Cherry

by Lindsey Rosin

  “Actual sudden? That is not a real phrase—”

  “Yeah, well, for actual and for real: You are already a fully formed human. You can still be in process or whatever. I think we all are . . . but you’re still already you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Do you hear me though?”

  “I think so,” Emma said, even though she wasn’t sure.

  “You’re already you—and you’re already magical, so can we agree that whatever this is . . . is already good too?”

  “Yes.” Emma nodded. Savannah’s use of the word “magical” was still echoing inside her head. She didn’t just hear that part, she felt it.

  “Okay. So. Then. Are we . . . ?”

  “Savannah. If you try to ‘expectation’ me right now, I swear . . .”

  “No, no,” Savannah said quickly, “I wouldn’t dare do that to you.”

  Good, Emma thought.

  Right now, for the first time in a long time, all of her thoughts were mostly clear and genuinely good.

  Now that felt like some actual progress.

  * * *

  ZOE was surprised to see Dylan standing in front of her house.

  He had texted her about an hour ago, saying that he needed to see her. And now here he was, standing on the sidewalk at 9:00 p.m. on a Wednesday night.

  “What’s up?” she asked. “Another mix CD?”

  “I can’t stop thinking about you.”

  Zoe wasn’t expecting that.

  “And,” he added, nervously biting his lip, “I can’t stop thinking about the other night . . . and how you picked up the phone while you were—”

  “Ohmigod, Dylan. I swear to God if you say it out loud—”

  “Okay, I won’t . . . ,” Dylan said as his whole face turned into a smile. “But I do want to say that . . . I think there’s a reason you picked up.”

  “I picked up because you were calling me for the first time in weeks—”

  “Yeah, but . . . I know you’re attracted to me—”

  “Oh, okay. Thank you—”

  “—and I know I’m attracted to you, too! That’s it. That’s why I’m here. I can’t stop thinking about you.”

  Zoe let Dylan’s words hang in the air for a moment.

  She’d never heard him say anything like that before. Not even close. She waited for him to say something—anything—more . . . but he didn’t. So she filled in the silence instead: “I have a boyfriend.” Zoe could feel her temperature rising. “I don’t want to do this right now . . .”

  “But . . . I just . . . feel like I’m gonna lose you, Zoe,” Dylan finally managed to say.

  “That’s a weird thing to say.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you never had me. You could’ve, maybe, at some point, but you didn’t want me all these years, so—”

  “That’s not true—”

  “But it is true. It’s painfully, absolutely true—and you’re only saying this to me now because I have a nice boyfriend who isn’t embarrassed to be with me in public—”

  “No. Stop. Your nice, public boyfriend only started liking you once you got boobs!”

  “Ohmigod.”

  “What?”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Are we just supposed to pretend they don’t exist?”

  “I don’t know! Why do you care about them so much?”

  “That’s kind of a stupid question.”

  “You’re kind of a stupid question,” Zoe said, wanting to laugh and scream at Dylan all at the same time. “I didn’t really even know Austin until I had boobs, so your argument is also stupid.”

  “Whatever. I’m saying I knew you before all that—”

  “And what . . . ? Do you want, like, friendship bonus points for being nice to the awkward, frizzy-haired charity case?”

  “Being nice? Zoe, is that what you think we’ve been doing all this time . . . ?”

  “Stop,” Zoe said, surprised to hear the word come out of her mouth.

  “Stop?”

  “This isn’t . . . I have a boyfriend.”

  “I know, Zoe, but that doesn’t mean . . . I’m just trying to tell you how I feel—about you—”

  “I don’t care how you feel! About anything!” Zoe said, even though they both knew that wasn’t true. She did care. She cared about Dylan so much. Probably too much. And there was a time when she would’ve killed for a moment like this. She’d wanted it to happen for years. But not now. Not like this . . . She didn’t know what else to say. “I’m with Austin, and we’re having sex now, so . . .”

  Dylan’s face sank.

  Zoe knew he wasn’t expecting that.

