His eyes met mine and I couldn’t look away as he said, gently, “You really care a lot about people. That’s nothing to be sorry about.”
My heart jumped in my chest and I broke the gaze, focusing on finishing my cocoa. “Thanks.” I stood up, swinging my bag onto my shoulder. “I’ll probably go again before the week’s over.”
“If you want a coffee partner, let me know when you’re going, I wouldn’t mind going back. I like helping individuals.” That was probably the closest he’d get to saying my point had stuck with him, but I’d take it. Then, he added, “While working to fix policy so they’re empowered to make better lives for themselves.”
“You’re always on, aren’t you?” We headed for the door and Kris nodded another thanks at Rosie.
He nodded, trying to look completely serious. “Always.”
“You want to risk potential death by peanut butter again?” I asked in my most dry tone of voice, arching one of my eyebrows.
Kris laughed like I’d caught him by surprise, stopping to hold the coffee shop door for me. “You’ll keep me safe, right?” He flashed me the same flirty smile he’d used on the barista.
I passed by him so closely our bodies were barely an inch apart and paused, trapping him against the doorframe as I stepped the tiniest bit closer. If he was going to play that game, so would I. “I don’t know. You’re my competition, you know. Just one tiny drop of peanut butter on an apple and you’ll be out of my way,” I said in my coyest, evilest tone. The air grew thick between us and I could hear his heartbeat picking up pace to match my own racing heart.
His eyes locked with mine and he didn’t move an inch. “I think I’m safe. You might play bad guys, but you’re not one of them.” He echoed Grace’s latest lecture, except his words were delivered with a serious smile. We stood like that for what seemed like forever until Kris started slowly moving forward, like he was about to close the electric-charged distance between us. His hand barely whispered against my arm.
I arched my eyebrows at him and pursed my lips, breaking away into the cool October air, which felt wonderful against my suddenly way-too-hot skin. “Oh ye of too much faith.” I twiddled my fingers and cackled my best evil-queen cackle.
He hung against the doorframe a second longer than necessary, looking like he was trying to catch his breath. Point for me. “In you? Yup. If I can’t trust a fellow Lamberfield-ian, who can I trust?”
I just winked at him and cackled again.
From: Em ([email protected])
To: Wilhelm ([email protected])
Subject: Haven’t heard from you and Boston update
Hi!
My mentor is really great, and she looks a lot like the actress who played Wonder Woman in the 70’s, which makes it really fun to be in her mentoring sessions. She’s making me change a lot of my speech to try and make it better. I’d really love to get your thoughts on it. When I’m done, maybe I’ll record it and send it to you? Let me know.
Everyone here is so amazing and talented and sometimes I wonder if my stuff is good enough to be here, but…you don’t want to hear my worries, right? I know you’d just tell me my speech is perfect, anyway J We helped out at a soup kitchen this morning and I’m now an expert at pouring coffee and making peanut butter sandwiches. It was a really great experience and I’ll probably do it again later this week.
Remember when you told me about your favorite café in Freiburg? I’d love to check it out someday. Do they have hot chocolate? It would be amazing to just cuddle the window, like you said you like to do, and watch people walk by while being all cozy and drinking hot chocolate.
I miss you, XOXOXOXO
-em
I dropped onto the little couch at the entrance to the inn’s lobby bathroom, counting the rings coming through my phone. I had a few minutes before we were supposed to board the bus to Breed’s Hill and I needed my best friend.
“Come on, be there. Please.” When Phoebe finally picked up, there was the distant sound of some blustery music with a lot of brass—right, she was probably watching early morning marching band practice. “Feebs, my life is falling apart,” I said, digging behind my back with one arm to save the stupid oversized doily that had slipped its way off the back of the seat. “Everything sucks,” I added before giving up on fixing the doily and dumping it on the embroidered cushion next to me.
“Wait a minute, I can’t really hear you.” There was some shuffling on her end and the music grew fainter. “Okay. The bleachers kind-of block the drumline.”
