A Kiss in the Dark

by Gina Ciocca

  The way Ben looks at me makes me feel like he’s testing me. On what, I don’t know. But I decide that’s silly—I’m probably hallucinating. I sit up and take his hand, but I don’t get to my feet. “You’re such a good friend, Ben.”

  “You said the same thing last night.” He gives me that look again, like there’s a correct response to that statement, and it’s starting to make me a little self-conscious that I have no idea what it is. So I go with:

  “I owe you so big.” I squeeze his hand to show him I mean it. “Whatever I can do, just let me know.”

  “Really?” From the way he brightens, I have to wonder if he’s already thought of something. And then, as if he read my mind, he says, “Because there is something, but I’m not sure how you’d feel about it.”

  I snort, which makes every muscle in my torso smart. “Unless you’re going to ask me to rob a bank, I’m pretty sure I can handle it.”

  “Okay. Um.” A nervous-sounding chuckle escapes his throat, and he runs his free hand through his hair. The other is still holding mine, and as the seconds tick by, his touch starts to feel different. Less helpful. More . . . hopeful? “So I was—” he starts to say, but the creaking of the basement door interrupts.

  “Collins,” Joel’s voice, raspy with sleep, or maybe lack thereof, calls down the stairs. “Where the hell do you keep toothpaste in this place? And, um, do you have a bottle of Fantastik or something? I need to clean your bathroom floor.”

  Ben drops my hand and claps his against his head. “Dude. I left a garbage can right next to you.”

  “I know. I missed.”

  I can tell Ben feels bad leaving me, but I say I’ll be fine, even though I’m not sure it’s the truth. I do manage to find my clothes and my purse in Ben’s laundry room. When I pull out my cell phone, there are three missed calls from my mother and three texts from Meredith.

  One text says BRIDESMAID DUTY = DONE, YOU GUYS STILL OUT?? The second came through about an hour later and reads IF YOU’RE GOING TO FAKE SLEEP AT MY PLACE, WHY NOT JUST SLEEP HERE FOR REAL?? And the third: GUESS YOU HAD A GOOD TIME.

  Great. She’s mad. But I don’t have the time or energy to grovel right now, so I fire off a quick BE HOME SOON to my mother and drag myself into the bathroom. I get through a shower without incident, even if I do most of my washing seated on the tile floor of the stall. There’s a connected workout room, and I get dressed in there. No one thought to sneak my overnight bag out of Jadie’s house last night, so I try not to blanch as I turn yesterday’s underwear inside out beneath the clothes that Ben washed for me. By the time I’m ready, Ben and Joel are each sitting on one of the leather couches.

  Joel is pale, with dark circles under his eyes, and blond stubble glistens on his chin. I don’t recognize what he’s wearing, so I assume Ben lent him the gray sweatpants and blue T-shirt he has on. Even though he looks like he should be hooked up to an IV, he stands up and says, “We have to go. Ben’s parents are on their way home.”

  “Are you okay to drive?”

  He gives me a limp smile. “I can make the car go in a straight line, but I can’t guarantee that I won’t have to pull over between here and your house.”

  I’m praying for an uneventful drive as Ben walks us out to the car. Even through sunglasses, the morning light is so offensive that I can barely think of anything except making a beeline for my bed the minute I walk in the door. Ben gave me a sweatshirt to hide my walk-of-shame outfit, but it’s early enough that my brothers might still be sleeping, and my parents will probably be reading the paper over coffee at the kitchen table, out of sight from the front door. That way I can make my escape without being spotted.

  It doesn’t occur to me until we’re pulling out of the driveway that Ben never got the chance to ask for his favor. I make a mental note to text him later, when I can look at my phone’s screen without feeling like I’m going to hurl.

  It’s a quiet ride home. We make it to my house without having to stop, and I tell Joel to text me so I’ll know he got home in one piece. As I open the car door, he grabs my hand.

  “Thanks, Mace.”

  “For what?”

  He lets go of my fingers. “I don’t know. I just felt like I should say it.” He puts the car in gear. “Good luck.”

  “Same to you.”