  And this was certainly not how she had envisioned telling him, but the words had come out of her mouth, and she couldn’t take them back now. “I’m sorry. For just saying it like that—”

  “No, it’s—”

  “—but we hadn’t really talked in a while, so . . .”

  “Yeah. It’s . . . I mean that’s . . . cool. I just . . . I feel like an idiot.”

  Zoe hated the look on Dylan’s face right now, so disappointed and betrayed. Honestly, she felt like an idiot too. And she felt like there was so much more she wanted to say to him—but maybe there was also nothing at all. Dylan stood silently in front of her, avoiding her eye contact. All of their past conversations, all of the phonefalls, began to replay in Zoe’s brain all at once, giving her a front row seat to relive them and over-analyze them at the same time. It looked like Dylan might’ve been doing the same thing. Or maybe he was just trying as hard as he could not to get emotional and therefore maybe he wasn’t thinking about anything at all. Zoe couldn’t quite tell. “I feel like you’ve been lying to me this whole time,” she finally managed.

  “Zoe. I never lied to you,” Dylan insisted.

  “I think it’s time for you to go home.”

  “Zoe, please . . . ,” Dylan said as sincerely and sweetly as he could. “The only lie I ever told you was that I only liked you when I already knew I was completely in love with you.”

  “Completely?”

  “Maybe not the whole time, but—”

  “Of course it wasn’t the whole time! It couldn’t’ve been! You were too busy dating a parade of skinny blond girls!” Zoe said sharply and loudly.

  “Yeah. And falling asleep on the phone with you every night,” Dylan said softly.

  Zoe had wanted to hear Dylan say this sort of thing for so long, but now that he had, now that she was listening to the words actually come out of his mouth, it just felt forced. “I feel like you only want to be with me now because I want to be with someone else,” Zoe said. She wasn’t entirely sure she believed that, but was sure that she had to say it. And then there really was nothing left to say. Zoe turned around and left Dylan standing alone behind her.

  109 days until graduation . . .

  LAYLA couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a new first kiss.

  The only person she’d kissed for the past two years was Logan, and the painful truth was that he was still the person she wanted to be kissing, but he was no longer an option.

  Instead she made a kiss list.

  She took out a pen and a piece of paper and wrote down a list of people she wanted to kiss. It wasn’t another to-do list, more like a wish list, and it made her feel silly and small, but she had to do something. She wished she had a better, more brilliant idea, but this kiss list was the best she could come up with considering the circumstances, mostly the fact that Logan was now (indefinitely) kissing Vanessa and there was absolutely nothing she could do about that.

  So far Layla had written down five names: Wyatt (the cute boy from Savannah’s party whose last name she didn’t know) followed by Jackson Clark, Miles Roth, Tyson Marks, and Channing Tatum.

  Obviously, that last name was more of a dream than a plan, but Layla always mushed those two things up in her mind anyway.

  “Might as well shoot for the stars, I guess,” she
’d said to the girls at lunch a few days earlier. She was doing her very best to find the bright side and trust that things happened for a reason and all of that, but right now even the stars felt like they were tainted. Logan always said he loved her to the moon and back. And they’d spent oh-so-many hours out on her trampoline staring up at the moon and the stars, and she hated that even as she was talking about other boys, other boys she genuinely wanted to kiss, her thoughts were still drifting back to Logan . . .

  “It’d be weird if you weren’t thinking about him,” Emma said.

  “I’m not even thinking about him,” Layla had tried to explain. “But he basically ruined all the stars so that’s annoying.”

  “Okay, no,” Alex said, her voice sounding way too reasonable for Layla’s liking. “Let’s not give him that much power. Or any power . . .”

  Easier said than done, Layla had thought, but she trusted her girls, and also the power of step-by-step instructions, so she started at the top of her kiss list and texted Wyatt, and that’s how she ended up sitting next to him near the edge of the Venice Beach skate park after school on Thursday.

  “You sure I can’t get you on a board?” Wyatt asked.

  “Positive. Not happening. But it’s cute of you to ask.”

