That was not the sweet nothing I’d expected. Political talk . . . not a turn-on. “Patrick Stratford”—I had to fight to keep my voice level, because I usually only said and heard that name with a sneer—“is your father?” I saw the resemblance now, not the curls or the inviting shape of his lips, but the jawline and the eyes. The impact of this washed over me slowly, sickeningly. I had to look away.
Patrick Stratford was enemy number one in Senator Rhodes’s house and, as a result, our house too. I mean, besides the fact that he seemed incompetent and slimy, there was also the fact that every time he gained a point in the polls the senator, and everyone around her, was miserable. Monroe’s dad had eviscerated Lilly’s future mother-in-law in a pretty dubious attack ad last month. The fallout had been so bad that Trent had hidden at our house for a week of dinners. So really, everyone was punished.
“That’s not a problem, is it?” Monroe asked.
“I hope not?” I didn’t mean for it to come out as a question. I was still thinking of the hour-long dinner conversation about which veggies were actually fruits. Avocados, apparently. Trent was the embodiment of torture by boredom. How did Lilly stand it?
“Why would it be?” Monroe wrung his hands on the railing, his voice growing louder with each word. “I am not my father!”
“Shhhh!” But it was too late. Lights flicked on in the room across the yard from mine. “You need to go.”
And I didn’t mind that as much as I would’ve a minute earlier, because that was the second time he’d raised his voice at me. Though maybe they’d been valid? Both times I’d compared him to guys I considered vile.
“I’m sorry I yelled,” he said, covering my hands with his and making no attempt at leaving. “My father . . . he just . . .” Monroe sighed and squeezed my fingers. “I know I need to go, but when can I see you?”
“Merrilee?” Toby’s groggy voice drifted through his balcony door. “You up?”
“Um . . . yeah?”
“Let me find my glasses,” he mumbled. “I’ll be right back.”
“Tomorrow?” I whispered to Monroe.
“My weekend is packed—campaign stuff and auditions for the school play.” I’d never used the word “crestfallen” before, but it seemed the only way to describe his face.
“If you’re busy, then Monday’s fine.” I tugged at his fingers, trying to loosen them from the railing.
He dropped down to the patio below. “I don’t want to leave.”
He may not have wanted to—but I needed him to. “I’ll see you soon. Monday. Monday morning. Before school.” Which would make this the first Monday morning I’d ever looked forward to. “But, go!”
My eyes flashed back and forth between Monroe’s forlorn face and Toby’s open balcony door. Toby reappeared, yawning and stretching as he stepped outside. “What are you doing up, Rowboat?” He was barefoot in Hawaiian-print pajama pants and a white T-shirt, sleep-staticky brown hair and crooked glasses.
I refused to look down, to let my glance or actions draw attention toward where Monroe was slipping away across my front lawn.
“Sorry I woke you.”
“No big deal.” Toby rolled his neck and rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses. “Everything okay?”
I wasn’t a liar, and Toby and I didn’t keep secrets. A car started somewhere down my street, and I glanced at my empty yard.
“Want to come over, Mayday? Have a roof talk?”
These words seemed to wake him up and make him stand taller. “Yeah, I think we should.”
In the years since my twelfth-birthday balcony was built, Toby and I had tried a zillion methods of getting straight from his railing to mine. It’s just dumb luck that none of them resulted in either of our deaths. It was much easier—and safer—for us to climb down from our own balcony and then climb up to the other person’s. Toby clambered down and up, landing next to me. He was much more graceful than Monroe, but then again, he’d had years of practice.
“You okay?” He blinked at me through his glasses.
Could he tell I’d been kissed? Did I look different? Good different? Or bad?
“Fine,” I squeaked.
“Climb up first, I’ll spot you.”
I scrambled onto the railing. His warm hands hovered, then landed lightly on my waist as I shimmied over to the edge of the roof and crawled up. The rough surface of shingles bit at my bare knees, reminding me: “Go grab the blanket from the foot of my bed.”
He passed it up, then climbed beside me and helped spread it out.