  As he drives away, I unlock the front door and slip inside, noting the kitchen lights spilling onto the hardwood of the dining room floor. My parents are definitely in there. And just as I’m about to call, I’m home, and make a run for it, the sound of a gong reverberates in my skull, breaking my brain into a hundred pieces.

  That’s when my mother, father, and both of my brothers march into the dining room. Everyone is holding wooden spoons except for Aaron, who’s wearing his noise-canceling headphones as Michael gleefully smacks away at the lid to one of the pots that are tucked under my parents’ arms. A cacophony of clashes and pings and clangs rings through the foyer until I feel like the sounds are tunneling inside my head like tree roots and I might implode at any second.

  “WELCOME HOME, MACY!” my family shouts in unison, and it’s clear that this is an ambush.

  They know.

  “What are you guys doing?” I say, sinking onto the bottom stair, clutching my temples.

  “Giving you the welcome you deserve,” my dad replies. He punctuates it with a loud smack of the wooden spoon against the bottom of his pot.

  “I got a text from Jadie’s mother saying that you spent last night at Meredith’s.” My mom shifts her pot to her hip, her lips taut with anger and disappointment. “But when I asked Mrs. Kopala if I should pick you up while I was out this morning, she said you weren’t there.” Her eyes flash. “I called you three times, Macy Jean.”

  “I know, Mom. But by the time I saw it—”

  “You were what?” Her question slashes off the end of my statement. “You could’ve been tied up in someone’s basement, for all I know.”

  “Well, I was in someone’s basement, but I wasn’t tied to a post or anything.”

  My parents’ expressions don’t change, and my brothers give each other confused looks.

  My dad holds out his pot, a beat-up hunk of stainless steel that my mother uses to make soup. “Hand over your phone and go to your room. We’ll discuss this later.”

  There’s a defeated clunk as my cell hits the discolored bottom. I slink off to my room knowing that I’ll be paying for last night for a very long time.

  * * *

  It’s a couple of hours later when my mother comes into the dark, quiet solitude of my bedroom and sits down on the edge of my bed with my cell phone in hand.

  “Your friend Joel must be very worried about you,” she says. “He keeps sending you text messages.”

  I roll over to face her, noticing that I feel a little hungry for the first time all day. “Am I allowed to answer him?”

  “First tell me why he’s checking on you so many times, and then we’ll talk about it.”

  I tell her. All of it, or at least what I remember. And I don’t leave anything out, because I feel like somehow she’d know.

  Once I finish, she’s quiet for a bit. “Macy.” She pauses again, like she’s deciding how hard it’s necessary to ride me. “I don’t consider myself an unreasonable parent. Nor am I ignorant. I’m well aware that kids your age are experimenting with a lot of things, especially alcohol. And I’ve never expressly forbidden you to drink, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t expect you to behave responsibly. That includes being honest with me. Telling me what you’re doing, who you’re with, and checking in with me when your plans change. I don’t think that’s asking too much. Do you?”

  “No.” In all honesty, this is probably the least dramatic reaction I’ve ever seen her have to anything. It’s pretty humbling.

  Mom must know she’s twisted the knife enough, because she switches to interrogating me about Joel. She wants to know how close we are. Which, of course, is code for Do I need to rehash the
birds-and-bees lecture while I’m here?

  “We’re friends,” I say.

  Mom raises an eyebrow. “But?”

  “No ‘but.’ ” Her stare is unrelenting, and she ticks my phone from side to side in front of her chest like a pendulum. So I tack on, “Yet?”

  “Well.” She turns the phone toward her, and the screen illuminates her face. “He wants to meet for coffee at Mugsy’s, but since you’re grounded—”

  “No! I’m supposed to go to Meredith’s and help finish the homecoming float today.” Not to mention I still haven’t responded to her text messages. She’s going to kill me.

  “I already made Meredith aware of your situation. The float will have to get finished without you.” She hands me the phone. “I’m relinquishing this long enough for you to call and tell Joel he can bring your coffee here. I couldn’t get a good read from the two minutes at the door when he came to pick you up.” I have to laugh. “After that, your phone is mine until next weekend, unless you’re in school or at practice. Which are the only places you’ll be going.”

