“I’m kind of worried it’s going to be anticlimactic, to be completely honest with you,” I confess, making a face.
“Oh yeah?” Clayton taps on the brakes, raises his eyebrows. “You want to just forget about the whole thing and head back?”
I reach out and sock him in the arm, just lightly. “Don’t you dare.”
“Hey there, muscles,” he says, grabbing my hand and squeezing, holding on for a second before letting go. “No assaulting the driver.”
We finally reach the border crossing, and the officer doesn’t seem at all surprised by our request. “So where are you from?” he asks, looking from my passport photo to my face and back again.
“Michigan,” I say.
“And how long are you staying in Canada?”
“Oh, about five more minutes,” Clayton says cheerfully.
The officer nods, satisfied, the stamp hitting the blank page with a satisfying chunk. “Enjoy your visit,” is all he says.
“Well?” Clayton asks once we’re back out on the road. “You feel different?”
I look at him for a moment, the late-afternoon sunlight turning his skin warm and tawny. I can’t believe he did this for me. Most of all I can’t believe I let him.
“Yeah,” I say, and I mean it. “I really do.”
* * *
The ride home is mostly quiet—another episode of [environ]Mental and a little more Prime Country, Faith Hill crooning quietly as the sun sinks behind the trees to the west. “You want me to drive for a while?” I ask. Once we switch, Clayton falls asleep almost immediately, his head against the window and the vulnerable line of his throat exposed. It takes literally all my willpower not to reach across the center console and run one gentle finger along the skin there, just to see if it’s as soft as it looks.
I don’t, obviously. I’m not a total psycho.
But I think about it.
Eventually the gas light goes on, so I pull into a service station, Clayton blinking awake just as I put the SUV in park at the pump. “Hi,” he says with a yawn, the wet pink muscle of his tongue visible for the briefest of seconds. “Where are we?”
“Another hour from home maybe?”
He asks me if I want anything and runs into the mini-mart to pee, returning a minute later with a plastic shopping bag that he tosses into the back before climbing into the driver’s seat.
“So,” I say as we pull onto the highway—thinking again of his texts with Bethany from earlier, wanting to give him a chance to drop her into the conversation on his own. “What’s your plan for the rest of the week?” By which I mean, Are you planning to get back together with your maybe ex-girlfriend, and does “it’s complicated” mean you guys still touch each other’s bathing suit areas? Please advise.
Clayton doesn’t bite, though. Instead he tells me about the big soccer camp his sister is starting at Hope College in a few days, where he’ll be helping with clinics. “There will literally be hundreds of kids from all over the state,” he says, like he’s not quite sure what he’s signed himself up for. “It’s going to be nuts.”
I smile, trying valiantly—and utterly failing—not to be charmed by the idea of Clayton Carville teaching ten-year-olds soccer drills.
“What about you?” he asks.
This time, I tell him the truth. “Working, mostly. Hanging out with my grandma.”
“She lives with you guys, right?”
I nod. “Nonna moved in when her husband died.”
“Your grandpa?”
“Eh,” I hedge, “not really. Bill was her fourth husband, and they were only married for a couple of years. I hardly knew him. They met at a Democratic Socialists meeting in Lansing.” My actual grandpa died when my mom was a kid.
“Wait a second.” Clayton’s eyes widen. “Fourth?”
“Yeah,” I say, laughing a little—in between Poppa and Bill were Silvio, who was very into model trains, and Victor, who had an extremely distracting mole on his forehead that I never quite managed to stop staring at. “She’s Italian through and through in, like, the most passionate, stereotypical sense of the word. They call it sanguigni. She falls fast and hard. My mom was the same way.”
“With your dad?”
“Um, yeah. But…” I debate telling him this next part. Not many people know that my dad isn’t technically my dad, especially since he legally adopted me when I was in fourth grade, so we have the same last name now. It’s not that I’m embarrassed about it or anything. It’s just that I guess there aren’t that many people I’ve ever been close enough to tell. “Before that, even. With my, uh, biological father.”
Realization flashes across Clayton’s eyes. “Oh.”
“He was like, not that into the whole ‘being a dad’ thing,” I explain, “so they broke up when I was still pretty small.”
Clayton nods. “Do you remember him?”
I wave my hand, so-so. “It’s not like my mom has a bunch of pictures of him for me to look at,” I say wryly. “But sometimes I’ll hear someone else say something in a certain way or with a particular cadence and I’ll be like, ‘Is that him?’ ” I crinkle my nose and change the subject. “Anyway, I’m like my nonna in a lot of ways, but that’s not one of them.”
“Oh no?” Clayton asks, glancing over at me in the passenger seat. It’s fully dark by now, just the red glow of taillights up ahead of us and the fat white moon hanging low in the sky overhead. “So you don’t have the…whatever you call it? Where you fall fast and hard?”
“Sanguigni,” I manage. “No, actually.” I swallow hard. “I fall hard and then just kind of…stay there. Lying on the ground.”
Clayton smiles out the windshield, just barely. “Good to know” is all he says.
