Like it’s too ugly to tack on the reason why.
I want to abort this doomed mission and flee this office, because Armstrong clearly doesn’t give a single solitary damn and sees no reason to change his stance.
“You know what I can do?” Armstrong wags his finger like he’s really embracing this whole dilemma on our behalf. I can smell the stink of bullshit wafting from him before it even drops. “I can give you the numbers for Cassidy Mingledorff and Judy Powell. They’re the mothers who run our proms. Let’s see if they can give you some kind of solution.”
He holds out a Post-it note with the names and numbers scrawled across them, like we don’t realize he’s writing his own get-out-of-jail-free card.
Doyle moves to take the paper, but I shake my head and hold out a hand to interrupt the transfer.
“We’re giving these two women the power to tell us yes or no about attending our own prom. This is our school. Our prom. Any person who attends Ebenezer High should get a bid to our school’s one prom.”
I realize too late that my impassioned plea was utterly devoid of sirs, so I’m sure all he heard was the absolute insubordination that’s becoming my MO in Armstrong’s book.
“Ms. Murphy-Pujols, you are aware that prom is a luxury, not a necessity?” He holds the paper scissored between his index and second fingers and rocks it back and forth. “Proms require organizing and funding that some of our lovely community ladies have taken upon themselves to deal with and that our school is ill-equipped for, especially with the end of the school year fast approaching. The school’s budget has already been presented and approved by the board for the year. Now, I won’t say that I agree with every detail of how each prom is run, but I do know that these women are falling back on decades of Ebenezer tradition as well as the wishes of the student body and the community when they pull this all together.”
I’m about to ask hard-boiled investigative questions: The wishes of which students, exactly? Has an alternative prom ever been offered? Why don’t the other schools offer this privatized prom abomination? Why hasn’t the ACLU ever come down on you jerks and called you out for being the racist freaks you are?
Okay, maybe less investigative and more incendiary, but I’ve never felt my entire body catch flame with such righteous anger. Before I devolve into mad-dog territory, Doyle stands and takes the paper, creased by Armstrong’s impatient fingers. I’m about to rally, but I stop short. Doyle knows from painful firsthand experience when he’s been beaten, and I know better than to try to fight when Doyle’s face says retreat.
Armstrong offers an insincere have a nice day to our retreating backs, but the words are just a little feather in his authority cap. A bloated filler for all my clearly forgotten yes, sirs.
There are a ton of complicated, sticky, emotional things to talk about, and, at this moment, I just can’t do it. I’m thoroughly beaten down, and I want to rest and refuel.
“Lunch will be over soon. Wanna eat?” I bump Doyle’s shoulder, but his head shake is so defeated, it scares me. Doyle is possibly the most optimistic person I know. I expected him to rebound with a plan B by now. “Well, I’m hungry. If you want to waste away…” I lope off toward the cafeteria, but he calls my bluff and doesn’t follow. “No food for you?”
“Not hungry.” He flips the paper Armstrong handed him around his fingers like it’s a tiny, flat baton. “I don’t want to feed this mess of a body. It’s one of those days I don’t feel hungry to even be here, y’know?”
I’d call him on his melodrama, but his words howl from somewhere ugly and scary. I still joke, because I refuse to stop screaming my nonsense in the face of the darkness that works to swallow him whole.
“Very Kafka of you, but don’t starve yourself on me now, cucaracha. If these biddies won’t help us throw the prom we want, I’m going to need to do all kinds of balloon blowing up and streamer hanging. I can’t do it without you.”
His smile is minimalist. “Maybe I can handle, like, an ice-cream sandwich?”
I link a finger through his belt loop and tug his skinny hips my way. So much has changed between us in a few short days. And I just want to eat some ice cream with the guy I love. “That’s more like it. This ice-cream weakness of yours? I think revealing it to me was a big mistake.”
“That so?” His boots clomp a step closer, then two, until his feet and mine alternate in a pattern of big and small soles. “Why not? Can’t you be trusted?”
