Such a Good Girl

by Amanda K. Morgan

  “I have the scarf. It’s special.”

  I pull the scarf from the night before out of my closet and wrap it around my neck. It still smells like him—just a hint of his cologne lingers.

  Kolbie taps a finger on her lips and juts her hip out, considering. “Why that scarf? You wear it all the time.”

  “This look has to have a little me in it, right? Besides, I got it shopping with you and Neta.” I bury my fingers in it, daring her to make me take it off.

  Kolbie shoves the clothes into my arms. “Okay, okay. Go. Try on. I have three more combos we can go through, and yes, you can borrow these. And I know you don’t wear glasses, but it would be totally on point if we could get you some nonprescription frames. I’m thinking a round black plastic frame? Yes?”

  I make a face. “I am not going to be one of those girls.”

  “There is nothing wrong with being one of those girls, Riley. Stop being judgy. Listen to the master.” She points at herself. “Wear things because they make you feel good about yourself. Not because you think you should or shouldn’t.”

  “Are you going to write a self-help book in the near future?” I ask innocently. “I think Oprah has it covered, but if you want to go for that, I mean, shoot for the stars—”

  “Are you going to keep being a bitch to the girl who is going to do your mascara in about ten minutes?”

  I laugh. I can’t help it. I love Kolbie. “Point taken.”

  “Good. Now try on those clothes before we worry about the makeup, I guess. And then we’re going to Instagram the hell out of this.”

  I smile a little to myself. Normally I wouldn’t let her put anything on my Instagram. I reserve it for cute coffee mugs and perfectly round waffles and generally keep my face out of it.

  But maybe, just maybe, someone important will be checking in.

  FOURTEEN

  Dinner

  I cut through the alley again.

  It’s safer that way. I come from the opposite direction, and I wear a big black hat with my hair tucked up under it and a large coat.

  I don’t see anyone in the alley.

  The door is unlocked, so I let myself in through the back door, into a den sort of room with a squishy brown leather couch and a fireplace. The décor is spare and a bit lowbrow, and not at all what I’d expect from Jacqueline Belrose—it’s actually a little kitschy, all HOME SWEET HOME signs and flowers, like maybe it was lifted out of an outdated Good Housekeeping. A squatty little table holds a cookbook and a bouquet of dusty plastic flowers.

  “Hey!”

  I hear Alex’s voice through a door. “Hey,” I call. “It’s me.”

  “Come into the kitchen!” he calls back, and I follow a red runner rug through the den and into a little kitchen with a small white table and yellow curtains. Two matching rooster salt and pepper shakers sit in the middle of the table, wings extended and necks out.

  “Riley!” He sees me and grins, wrapping me in a quick hug, his arms around my body, and then releases me. “Sit. Please. I’m almost done.” He pulls out a chair for me at the kitchen table, which is . . . set for two.

  He pours me a small glass of red wine, then swirls it around, lifting it to his nose. “Do you like Malbec?”

  I bite back a smile. I have no idea what Malbec is. “I love Malbec.”

  “I wasn’t expecting you for a while,” he says. “I thought you had cheerleading practice.”

  “I pretended I was sick and asked my cocaptain to take over,” I tell him, and almost immediately regret it. Why was I so eager? Why did I do that? He’s used to girls falling all over him. I should be different. I am special, after all. But instead of practice, I’d gone home to fix up my makeup exactly the way Kolbie taught me (well, a toned-down version of the way Kolbie taught me) and get pretty for Alex Belrose.

  “That’s sweet,” he says. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I just wasn’t feeling it anyway.”

  He pours another glass of wine and takes a sip. “I’m glad you’re here, Riley. I wanted to see you.”

  I want to smile and duck my head, but I force myself to meet his eyes. “Me too, Alex.”

  “God, I love when you say my name.”

  His voice sends shivers down my spine. “Yeah?” I grab my glass of wine and take a sip. “That’s okay?”

  “It’s good.” He turns to open the oven, and a warm, citrusy smell fills the room. “I think it’s done.”

