by Jennifer Yu
“Listen,” Lin says. “I’m not going to stop you from going and talking to Kevin. But just...think about what you want to get out of the conversation, all right? And stick to that. Don’t let yourself get too caught up in the moment once you get up there. Figure out what you want to say to him—whether it’s why he stopped talking to you or if he was offended when you said you weren’t into him or whatever else—and then...then just make sure you get that and get out. Okay?”
“You know you’re perfect, right?” I say.
“Not nearly,” Lin says, smiling. “But I’m glad I have at least one person fooled.”
* * *
There’s this moment. It’s when I’m standing behind the French doors that lead to the balcony, looking at Kevin and Yago’s backs as they lean on the railing over Katie’s front yard. Yago has a lit joint between two of his fingers that he raises to his mouth every minute or so. Kevin is restless, shifting his body weight from one leg to the other and drumming his fingers on the railing. There’s an open can of beer sitting on the railing next to him. I wonder if they’re deep in conversation, if they’re standing in companionable silence, if either one of them has thought of me, even in passing, in the past few weeks. And I think to myself: Maybe I should just go back. Maybe this is going to be horribly awkward. Maybe I’ll step outside and Kevin will get so freaked out that he’ll jump and end up breaking his leg and Yago will be too high to do anything and then the police will show up and Katie’s parents will kill her and it’ll be all my fault.
But then it’s like something takes over my body—maybe it’s the alcohol, or maybe it’s plain desperation—and I’m thinking, Just do it, Stella, goddamn it, and the next thing I know I’ve pushed the doors open and I’m standing outside, staring at two very taken-aback expressions.
It’s silent for a solid ten seconds as Yago and Kevin take in my presence. Yago’s expression goes from confused to surprised and then back to confused again. Kevin is unreadable.
“Oh, hey, Stella,” Yago finally says.
“Hey,” I say.
And then it’s silent again.
It’s right around now when I realize that I haven’t actually planned anything to say. No deliberately casual questions about how their nights are going. No offhand comments about the state of the party downstairs. I don’t even have an excuse ready for why I came up here in the first place.
Yago extinguishes his joint on the railing and slips it into his pocket. “Well, I’ll talk to you later, Kev,” he says. He nods briskly in Kevin’s general direction.
“Yago,” Kevin says, through gritted teeth. His eyes are locked onto mine and he keeps squinting, like there’s a message written on my face that he can’t quite read.
“Good seeing you, Stella,” Yago adds, walking by me. I hear the French doors swing shut.
And then it’s just Kevin and me.
“I heard you were here,” I say. I take a few tentative steps forward, because the distance from the doors (where I’ve been frozen) to the railing (where Kevin is standing) feels awkwardly distant for two people who are trying to have a conversation. Of course, those steps put me three feet away from Kevin, which now feels both awkwardly distant and awkwardly close.
“Here I am,” Kevin says. He unfolds one of his arms so that it’s lying along the top of the railing and shoves his other hand into a pocket. “Nice costume,” he says. “The ski mask is a nice touch. Bank robber, right?”
“Actually, it’s supposed to be—oh, never mind. Yeah, I’m a bank robber. But what are you supposed to be? You look—you look like—well, you look totally normal.”
“I don’t really dress up for Halloween,” Kevin says.
“Oh,” I say.
I wait for Kevin to say something else.
He doesn’t.
During the ensuing silence, Kevin takes his right arm off the railing and slides it into his pocket, and takes his left hand out of his pocket and slides it along the railing. I hold my breath and take one, two, three more steps forward. There are two feet between us now, close enough for me to see the wrinkles stretched across his black T-shirt, the stitching on the seams of his jeans.
I try to think back to what Lin was telling me before I ran upstairs: figure out what you want to say to him and then get out.
The problem is that now that I’m actually standing here, I have no idea what exactly it is that I want to say. Maybe at some point, I knew. Maybe before those beers. Maybe before that cup of punch. Maybe before being close to Kevin for the first time in weeks, maybe before I remembered what it’s like to want so badly to throw yourself at someone, to throw yourself into someone. But now my thoughts are slow and sluggish and they keep getting interrupted by these random observations and all I can think is:
We are on Katie’s balcony.
Kevin is looking at me like I am some kind of riddle, like I am something unexpected.
It is cool outside. There is a trail of goose bumps running down the skin of my arm.
Kevin is standing in front of me, less than two feet away, in a black T-shirt and ripped blue jeans.
He is running a hand through his hair.
There is something about this time of year that makes everything feel so temporary. Like the world around us is about to disappear.
His hair is dark, dark brown. Shines under the moonlight.
“I am attracted to you,” I blurt.
Kevin raises his eyebrows. “Are you drunk, Stella?” he says.
“Damn straight I’m drunk,” I say. I take two more steps forward to cement the point.
Kevin looks down, laughs softly. “I really like that about you, you know. You’re—you’re...unabashed.” The word unfolds slowly, coming out of his mouth syllable by syllable before it rolls to a stop somewhere in the two feet of space between us.
