Romeo & What's Her Name

by Shani Petroff

  No sooner had I sat down and started my business, there was a knock on the door.

  “Em, are you okay?”

  It was Wes.

  Could he hear me pee? Uck. Why was my life a constant disaster? “Fine, be right out,” I called to him.

  “Do you need anything?”

  Yeah, you to leave me alone right now so I could go to the bathroom in peace.

  “Nope, I’m good.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Just wanted to check.”

  “Thanks.” Oh my God. Did I let out a fart? No! Did he hear it? This kind of thing did not happen to girls on the CW or Freeform shows. Hell, they didn’t even go to the bathroom let alone have the guy of their dreams calling to them while they sat on the toilet. Why couldn’t I be a character on a TV show? My life would be so much easier. I would definitely take being a vampire or a superhero over being a pathetic klutz.

  I finished as fast as I could, washed my hands, and threw on my dress. When I opened the door, I was relieved to see that Wes wasn’t there.

  I walked back into the main dining room and saw Kayla and Jace sitting near the back, about three tables behind my group. They must have arrived while I was in the bathroom. I gave them a little wave as I walked by.

  “Emily,” Kayla gasped. “Your dress.”

  The giant water marks were impossible to miss. “I know,” I whispered, “and this was one of the better things that happened tonight. I’ll tell you later.”

  When I got back to my table, the pizza was already there. I grabbed a slice and shoved it into my mouth. If I was chewing, I wasn’t talking and risking making a bigger fool of myself. Besides, the quicker the food was gone, the quicker I got to go home.

  “You sure know how to make yourself the center of attention,” Cody said.

  “Not intentionally,” I told him. “I’d much rather stay out of the spotlight. Amanda can have it.”

  “I will Friday,” she said. “When Wes and I do our scene.”

  She reached out and took his hand. Only, he didn’t jerk away the way I did when Cody tried to take mine. I jammed another bite of pizza into my mouth. Amanda certainly seemed in a better mood. I guess my embarrassment lifted her spirits.

  “It’s going to be so great,” she said. “We’ve been rehearsing, and let me tell you, our scene is going to sizzle.” She turned toward me and Cody. “It’s really hot.”

  “Yeah, I got that from the sizzle part,” I answered, my mouth still full of food. While I didn’t like talking about Amanda and Wes, it beat focusing on my klutziness. I was just grateful Amanda’s need to brag outweighed her need to ridicule me.

  “I even got Ryan to help me with that long monologue, my blocking, my characterization. He totally reworked everything. It’s so much better than the way I was doing it before.”

  “Wait, what?” I asked. “You changed Jill’s scene? She worked really hard on that.”

  “It’s not a big deal. Ryan won best director. I figured the best for the best.”

  “He only won,” I said, trying to hold back my anger, “because no one got to see Jill’s actual scene. You weren’t there, remember?” I could not believe she was doing this to my best friend. This was supposed to be Jill’s second chance, too.

  “My stuff is all the same,” Wes added.

  Amanda glared at him and then turned back to me. “If I want help with my acting so I can give an unrivaled performance, that’s my business. I’m the one up there. Not Jill.”

  I was at a loss for words, but Amanda wasn’t. She kept going like she hadn’t just dropped a major bomb on me.

  She turned to Cody. “The whole eleventh grade is getting out of last period so they can come watch. You’ll love that.”

  “Yeah, anything that gets me out of class,” he said.

  She rolled her eyes.

  I was so annoyed. I kept silent as they all made small talk about the scene and Amanda’s goals of being a famous actress until we finally finished the pizza.

  “Anything else?” the waitress asked us.

  “Just the check,” I said.

  “What about the triple-chocolate blackout cake?” Wes asked.

  “Not tonight,” I answered. Cake sounded good, but after everything—the fighting, the spilling, the directing news—leaving sounded better. I think he understood that.

  When the check arrived, Wes picked it up. “Cody, why don’t you and I just split it?”

  “Why?” Cody answered. “I didn’t eat half the food.”