  Layla wasn’t sure she remembered how to flirt, but she was trying. Actually calling him cute seemed far too obvious, but he really was cute. And adorable. And uncomplicated. Right now Layla appreciated that about him most of all. There was so much complication with Logan, so much Layla didn’t understand and couldn’t quite explain. It was nice to sit with Wyatt and not be confused. He was attractive, and she was attracted to him. And that was it.

  Wyatt was playful with his kisses, and Layla liked that.

  A lot.

  The only thing that Layla didn’t like about Wyatt’s kisses was that she couldn’t stop comparing them to Logan’s. She tried to cut herself some slack, considering how many thousands of kisses Logan had pressed onto her lips compared to these very first few she was now sharing with Wyatt, but she didn’t like that she could still somehow feel Logan’s kisses even though it was Wyatt’s tongue inside her mouth.

  And then she couldn’t stop thinking about Vanessa’s tongue.

  And what her tongue might’ve felt like inside Logan’s mouth.

  And whether or not Logan had thought about her lips when Vanessa’s lips were pressed up against his.

  And despite the distractions and unhelpful thoughts swirling around in her head, Layla kept kissing Wyatt . . . but it felt far more like the end of a chapter than a new beginning.

  108 days until graduation . . .

  ZOE heard all of Layla’s words, but she did not understand them.

  “What do you mean you’re done?” she asked sharply.

  “Okay, ‘done’ is maybe the wrong word,” Layla backtracked. She pushed some of the lettuce from her half-eaten salad back and forth with her plastic fork as the girls sat around their lunch table. It was a Friday, the last day of school before spring break, and tensions seemed to be running high. “I just . . . ,” Layla tried again. “I guess maybe I’m just trying to say that I don’t think it’s going to happen.”

  “Well, I didn’t either at first.” Zoe smiled. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

  But Zoe’s certainty withered as she saw a gloss wash over Layla’s eyes . . .

  “I don’t know,” Layla said. “It doesn’t feel like it’s gonna work without Logan.”

  “Is it too soon to say it didn’t exactly work with Logan either?” Alex said, which made Emma and Zoe giggle—while Layla, noticeably, did not.

  Zoe got the sinking feeling that it really was too soon. Or maybe too late. Or both.

  “Sorry, Lay,” Alex added quickly when she saw that Layla was actually upset.

  “It’s okay . . . ,” Layla said meekly.

  “Of course it’s okay,” Zoe insisted. “You’ve still got four more names on the kiss list. And it’s not like that bullet point disappeared or anything. It’s still there. There’s still a due date and everything. All of the things. It’s all still happening . . .”

  Zoe was expecting a “right” out of Layla, even if only a tepid one . . .

  . . . but instead she just got a short, clipped exhale.

  And Zoe did not like the sound of it one bit.

  It was off-putting and out of character and it made the little red, frizzy hairs on the back of Zoe’s neck stand up straight. “Unless . . . ,” Zoe started again slowly, “ . . . ‘done’ simply means you’re done . . . and then that’s it.”

  “Well that’s not exactly what I’m saying . . . ,” Layla attempted to explain, but Zoe had heard enough. Now she really felt like an idiot. An absolute mess of a human. All of a sudden Zoe remembered the feeling she got the first time Layla had smiled at her about the pact as they sat at their table at The Bigg Chill. Right now, in this moment, she felt exactly the opposite. She could also feel a dark pit growing inside her stomach as if she already knew what Layla was going to say next. Zoe was furious. She went from zero to livid in no time flat.

  “That sucks,” Zoe spit out with more bite in her voice than she’d anticipated.

  Zoe realized that it might’ve sound off-putting to Emma and Alex, as if her fervor had come out of nowhere, but Zoe could feel Layla abandoning the pact and The Crew and maybe even her, too, even though she hadn’t quite said that yet . . . and she hated all of it.

  “I’m just trying to be honest,” Layla said, which pissed Zoe off even more.

  “Thank you, Layla, I really super appreciate your ­honesty . . .”

