“What would you do?” Dia asked. “With the money.”
“I want a car,” Jules said. “I’d take us everywhere.”
“When we win you will,” Dia said. “We’ll get matching rides. Red. Yeah?”
“Can we talk about something else?” Hanna asked. “This is giving me hives.”
“What’s left?” Jules said. “You don’t want to talk about the contest, or your living situation. Dia doesn’t want to talk about anything.” She rolled her eyes when Dia kicked her. “Oh, please. You’ve barely said a word all day.” And I have nothing good to say about me and Autumn, she thought.
She needed more food to keep from thinking about it all. “I’m going to get an apple pie. Anyone want anything?”
“More fries,” Dia said.
“Coke,” Hanna said. “Large.”
“Coming right up.”
Jules went inside and got in line behind two younger girls whispering in each other’s ears. When she got to the counter she ordered and then turned, leaning her elbows on the counter and looking at her friends outside the window.
Listen to that—her friends.
Hanna and Dia, sitting by themselves, laughing at something. Two months ago this would have been impossible to imagine, because of what had happened two years ago.
But two years was a long time. Long enough for things to change again and again, a thousand times over. For Jules to realize that fighting was not her fantasy. For Dia to raise a precocious, perfect kid. For Hanna to get sober and get smart and become this new-but-the-same girl.
Long enough for all of them to realize that there was nothing they could do to each other now, ever, to fully break them.
And win or lose, they still had their music. Nothing and no one could stop them. Jules knew that now.
Jules
Jules was at the grocery store early on Thursday morning, yawning as she listened to Henry and Malai bickering across their registers. “Can you shut up?” she called after a while. “You two are so annoying.”
“Says you,” Henry fired back. “You wanna go? Freezer race, you and me, winner takes all.”
Jules raised her eyebrows. “Takes all what?”
“Uh . . .” Henry tapped his chin. “All . . . the vending machine food you can get for ten bucks.”
“I’d rather have the ten bucks,” Jules said. “Pass.”
She started tidying the pamphlets on the end of her register, lining them up by height, until she sensed a customer waiting. “Sorry,” she said as she turned. “I—Autumn.”
Autumn leaned on the plastic barrier shielding the screen between them. “Hi,” she said, her voice a little unsure.
“Hey,” Jules said, surprised. “What are you doing here? You’re not working today.”
“What do you think?” Autumn said. “I came to see you.”
Jules’s heart tripped over itself. “Oh.” Oh?
Her nerves jangled. Things were not so great with them, not since Autumn had found out about the contest and Jules’s secret keeping. They were still talking, texting, but—she could feel it all between their words, Autumn’s uncertainty and her own anxiety squeezing in the air around them. Jules had apologized, and Autumn had said that it was fine, she was fine, but Jules couldn’t quite believe it. Surely Autumn was still mad, really, and just telling Jules everything was okay; surely this was all a sign that they weren’t working out, not Meant To Be; surely Autumn was going to end things with her any day, any minute now.
(Jules knew those thoughts were ridiculous, but in some moments she’d find herself thinking that what was really ridiculous was thinking Autumn would ever want to be with her in the first place.)
But that was how it had worked before, wasn’t it? With her and Delaney. Every conversation they’d had could be twisted and turned into a fight, and Jules had become an expert at it. But Autumn was not Delaney. Right?
“Are you seeing the others today?” Autumn tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Her hair was loose, the colors faded to soft pastels from their former bright rainbow.
Jules nodded. “At eight.”
“Before that?”
Jules looked around, but it was quiet and no one was paying them any attention. “I’m not doing anything.”
That earned a smile from Autumn, a fraction of her megawatt version. “Okay,” she said. “Will you come over? When you’re done here?”
“Come over?”
“I think we should—talk,” Autumn said. “When do you finish?”
Jules looked at her watch. Grocery store time did not work like regular time; more like time in the fairy stories Jules had read when she was younger, slipping back and forth and stretching out so long. “Four hours,” she said. “Four more hours?”
