by Gina Ciocca
And he knows it. There’s a violent lurch in my stomach as I realize that Ben covered for me.
I can only imagine what my face looks like, because Noah quickly adds, “Don’t think I’m saying you’re to blame in any way, Mace. You didn’t force me to go over there the night of the homecoming dance. You didn’t know Meredith’s dad was going to leave the garage door cracked open because he’d been touching up the paint, and you sure as hell didn’t make me sit on that float feeling sorry for myself or put the bottle of vodka in my hand. I did all that. The same way I spilled half of it into the trash before I threw in the cigarette. It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
“You know everyone assumed I did it, right?” Joel spits out.
“I do now. It was one of the things I wanted to tell you tonight. I had no idea you’d skipped out on the dance until Macy told me. Trust me, I feel even shittier knowing you took the blame.”
Joel stands, his hands clenched at his sides. “That’s exactly what you wanted. You came here to make my life hell, and now you expect me to believe that you feel bad about it? Seems to me like everything played out exactly the way you planned, right down to the way you used Macy to get back at me.” Joel turns to me. “He hasn’t gotten to that part yet. But in case you thought he really cared about you, he doesn’t.” He turns back to Noah. “I don’t think he cares about anyone but himself.”
He’s halfway across the lawn in three strides, and Noah and I both jump to our feet.
“You know that’s not true,” Noah calls after him. “No matter what I told myself about moving here to get back at you”—his voice rises in volume and urgency as Joel continues to retreat—“I just wanted to be with you.”
Joel stops, then looks up at the sky. When he turns around, every wall he let down in the past half hour is firmly back in place. “I can’t, okay? I’m sorry.”
Noah makes a move like he’s going to take off after Joel, but I put my hand on his arm. “Give him some space,” I say.
Noah releases a frustrated, primal grunt into the air before collapsing onto the bench. I sit down next to him, waiting for him to get his bearings. After a long, quiet moment, he says, “I really fucked up, Mace.”
“I think we’ve all made our share of mistakes.”
“I’ll talk to Meredith if you want. I won’t say anything about how I knew the float was in her garage. I’ll lie if I have to. It’s the least I can do.” He reaches over to take my hand, and I let him. “Joel’s right, you know. I mean, not totally right. But he wasn’t wrong when he said I wormed my way into your life to get a rise out of him.” His thumb runs along the inside of my wrist, the same way he touched me at Old Mill Park when he kissed me. Only, this time it’s different—not a come-on but an apology. “I came to Ridgedale thinking the two of you were together. But then when I saw that you weren’t even speaking, I thought I could screw with him by getting close to you. Make him jealous, because he knew I at least had a chance at falling for you.”
I nod, but I’m finding it hard to look at him. “In other words, you used me.”
He sandwiches my hand between both of his. “At first, yes. And you have no idea how sorry I am. Because I really am your friend, Mace. It’s why I backtracked after I asked you to homecoming, and why I stopped lying about that kiss—I knew I was being a sadistic little prick, and I couldn’t do that to you.” He stops short and says something that he’s said to me before. “I like you. I do.”
I lay my other hand on top of his. “You like me,” I say with a shrug. “But you love him.”
Noah laughs, one quiet, incredulous note. “Yeah,” he says. “Probably could’ve saved myself a lot of trouble if I’d just opened with that.”
And then, because it wouldn’t be Noah if he wasn’t taking me completely by surprise, he lays his head in my lap and starts to cry.
Thirty-Three
SENIOR YEAR
Noah insisted on still taking me to the homecoming dance. I told him he didn’t have to, that I understood if his heart wasn’t in it. But he interpreted that as I’m disgusted by you and never want to see to you again, and the only way I could convince him otherwise was to say we were still on.
In all honesty, disgust is the last thing I feel. For him, or for Joel. Our friendships might’ve started under less-than-truthful circumstances, but it doesn’t mean they’re not real. I’d be lying if I said Joel’s confession didn’t bring up more questions, but at the very least, I understand his motivation.