“We’re almost too big to share this space,” I said once we were settled shoulder-to-shoulder in the nook where I did my best thinking. I rolled onto my stomach and pushed up on my elbows so I could see his expression. “I’m sorry about Knight Lights.”
He shrugged and kept his eyes on the stars.
I turned his face toward me. “But why didn’t you ask me weeks ago?”
“Because I’m an idiot.” He shrugged again and pressed his cheek into my palm, reaching up with his own hand to hold mine there. “I thought I had more time—Headmaster Williams won’t mention it until Monday. I guess I underestimated you, Rowboat. I knew you’d take Hero High by storm, but I didn’t expect you to win everyone over in one day.”
“Speaking of . . .” I pulled my hand away and covered my face, not sure if it was cruel to tell him—but it was crueler if he heard it from someone else. “I kinda kissed someone.”
“What?” It was the same first question Eliza had asked, but hers had been a shout, and his was a whisper. I felt the liquid relaxation disappear from his body. He pushed himself up to sitting, propping his elbows on his knees. “Who?”
I rolled over and sat up too, but stayed farther back in the eaves. Something about his posture and tone warned that he didn’t want me in his face right now. “Monroe Stratford.”
“How could you possibly . . .? When?”
“Tonight.” It was an answer to his last question. I didn’t have one for his first. Nothing more coherent than yearning. “It just sort of happened.”
“Monroe? Really?” His voice sounded like he had more to say. He shook his head instead. “But you wanted to? You’re okay?” He looked at me over his shoulder, all concern and comfort and Toby. I wanted to throw myself into a hug, but I’d probably knock us both off the roof, and it wasn’t the right time. My actions tonight had solidified those friendship parameters he’d been tiptoeing around, and there had to be feelings involved. Feelings I didn’t want to toy with.
“I wanted to,” I confirmed, and the silence settled around us like a snowdrift, making me shiver and fidget till I blurted, “Everything’s just moving so fast. It’s been one day at Hero High and I already have a mortal enemy.”
“Wait! A what?”
“Let’s put it this way, you don’t have to bother introducing me to He-who-must-not-be-tempted. Aka Fielding.”
“You heard that?” His eyebrows drew together. “He’s not usually like that. It’s—”
“Please don’t defend him. So he has one less groupie in his fan club. I doubt he’ll even notice—and he wouldn’t care if he did.”
“It’s not you, Merri. It’s this thing with his father.”
“I’m done talking about him, Mayday. And unless you feel like being pushed off the roof is a more efficient way of getting home, you are too.”
“Fine. Topic change. So, Monroe. He’s . . . he’s not who I would’ve picked for you. Was it just a kiss, a one-time thing, or . . . ?”
I cringed, wondering if that was a warning, or him hinting that he would’ve liked the role. Neither sat well in my knotted stomach, but I kept my voice light. “I think it’s an or.”
“Oh.” The shape of his shoulders against the sky made my heart ache.
“Should I . . .” Gah, I needed a guide map for navigating this weird transitional place in our friendship. “Do you not want me to tell you things about other guys? How do I make this easier on you? Do I give you sp
ace?”
“No.” He reached back and grasped my hand like he was worried I’d disappear or leave him there. “Don’t you dare. You’ve always told me everything. And we’re friends. We’re best friends. I’m not losing that. I’m fine.”
My “Okay” was quiet, and his grip on my fingers loosened, then let go.
Toby and I had sat in silence on my roof before. Lots of times. When we were searching for shooting stars, or trying to stump each other by quoting lines from movies. Sometimes just the comfortable silence of lying sides pressed together with someone who knows the name of every pet you’ve ever owned—including your imaginary ones. I’d fallen asleep up here beside him. He’d dozed off next to me. We’d climbed up here and talked the day he’d discovered he was adopted—a fact that shouldn’t have shocked us since his brown skin didn’t match his pasty-pale parents’ but still rocked our eight-year-old world. And here is where he’d shared that his parents were getting a divorce, and where he’d told me he’d chosen to stay with his dad. Where I’d whispered my fears about Lilly and an eating disorder and where we’d rehearsed ways for me to talk to her and my parents. Where we’d daydreamed all summer about going to the same school for the first time.