We don’t talk the rest of the ride, the air in the car getting heavier and denser between us, crackling with an electric energy that has every nerve ending in my body on high alert. It’s like I can hear Clayton’s heart beating. It’s like I can feel the blood moving in his veins. By the time we turn onto my street, I half want to make an armpit farting noise or start singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the top of my lungs, just to break the tension.
But like, is it tension, even? Is Clayton feeling it too? Or am I having this extremely fraught experience completely solo, in the dank privacy of my own messed-up brain? I have basically no experience in this area whatsoever; the truth is that in all likelihood I’ve completely misread this situation and he’s going to shake my hand at the end of the night like a freakin’ job interview.
“I had fun today,” he says finally, pulling up in front of my house and turning the car off. That’s a good sign, right? It means he’s planning to be here longer than it takes me to tuck and roll out of the passenger seat, at least.
“I did too,” I tell him, tucking one leg up underneath me as I turn to face him. “Seriously, Clayton—this was really special, you doing this for me.”
“Yeah, well.” Clayton shrugs. “You’re special.” His expression turns immediately horrified. “Oh my God, that was so effing corny.”
Holy crap. “No no, corny’s okay,” I say immediately, laughing nervously even as my heart slams against the inside of my rib cage like a furious zoo animal. “I love corny.”
Clayton laughs, too, something like disbelief flickering behind his eyes. “Okay,” he says. “Good.”
“Good,” I echo.
“Um, in that case,” he says, shifting his broad body closer. “Can I, like—” He breaks off, blowing a breath out and swearing quietly. “Why am I nervous right now?”
“I don’t know,” I tell him honestly, though my own voice comes out slightly strangled. “I can…pretty much promise you there’s no reason to be.”
“Oh yeah?” He smiles at that and suddenly he’s the same Clayton I’ve watched for years in the hallway—Soccer Dud
e, the most popular. The entire world, including me, at his feet. “So it’s okay if I—”
“Yes,” I say, then lean forward and kiss him.
Yes.
Up until this moment I have kissed exactly one other person—Charlie Patterson, who pecked me on the lips during a particularly mortifying round of Seven Minutes in Heaven at Ruoxi’s birthday party in fifth grade. “Just get it over with,” I told him, and he did, then spent the remaining six minutes and forty-five seconds showing me his Pokémon cards, which is not a euphemism.
Anyway. This is…not like that.
My damp palms land on his shoulders, Clayton cradling my head in one big hand as my body melts into his. His mouth searches mine, tentatively at first and then more firmly; I can feel his eyelashes brushing against my cheeks. The angle is kind of weird, honestly, both of us leaning across the center console and my spine twisting uncomfortably, but none of that matters because I am kissing Clayton Carville.
I. Am. Kissing. Clayton. Carville.
I keep waiting for my brain to quiet down, the whole universe narrowing to this moment like it always does for girls in books and fan fiction, but instead my mind is racing: Am I doing this right? Is my breath okay? What’s going to happen when we leave for college in six weeks? In the back of my mind it occurs to me to wonder about condoms, which even through my haze of lust I recognize as a completely ridiculous thought. After all, it’s not like I’m about to have sex with Clayton in his car on the street in front of my house.
But, like, eventually I might have sex with Clayton!
That is officially a thing that has entered the realm of possibility!
That’s when my parents’ front porch light flicks on.
“Oh, shoot,” I say, pulling away dazedly, blinking. All at once it occurs to me that I never actually told anybody where I was going this morning. This could be sort of bad. “Okay. Um. I think I’ve got to go.”
Clayton nods. “Okay,” he says immediately, wiping the corner of his mouth with one thumb, then smiling a little. “I’ll text you.”
“Okay. Um. Bye!” I scramble out of the SUV, opening the door to the backseat to grab my DiPasquale’s hoodie before slamming it shut again and booking it up the front walk. It’s not until I’m digging my keys out of my purse that I even register the contents of the mini-mart bag that was sitting on the seat beside my sweatshirt—a tube of Sour Cream and Onion Pringles.
The green kind. The ones Bethany asked for.
I freeze for a moment, then whirl in the direction of the SUV just in time to watch its taillights disappear around the corner. Come over, she told him, like a spoiled queen summoning a courtier. But he can’t possibly be headed…after we just…
Right?
I’m still standing on the steps trying to put a coherent thought together when my mom wrenches open the front door. “Where the hell have you been?” she demands.
I blink. She’s never sworn at me in my life before, not ever. She looks terrible, her eyes red-rimmed and her dark hair a mess like she’s been yanking at it. “I messed up,” I say immediately, holding up both hands.
“Oh, I’ll say.” She opens the front door wider, taking me by the arm and tugging me roughly inside like I’m a toddler who nearly darted out into traffic. “Where were you?”
It occurs to me that Canada is probably not an answer that’s going to win me any points at this moment. “I was with a friend,” I tell her. Over her shoulder I can see my dad sitting at the cluttered kitchen table, looking equally wrecked. “This guy Clayton.”
“Clayton?” My mom shakes her head, searching my face for clues. “Who’s Clayton?”