Which is why I pick up the phone and call him the minute the digital alarm clock on my nightstand reads 5:50—exactly fifteen minutes from the time I last texted him.
It rings long enough that I’m mentally preparing a voice mail message, but then there’s a click. “Mace? What’s up?”
“I texted you and you didn’t answer. I got nervous.”
Joel chuckles. “I saw your text, and I’m fine. No running off to Buford tonight, I promise. But I’m not coming to the dance.”
“Please, Joel? I hate knowing that you’re going to be home by yourself.”
“I won’t be by myself. I’ll be with my parents and my brothers.”
I sigh. “You know, I never got to dance with you last year. I was hoping to make up for it tonight.”
The line goes quiet. Then he says: “Is it okay if I come over for a minute? There’s something I want to tell you anyway.”
I can only imagine what he’s referring to, and Noah will be here to pick me up in half an hour, but I tell Joel of course he can stop by.
When the doorbell rings ten minutes later, I’m one step away from being ready. My dress is still hanging in its plastic bag on my closet door, but my hair, makeup, and nails are all dialed up to homecoming level. So I’m not all that embarrassed to answer the door in my bathrobe and slippers.
I open it to find Joel standing outside, holding two yellow roses. Before I can do anything more than smile, my mother walks into the foyer, saying, “Macy? Who’s at the—” She stops short when she sees Joel. I haven’t told her anything about what happened on the basketball court, and my instincts to usher Joel to safety before she can start in on him kick into high gear.
“Joel,” she says, the pitch of her voice surprised but casual as she eyes the flowers. “You know Macy already has a date for homecoming, right? You were supposed to take her last year.”
Too late. I open my mouth, but Joel steps into the foyer, wiping his feet on the welcome mat. “I know, Mrs. Atwood. She’s going with my ex-boyfriend.” He sucks in a breath. “I’m gay.” My mother’s eyes bulge, and I’m pretty sure my expression is almost the same as hers, but for different reasons. Joel exhales, sheepishly holding out one of the roses to my mom. “Sorry,” he says. “I haven’t told my parents yet, and that was practice.”
She reaches for the flower, her mouth opening and closing without a sound. Finally she says, “You’re gay?” Her gaze switches to me. “And so is Noah?” I nod, deciding I’ll correct her terminology later. The stunned look on her face turns to confusion. Guess her personality radar didn’t pick up on that little nugget. “How did you end up with gay dates two years in a row?”
“Luck?” I say, and she turns to Joel, twisting the flower between her fingers. My mother is almost never at a loss for words, and I have to hold back a snicker as a high, nervous laugh skitters from her throat.
“Well. Congratulations.” Her eyes dart from Joel to me and back. “Is that the right thing to say? I’ve never had anyone come out to me before.”
Joel considers it. “That works. And I really am sorry for what I put Macy through last year.”
She nods, pressing the flower to her nose. “If Macy forgives you, then so do I.” She steps back toward the kitchen. “Good luck telling your parents. And thank you for telling me.”
I nod toward the stairs. “Come up to my room.” We jog up the stairs, and I close the door behind us, giving Joel a push on the arm. “Definitely didn’t see that co
ming. You were amazing.”
“Glad you thought so. My heart feels like it’s gonna beat right out of my chest and take off down the road.”
I sit on the edge of my bed. “Are you really planning to tell your parents?”
Joel stares at the remaining flower in his hand. “I have to, Mace. Maybe not tonight, but soon. Denying it won’t make it go away. And . . . the more I say it out loud, the more I think I’m learning to be okay with that.”
“Noah would be really proud of you.” I tap the comforter, not wanting to be too pushy with what I say next. “I’m not the only one who’d like to dance with you tonight, you know.”
“About that.” Joel steps forward, holding out the flower. “This is for you. I bought you a yellow rose corsage last year, but . . . obviously I never gave it to you. So I brought two flowers to make up for this year and last, only . . .” He swings around to look at the door. “I ended up giving the other one to your mom. Sorry. It felt like a good move.”