  Less than half an hour later, Joel pulls up to the curb in front of our mailbox and emerges from his car with a red Styrofoam Mugsy’s cup in each hand. I’m praying my family will be gentle with their inquisition as I watch him from our dining room window. If the way I feel is any indication, Joel doesn’t have the luxury of all his pistons firing right now.

  My parents are already behind me as I open the door, so I can only hope Joel hears my telepathic apology for whatever discomfort they inflict on him. Even though they know that I made my own moronic decisions last night, having their first real conversation with him while he’s shaking off a hangover and after I tried to lie about spending the night under the same roof as him . . . he hasn’t made the best impression.

  We get through the initial overly polite introductions, and Joel hands me my coffee so he can shake my father’s hand.

  “Good call on the coffee,” Dad says. “Looks like you could both use it.”

  Joel gives a nervous chuckle, looking like he wishes he could jump into his cup and submerge himself. “Yeah. This—” He looks at me, floundering. “It’s not a habit. Not even close. But yesterday was my birthday, and I guess I threw good judgment out the window.” He ducks into his shoulders like a turtle missing its shell. “Sorry.”

  He’s so embarrassed, and this is torture to witness. It doesn’t help that my brothers have crammed themselves into the doorframe between the dining room and kitchen, eavesdropping with unabashed conspicuousness.

  “Oh, well, happy birthday,” Mom says coolly. “Older and wiser, eh?”

  “And dehydrated,” Joel adds.

  Luckily, the stiffness in my parents’ postures eases up after that, and the conversation becomes less interrogational. Mom even offers Joel a piece of homemade pound cake, and when he politely refuses, Aaron and Michael take it as their cue to drag him into the living room and test his video game knowledge.

  “Are we allowed to walk down to the lake?” I ask as Michael insists on showing Joel the “cool trick” he learned to take down some evil ogre in a game that I’m always amazed doesn’t give them nightmares.

  “Don’t be gone long,” my mother replies.

  Joel and I both breathe a sigh of relief when the front door closes behind us.

  “Wow,” he says. “They don’t hate me or anything.”

  “They really don’t.” I hope I sound reassuring. “They’re mad at me, and all they know about you is that you were with me last night. Makes you an easy target to play the bad influence. Then they don’t have to put all the blame on me, because that’s kind of the same as blaming themselves. At least I think that’s their logic.”

  Joel shrugs deeper into his sweatshirt, even though it’s not cold out. “Makes sense. I got the ‘man of the house’ speech from my mom, plus the ‘you’re only doing this because your father isn’t here to deal with you’ guilt trip, which means I’ll be getting a long-distance lecture from my dad later on. Not that it matters, when she already grounded me.”

  I throw him a quizzical look. “If you’re grounded, how are you here?”

  “I told her I was going to the car wash to get the puke off the exterior. She’s running around with my brothers this afternoon anyway. As long as I’m back before she has to go to work, it’s no big deal. My parents are great at ignoring things if it’s more convenient to overlook them.”

  “So you babysit your brothers while your mom works?”

  Joel nods through a slurp of his coffee. “Between Peyton’s medications and his moods, he can be kind of tough for other people to deal with. Sometimes the neighbors will take them, or people from church. But most of the time, it’s me.”

  “Wow. Can your mom really blame you for wanting to cut loose a little?”

  He snorts. “From what I remember, I’m not sure it was worth it.”

  I wrap my hands around my cup as we round the corner at the end of my street, trying to come up with something to contradict him. I thought the haze shrouding my memories of last night would clear along with my headache, but it’s like my brain has the same fragmented highlight reel playing on repeat.

  “Were your friends from Mortonville giving you a hard time? I feel like you were upset about something.” I also feel like an ass admitting that I can’t really remember.

  “They were mostly fine. There was this one kid I didn’t expect to be there, and it kind of threw me when he was.”

  We trot down the planks that serve as steps to the path between the lakes and settle down on one of the benches. I lift my knees to my chest.