“Never. At least not where you’re concerned.”
Our faces are close enough now that we might break my “no PDA” rule and kiss, right here in front of the cafeteria. But after our visit with Armstrong, everything we do in school—in front of the people who seem to think we need to ask permission just to be together—feels like some kind of activism.
Nothing is unsexier than PDA for the sake of activism.
I dodge ahead of him and buy a crap ton of food neither of us is that hungry for.
“So.” Doyle lets the word hang in the air as he collects all our half-eaten garbage and tosses the last melted bits of ice-cream sandwich into his mouth when the bell rings. “What do ya think we should do?”
“I do not think I’m the one you should ask about how to organize some huge party on our own, if that’s the route you’re going with this. I mean, I’m more than okay helping out, but I’m a social misfit. And a Yankee. And a smart-ass.”
“Really. Well, I think you could do more than organize it—I think you could be the prom queen.” He folds his arm around my shoulder.
I’m worried about the stiff way he walks, like he’s trying not to jostle his ribs. “That’s probably the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said to me, and you’ve said some really crazy crap. Doyle, admit it—I wouldn’t even be the prom queen of an alternative prom.”
He stops short, creating a minor traffic jam in the middle of the hall, grabs my face, and slaps a kiss on my lips.
“Brains, girl! You got so many, they solve problems even when you ain’t tryin’!” His grin buzzes through me before I’m sure why I’m excited.
“What did I say?” We’re almost to my classroom, and he’s already scanning the halls. He pats me on the shoulder like I’m a sidekick tucked behind his superhero cape and yells, “Khabria Scott! Where you at, girl?”
“Khabria?” I ask, but Doyle doesn’t hear me or stop to explain before he bolts down the hall like a man on fire.
TWENTY-THREE
There’s no sign of him until after dinner, when I hear a faint scratch at my bedroom window.
“Doyle.” I press my palms flat against the pane and push up, my sweaty hands leaving streaks on the glass. “What are you doing here? I just called you.”
“I looked for you after ninth.” He tumbles in over the sash. “I rang the bell like a proper suitor come callin’, but I think your doorbell’s broken. Want me to fix it?”
“‘Suitor come callin’,’ huh? I’ll have to tell Ollie that one. Uh, yeah, if you know how to fix doorbells, that’d be cool. Thanks.”
His gray T-shirt is rumpled, and his hair sticks out a little too long from under both sides of his navy Yankees cap, the one we keep stealing back and forth. When we were just friends, I could look at him and admire what I liked, but there was no experience driving me to press things further.
Now that we’ve gunned it right over the friend line, I can’t stop the itchiness I feel when he’s close and we’re alone. It’s intensified by my PDA hatred, which forces me to keep a Puritan lid on it anytime anyone else is around. So I’m pretty pent up. It feels out of control, and I’m not sure I like it at all. But that doesn’t stop me from tugging on the front of the soft gray fabric of his shirt and pulling until he falls back on my mattress with me. He winces a little and holds his side, but flips me back fast, like he’s proving to me just how fine he is.
He buries his head in the place where my shoulder meets my neck and breathes deep. “Mmm, you smell like a coconut.”
“I heal quick.” He flashes that assurance too fast, then bulldozes onto a new subject. “And I talked to Khabria. So…she wants to talk to you.”
“Right. What about exactly? You ran off before you explained.” I want to know. I do.
But what I really want is to run my hands over Doyle’s body, momentarily broken, but strong. I want to be with him the way we were the other night, the two of us against the world. While I’m wrapped safe in his arms, I want to forget all the complicated and incredibly screwed-up situations we deal with on a daily basis. Maybe that’s a dangerous perspective to take regarding our relationship, but I’m as addicted as any junkie to this total, beautiful release I feel with Doyle.
It’s scary, but I can’t get enough of it. Of him. I lean back on my elbows, push him away with my foot and sit up cross-legged, resting my hands on my thighs so that I’m not tempted to touch him.