“It was.” I laugh, brushing the silky petals over my lips.
Joel pulls his cell phone from the back pocket of his jeans and sets it on top of my dresser. He presses the screen a few times, and then a familiar song starts to play.
The song.
My spine straightens, and the flower drops to my lap. “How did you know about this song?”
Joel freezes, looking almost frightened by my reaction. “What about it?”
“Last year, when I walked out of homecoming. Ben followed me outside and asked me to dance with him. This was the song that was playing.”
“Oh.” Joel fumbles with the phone, and a different melody starts up. “Weird coincidence, I swear. Is this better?”
“Better for what?”
He holds out his hand. “May I have this dance?”
I study him to see if he’s pulling my leg, but his eyes are so earnest and the set of his mouth betrays the tiniest bit of nerves. It’s so sweet that I can’t say no. So I take his hand, and we start the first dance of the night, right there in my bedroom.
“You don’t have to wear that,” Joel says, nodding toward my dresser, where the locket he gave me is laid out next to my earrings and bracelet for tonight.
“But I like it.”
“I know.” He shakes his head. “Only, it was never mine to give. That’s one of the things I wanted to tell you before the dance tonight.”
“What do you mean?”
“So, remember how I said Meredith knows about me? It’s because I told her. The night that they gave my dad the welcome-home celebration, that was the night I planned to come out. I pulled her aside before the game because I was sick of everyone thinking I had something to do with the fire. I promised her that I hadn’t been anywhere near her house that night. And then I blurted it out.”
“How did she react?”
“She hugged me. Which I didn’t expect, but it gave me the boost I needed to feel like I could tell everyone else. I made her promise not to say anything until I gave the okay. But then my dad got onstage at halftime, and we all know what happened after that.” He grimaces. “I thought she’d kept her word, until you came into the library that day and mentioned the ‘shitty thing’ I’d done the night of the blackout.”
I pull back and look up at him, a cold sensation brewing in my veins. “Wait. When you said you’d made a bad decision—you meant coming out to Meredith?”
“Yeah. I thought she’d blabbed and it was blowing up in my face. But what you said right after made me realize that you must’ve been referring to some other shitty thing.” He jerks his head in the direction of the necklace. “That was the only other thing I could think of. Because I didn’t buy it for you. I didn’t even pick it out. I found it near the football field that morning when I was waiting to meet with you and you never showed.” He hangs his head. “The rest was all bullshit I made up on the spot.”
I stop dancing, retracting my arms from around his neck. “So you didn’t kiss me when the power went out?”
“Kiss you? Mace, I got within an inch of telling you I was gay. Why would I kiss you?”
“Because someone did. And then walked away without a word before the lights came up. That was the shitty thing I meant.”
“Oh.” He draws the word out, like he’s giving himself an extra second to make sense of this. “So it was never about me finding some kid’s necklace on the ground and passing it off as my gift to you, or the fact that it was only one of about a thousand lies I told you?”
“Joel, whatever lies you told me, yes, they hurt my feelings. But they’re water under the bridge, okay? Clean slate. I’ve had enough experience with grudges to know that it’s not the route I want to take.” I pause. “There’s not more, is there?”
He scratches his head. “No. That covers it. But I want you to know, Mace. The idea behind the necklace was real at least. I did want things to be good between us again, and I’m sorry I screwed it up a second time.”
“You could make it up to me by coming to the dance,” I say with a hopeful bat of my eyelashes. Joel immediately starts to squirm and stutter, so I don’t drag out the torture. “Kidding, Joel. I’m kidding. It was worth a shot.”
A knock sounds then, and my mother pokes her head into the room. “Hey. Door open when friends are in your bedroom, please. Gay or not.” She winks. “And can you see if Noah is running on schedule? I want to make sure we have plenty of time for pictures.”