Autumn winced in sympathy. “Will you come?”
“Sure,” Jules said, but all she could think was, It’s too late. I broke things before we could even get started.
What happened to the girl who’d asked Autumn out with so much confidence? What happened to the magic?
Jules glanced around again—no sign of customers, and the others were paying them zero attention. No one to witness her crashing and burning in such quiet, careful style. “I’ll be there.”
“All right,” Autumn said, already beginning to walk away. “See you later.”
The bus let her off half a block from Autumn’s house. At the door she hesitated before ringing the bell, and then bounced on the balls of her feet in the time it took for Autumn to come to the door. When she opened it, she was smiling, and Jules smiled back, a reflex.
“Hi,” she said. “Sorry I’m late.”
“It’s cool,” Autumn said, and led Jules inside. “Do you want something to drink?”
“Sure.” Jules took a second to adjust to the brightness of the hall, all the knickknacks and everything, and followed Autumn to the kitchen. “Is your mom here?”
“No, my parents are at work, and my brother’s at day care,” Autumn said, leaning into the refrigerator. “They won’t be home for hours.”
Jules shrugged her backpack off. “What do your parents do, anyway?”
“My dad’s a construction manager. My mom works in some snobby law office, and she does hair and nails on the side. I know,” she said. “Of course, right? She wants to open her own place one day. She’ll be able to service all your acrylic and peroxide needs.”
Jules pointed at Autumn’s hair. “Does she do that for you?”
“Yeah.” Autumn handed her a Diet Coke. “Couldn’t stop her if I tried.” She laughed softly. “Um, I have to switch the laundry real fast. You want to go up to my room? It’s the second door on the left.”
Jules followed the directions, up the decorated stairs and onto the landing, the walls of which were painted as bright as the ones downstairs.
Autumn’s door had an A painted in blue. Jules opened it, and if the rest of the house was a neon Palm Springs pool party, this was the morning-after meditation. Jules exhaled as she stepped inside—This is Autumn’s bedroom. I am in Autumn’s bedroom—and gazed around. The walls were a soft, pale gray and the only clutter was a pair of shoes by Autumn’s closet. Otherwise, everything was neatly in its place: the perfume bottles placed at measured intervals along the windowsill gleamed; the pictures above her bed were framed. And the books in the tall case were arranged by color. By color.
Jules went to them and ran her finger lightly across the shelf of spines that shifted from blue to green. “It’s impossible to find anything,” Autumn’s voice came from behind. “But it looks so pretty.”
Jules turned. “You’re a neat freak, aren’t you?”
“Little bit. My mom has the rest of the house to fill with all her stuff. But this is mine.” Autumn sat on the edge of her bed and looked up at Jules. “So.”
“So . . .” Jules glanced out the window. From Autumn’s room you could see houses, trees with their leaves curling brown in the heat, some kids playing in the street. She looke
d back at Autumn. “Are we over?”
Autumn startled. “What?”
“It’s okay,” Jules said, and she meant it. It was only her own fault, pushing Autumn too much, lying to her. If Autumn wanted out, Jules understood. “I know I screwed up. I’m sorry. But it’s okay.”
Autumn’s eyes widened. “Slow down,” she said, her voice high. “Why would we be over? Do you want us to be over? Did I do something wrong?” Then she held her hands up. “Actually, no. I don’t think I did do anything wrong. I think I got upset about the contest thing, and then you got weird, and started avoiding me, and now here we are. Am I right?”
Laid out like that, it sounded bad. “No. Maybe.” Jules paused. “Okay, yes.”
“Do you even know why I was upset?” Autumn asked. “I’ll tell you. You didn’t tell me this big thing and it made me feel like I wasn’t important to you. Like maybe I was thinking that we meant more than we really do. That’s why.”