  “Because it’s the nice thing to do,” Amanda informed him.

  I was shocked she was saying that. But then again, she had already shown us that her resentment for Cody outweighed her disgust for me.

  “This isn’t the fifties. If anything,” Cody said, “Emily should be paying for me. She’s the one who suggested dinner. I just wanted to hang out.”

  Amanda rolled her eyes again. “After the night she had, you’d think you could at least buy her some pizza.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Wes said. “It’s not a big deal.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I can pay for my own food.”

  “No, it’s not okay.” Amanda turned her whole body toward Cody. “You can never do anything for anyone else. You only take, take, take. It doesn’t matter what the person does for you, you never reciprocate.”

  Here we go again. As if it wasn’t already awkward enough.

  “I reciprocated,” he said.

  “Oh, please,” she groaned. “We dated for a year, and you couldn’t even get me flowers on my birthday or our anniversary. I wanted some big, grand, romantic gesture, but you couldn’t even call me back when I asked you to.”

  “And like you went out of your way for me? I didn’t see you doing anything. There were no giant moves on your part.”

  “Guys don’t like big gestures,” she said.

  “Sure, we do. Right, Wes?”

  Wes looked like he did not want to get in the middle of this, but he answered anyway. “I wouldn’t complain if someone did one for me.”

  Amanda sat back in her chair in a huff and folded her arms. I was just happy the conversation was off me, off Jill and how great the new scene was, and off how wonderful Wes and Amanda were together, so I may have stoked the fire just a little. “Like that old eighties movie where the guy stood outside the girl’s window with the boom box?”

  “Exactly,” Wes said.

  “Who has a boom box these days?” Amanda said. “I didn’t even know what one was until my dad explained it to me.”

  “The boom box isn’t the point,” Wes said. “It’s that he was willing to put himself out there. He went big.”

  I couldn’t believe Wes knew the movie Say Anything.…

  “I love that kind of thing,” I said, “like in The Notebook, where he wrote his love a letter every day for a year.”

  “Or The Fault in Our Stars, where he used his wish on his girlfriend,” Wes added. “Who wouldn’t want something like that? Sure, these examples were all guys making the move, but I think most guys would like to be on the receiving end, too. I know I would.”

  “Fine, whatever, you win,” Amanda said. “Can we go now?”

  As nice as it was talking about romantic movies with Wes, Amanda had said the words I had been waiting to hear all night.

  I was more than ready for this double date to end. I certainly didn’t need to be asked twice.

  27

  As Amanda and Wes left the restaurant, I hung back.

  Amanda didn’t bother saying good-bye, but Wes raised his hand in a half wave and gave me a small smile. He looked a little down. Not that I could blame him. He had just witnessed one of the most awkward dates in history, which involved not only his girlfriend but also his girlfriend’s ex and the girl who had been crushing on him basically his whole lifetime. And between Cody and Amanda’s fight and my soaking myself and the whole table, I’d say it was a disappointing night for all.

  “It’s not th
at late,” Cody said, and stroked his fingers down my arm. “Want to go hang out at Feiman Park for a bit?”

  Was he serious?!! After the date we just had? The answer was a definite no. I had had my fill of Cody for the day. Maybe for the year. “I’m going to stick around here and talk to Kayla a bit,” I said. “About tonight,” I added, “I think we’re probably better off just as friends.” And by friends, I really meant friendly acquaintances, as in someone I would say “hi” to in school, but not someone I’d go out of my way to talk to. Flirty, suck-up Emily was dead. This night pounded the final stake into her heart.

  He shrugged and mumbled something. I think it was “your loss,” but I wasn’t positive. As if to punctuate that sentiment, he stopped by the waitress and got her number. Then he smiled at me and raised his hand in some sort of “peace out” sign. “We could have had fun,” he said with a wink before walking out.

  He was seriously too much. I cringed as I thought back on the evening.

  “Em?” Kayla called out.

  I grabbed a chair from an empty table and placed it between Kayla and Jace. “I am so happy to finally be crashing your date,” I told them.