“If you keep hanging out there, you’re going to become a marcher by osmosis.” I could picture her leaning against one of the bleacher supports, wearing Dev’s marching band letter jacket. “Osoba’s probably hoping Dev will be a good influence and you’ll want to wear matching uniforms and freeze your asses off in the middle of a football field together.”
She laughed and the sound untied a few of the knots that had twisted inside me. “Sure, and when I trip over the fifty-yard line and break my arm, you can take my place.”
“I’ll be right on it as soon as I’m done fighting with this stupid lace couch thing.” I poked at the stiff cotton. “You’d love it here. Even the bathrooms in this place think they’re from the nineteen-hundreds and have lacy yarn stuff everywhere.”
“Antimacassar,” Phoebe said, absently.
“Excuse me?” Coming from her that could have been a character or a place or just a big vocabulary insult for all I knew.
“Victorians used antimacassars to protect their couches from the macassar oil guys used in their hair back then. You asked me to crochet a few for the historical society, remember?” When I didn’t answer her little yarn-loving trivia factoid right away, Phoebe said, “Hmm. Okay, I should have at least gotten some sort of word-nerd comment from you for that. What’s wrong?”
The twisting came back full-force, complete with a little bit of nausea. I pushed the words out quickly, my fingers tangling in the antimacassar. “What’s wrong is that I’m going to lose this competition, my life sucks, my family might move to Kenya or Sweden, and I shouldn’t have even bothered to come here. My speech is the worst one and everyone knows it.”
Another hmm, though it was one of her knowing hmms. “First: You’re being ridiculous about the moving thing because I know for a fact from Alec that’s not real, just some wild guess of yours. And I wish you had told me you were worrying about this stuff earlier. Second: The part about your speech being the worst is not true, and third: What do you mean ‘Everyone knows it?’”
I didn’t bother to answer the “wild guess” thing but moved straight onto the speech. “It is true. Everyone else here is serious and I’m just,” I fluttered my hand around, whacking one of the chair arm antimacassars onto the floor, “only here because you and Grace basically wrote my speech.”
There was a huffing noise on the other side of the phone. “No, we didn’t. You wrote your speech—”
“I said it out loud and you guys wrote it down better,” I corrected her.
“Actually, the voice to text software wrote it down and you cleaned it up. Your words won state, Em. Grace and I made suggestions in a few spots to smooth it out, but that’s all your hard work.”
There wasn’t any use in arguing with her. “Anyway, even with all your help, it’s still not good enough. They got these mentors to come in and help us make our speeches better. I’ve seen everyone else’s critiques and all of them just have a few red lines here and there on the paper, but my mentor tore mine apart. According to her, everything’s wrong with it. I can’t write and I still haven’t found my hook and—”
“That’s really mean if she’s telling you that. Why would they let someone like that mentor at this competition? You should definitely ask for another mentor.”
“No, she’s right, my speech totally sucks. I hear people talking about how some of us are only here because of delivery, and I know they’re talking about me. It’s obvious.”
“
Oh, Em.” There was a metallic sound in the background, like she’d just slid down the metal column holding up the bleachers and the zipper on her jacket whacked the rivets a few times. There was a good chance Phoebe was now sitting on the ground, a concerned look on her face. I held tight to that picture in my head. “I’m so sorry people are all being awful. I believe in you.”
My fingers curled around the edge of the sofa’s wooden trim, squeezing tight at the ache that just kept growing as my words came out. “They’re not being awful. It’s so much worse because they’re actually nice people. At least, most of them. And all of these people can’t be wrong about my speech, either.” The best thing about Phoebe was that she just listened, unlike Grace, who, thanks to her super logical brain, always tried to figure out ways to fix things. Or Alec, who always told me I was blowing things out of proportion. The way I was feeling at the moment, I needed a listener, not a fixer. I took a deep breath. “I miss you guys.”