“You can’t just say that,” I say. “You can’t just ignore me for two straight weeks and then—now that we’re on Katie’s balcony together and I’m drunk and you’re...whatever you are—you can’t just start saying things like that to me now. It’s not cool.”
“Okay,” Kevin says. He cups his face in his hands, then looks up at me and nods. “Okay, you’re right. You’re absolutely right. Look, I’m sorry. I’m sorry about that afternoon at the park and I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable on the ride home and I’m sorry I never said anything afterward. I should have said something.”
He takes a deep breath.
I am so close to him.
“Why?” I say, simply. I don’t really want to talk anymore, not here, not now, not when he’s so close and there’s so much else I would rather be doing. But I want to know why.
Kevin sighs. He tilts his head back and massages his temples. This is clearly not the conversation he wants to be having right now. But he is trying. And there’s something about that, something about that deliberate seriousness, the way he moves with such gravity, the way he thinks about everything. The way he tries to say the right things, the truthful things, even when it’s almost midnight and he’s been accosted on a balcony by someone he probably didn’t even want to see tonight.
I am not the type of person who is careless with my words.
“Stella, I just... I got too caught up in everything, you know? I came back to Bridgemont after being away for so long and all of a sudden there you were—this smart, amazing girl who wasn’t afraid to cut the crap and see things for what they really are, even if what things really are is total shit. And I thought, God, I can’t let myself fuck this one up.”
“You didn’t,” I say. “You didn’t fuck it up. Look, Kevin, the stuff I said in the car—I don’t know why I said all that. I just panicked. I didn’t want you to think that I was some stupid girl who could be convinced to ditch school with a random guy she barely even knows just because her friend thinks he’s worth thirteen winking emojis. So I
just...lied.”
“Stella,” Kevin says, and for some reason he’s smiling, for God’s sake, and now there’s a part of me that wants to jump off the balcony.
“What is funny?” I say. I try to keep my voice on the calmer side, but the thing about being drunk is that you really no longer have that kind of control over your vocal chords.
“I’m sorry,” Kevin says, still sounding like he’s holding back a laugh. “No, really, I am, don’t look at me like that. Stel—c’mere,” he says. He reaches out, takes my hand and pulls me over to the railing so we’re standing face-to-face in front of it. By the time I’ve fully processed the fact that he actually reached out and held my hand, he’s already let go. It’s the strangest feeling: giddiness and desire and disappointment colliding all at once.
But he is so, so close.
“Stel, I know what you said in the car was total bullshit. No one works so hard to deny that they’re into someone unless they’re...really into that someone.”
“All right, then,” I grumble. “If I was that obvious, then I retract my apology. And stop calling me Stel.”
“It wasn’t about that,” Kevin says.
“So what was it about? All I know is that the next Monday I came in with a whole freaking speech prepared, and every time I got within ten feet of you, you hightailed it out of there like I was out to kill you or something. Seriously, the last time a guy has run from me like that, it was back in the third grade when cooties were a scientific and very terrifying reality.”
“I just started thinking, you know, What if things go wrong? Stella, you were so freaked out. Which made me freak out, and then I thought, Things are already going wrong. If things are already going wrong, how bad is it going to be if I actually get with this girl? And then I realized that this entire thing, this entire idea that you and me should be together, that I should be with you—I realized that it was all a horrible idea!”
“How,” I say, “how is it a horrible idea?”
“I just...” Kevin starts. He trails off. Bites his lip. Picks up the can of beer sitting on the railing and takes a drink. And I honestly, honestly have no idea what’s happening inside my head right now. I feel wild, uncontrollable. I want to rip the beer can out of his hands and throw it over the railing and kiss him. I want to take his hand and jump off the balcony together, because something about that seems like the appropriate thing to do right now, seems romantic and beautiful and free.
I should not have chugged that cup of punch.
“You just what?” I say, instead of doing any of the above.
“I don’t think that I...” Kevin says slowly. He pauses before he continues. Then: “I don’t think I would be very good for you.”
“Give me a break,” I say.
“No, I’m serious, Stella!” he says. “You should be with someone who’ll take you to the movies after school instead of convincing you to ditch halfway through Homecoming. Someone who doesn’t spend half of his time talking about depressing continental philosophy.”
“Give me a break,” I repeat.
“It’s not even really about ditching school or thinking about Camus all the time. It’s more just about—I don’t know, I’m the type of person who ditches school and thinks about Camus all the time, you know? That’s not the type of person you want to be involved with! And if you knew what my last year was like, why I wasn’t at school, then you’d understand—”
“GIVE ME A BREAK,” I shout.
Kevin shuts up. Looks taken aback.
“Are you being serious right now, Kevin? You sound like you think you’re some kind of modern-day Heathcliff, moaning and groaning and whining your way through Victorian England feeling sorry for yourself in all your romantic, tragic isolation. You think you’re the only person who’s ever existed in the history of forever who’s needed to take a year off school?”
“It’s not just that I had to take a year of school, it’s that—”
He cuts off.
“What?” I snap.