We’d done silence on my roof before, but it had never felt so heavy. I’d never felt so precarious. For the first time, I thought about what would happen if I fell.
“It’s late. We should go to bed,” I whispered.
“I’ll go first and spot you.”
If I fell, he’d catch me. These associations had been automatic for so long: Toby. Rooftop. Balcony. Toby.
Yet when my feet touched back down on my balcony that night, he wasn’t the boy I was thinking about.
11
Gatsby and my parents’ dog, Byron, weren’t allowed upstairs. Most of the time Mom and Dad took pure Pomeranian Byron to the store, which was a specialty dog boutique in one of the upscale shopping strips in town, and left my hodgepodge of a mutt at home. This had nothing to do with pedigree papers and everything to do with Gatsby liking to leave his “mark” on Haute Dog every time he visited. He was also a Houdini when it came to breaking into the glass cases that held the fancy bakery-style dog treats—K-9 cannoli, doggy doughnuts, pupcakes—which he’d later puke up all over the doggy sweater display.
Fine, they could maintain their image (and inventory), and I’d maintain my belief that “no dogs upstairs” didn’t apply to Gatsby on Saturday mornings when no one was home to tattle.
But if he was in my bedroom breathing stank doggy breath in my face, why wasn’t I being drowned in slobber kisses? I opened an eye and batted away—not Gatsby’s snout—a running shoe propped on my pillow. Gag. Did my feet really smell that bad?
“Morning, sunshine,” said Eliza.
“What are you doing here?”
Her ponytail swung like a blond pendulum when she tilted her head. “Morning run?”
“No. Too early. Too mean.” I squashed my pillow over my head.
“But you agreed last night.” She bounced on the edge of my bed. “Get up!”
“I did?” Her face pinched in a frown and I remembered my hasty half-listening hangup. “I mean, I did!”
“How late were you up? You slept through my calls and texts, knocking on your door, and pinching your toes through the blanket. I was worried the stench of your shoes knocked you unconscious. I told you to stuff them with newspaper after running in the rain.”
My response was half grumble, half groan.
She plucked the pillow from my head. “Our first meet is in three days. Get your lazy butt out of bed. Also, I believe you have some news to tell me?”
Kissing! It wasn’t a dream. I had to tell her about how fate or luck or coincidence had thrown Monroe and me together in the pro shop. I loosened my death grip on my pillow and sat up. “So much to tell you, and I can’t talk while running.”
I thought that was a winning argument—that we’d be heading to the backyard, me with a big bowl of cereal, her with a veggie smoothie, plopping down by the pool while I told her all the details.
But I should never have underestimated Eliza. She smiled. “Then we’ll run slower. Conversational pace.”
If “conversational pace” was truly a thing, then I was bad at it. Perhaps I shouldn’t have skipped so many of the workouts Eliza had encouraged over the summer. Or maybe it was that I didn’t want to have a conversation; I wanted to gush. I wanted to dance and skip and generally float off the ground. I’d been dreaming about my first kiss for fifteen years, and I’d earned this moment.
“Tree!”
“Mailbox!”
Luckily, Eliza was excellent at preventing my death by collision with inanimate object.
“Honestly, Merrilee, could you stop shutting your eyes? Coach Lynn won’t be impressed if you can’t compete because you collided with a stop sign while reenacting a kiss.”
While I was sticking out my tongue at her, I stepped in gum. “It was so romantic! Just like something in a book.” I dragged my sticky shoe on the sidewalk to scrape it off, but that just made me stumble.
Eliza’s mouth thinned. “Be careful, okay? It’s one thing when you’re infatuated with a book character, but Monroe’s a person. He’s not going to be perfect, you know? And I worry you’re building him up to—Bicycle! Merrilee! Bicycle!”
That one was totally not my—okay, it was a little bit my fault. But no one was hurt.
