“What about him?” I asked, pointing at a lanky dude I’d had European history with sophomore year. All I remembered about him was that he could recite every detail of every NASA mission. Ever.
Stella shook her head. “Too tall. Also, too much fuzzy lip hair.”
“I don’t think that’s hair,” I said.
“Reason number three, then.” Stella tapped her teeth with the end of her fingernail. “Can you sing?”
“Have you ever heard the sound a cat makes when it’s in heat?”
“Unfortunately.”
“That’s how I sound when I sing.”
“Oh,” Stella said. I was frightened by the fact that Stella’s only idea so far seemed to involve me singing. Anything that involved me singing or dancing or performing magic tricks or wrestling polar bears was probably a bad idea.
I clutched a mostly full cup of weak beer that I’d been nursing for the last thirty minutes. Getting some liquor in me probably would have helped to boost my confidence, but I decided that I was going to need a clear head if I ever got my chance to tell Cassie I loved her.
“What about that guy?” I asked, pointing out Rory Johnson.
Stella seemed to consider him. I’d sat at a lunch table with Rory in eleventh grade, when, due to a tragic scheduling error, I’d been put in a different lunch than Ben and Coop. He chewed with his mouth open and spit when he talked, but he drew the most demented underground comic books. Plus, I knew for a fact that he had three dogs. So there was that.
“I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be interested,” Stella said. I was about to ask why when I realized that he was staring at Nic Fulson. Specifically Nic Fulson’s ass.
“Ten-four,” I said. “God, this is tough.”
“Tell me about it,” Stella said. “Can you write poetry?”
I grimaced. “I’m not much of a poet. In fact, poets everywhere would shower you with gifts if you made certain I never, ever attempted to write in any form of rhyming couplet.” Stella sighed, dejected. I scanned the family room for Ben or Coop—they were more suited to this type of job—but neither was dancing. I finally spied Ben out in the courtyard talking to a couple of girls, looking frustrated. Probably still trying to get that condom. Coop was by the front door hamming it up with Cassie.
“In fact,” I said, “the less you make this like a bad teen movie, the better.”
Stella flashed me a wry smile. “Does that make you Molly Ringwald or me?”
I chugged the rest of my beer, unsure how to answer. “How about my old lab partner Ewan McCoy? He’s funny and cute, if you like that sort of thing. Ben’s mentioned multiple times that he’d do Ewan.”
“He’s got potential,” Stella said. “Tell me more.” So I told her about the time he’d refused to speak in anything but Mandarin for an entire week. And about the time he’d snuck into the chem lab and turned all the furniture upside down.
“I’d date him,” I said. “I mean, I wouldn’t. I mean, you know what I mean.”
Stella and I covertly followed Ewan into the living room to watch some beer pong. We hung back by the wall, on the opposite side from Dean Kowalcyk and his girl of the week.
I could practically see Stella working out a pro/con list in her head as she looked at Ewan. For her sake, as well as mine, I hoped that she went for him. The longer it took me to find her a guy to kiss, the longer it was going to take for her to keep up her end of the deal.
I glanced down at my watch. It was nearly eleven. The party was beginning to hit its stride. People were drunk, but not too drunk. The music was perfect and every song seemed so danceable that even people like me who hate dancing couldn’t resist moving to the beat a little. Cassie’s party hadn’t peaked yet but it was definitely reaching for the crescendo. Everywhere I looked were happy faces, people making out and drinking and smoking pot in dark corners. The party spilled to the outside, to the night, and it was like Cassie’s house was too small to contain all the concentrated awesome. Everyone was beautiful, everyone was amazing. We were all gods: immortal, perfect, and so fucking alive.
“Come on,” I said. “I’m going to introduce you to him.” Before Stella could say no, I dragged her to the corner where Ewan was chilling with some of his friends. He bumped my fist. “Ewan, this is Stella and her blind dog, Falcor.”
Ewan nodded casually. “You the hottie who made out with Cassandra?” His words were sharp and not slurred at all, which meant he was probably just holding that can of beer for show.