“Because Khabria is like Glinda the Good Witch to Ansley’s Wicked Witch of the West,” Doyle explains, apparently oblivious to the fact that I’m barely containing myself around him.
I dig my nails into my shins and keep a calm face. “Right. I mean, I don’t know her superwell, but she’s always been really cool to me.”
“Yeah.” He creeps closer. I scuttle back and hug Mr. Kittenface, using my old teddy as a barrier between us—a reminder of a time when I wasn’t a total sex-crazed pervert. What’s even happening to me? I was never like this with Lincoln. He was the one who seemed to have this intense need for me—the same overpowering need I’m now possessed by whenever I get Doyle alone. I always thought of that kind of desire as seriously alpha, as total strength—but the truth is, I’ve never felt more vulnerable.
“You okay?” Doyle asks.
I’m not being subtle, because subtlety is an impossibility for me. “It’s just… I feel… The other night… It was so good, so amazing, and I…” Usually I have too many words, but I’m at a total loss.
He clears his throat and rubs his hands down his thighs. “When, uh, that happens… When I fight, I don’t know… I go to a weird place. I know things got rushed. I didn’t want it to happen that way. I know we did…we did things you probably regret.”
Everything grinds to a halt. I get that his pride and pain and the lies he feels like he needs to keep for his family got crushed together the other night, and maybe his feelings for me got mixed in, but what? Anger and panic kickbox in my stomach, and I’m too thrown off guard to referee. I toss Mr. Kittenface aside and sit up.
“Do you regret them?”
Doyle hangs his head. “That wasn’t the way it should’ve been. Not with all that chaos and craziness. That’s not what I wanted for us.”
“What?” My voice is hoarse.
His almost-lavender eyes are fixed on my comforter, his face so beautifully sad, the sight of it inspires a fist-sized lump in my throat. “That was jest me losing it. Same way my dad does with booze and his fists. Sometimes I lose self-control, and it hits me that I’m following in Boyd Rahn’s footsteps no matter how hard I try to do better. Guess you can’t escape your blood.”
My voice comes out edged with something dangerous Doyle would be an idiot to ignore. “Are you saying you screwed me in some crazy moment when you had no self-control? That you said you loved me, but… What?”
“I do love you. That’s exactly what this is about. You think that’s what the girl I love deserves? ’Specially our first time?” He slides the Yankees cap off his head and crushes the fabric in his fist. “Before, with other girls, I was always enough how I am, and they kinda fell all over me.” The smile he attempts fails. “With you, I gotta be on my A game all the time. And I messed up. I know there ain’t really any such thing as a do-over in life, but maybe you and me could try this once?”
“A game?” The words crack out with the full force of my fury and disgust. “I don’t want to see your game, Doyle. I want us to be honest. I want you to accept the fact that you need help, sometimes from me, the person who loves you. Showing me your A game is lying.”
“A lie’s not so bad if you’re doin’ it to protect the people you love,” he says.
“That’s a total load of crap!” I yell. “I get you love your family, and that’s truly noble and all, but their lies and secrets are tearing you up, in every way. Look!” I point across the room, where his bruised reflection stares back at us from my mirror. Doyle lowers his eyes.
“I don’t wanna look. I can’t. I need to forget.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I stand on my mattress, towering over him so I don’t feel so out of control. He stands too, I guess to even the playing field, and tries to hold my hands, but I yank them away.
“I know it sounds messed up. It is messed up.” He rubs a hand over the back of his neck, his go-to nervous tic. “It ain’t gonna get clearer the more we talk. Easiest if we jest forget it happened. Get it right next time. Can’t we do that?”
“Forget it? It’s all I’ve been thinking about. You’re all I’ve been thinking about.” I swallow hard, but the next words croak out from somewhere dark. “I never want to forget what happened between us.”