“Are you kidding me?” Jules said, her surprise real. “Autumn. You couldn’t possibly think we meant more than I think we do. Oh my god, the first day I saw you I thought—” She stopped herself. But then Autumn’s words in the break room came back to her: I thought we were all about being honest with each other. “I thought you were amazing. I felt like I fell in love with you the second I saw you, and I’m telling you that even though it’s ridiculous and embarrassing because it’s the truth.”
Autumn’s cheeks were bright pink. “Jules—”
“You want me to be honest, right?” Jules said. “Okay.” She took a deep breath. “Let me tell you about my ex.”
When Autumn’s eyebrows rose Jules held her hands up. “Wait. See, I went out with this girl for, like, six months last year. I’d had a crush on her for literally years. I really liked her and she really liked me. But we were so wrong for each other.” She shook her head and smiled tiredly. “It was obvious after a couple weeks. We should have broken up right then. But I liked her, and she was the first person I’d dated, so I wanted it to work. And I always wanted her attention, I wanted her to be . . . sweet to me. Because I—” Jules ignored the heat in her cheeks. “I like the romance—flowers and hand holding and everything. But she wasn’t like that, it just wasn’t her. And when she tried, I’d pick apart how wrong whatever she’d done was.”
Autumn brought a hand to her hair, nervous. “Okay,” she said.
Jules looked out the window again. “I do this thing,” she said. “I think everything should be perfect and magical and then when it’s not, I decide it’s not worth my time. But really, I don’t think what I’m waiting for is a fairy tale. I think it’s just someone who wants to try as hard as I do. You’re just you and I’m just me, and if it works or not is up to us, not some magic. I’m sorry I didn’t get that before. I really am sorry.”
The space between them felt so full, and Autumn stared Jules down, and the scrape of branches against the window was the only sound beyond the blood rushing in Jules’s ears.
“Okay,” she said eventually. “I accept your apology.”
Jules felt a snap in her chest, palpable relief. She did? “You do?”
“I really like you, Jules,” Autumn said, her eyes bright. “But god, you like to make things complicated.”
Jules laughed. “I know.”
“You’re lucky I’m the kind of person who doesn’t give up on things when they’re not perfect and magical.” Autumn said. “If that was me, I wouldn’t be here. My life has not been perfect and magical. But it’s still good.”
“Yeah,” Jules said. “I get it.”
“But from now on,” Autumn said, “talk to me. Don’t pick a fight. I don’t like fighting.”
“Okay,” Jules said, nodding quickly. “I can do that.”
Autumn leaned back on her elbows and Jules tried not to let her eyes linger where Autumn’s skirt rode up. “Oh, Jules,” she said, and the smile she gave now was her full dazzling brightness. “What am I going to do with you?”
She stood and took three steps across the floor, planting herself in front of Jules. “You make me nervous,” she said. “Not because I don’t want this, but because I want it so much. And it’s all new to me. I’ve never kissed anyone but you, and I’ve never kissed anyone with people watching me, and I’ve never held anyone’s hand and been like, This is my person. But I want to do all those things with you.”
Jules tipped her head to the side. “It’s okay,” she said. “I get it. It’s new to me, too. Being public. Letting people see. And I get how it feels scary sometimes. I don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to, that you’re not ready for.”
“I know you don’t,” Autumn said, and she put both her hands on Jules’s waist. “But I do want to do them. If I screw up—it’s not because of you. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“And if I screw up, will you let me know?”
“Yes,” Jules said, and she felt confident now, all the uncertainty gone and this magnetism in its place, heat from Autumn’s hands on her. “And you’ll do the same for me, right?”
“Yes.”
Jules smiled, relief that they were finally, definitely on the same page flooding her. She put her hands on either side of Autumn’s face and kissed her once, quick and sweet. “I feel so lucky,” she whispered in the space between their mouths.
Autumn’s fingers tickled at Jules’s waist in a way that made her squirm. “Please stop talking and kiss me properly,” Autumn said.
Jules felt both like she would come alight and come undone at Autumn’s touch. She felt suddenly nervous again—like she didn’t know where to put her hands or what to do with her body, even as her body seemed to decide for itself, pressing closer to Autumn, even as she kissed Autumn again, her tongue tracing Autumn’s lower lip.