“This is going to sound a little weird, but I think it’s really good you’re doing this without us. It’s like you’ve created a character description for yourself of a talented actress who is outgoing and flirty, but you don’t think things like speechwriting and debating belong in that description without us around to help you, and that’s so not true. Maybe your mentor sees that, too. You’re so freak-ishly talented, Em, and maybe being away from us will let you see that.”
That speech was something I’d expect from Grace or Leia, not Phoebe, and it felt weird to have her dissect my fears so perfectly. Weird enough that I couldn’t brush it off like I could one of Grace’s “you’re awesome” speeches. “Still, it’s lonely here.”
“You have Kris.” I snorted at that, and Phoebe added, “And Ann and some of the others you mentioned before. And it’s not like you can’t call or text me whenever you want.”
“I know. You’re the best. I just wish…” I thought about the unanswered emails and texts I’d sent over the past few days, “I was hoping Wil would have tried to fix this by now,” I said in a whisper, as if the softer I said it, the less real it would be. “I don’t know what he’s waiting for.”
Phoebe was silent for a second, before saying, just as softly, “Oh, Em. The way you’ve been talking, I thought you two fixed things.”
“There wasn’t anything to fix. It wasn’t even a real fight, but he won’t answer any of his texts. What if Grace is right? What if he really is ghosting me?” I swung my legs over the sofa arm and lay on my back, draping my free arm over my eyes, the antimacassar-thing a giant lump in the middle of my back. “Maybe he met a five-foot-nine Veronica Lake wannabe supermodel named Katja and they’re too busy making out in front of the pillar in Freiburg for him to bother with me.” I could practically see the girl. Gorgeous, completely sure of herself, and not thousands of miles away. The exact opposite of me.
“Wow, that’s specific.” Phoebe picked a perfect time to develop a dry sense of humor.
I uncovered my eyes and glared at my phone. “You do realize I’m emotionally fragile right now, right?”
“Sorry. Honestly, though,” she said really slowly, drawing out the word, “Is this really the time to worry about Wil? You’re only away for a week, and I know it’s hard, but a week really isn’t a long time. You can worry about fixing this when you get back, if you still want to.”
Her last few words stung, but her comments actually made some sense, even though it was weird to hear Phoebe give me relationship advice. “He could just be giving me space so I can focus on the competition.”
Phoebe made her skeptical humming sound, the same one she always made whenever I tried to convince her to watch Vampire Teens. “Maybe, but whatever it is, it’s not worth overreacting about. And where the frack did you come up with Katja?”
“Please, it’s totally possible. Have you seen some of those German supermodels?”
She definitely was choking back a laugh. “Stop worrying about it,” she said, raising her voice as the sound of crescendoing horns came closer. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
“You’re starting to sound like me.”
“Mmmhmm. Speaking of sounding like you, aren’t you supposed to be doing some conference stuff right now?”
I rolled my eyes up to the ceiling and took a deep breath. “It’s okay, the less continuous exposure I have to Kris, the better for everyone around us. Honest to God, when he’s not trying to mess with my head, he’s arguing with me about everything. If I say it’s Tuesday, he’ll come up with some argument about how it’s Wednesday in Japan or something ridiculous like that.”
“You’re overreacting about him, too.”
“Whatever. You don’t have to play nice with him twenty-four/seven.” I almost went in to how he was starting to really make me question my own feelings in moments like the coffee shop, but then the door banged open, breaking that train of thought. New York waved as she passed me but if she thought being fake-nice to me would get her inside information about Kris, she was so wrong. “Besides, he’ll be fine. He’s getting enough attention already,” I said in an almost-whisper. I didn’t need Miss Empire State going back to Kris, saying I was talking about him. I glanced over towards the stalls and realized it would probably be a good idea to stop before she did hear something. “You’re right, though, I have to go. Our bus is probably already here.”
“Have fun. You’re awesome, your speech is awesome, and you really, really deserve to focus on just you right now. You earned it.” Phoebe’s voice wrapped around me like a hug.