  “What did you make?” I ask. I can’t believe he cooked for me. He must—he must actually like me. Like like me. I have the jitters. I busy myself with spreading the yellow napkin next to my plate across my lap. This is like a date. A real date. This is what couples do.

  “Lemon-pepper salmon,” he says, pulling an oven mitt over his hand. He pulls the tray out. “I hope you like fish.”

  “I do,” I say, saying a silent thank-you that he didn’t cook tilapia, which I personally think is too gross to eat. “Thank you so much for cooking.”

  “You’re welcome.” He takes my plate and hands it back with a salmon fillet and a few spears of asparagus. “My grandfather was actually a chef, so most of my family can cook really well.”

  “That’s cool. Did he have his own restaurant?”

  Alex sits down across from me with his own plate. “Yeah. It was called the Belrose. Creative, right? Anyway, it did really well until he died. My dad tried to take it over, but it wasn’t the same without my grandfather. We were struggling to keep it afloat, so my dad sold it.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah. Me too.” He smiles, but it’s missing some of the happiness that should be attached to it. “My grandmother, I guess, was the saddest. She is the only one of us who can’t cook. Like, at all. She did all the financials for the restaurant because she would burn, like, everything. She tries to microwave something and it starts on fire.”

  I start to laugh. “That sounds like my mom, honestly.” I take a forkful of salmon. It’s delicious and flavorful, and it really does taste like something I would order at a fancy restaurant. “One time she tried to make my brother chocolate chip cookies and she started a fire in the oven. She forgot to add the flour.”

  Alex points at me with his fork, a piece of asparagus speared onto the end. “My grandfather actually kept an extra fire extinguisher in the kitchen specifically because of my grandmother. I mean, he forbid her from ever going in there, but every once in a while she’d try to make coffee or something and bring about world-ending fumes. Like, you could die if you went near. It was a hazard.”

  I giggle. “With coffee?”

  He nods solemnly. “You have no idea. She’s in a rest home now, and the nurses won’t even let her try tea. To be fair, they probably don’t let anyone, but they actually have good reason with her.”

  “Do you see her often?”

  He pauses while he finishes chewing. “Not like I’d like. She’s in Oregon.”

  “That’s hard.”

  “Yeah.”

  We’re quiet for a minute. I’m lucky. Even though my family feels remarkably distant sometimes, they’re all close and here and alive. Most people experience death in some major way by the time they’re in high school, it seems. But I haven’t. I’ve been charmed.

  Perfect Riley Stone and Her Perfect Life.

  “This is really good,” I tell him. “Like, really, really good.”

  “Thanks,” he says. “It’s one of my signature dishes.”

  “I’m glad you can cook,” I say. “Because it’s not one of my strengths.”

  Alex pretends to be shocked. He lets his fork drop from his fingers. It clatters onto his plate. “I thought you didn’t have any not-strengths.”

  “I have several not-strengths,” I confess, solemn.

  “Tell me,” he says. “Because right now, I sort of think you’re perfect.” He reaches across the table and brushes my hand with the very tips of his fingers, and it starts this strange sort of reaction in my body, beginn
ing in my hand and then running through my veins and settling somewhere in my lower belly.

  I bite my lip. “I sort of think you’re perfect too.”

  “So give me a confession,” he urges, his fingers still on the back of my hand. “Tell me something.”

  I want him to run his hand up my arm. I want more of those fingers. I want to tell him that.

  “Well, I’m very bad at riding bicycles.”

  He smiles at me, anticipating a joke. “How can you be bad at riding a bicycle? Isn’t that a rite of passage for kids everywhere?”

  “I just suck. I think I have a bad center of balance or something. I just can’t do it. It’s stupid.”

  “You’re lucky, you know.” He stops stroking my hand, and I long for his fingers back. I want to grasp at them, but I will my hands to stay still on the table.

  “Lucky? How?” I look at his green eyes, the scruff growing on his cheeks.

  His lips.

  “I’m an excellent bicyclist. I could teach you.”