“I’m sorry.” The way he keeps hanging his head like he’s ashamed—of what we did? Of being with me?—stirs my fury. “I knew I should have never brought you around that drunk asshole. You got no idea how sorry I am for all this. I can give you time if you need time. I know you ain’t used to seeing things like that. I guess it’s easier for me to jest put it outta my head because, in my screwed-up world, that’s what I gotta do to keep goin’. I’ve had years of practice though.”
He lifts his chin, and when our eyes meet, I know I’m not imagining our connection. It’s an undeniable something in me, in him, in the air between us.
How can he be so completely mine and so out of my reach at the same time? It’s like we’re soul mates who speak different languages.
The need to make him understand is so intense, it scorches through me.
“I get that it sucks to rehash everything that went down between you and your father. Honestly, I get that. But what happened after, with us? I can’t forget that. I won’t. And I have no idea why you’d want to.” The air between us goes thick and silent.
When he finally says the next words, they’re slurred with emotion. “I guess I really don’t get it.”
“I loved being with you. Exactly like we were. I don’t want a do-over, Doyle. If we’re going to be brave enough to be together, we have to face all of it—the good, the ugly, all of it, head-on. I can’t stop thinking about it, and I don’t want to. In fact, I refuse to.”
His eyebrows crush low and his mouth twists into a scowl. “But I’m askin’ you to stop thinking about it. Fact of the matter is, I need ya to. I’m asking you to do it for me. Because that guy you saw cryin’ his heart out, beat to a pulp? That ain’t me. That guy’s nothin’ but a weak goddamn mess. He ain’t me.”
“Really? Well, who are you, exactly, Doyle? Are you the guy who’s always smiling? The guy every girl crushes on and every teacher lets get away with murder because you’re so charming? The good friend, the good worker, the good boyfriend?” My voice rises with the swell of feelings rolling through me. I’m more than a little off-kilter after every crazy thing that I’ve seen and put up with in the last few months.
“Yeah, all that. All that, Nes, and better. Or at least I’m tryin’ to do better. I’m tryin’ because it’s what I demand from myself. And it’s what you deserve outta me.” He throws his hand up, surrender-style when I won’t agree with him. “Why don’t it make sense that to you I don’t wanna be the guy who never amounted to nothing ’cause his daddy’s the town drunk, and he followed that same path? There’s plenty of guys like that in this town, and I can’t stomach the sight of ’em. The truth is, I don’t want you to love that guy. You’re better than that.”<
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“Don’t you dare try to tell me there’s any part of you that isn’t good enough for me. You can’t just slice out the pieces of yourself you don’t like.” I lean close to him, my hands planted on his wide, steady shoulders, my fingers curled around the strong muscle and bruised skin. “You can’t pick and choose which parts of yourself you want to show. Not to the people closest to you. Not to the ones who love you.”
He reaches up and closes his fingers tight around my wrists, his eyes wild. “That’s the thing. I want for you to see the best in me, nothing less. I hate that you saw me the way you did.”
I inch closer to him, keeping my voice low and gentle, like I’m talking to a wild animal that’s spooked. “That’s the way it goes when you really care about someone. Fair’s fair, Doyle. I feel like the only way you ever see me is at my worst. You don’t know what I was like back in Brooklyn. I wasn’t this loner rebel. I was a cool girl, smart, fun. I was popular. I know this is hard to imagine, but my teachers and classmates actually liked me. I was nice. God, I used to hate that word. Nice.”
“I like you jest fine the way you are right here, right now.” He strokes his hands up my arms and pulls his fingers back down, leaving a trail of goose bumps on my skin. “You’re a helluva lot more than nice, Nes. You’re brave. Strong. Smart. And you’ve got the best heart of anyone I’ve ever known. Knowing you makes me wanna be a better man. Makes me wanna prove to you I’m not that guy you saw lose it. Why can’t you see that?”
“The way I saw you the other day was honest, Doyle. It wasn’t the phony face you put on whenever you want people to think everything is okay. I hate what your dad did. I can barely sleep because every time I close my eyes, I see him beating you.”
“Don’t remind me,” Doyle mutters, dropping his hands.
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