  “Welcome,” Jace said.

  “All right.” I picked an olive off the pizza that sat on their table. “Go ahead. Get it out. Let the jokes begin. I know I did it to myself this time.”

  “We don’t have any jokes,” Kayla said.

  “Well…” Jace interrupted her. “I have a few.”

  Kayla threw her napkin at him.

  “It’s okay,” I said, covering part of my face with my hands. “You guys can laugh. I probably would be if it happened to someone that wasn’t ME.” I pointed at their pizza. “Can I?”

  Kayla nodded.

  Apparently, humiliation made me hungry. “It was bad,” I said.

  “I know, we saw,” Kayla told me.

  “You only saw half of it.”

  Jace stared at me. “Wait. There was more?!”

  I took a bite of pizza, then recapped everything they missed: being trapped in the bathroom while Cody flirted with someone else, Amanda and Cody’s fighting, my spilling the pop, and the awkwardness with Wes.

  “Em, I’m sorry,” Kayla said. “I thought your date might have some entertainment value to watch, but I never expected all this.”

  “It’s not your fault. I guess, on the upside, other than the tiny, itty-bitty piece of pride I still had left, there wasn’t really anything else for me to lose, right? I’m already the school joke. I couldn’t care less about Cody. And it wasn’t like Wes ever liked me. Not romantically anyway.”

  Jace made some sort of weird noise midchew.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  Kayla’s eyes zeroed in on him. “What aren’t you saying?”

  “Nothing,” he repeated.

  She shook her head. “Ut-uh, you know something. Start talking.”

  “I don’t want to get in the middle of this,” he said.

  “Middle of what?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said yet again.

  Even though his name was short and only one syllable, Kayla managed to drag it out to sound a lot more like three. “Jaaaacccce,” she warned, “you already are in the middle. It’s too late. So if you know something about Wes that you’re not saying, it’s time to speak up.”

  My heart started to beat faster. What did he know? “Please, Jace,” I pleaded, “you have to tell me. Please!”

  Jace tossed his pizza crust down on his plate. “First, let me get this straight. You like Wes?”

  “You know I do. That’s why I didn’t want to go to the dance.”

  “I just thought it was because you didn’t have a date,” he said.

  I turned to Kayla. “You never told him?”

  “You told me not to, so I didn’t. That’s what you wanted, right?”

  I nodded. “But, Jace,” I said, “if you know something, you have to tell me.”

  He shifted uncomfortably.

  “Please,” I begged.

  He finally relented. “Fine, he may have talked about you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Jace was really squirming now. “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Okay. It wasn’t like we sat around discussing your every move or anything.…” His voice trailed off at the end.

  “But…” I egged him on.

  “But he liked you. A lot.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Kayla shrieked.

  I felt my chest contract. Wes had liked me? I wasn’t sure I could still put a sentence together. “Wha, huh, I, when?”

  “Jace!” Kayla said.

  “He told me not to say anything.”

  She shook her head. “And you listened?”

  He picked up a piece of pizza, but Kayla slapped it out of his hand. “He’s my friend,” Jace said. “You didn’t tell me she liked him. It’s the same thing. Besides, he was going to ask her out, but if I told you, you would have told her, and it would have messed everything up.”

  “Well, you could have said something after you realized he wasn’t going to do it anymore,” she said.

  “Why? She’s the one who said she only liked him as a friend.”

  “What?” I yelled loudly enough that an old couple in the restaurant turned around to stare.

  Jace looked confused. “He said you told him you weren’t interested.”

  I slumped down in my chair. “I didn’t mean that. Besides, he had already asked Amanda to the dance anyway. He likes her.”

  “Not really,” Jace said.

  Kayla squeezed his arm. “Jace, tell us everything he said.”