  “Teach me?” I ask. I smile even harder, smile from deep in my chest. I imagine his hands around my waist, steadying me. “When?”

  “Maybe we meet in the middle of the night,” he says. His hand slips under mine from across the table and squeezes. “Maybe we put the bikes in the back of my truck and go out to the country. And I can teach you there. And we’ll get dusty out on the dirt roads and ride until the sun comes up.”

  I squeeze back. “That sounds perfect,” I breathe.

  “And you’ll cook for me,” Alex says.

  I move back slightly. “Wait, what?” That was . . . a leap.

  “Please?” he pleads. He blinks. His eyelashes are gorgeous. He’s gorgeous. “Next time. Tell me what ingredients you need and cook for me. I promise to eat it even if it’s terrible.”

  “The only thing I know how to make is, like, the little mini pizzas that Ms. Archer taught us to put together in Family and Consumer Sciences last year,” I say. Which, of course, I got an A on. That and monkey bread, but I can’t make Alex monkey bread and call it a meal. And I can make a mean plate of brownies, but that leaves me in the same place as monkey bread.

  That’s not to say I haven’t had a yoga-pants-and-monkey-bread day or eight.

  Alex releases my hands and stands from the table. He rummages through a kitchen door and comes back with a pad and paper. “Okay, Riley. Tell me what you need for mini pizzas. I’ll bring back the ingredients, and you cook them for me. Okay?”

  “Um, okay.” I smile. “Will you help?”

  He pretends to think. “A little. Maybe. If you’re good.”

  I laugh. “I’m always good.”

  He watches me. “Are you, though?”

  I duck my head, unsure of the answer. I am, but I’m not. I’m not.

  I am.

  My heart does this strange twisty thing.

  “Ingredients?” he presses, and I list them off the best I can remember, and promise to meet him again in two days.

  This time, when I say good-bye, he touches me. His hands touch my back, and trace up and down. I stare at his lips and I tilt my chin upward, but he doesn’t kiss me. My hands touch his shoulders tentatively and slide down to his chest. He is thin but all hard muscle.

  “Soon,” he promises.

  I leave, full and starving at the same time.

  Things to Know About Riley Stone:

  • In third grade, Riley Stone was caught cheating on a spelling test. Because it was her first offense, she received a zero on the test but was not suspended or given detention.

  • Riley’s teacher suggested that Riley was under too much stress and called her parents in for a special conference. She was worried about Riley’s personal development and wanted her parents to understand the amount of pressure their daughter was putting on herself to succeed.

  • Riley never cheated again.

  • Sometimes, even girls who do everything right make mistakes.

  FIFTEEN

  Italian

  “I am going to make my pizza in the shape of a dinosaur,” Alex announces. “And it will definitely kick your pizza’s ass.”

  “Mine is definitely going to be cooler than that,” I say, trying to roll out the dough properly. Honestly, I’m not even sure I’ve made the dough right, or if a pizza in the shape of a dinosaur would cook evenly. But I don’t care. I’m happy in a strange, jittery way that I’ve never been happy before, and these pizzas will be perfect even if they cook black.

  “How can you beat a dinosaur?” he asks, pretending to be offended. “You can’t.”

  I grin at him. I grin at him all the time. It’s hard in class, because all I want to do is grin at him, but I have to be studious and quiet and uninterested and sit in the same seat and do the work like I’m not going to his house at night. So I bite at the inside of my cheeks and grip my pencil a bit harder and think about later, when I’ll be all his and he’ll be all mine.

  “I can,” I say. “Easy.”

  “How?” he demands.

  “A baby sea otter, maybe.” I pull the dough into two pieces and toss him half.

  “So,” he says. “You’re going to beat my dinosaur with sheer adorableness?”

  I began shaping the dough with my hands. “It’s a pretty foolproof plan. You have to admit.”

  “It’s so good I want to help.” Alex abandons his lump of dough in the flour and stands next to me. Very, very close. I smile up at him. He’s a floury mess, and I know I am too. His normally perfect hair has a dusting of the fine white powder in it, and there is just a smudge above his left eyebrow.