Joel retrieves his cell phone as she makes her way downstairs. “I should get going. If I do end up talking to my parents tonight, I have to figure out how to do it.”
I pull him into a hug and wish him luck. Before he can go, I tug at his hand, hoping he won’t think I’m prying. “So,” I say. “What about Noah?”
“Noah’s made some pretty stupid decisions. But then again, so have I.” He releases my hand and puts his in the pocket of his jeans. “I have to figure out where we go from here.”
I so want to point out that he seemed to know exactly where he wanted things to go when he kissed Noah on the basketball court, but it’s not my call. So I bite my tongue and we say good-bye.
Once he’s gone, I take my heart locket from my dresser and sink into the armchair in the corner of my bedroom. I flick it open and stare at the empty center. In a way, Jadie was right when she compared Joel to the fable about the painted clock. Only, I was never the downfall that Joel was so afraid of; it was Noah.
As my palm closes around the heart, I feel like it has lost some of its meaning. I wanted to think of it as Joel’s promise to start over, the same way I was hoping for that kiss in the dark to be the beginning of something special.
I close my eyes, letting myself relive that moment for the first time in a long time. Letting my insides flutter and the warmth spread from my head to my toes. When I open my eyes, I grab my phone and send a text to Joel. Something he said isn’t sitting right, and I need him to clear it up.
As I wait for his answer, I lose myself in the memory again. And just for a minute, I let myself wonder if an abandoned locket on the football field might mean something totally different from what I originally thought.
Something that, up until now, I haven’t allowed myself to hope for.
Thirty-Four
SENIOR YEAR
It’s almost a shame that Noah and I mutually friend-zoned each other, because with his dark hair and smoldering eyes and his suit, the boy cleans up like he stepped right out of an Armani ad.
He’s unusually quiet as a group gathers to take pictures in front of the fountains near the town hall green. The clouds are backlit and turning pink with the sun’s descent, the perfect backdrop for what’s supposed to be a perfect night. Every time a camera or cell phone clicks, I envision the next wave of Ridgedale’s Finest photos. The smiling faces, the arching water, arms around shoulders and hands touching waists. And then I think about what no one else will notice. Like the concerted effort that Ben and Meredith are making to keep as many people b
etween us as possible. Ben never did respond to my text about the bulletin board, and I wonder if he’s angry at me too. Again.
I watch Noah, hooking his finger into the collar of his shirt every five minutes like it’s suffocating him. I wonder if everyone sees it, if they assume it’s because it’s too starched or too tight, or if they have any idea that he doesn’t want to be here.
At least not with me.
I point my lens at the sky to capture one thing that actually is perfect tonight. As I lower my camera, ready to cap it and leave it in Noah’s car in favor of my less cumbersome cell phone camera, I notice someone standing at the edge of the fountain, his own cell phone aimed at the pink plumes. My breath catches when Ben turns around as if he felt my stare. His mouth turns up into a smile, like he knew we’d be thinking the same thing. Like we’re in on the same secret. And I bring my camera to my eye, freezing one more perfect image forever.
* * *
It isn’t long before we’re all filing into the gym entrance. I shoulder my way through the crowd to the bulletin board. Taking in the whole thing, it really is a work of art. Almost the entire school is represented: Athletics, arts, teachers, coaches, and lunch ladies all make appearances in the four-by-four squares. It’s a colorful mosaic, spotlighting the high points of everyday life.
And I get that that’s the point.
Still, I can’t stop myself from zeroing in on that one photo, the memory of Ben and me that has existed only inside my head for the past year. It makes me feel like no time has passed at all, even though the entire board is evidence of the contrary.
“Oh, I see it,” Jadie says, coming up behind me. She motions at the picture with a hand that’s intertwined with Tyrell’s. “No wonder Meredith’s mad. That is ridiculously cute.” She shoots a glance at Noah. “No offense, Pirate Booty.”
Noah smirks. “I was actually thinking the same thing.”
Jadie leans in and, more quietly, says, “Do you want me to take it down?”