Stella jutted her hip out in a totally cute way. “Made out? No. Gifted her with the best kiss of her life? Absolutely.”
The guys with Ewan chanted “Stella! Stella! Stella!” while Ewan’s grin covered him from top to toe.
“Cool pup,” Ewan said.
“The coolest. We do yoga together. Warrior pose is his favorite.”
Ewan frowned. “Not downward dog?”
“Too obvious.”
Stella and Ewan were getting on like I didn’t exist. Ewan even turned his back to his friends to give Stella his undivided attention. “I have any classes with you?”
“I go to Saint Anne’s,” Stella said. “Nothing but bitchy rich girls all day.”
“Sounds like my sisters, minus the rich part. Got eight of ’em.”
“Your parents ever hear of birth control?”
Ewan shrugged. “Seems like every time my pop winks at my mom, he knocks her up.”
“Sounds like the worst superpower ever,” Stella said. Ewan laughed and asked her about her favorite band, at which point I realized I was no longer part of the conversation.
Clearly, Stella didn’t need me anymore, so I slipped away to look for Coop. I found him by the front door, sitting on the spiral staircase, nursing a Red Bull. His shirt clung to his chest and arms. Sometimes I forgot how ripped the guy was, and it made me regret not learning to play the guitar. Maybe if I’d taken lessons with Coop I’d have had arms like his rather than arms like bar stool legs.
I plopped down next to Coop and stole a sip of his energy drink. I admired his dedication to being our sober driver, especially when everyone around us was drinking their body weight in beer, running around like they were partying down to the end of the freaking world. I should have been blowing up the dance floor or chatting up the girl of my dreams, but instead I was sitting on the edge of the chaos with my best friend.
“Where’s Stella?” Coop asked. Despite asking the question, he looked almost too preoccupied to hear my answer.
I glanced through the spaces between the banisters to see if I could steal a glimpse of Stella and Ewan, but they’d moved into a blind spot, and all I could see was the beer pong table, some of the kitchen, and the glass doors leading to the courtyard.
“She’s hanging out with Ewan McCoy.”
Coop let a halfhearted chuckle slip out. “What’d you do to piss her off?”
“Nothing,” I said, trying not to be offended by Coop’s assumption. “I introduced them.”
“Oh,” Coop said. “Why, exactly?” Coop leaned back against the steps and rested on his elbows so that he could better shine the spotlight of his curiosity on me.
“We had a deal,” I said. “She’s never kissed a guy before, so I promised to find her one. And in return, she agreed to help me with Cassie. Though, in retrospect, I should have gotten her to help me before introducing her to Ewan.” Not that I believed Stella was really up to the challenge anyway. Her ideas had all been less than inspiring, and to win Cassie’s heart I needed something brilliant. A foolproof plan for a fool.
When I looked up, Coop was watching me with the most disappointed expression I’d seen on his face since the time I hooked up with Aja Bourne at Maria Hernandez’s quinceañera.
“Don’t start,” I said.
“Simon—”
“I love her.”
“I thought you quit this shit when you talked to ketchup girl.”
I buried my face in my hands and then looked at the ceiling, a
nywhere but at Coop. His judgy eyes were too much. Partly because I hated disappointing the kid, but mostly because he was right. He knew it, I knew it, even Falcor knew it. But the heart wants what it wants, and my heart beat for only Cassandra Castillo.
“I tried, Coop,” I said. “I wanted to let go of Cass, but I can’t. Things didn’t work out with Natalie, she wasn’t my type, and—”
Coop held up his hand. “Shut up.”
“Coop—”
“Shut. Up.” Coop took a deep breath, the way he does onstage before he begins to sing. He told me once that when he did that, he imagined he was breathing in all the hopes and dreams of the people in the audience and breathing out all his fear. I wondered what he was breathing in from me. “Fuck it, dude. You’re hopeless.”
Not much I could say to that. Coop’s disappointment in me was bottomless, but I had no shame. “If you were me, and Cassie was Ben, you’d be sitting right where I am and I’d be where you are. Only I wouldn’t be looking at you like you were the biggest piece of shit on the planet.”