  I’m not a very neat cook.

  “How do you intend to improve on this?” I ask, gesturing at the vaguely otterlike shape that could also be a very good eggplant.

  He steps behind me and puts his hands over mine. “Like this. Let the master work. I had a solid B in pottery, Riley.”

  I giggle. “Show me,” I say.

  “Well, you have to work with me.” His breath is hot on my neck. His fingers interlace with mine, and we’re both working the dough together. “How is this like an otter?”

  “Like this,” he says, and squishes it into an unrecognizable lump.

  “Alex!” I cry, and spin around. I push at him with my doughy hands. “You ruined my otter-pizza!”

  He doesn’t laugh.

  He doesn’t move, either.

  He’s just there, close, looking down at me. He’s not smiling. He’s inches away, and he steps closer, so our bodies are touching.

  We’re touching.

  I reach back, my hands trying to find purchase on his counter. “Um, Alex?”

  He touches my chin, very gently. “Riley,” he breathes.

  And then he’s all the way against me and his mouth is against mine and he’s kissing me. He’s kissing me nice and soft and slow, and I’m kissing him back the same way, my eyes closed, but my heart is doing something crazy, hammering like I’m going to die, right here, while Alex is kissing me.

  He pulls away. “Are you okay?” he whispers, his lips next to my ear. His hand slides to the back of my neck.

  “Yes,” I whisper back. “I’m okay.”

  I am.

  He kisses my neck. He kisses the bit of my chest that is exposed above my shirt.

  And then Alex Belrose lifts me up onto the counter. He steps between my legs.

  “You,” he says, “are gorgeous, Riley.”

  And then he kisses me more. Pretty soon, I forget to think about what I’m doing and his tongue slips into my mouth and he isn’t so gentle anymore but I don’t care because my hands aren’t hanging onto the counter anymore either. They’re on him.

  And that is the story of my first real kiss.

  Also, we ordered pizza.

  SIXTEEN

  Waiting

  “You’ll have to wait for me tonight,” I tell Alex, my voice just above a whisper.

  I’ve caught him in between classes, and I’m bending over his de
sk, frowning at a scholarship application. I point at a blank space, like I’m asking him a question.

  He looks at me, his brows drawing together. “Wait?”

  He’s not used to waiting. He’s used to getting what he wants.

  “I can’t skip cheerleading again,” I murmur, moving my fingers to the next field, like this is just a normal discussion and we’re just people, normal people. “I’ve already missed three practices. The girls are getting suspicious. So just hang on, and I’ll be over after. Okay?”

  He hesitates, and I know he wants to tell me no, that I should skip cheerleading practice and spend the time with him. But we’re both sensible people. Sensible people who will do sensible things and not get caught.

  Sensible people who know this is wrong by everyone else’s standards.

  But not by ours.

  “I’ll miss you,” he murmurs. He casts a glance toward the doorway, but no students filter in. “What will I do without you?”

  “I’ll be fast. I’m head cheerleader, remember? I run the practice. Let me make sure we’re good on our routines, and I’ll be over before you know it.”

  Alex points to something on the application, and I fill in the bubbles above his finger without thinking, the marks messy and outside the lines. “Have your . . . has your family mentioned how late you’re getting home?”

  I choke back a short laugh. “They have not noticed. They don’t ask where I am. I’m the good kid, remember? Ethan was the troubled one.”

  Alex smiles wryly. “You’re very good.” But the tone of his voice is slick and suggests something different and I suddenly feel warm and strange and I wish we were at his house and he was kissing me again.

  That’s all we’ve done. Kiss.

  I think I’m getting good at it.

  Alex clears his throat. “Just finish the second and third pages at home, and then drop it by tomorrow, okay, Riley?”

  I glance up. Emilio Rivera has dumped his bag onto the floor and is digging around in it, throwing crumpled papers out on the tiles. Probably the extra-credit work that Alex assigned last class. Three points for writing a two-paragraph report on I-can’t-remember-what. A-students weren’t eligible, so I didn’t bother to write it down.