cotton candy kind that you bite into and it’s only sweet for a second before it’s gone. Anyway, next to my distress about Willow an
d Dela, my anger at both of my parents, and my worries about brunch, this little victory over Helena hardly matters.
As for brunch: Dad and Stephen ended up buying one of the top spots on Oak Vista’s “exclusive wait list,” which almost guarantees an apartment opening up within the year. They’ve been scheming and strategizing for the past couple of days about how to break the news to Baba, quibbling over the details of when, where, who, and how. Today’s brunch is the setting they’ve picked, and Max and I have been roped in, presumably to minimize the risk that Baba will shout at Dad and Stephen when they tell her. As for the how, “You’re her favorite,” Stephen insisted to Dad this morning on the phone. “You know this is part of the reason you’re here, so don’t flake on me. She’ll take it much better from you.”
“I don’t know, Zomi,” Max says as we enter the restaurant. Baba and Dad have already been seated, and Baba sees us first and waves cheerfully from their table. Max and I look at each other, and he adds, “There’s no way this is going to end well. It’s not fair to set her up like this.”
I wish he wasn’t like this. I really want to believe that Dad and Stephen know what they’re doing. After all, being at the restaurant with her grandkids will ensure that Baba is in a good mood to start off with, and it should help her to stay calm and rational when Dad breaks the news.
We sit down at the green formica-topped table, and for a while, all goes according to plan: friendly greetings; questions about Arden’s party, which I do my best to deflect; strange looks from Max, which I do my best to ignore; orders placed; food brought to the table. Baba is happily cutting up her Belgian waffle when Stephen launches the next stage of the plan by talking about an art auction he’s been invited to. Then Dad drops the bomb.
He says cheerfully, “Speaking of auctions, great news, Mom! We bid on a top spot on the wait list for Oak Vista last week, and we won!”
Baba puts her fork down and eyes him with suspicion. “Hm?”