A couple tried to climb the steps but they were so busy groping each other that they didn’t see me or Coop, and we had to scoot all the way to the side to keep from being stepped on.
“You’re still a moron,” Coop said.
“True,” I said, nodding. “Where’s Ben?”
Coop shrugged. “Somewhere. Bartering. Trying to figure out how to get some pictures from Jordan that he took of Camille when they were together. Jordan wants tickets to the Mustache Pirates’ show in Orlando next month, but the tickets sold out in under five minutes—even I couldn’t get them, and now they’re like five hundred bucks on eBay. But according to Lee, Katia’s got tickets because her brother is a roadie for Captain Fingerbang, who’s opening for the Mustache Pirates for the Southern part of the tour. The real problem is that Katia wants this purse that’s sold only in Europe and costs more than my first semester at BU. Maya Faustino has the purse in question because her dad’s an editor at large for a fashion magazine, and Ben thinks he can convince her to part with it, though I think she’d rather give up one of her feet than that ridiculous leather bag.”
Trying to follow that convoluted spew was exhausting, and I was a little more than impressed that Coop was actually able to keep track of it all. “So I’m guessing that Camille has the condom Ben assaulted me for earlier?” Coop frowned at me but nodded. “You’re sober,” I said. “And you have a car. Just drive to the store and get some.”
“That’s no fun,” Coop said. “It’s a barter party. Buying them defeats the purpose.”
I screwed my face up into my best “What the hell are you smoking?” expression. “I thought the purpose was to have sex. Lots and lots of Coop-on-Ben action in a dark room. Get your priorities straight, dude.”
“Yeah,” Coop said. “You’re right.” Except Coop didn’t sound convinced, and he was avoiding looking at me. One of the best parts of having a best friend who knows you inside and out is that he can always tell when you’re full of shit. And Coop was so full of shit that it practically fell out of his mouth every time he peeped.
“You do want to sleep with Ben, right? You haven’t changed your mind, have you?”
Coop and I didn’t spend a lot of time talking about his relationship with Ben. Partly because I knew less about relationships than . . . well . . . anyone, but also because Ben was my friend too, and that made it awkward. But we had talked about losing our virginity. Ben had been rooting for sexy times since he and Coop first kissed, whereas Coop was something of a traditionalist—or prude, depending on who you asked. Coop wanted to be in love, to know he was in love, and to know it was going to be forever. Last time I’d checked, he had all those feelings for the incomparable Benjamin Kwon.
“I don’t know,” Coop said. “I love Ben. God, I love him. But it’s like . . . where’s this going?”
I was floored. It wasn’t even my relationship and I still felt like Coop had sucker punched me. “Where are you and Ben going? Is that what you’re asking?”
“Yeah.” Coop hung his head and I gave him some room to breathe. “Graduation’s not far off. We’re growing up, Simon. How many high school relationships do you know that work after high school?”
“Whoa, Cooper. Just slow down here.” I was shocked that I was about to be the voice of reason, but it did happen occasionally. “You’re not getting married. It’s just sex. You love Ben and Ben loves you and I can’t imagine two people who deserve to get biblical more.”
Coop chuckled. “I’m pretty sure the Bible has rules against what Ben and I are planning to do.”
“Yes, well, two-thousand-year-old rules are meant to be broken.”
“True,” Coop said. He relaxed a little and took another of his deep breaths, letting all his tension go. “When did you become an expert on this shit?”
I shrugged. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Coop rolled his eyes like I should have known exactly what he meant, but since I didn’t, he said it out loud. “You’ve had two opportunities to get with girls that actually liked you, but instead, you’re going to spend your whole night on a fruitless quest to win the heart of a girl who will probably never feel the same way about you that you feel about her.”
“Two? Natalie and who else?”
“The girl you showed up with?” Coop smacked his head. “You’re a moron.”
“Stella’s cool and all, but she and I would never—”
“Bullshit,” Coop said. “She’s perfect. Weird, hot, and totally into you.”