Her heart was racing. Stop thinking.
Stop thinking stop thinking.
Why am I so nervous?
Is she nervous?
Her skin is so warm.
I think I love her.
They broke apart. “Jules,” Autumn said, her cheeks pink, her voice hoarse.
“What?” Jules said, her voice a whisper in response. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” The back of Autumn’s hand brushed right where Jules’s cutoff’s ended and her whole body bloomed warm. “Nothing at all,” Autumn said, and swallowed hard. “I, um . . .”
“Is it the kissing?” Jules asked. “We can stop.”
“No, no,” Autumn said. “That is the opposite of what I want.”
Jules wondered if she was hearing the meaning in Autumn’s words right. “So . . .”
“Full disclosure,” Autumn said. “I really want to do more than kiss you.”
“Like—” Jules couldn’t help her laugh. “That’s a nice way to put it.”
“Shut up,” Autumn said, and this time she pinched Jules’s thigh, the gentlest pain. “I’m saying I want to. If you want to. You know, take our clothes off and . . . other things.”
Now Jules’s heart rate kicked up a thousand percent. She touched her thumb to Autumn’s chin. “You know we don’t have to do anything.”
“You’re not listening,” Autumn said, and she stepped back. Her hands went to her shirt and she tugged it free from the waist of her skirt, lifting it to flash the smallest amount of peachy skin. “I want to. Get it?”
Jules wet her lips. She’d done under-the-clothes fooling around with Delaney, in the back of her car at night only, hands cramped behind zippers and underwear. And she was pretty expert at getting herself off, but that was a different matter entirely. But Autumn looking at her like that, taking off their clothes in Autumn’s room in afternoon sun, seeing each other and doing things to each other?
That was another level.
This was intimacy. Sleeping together.
Sex.
And god, she wanted to.
“Do you? Want to?” Autumn held her hand out to Jules. “Have sex with me?” An invitation. And a
nervous look that fluttered over her face, like maybe she was doing the wrong thing, which was so not true that Jules almost wanted to laugh.
But instead she took Autumn’s hand and pulled her close again, their bodies pressed together, and she pressed her hand flat against the bare skin under Autumn’s shirt. “Yeah, I do,” she said. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” Autumn said, and then her usual sweet smile turned wicked. “Yes!”
Jules cut her laugh off by kissing her, and her fingers fumbled for the hem of her own shirt. She found it and broke away from Autumn to pull it over her head and toss it aside, and Autumn did the same, revealing an emerald-green bra with all sorts of lace and ribbon that left Jules feeling too plain in her black sports bra. But the way Autumn took her in made her feel more than enough.
It was only a trip and fall to Autumn’s bed, and once they were on her rose-colored sheets everything seemed to slow and speed up at once. Fast: Autumn tracing circles around Jules’s belly button, Jules sliding her tongue at the back of Autumn’s knee, the time it took to unbutton her shorts. Slow: Autumn shimmying out of her skirt, the kiss Jules gave Autumn as the sunlight hit her eyes, the touch of Autumn’s hands on her breasts. The sound Autumn made when Jules touched her for the first time, surprised and breathless and quiet. And the satisfaction Jules felt, pride as she made this girl she was half or wholly in love with squirm and moan at her touch.
It was the best kind of careful and careless at the same time, accidental elbows and knees and giggles as they shifted around. A hurried apology at a sharp intake of breath and then No, no, good in response. Skin on skin and mouths on skin and hands on everything everywhere.
Jules had never done this, had kind of believed she’d have to wait years and years to find something like this. Someone who would let her see them so bare, who she would show herself to in spite of nerves, uncertainty. She tickled the bottoms of Autumn’s feet and got a laugh in response, and then she slid her hands up Autumn’s legs, dropped her head to blow on Autumn’s soft inner thigh. Autumn tensed, Jules felt it, and she raised her head. “Okay?”
This Is What It Feels Like Page 23