  “Wait, what’s happening?” Emma asked as her eyes darted back and forth between Zoe and Layla.

  “Yeah. I think I missed something,” Alex added. Her eyes were darting too.

  Layla and Zoe were still stuck in a silent stalemate.

  Zoe didn’t want to have to be the one to say it out loud, but she couldn’t stand it anymore. “Layla is quitting the pact.”

  “No, she’s not . . . ,” Alex said.

  “She is. She just said she doesn’t want to do it,” Zoe exclaimed.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to—” Layla tried to speak up.

  “Right, sorry, Logan doesn’t want to, so Layla couldn’t possibly—”

  “Hey, Zoe . . . ,” Emma spoke up, trying to lower the temperature.

  “Sorry, but this is bullshit,” Zoe said to Emma before turning back to Layla. “I’m sorry you and Logan broke up, but that doesn’t mean you just have to give up on us, too . . .”

  “I am not giving up—on anything—but can we be real clear for a minute? Logan dumped me. If it was up to me, we’d still be together.”

  “Yeah, but you probably still wouldn’t’ve had sex with him anyway . . .”

  “That’s a low blow, Zoe,” Layla said, raising her voice for the first time.

  “I’m sorry, but I thought this was about us, all of us together. Or together together. Or whatever it was supposed to be . . . now I’m realizing that maybe this was just about Logan the whole time. Did you ever even care about the pact?”

  “Of course I did! Zoe, you’re being ridiculous!”

  “Being ‘done’ is ridiculous!”

  “I don’t want to do this if I can’t do it right.”

  “What does that even mean? Right?” Zoe asked, reaching a fever pitch.

  “I don’t know! I don’t know what it means—but I know it’s a problem! So I’m trying to tell you how I feel—or that I don’t know how I feel—and apparently none of that is allowed . . .”

  “Just do whatever you want, Layla,” Zoe fumed. “Clearly, I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

  “Did I make you do something you didn’t want to do?”

  “No—”

  “’Cause if you didn’t want to sleep with Austin—”

  “I never said that!”

  “—you shouldn’t have slept with Austin—”
<
br />   “I’m not talking about Austin! I’m talking about you, Layla. You’re giving up . . .”

  “I tried, Zoe! I tried with Logan, I just tried with Wyatt . . .”

  “Oh, okay . . .”

  “Do you think I didn’t? What else am I supposed to do?”

  “Try again! Try harder! Eat pizza. Whatever! Just don’t be a hypocrite.”

  “How about if you try not to be an asshole?”

  “Fuck you, Layla,” Zoe snapped.

  “Should I just pretend I’m still in? Will that make you feel better?”

  “Don’t do me any favors.”

  “I feel like that’s exactly what you’re asking for—”

  “It’s not, I swear—”

  “Good, because this isn’t just a favor. This is a big, huge deal.”

  “I know exactly what it is, Layla. I’m the one that’s actually had sex.” It wasn’t just what Zoe said, but also the way she said it, the harsh tone in her voice—and all the honesty behind it—that seemed to hurt Layla so much.

  And Zoe felt how mean her words were before they even came all the way out of her mouth, but it was too late for her to take them back.

  And Layla didn’t say anything else.

  She couldn’t.

  Instead, she just got up and walked away.

  101 days until graduation . . .

  The silence in The Chat was deafening.

  It had been seven days, and still no one had texted The Chat since Layla and Zoe’s fight at lunch. None of the girls had anything to say. Or maybe they all just had too much to say. Whatever the problem was exactly, no one seemed to know how to fix it, which had resulted in a week of complete radio silence, which was insane, considering the longest Chat silence before this one couldn’t’ve been longer than a day or two.

  The fact that it was spring break wasn’t exactly helping the situation, because it meant that they weren’t forced to see each other.

  Or maybe the break was actually just giving the girls the time and space that they needed.

  Or something.

  98 days until graduation . . .

  Still nothing.

  Three more days. Seventy-two more hours. And still—still—no one had texted The Chat, which now brought the grand total of nothingness up to ten days.