“No way,” I said, slightly uncomfortable with the way Coop had turned the focus of the conversation to me. “She’s hanging out with Ewan.”
Coop’s groan was drowned out by a rambunctious collection of howls from the living room and we both turned in time to see Trey Howser drink the last cup on the table and then fall to the floor.
“You really are going to die a sad, lonely virgin,” Coop said. I turned back around. And I didn’t argue. I couldn’t. Not with Coop, anyway. Over the years, we’d dissected every moment of my one date with Cassie and every interaction I’d had with her since. If she smiled at me in the hall or when we were hanging out at Ben’s, I picked it apart until Coop threatened to garrote me with a guitar string.
After a minute, Coop said, “So, just out of morbid curiosity, what was Stella’s plan for helping you score the girl of your dreams? I mean, a girl who brings a blind dog to a party has got to have something slick up her sleeve.” There was a note of sarcasm in his voice that I chose to ignore.
“Her best idea involved singing—”
“Don’t.”
“Obviously.”
I was saved from further interrogation by Ben running down the hall from wherever he’d been, yelling, “Someone give me the password to AJ Tucker’s Facebook account! It’s a matter of life or death!” He skidded to a stop, nearly slamming into the front door. When he saw us, he bounded up the steps to slap a quick kiss on Coop’s lips and whisper something in his ear. Then he jumped down the steps and ran back the way he’d come, shouting, “The purse is mine!” and laughing manically.
Coop chuckled. “And that’s my boyfriend.”
“How could you not want to have sex with him?” I asked. I was being sarcastic but Coop answered soberly.
“It makes it real.”
“You’ve been together for three years,” I said. “That makes it real.”
Sitting on the steps felt lame now. There was a party going on, and Coop and I were sitting around talking about our feelings. Not even talking. We’d spent most of our time dancing around the things neither of us wanted to talk about. “I need a drink after all this whining,” I said. “Unless you want me to go buy you some condoms. Do they make micro-size?”
“You should talk. I’ve seen you naked.”
I stood up in mock outrage. “You said you didn’t look! Anyway, that lake was freezing. There was definite shrinkage.”
“Calm do
wn, Tiny Tim, I’m only messing around.” Coop used the railing to haul himself to his feet. “I should find Ben before he sells my mom’s car for the condom.”
“That car’s not worth a condom,” I said. “It’s not worth a used condom.”
Coop grimaced. “Gross.”
I jumped down the last couple of steps and came to a stop by the front door. It was cracked open and smoke from the nicotine junkies was seeping inside. Cassie hated smokers, so I kicked the door all the way closed.
When I turned around, Coop was standing uncomfortably close. “Can I give you some advice without you getting all pissy?”
“Always.”
“Forget Cassie.” Coop had more to say, so I kept my mouth shut. “I know I said I’d back you if you decided to go for it, and I still will, but you should forget her. Put her out of your mind. You’ll be better off.”
“What if I can’t?”
Coop sighed. “Then you need to forget about grand gestures or your deal with Stella. No plans, no singing. Just walk up to her and tell her how you feel.”
“Just like that?” I asked.
“Just like that.” Coop patted me on the arm and headed toward the back of the house, trading fist bumps and smiles with most of the people he passed.
And then I was alone. It was a huge party with more people than I could count, but I was alone. Stella, who didn’t know anyone at this party an hour ago, was having more fun than I was. Which made Coop’s advice that much sweeter. If Stella could walk right up to Ewan and strike up a conversation, I could tell Cassie—the girl I’d known for years—that I loved her.
With that in mind, I marched through the house on a mission to find Cassandra Castillo and make her mine. I dropped by the kitchen for a shot of vodka that burned like a jalapeño on the way down but then spread through my limbs, carrying courage to every cell in my body. Cassie wasn’t in the kitchen, but Ben and Coop were, and I passed Coop a knowing smile. He mouthed “good luck” before returning to Ben, who was yelling at Maya that she owed it to his penis to give him her purse.
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