  “Amanda asked him to the dance. And she had just gotten out of the hospital. It’s kinda harsh to say no to that, but he wanted to take you. He was going to tell you. How could you not know? It was obvious. He was always talking about you, or to you, and driving you around. He still hasn’t given me a ride, but he was your personal driver. Me and some of the guys gave him a hard time about it. But then one day he just said you weren’t interested, and we didn’t bring it up again.”

  I wasn’t interested? I was incredibly interested. I had been since I rode that bike down the driveway when we were little. Maybe even before. This was all my fault. I got jealous over nothing and ran my mouth. If I hadn’t said I just saw him as a friend, we’d be together now.

  “I blew it. I can’t believe he actually liked me.”

  “Sorry,” Jace said.

  “And what about now?” Kayla pressed him.

  “Huh?” he asked.

  She let out an exasperated sigh. “And what are Wes’s feelings now?”

  “What do you think? Who likes to hear the person they like doesn’t like them back?”

  I was grateful that Kayla was doing the interrogation. I was too overwhelmed to think straight.

  “So him and Amanda?” she asked.

  “She’s been paying a lot of attention to him, and he thought Emily didn’t like him, so they’ve been hanging out. They’re not exclusive or anything. But that could change. I mean, she’s hot.”

  Kayla glared at him.

  “Not as hot as you,” he corrected himself.

  But her eyes were still bugged out, and she nodded just a millimeter in my direction. “Or you, Emily,” he added.

  I knew he was just saying that to appease Kayla, but it didn’t matter what Jace thought about me, it mattered what Wes thought.

  I needed to fix this. Wes needed to know the truth. He needed to know I liked him. Even if he didn’t feel the same way back anymore. It was a chance I had to take.

  28

  The next day after school, Jill and Kayla came over for a get-Wes-back strategy session. We sat around my dining room table to brainstorm.

  “I really messed up,” I said, “but I’m going to fix it. I just need something big. Wes said he liked grand gestures, so I’m going to give him one. I
f I can figure out what to do. I can’t blow this. It has to be thought out. I can’t just be impulsive and mess everything up. I need to show him that I took the time to do something special because he’s worth it to me. That it’s him I always liked, not Cody. So any ideas would be greatly appreciated.”

  “Didn’t you guys talk about that Say Anything … movie? Get a boom box and go to his house,” Jill suggested.

  “I’m never going to find one of those.”

  “Then maybe just throw rocks at his window and hold a sign up?” Kayla offered, and unwrapped a Hershey’s Kiss. The table was covered with candy. I was hoping a sugar rush would inspire some good ideas.

  “My luck, I’d get the wrong room and break his brother’s window, and his mom would call the cops.”

  “Fair point,” Jill said.

  “You can fill his locker with something. Roses or balloons or love notes or”—Kayla popped another candy into her mouth—“chocolate Kisses?”

  “She’d need his combo.”

  “And if the Kisses melted,” I said, “I’d just cause him problems.”

  Kayla tugged at her ponytail. “Okay. How about something personal to the two of you, a fun moment or something you shared.”

  “He always gives you rides. You can borrow my car if you want to drive him somewhere,” Jill said.

  That was supersweet of her to offer, but I was going to be too nervous to be behind the wheel of a motor vehicle. “Maybe something that doesn’t involve machinery.”

  Kayla jumped up. “Your grocery cart. Do something with that.”

  “What? Offer to push him around all day while I recite bad Shakespeare sonnets to him?”

  “That’s it,” Jill said.

  I looked at her like she was nuts. “I was kidding.”

  “I don’t mean that exactly. I mean Wes and Amanda are performing the Romeo and Juliet scene tomorrow. Maybe it should be Romeo and … Emily instead?”

  “I cannot go back out there again. The definite humiliation, the probable suspension, and there’s no way I can ruin your scene again.”

  “You forget,” she said. “It’s not my scene anymore. You told me what Amanda said. I had even offered to do a few catch-up rehearsals for her. She totally lied and told me it wasn’t necessary, that she remembered everything. She didn’t even mention Ryan. I was going to get to the auditorium tomorrow totally expecting to see my scene. Can you imagine how Ryan would have jumped on that?”