  “Which one was that?”

  Joel’s face twists. “The jerk in the blue car.”

  I rack my brain, but come up blank. “Did he say something to you?”

  “Something about a threesome when you and Ben wished me happy birthday.” Now that, I vaguely recall. “I kept waiting for more. My parents almost took out a restraining order against him this summer. Kid’s fucking crazy.”

  My eyes widen. No wonder Joel seemed on edge last night. He was watching his back the whole time. “Is that part of the reason you left?” I suddenly feel stupid. I always assumed Joel had a good life in Mortonville, and that transferring to Ridgedale was a downgrade. I never bothered to ask if maybe it was just the lesser of two evils.

  Joel shrugs, staring over the lid of his cup at the murky water, and the faraway look in his eyes tells me his mind has gone elsewhere. “I guess you could say that.” In the next blink, he’s there with me again and pulling his phone out of his pocket. “I got some pretty funny pictures, at least. Actually, I have no idea who took half of these. Check them out.”

  He hands over his cell, and I scroll through the photos with my thumb. There are pictures of the football players and cheerleaders going shot for shot from the white paper sample cups, pics of Joel pretending to gag as Ben laps up his Pickle Juice slushie.

  I snort. “You’re lucky you were only pretending to puke in this one.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “So who lost it first? Me or you?”

  “I think I did,” Joel says, a trace of guilt creeping into the words. “I started feeling woozy when Ben and I were in the—” He cuts himself off and pales so suddenly that I’m afraid he’s about to be sick yet again.

  “Joel? Are you all right?”

  He licks his lips like his mouth has gone dry and eyes his cup. “Yeah. I think the coffee hit me the wrong way. Is there a garbage can around here?”

  I nod to my left. “There’s one at the playground. We can loop past it and take a different route back to my house if you want.”

  “Do you mind if we go now? I don’t think I can stand smelling this anymore.”

  We get up and walk to the rec area, where the pool, tennis court, playground, and clubhouse are clustered at the center of the subdivision. Once Joel’s coffee is in the trash, he doesn’t seem as anxious to leave. We sit down on the swings a
nd rock back and forth with quiet, absent glides.

  I try to go a little higher, then realize almost immediately that it’s a bad idea. I assume Joel has done the same when he suddenly stops, trenches forming in the wood chips where he plants his feet. As I’m scrambling to slow myself, he blurts, “Do you want to go to homecoming with me?”

  I gawk at him as I drag my feet along the ground, forcing myself to a complete stop. I half expected puke to come out of his mouth. I did not expect that.

  “Really?” I finally say.

  Joel smiles. “Are you that shocked?” Then his expression changes abruptly. “Or do you not want to be seen on the arm of a former Pirate? Are you afraid I’ll embarrass you?”

  “No. God—you know I don’t give a rat’s ass about all that Pirate crap. I just—” I clap my hand over my mouth, but a giggle escapes anyway. “Really?”

  Joel’s grin returns. “Is that a yes?”

  I nod, suddenly grasping that I got asked to homecoming by Joel Hargrove. While sitting on a swing set, hungover, in sweats, and not wearing a drop of makeup. I don’t even have my camera to capture the moment.

  And it could not be more perfect.

  Twenty-Two

  SENIOR YEAR

  YOU’LL NEVER BELIEVE WHO I JUST PICKED UP OFF THE STREET.

  Jadie’s text reaches my phone a few minutes before her car pulls into my driveway. We’re shooting the pennant hunt for the yearbook, and she volunteered to give me a ride.

  And apparently she’s giving one to Noah, too. Because he’s sitting in the passenger seat of her car. When I reach the driveway, he steps out and motions for me to take his place while he folds himself into the cramped backseat.

  “Wow, talk about an odd couple,” I say as I shut myself into the car.

  Jadie’s head ticks toward Noah. Her black hair is in two French braids, and she’s wearing cat-eye sunglasses. “Pirate Booty was having car troubles.”

  “My own fault,” Noah adds. “I’ve been procrastinating taking it in for a recall. It picked today to bite me in the ass.”