“I didn’t miss school because I was doing something cool, Stella. I wasn’t spending the year in Europe or volunteering full-time or bumming around New York working on a philosophy book. I missed school because I literally couldn’t go to school. Like, I would think about going to school, and I would just freeze. I couldn’t get out of bed. It was pathetic,” he says bitterly.
Extenuating circumstances, I think. Holy shit.
“I’m not the guy you think I am, Stella. I’m—”
“Depressed,” I say, flatly.
Kevin must take my tone of voice as a bad sign, because he cringes. “Yeah,” he says. “Look, I don’t expect you to understand, because—”
“Because why?” I demand. “Is there something about me that says, ‘I don’t have empathy’? Or perhaps, ‘I am a judgmental asshole who looks down on people for having feelings’?”
“No,” Kevin says. “You just shouldn’t have to deal with—”
“I was at camp this summer,” I say.
Kevin cuts off.
“Okay,” he says.
“It was called Camp Ugunduzi. You should Google it. Really nice, down in the middle of nowhere in upstate New York. Lots of hiking. Lots of...meditation.”
Kevin looks like he thinks that I’ve lost my mind. “That sounds fun, Stella, but what does—”
“‘Camp Ugunduzi is an experimental four-week therapeutic wilderness program for teenagers aged fifteen to seventeen who may be experiencing a variety of mental health issues,’” I recite. God, my mom read that brochure to me so many times.
“‘Ugunduzi operates upon the principle that teenagers struggling with emotional illness deserve a summer camp that is as recreational as it is therapeutic,’” I continue. “Yeah, it was fun, I guess. Other campers were a bunch of tools, but I liked the part where we played mental health charades and I got stuck acting out ‘cognitive dissonance.’”
A pause. Kevin runs his free hand down the front of his shirt, smooths out the wrinkles. For the first time in the conversation, he looks away from me. Katie’s voice plays back in my head, a line in a conversation that I’d forgotten about until now: That’s your problem. You’re all so goddamn afraid to be vulnerable.
“If you had been here last year,” I say wryly, “you would know that I didn’t exactly have the best year, either.”
I reach out and take his hand, watch as his eyes fly back up to meet mine in surprise. And I feel like I know exactly what he’s thinking. And exactly what he’s feeling. That mix of desperation and apprehension. That hope.
“So what you’re telling me,” Kevin says, “is that you get it.”
“Oh, I don’t know if I get it,” I say wryly. “But I think you should probably give me the chance to try.”
Kevin places his can of beer back down on the railing. “Okay,” he says. Deliberate as ever.
“Okay?” I say.
“Okay,” he repeats.
“Thank God,” I say. I feel my lips curling into a grin. “You really have no idea how ridiculous you were starting to sound there, all you wouldn’t understand me and I’m so attractive but so emotionally unavailable and only assholes are obsessed with Camus. Jury’s still out on that last one, by the way, maybe I should wait until we get around to him in Mulland’s class before deciding whether or not you’re—”
“Shh,” Kevin says. And he kisses me.
20.
“JESUS CHRIST!” Katie shouts. She flops onto her bed and throws one arm over her forehead in mock distress. “Stop. This is too much for me. I can’t listen to this anymore.”
I’ve just finished telling Katie and Lin what happened on the balcony last night, and Katie, needless to say, is beside herself.
“For someone who spent half of the night glued to Bobby at the lips, you’re awfully worked up about a kiss,”
Lin says. She’s sitting at the foot of Katie’s bed, still in her pajamas despite the fact that it’s almost noon.
“Shush,” Katie says. “This isn’t about me. This is about Stella! So then what happened?”
“Thought you couldn’t listen anymore?” Lin says.
“I recover fast,” Katie says.
She turns to me expectantly.
“Oh. Well, that’s...pretty much it. I was halfway through an extremely witty imitation of Kevin’s whole Heathcliff act—I literally used Heathcliff as an example, Lin, you should be so proud of me—and he just cut me off and kissed me.”
“Then what?” Katie asks.
“That’s it! Fin, the end, story’s over.”
Katie rolls her eyes like she can’t believe she even has to explain this. “Yes, but how was it?”
“How was what?” I say.
“How was the kiss?” Katie practically shouts.
Lin snickers.
“Oh,” I say. “It was good! At least, I think it was good. It’s not like I have a lot of experience to compare it to.”
“That’s funny, because I clearly remember you and Titus getting it on in this very house last year,” Lin says. She frowns. “A little too clearly, actually.”
“That didn’t count,” I say. “Nothing from that night counts. Can we just make that, like, a general life rule? If you’re so drunk that the room is spinning, nothing you do counts.”
“And didn’t you go out with Patrick a few times in freshman year?” Lin adds.
“Yeah, but that was freshman year. That should be another general life rule. Nothing from freshman year counts, because we were freshmen, and therefore dumbasses.”
“Stop avoiding the question!” Katie says.
“I’m not!”
Katie gives me A Look.
“Okay, fine,” I say. I take myself back to last night, try and remember how it felt the moment Kevin stepped in and kissed me. His hands, one in my hair and one at my waist, pulling me closer. The breeze in the air. That spark.