A little moisture sprang up at the corners of my eyes and I rubbed my sleeve across my face. “Thanks. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“So, this is what happens when you let them loose on the site of the first battle of the American Revolution,” Ann commented as we watched about ten of the guys from our group mock-battle on the wide green field of Breed’s Hill. The guy from Alaska war-whooped as Michigan fell over from an imaginary rifle shot by New Hampshire.
I snorted as Kris joined the “battle” and pretended to stab Michigan with a bayonet. “Boys.”
“Do you think we should take a video of this?” Lia casually pulled out her phone. “For posterity and scientific research reasons, of course.” The guy from North Dakota dove for cover behind a tree before Alaska could “get” him.
“Of course. It would be really remiss of us not to.” The girl from New York clapped as Kris fell over in the worst acted death scene I’d ever seen. “Oooh, maybe I should go over and try to nurse him back to life.”
My brows drew together and I side-eyed her. Was she serious? “Sure. Maybe you’ll get ‘shot,’ too.” Ann nudged me in the side and I shrugged. There was a good chance everyone else was thinking the same thing at such a dumb comment.
“I’d totally give Kris mouth-to-mouth,” Colorado-girl said to New York with a wink.
Apparently not.
Ann pulled me away from the group before I could even open my mouth. “I’m saving you from your own snark,” she said with the tiniest smile.
Over her shoulder, I could see some of the girls from our group swarming the “battlefield” to join in the chaos. New York and a few of the other girls were all over Kris. “It’s ridiculous. They’re all acting like preschoolers.” The back of my neck warmed up in perfect time with my annoyance.
Ann turned and finally let out her suppressed laugh as the rag-tag bunch of “zombie soldiers” chased the other girls. “We’ve all been working really hard. I think everyone’s just letting off a little steam.” Kris grabbed New York around the waist from behind and twirled her around before dropping her and zombie-stumbling after the girl from Arizona. “And that’s a new twist on the Revolutionary War.” She glanced back over at me, tilting her head and frowning. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. It’s just…” Why was the whole zombie battle bothering me so much? I turned my back on the chaos and Kris getting tackled by the girl from Vermont, who supposedly played rugby. My annoyance at
the whole group went up a notch. “…they have no respect for historical landmarks.”
Ann managed to look skeptical and amused at the same time. “Sure.”
“Zombies,” I muttered under my breath, then added, “It’s really hot out here. I’m going to find some shade.” The morning was clear and sunny, making it unusually warm for October. Most of us had left our jackets on the bus and now even my miniskirt, long sleeved t-shirt, and Keds were starting to feel too heavy.
A breeze blew over the hill and Ann pulled her sleeves over her hands. “Right. It doesn’t have anything to do with—”
I cut her off with an arched eyebrow and a circular hand gesture just like Osoba used for her cutoff in band. “Zombies? No. I’m going over there,” I waved vaguely in the museum’s direction, “before I die of heat exhaustion,” I said before taking off. As I got closer to some of the people who weren’t “battling,” I slowed down as their words carried over on the wind.
Illinois lounged on the lawn, twirling a blade of grass between his fingers. “…expected more serious competition.”
The girl from Kansas laughed as she dropped onto the grass next to him. “You mean super-positive ‘ohmigosh, I’m going to make a difference!’ fluff isn’t serious to you?”
“Good one,” he said, giving her a fist-bump. “This isn’t elementary school, it’s the real world. The one from New Jersey was the worst, too. Almost like a cheerleader wrote it. Rah-rah, change!”
“Right? I mean, you hear her during the conference, right? Like, she has absolutely no clue about the political process, it’s all bleeding heart and social justice stuff for her with no real action, like she’s some sort of Internet meme. She really doesn’t deserve to be here. At least the guy from her state has some sense.”
I couldn’t take it anymore—a cold breeze clenched my lungs and pushed me to move again. I shook my head, picked up my pace, and swept past them, forcing my expression to neutral.
Dramatically Ever After Page 16