“What’s the rest of your day like?” I asked once we were back on my front steps. She was stretching and I was digging watermelon-scented stickiness from the treads on my sneakers with a twig. “I’ve got a shift at the store later, but want to sleep over?”
“Are you going to make me watch a rom-com and compare it to Monroe?” she asked.
“Yes,” I admitted. “But I’ll let you dissect it without shushing.”
She tilted her head and considered this. Eliza hated romances but loved predicting their plots. And she was eerily accurate at spoiling them. “Okay, but we need to be on air mattresses with the basement lights off by ten thirty. I can’t handle another set of sleep disturbance paperwork this week.”
“We could just say we slept,” I suggested.
“You don’t—You can’t be—That is wrong!” Eliza stared at me like I’d suggested a murder spree followed by some recreational car theft. “Falsifying experiment data is not funny.” She pointed to the silver tech-band around her wrist. “Besides, you know they log in to my step and sleep counter.”
I opened my mouth to say It’s not an experiment; it’s your life! But we’d had this argument many times. Eliza needed to believe that all these stupid calculations and records her parents demanded added up to science. That they justified their rules, justified leaving her behind with graduate student guardians “in a controlled, stable environment for her own homeostasis,” justified rigid nutrition and sleep logs and tracking hair and fingernail growth and blood pH and every other task they threw at her in the name of some “-ology” or another.
“I’m just kidding,” I forced myself to say. Because she was stuck with her parents’ science baggage, and I’d inherited my mom and dad’s romantic idealizations. And whether or not we approved, we supported each other. Always.
After Eliza went home on Sunday morning, I went upstairs to shower and get ready for church and another day at Haute Dog. The store used to be closed on Sundays, but Mom and Dad’s latest attempt at keeping up with the big-box pet store in town was a half day on Sunday and staying open late on Tuesday and Wednesday. They really needed to hire more staff, or Lilly needed to have fewer wedding-planning obligations, because I wasn’t going to be able to juggle school, cross-country, and all the extra hours of listening to pet owners debate which designer collar complimented their pet’s fur or obsessing over shampoos and haircuts with Sonia, our zero-personality groomer.
I grabbed my robe and turned to beat Rory to the bathroom, but paused when I caught sight of something red on my balcony.
Roses. They were shaped into the outline of a heart and there was a crisp envelope placed in the center. I did a little Eeeeee! dance as I picked it up and then traced my name.
Hello, Monroe’s handwriting! You are lovely and the shape of my name in your letters makes my heart go squish. I almost didn’t want to open the envelope, because there was no way what was inside could possibly be better than what my imagination was drafting.
Hey Merrilee—
I hope you’re missing me as much as I’m missing you. These roses are almost as pretty as your face. I can’t stop thinking about kissing you. REALLY can’t wait to do it again.
Monroe
So it was sweet, but . . . kinda generic? That was okay. He was seventeen, not Shakespeare. It was the thought that counted, and this was adorably thoughtful.
I stayed in that rose-scented fairy-ring of romance until Mom yelled up the stairs, “If you’re eating brunch before we leave, come down now,” and even then I was too busy smiling to do much biting and chewing. I didn’t even stop grinning when a customer spent forty minutes trying sweaters and boots on his Chinese crested, then left without picking up his mess or making a purchase.
It wasn’t until midnight that my smile faded into yawns. I was cold too—my cute pajamas weren’t warm enough for September nights on my balcony—and the mosquitoes had found me. I’d finished my English homework—reading act one of Romeo and Juliet—hours ago and spent the minutes afterward imagining Monroe and me in those roles, imagining him here, now, reciting those lines, meaning them.
Come over, come over, come over, I begged Monroe via wishes on constellations I was inventing.
But he didn’t. And it was a school night—a school morning. I climbed into bed and fell asleep with rose petals crushed in my palm and his letter crinkling beneath my pillow.
12
“Who’s ready for their first full week of school?” Toby asked as he poured himself a glass of juice. He poured a second one and slid it across the counter to where I had my head resting on folded arms.
Bookish Boyfriends Page 8