“I know him from school,” I tell her weakly. “I lost track of time, obviously, and—”
“You more than lost track of time, Rachel! It’s almost midnight. None of us have heard from you all day. You didn’t pick up your phone—”
“You didn’t call me!” I protest, realizing even as the words come out of my mouth how extremely unlikely that is. I dig my phone out of my bag—where, I realize, it’s been sitting on silent all day long while I was too distracted to check it. Thirty-seven missed calls, and just as many texts from my parents and Nonna. There’s even one from Miles: Yo, he said, around four o’clock this afternoon, just FYI, your parents are flipping the f out.
I don’t know what to say. I look to Dad for support, but he shakes his head. “Your mom’s right. You were missing for almost an entire day. You’re lucky we didn’t call the police.”
Holy crap. The police? “It wasn’t like that,” I try to explain, but my mom doesn’t want to hear it.
“On top of everything else,” she continues, “you just completely blew off work. No warning, no nothing. Poor Miles had to work the Cream Cart by himself—”
“I texted him, though,” I defend myself. “He said—”
“Do not,” she warns me, holding a finger up, and I snap my jaws shut. “We may be a family business, but this is a job like any other job. You scared the living daylights out of us—you scared the living daylights out of your seventy-year-old grandmother, I might add—and for what? To run around with some boy? I have never in my life known you to be so irresponsible.”
The idea of Nonna worrying about me wrenches everything else into perspective; all at once, it feels dangerously like I might be about to burst into tears. I look at my dad, who stares down at his hands. “I’m really sorry,” I say, my voice coming out small and piddly. “I have no excuse.”
“No,” my mom says flatly. “You don’t.” She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “I cannot adequately communicate to you how relieved I am that you’re all right, Rachel. But I also can’t look at you right now. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.” With that, she walks out, leaving Dad and me alone in the kitchen.
Once she’s gone, a thousand more excuses run through my head like a news crawl on a cable network: I’m moving out at the end of the summer. I’m almost eighteen years old. It was Clayton freaking Carville, king of Westfield High School; what else was I supposed to do?
Then I look at my dad, his shoulders slumped and his forehead wrinkled, and all the fight drains out of me for good.
“She’s really pissed at me, huh,” I say, flopping into the chair next to him.
My dad looks up, thoroughly uncharmed. “I’m pissed at you, too, honey.” Then he sighs. “She’s afraid of losing you, that’s all.”
“I’m sorry,” I say again, reaching out and putting my hand on his. “But I was fine, really. It wasn’t like—”
“No,” he interrupts, “not tonight. Just…you’ve got a few more weeks and then, poof, you’re gone. And that’s a big transition for her.”
“I mean, sure,” I say, though the truth is I haven’t actually thought that much about how my going away to college made my parents feel. “But it’s a big transition for me too. And just because she’s used to me living my entire life shut up in my room like a hermit doesn’t mean—”
He holds up his hands to stop me. “I know it’s big for you too. And we’re all going to have to do a little bit of adjusting. But try to remember you’re steering this ship, will you? Your mom and I…we’re just bystanders.” He rubs his eyes again and shakes his head. “Try to cut us some slack, okay?”
I nod. “Okay.”
“So,” he says, leaning back in his chair and lacing his fingers together behind his head, looking at me speculatively. “Did you have fun, at least? With this Clayton?”
“Dad.” I blush and glance down at my hands on the table, thinking about the entire day. The conversation. The boat ride.
The kiss.
I look up again, nodding a little. “You know what?” I tell him. “Yes.”
* * *
By the time I make it upstairs to my bedroom, I’m fully exhausted. I’m just climbing under the co
vers when my phone—which I’ve switched off silent, Mom—dings with a text from Carrie: Um, she wants to know. Did you go to Canada today? Then a moment later: With Clayton?
Holy crap, news travels fast when you’re popular. Who told you that? I want to know.
I’ve got sources at the border, Carrie fires back immediately. So what’s up with you guys?
He kissed me, I want to tell her. He told me I was special.
I think he also might have bought Pringles for another girl.
Oh, who knows, I type, trying my best to affect utter chillness. I take a deep breath. What’s up with him and Bethany, is probably a better question.
Carrie doesn’t answer for a moment, and I gnaw my thumbnail anxiously. She and Bethany have been best friends for a long time. Sorry, I type. That was nosy.
This time she writes back right away: Nah, she says, you’re fine. Nothing anymore, as far as I know. Why?
Just curious.
Sure, sure. A winking emoji here. Let’s discuss this in person, yeah? Moxie’s soon?
I’m probably grounded until I’m forty. But after that, sure.
Sounds like a plan.
“Well, look who decided to grace us with her presence today,” Miles says the following morning, which is predictable. He shoots me a cocky grin as he loads ladyfingers into the Cream Cart. “You know, I have to say, I’m kind of impressed.”
I look at him dubiously, then double-check our sprinkle supply. “Meaning what, exactly?”
Miles shakes his head. “You of all people blew off a responsibility. Didn’t know you had it in you. It’s like you were channeling…me.”
“Oh God,” I say, truly horrified. “Anything but that.” Then I frown, reaching back to scratch at my neck. “Sorry if I freaked you guys out yesterday, PS. I could have handled the whole thing better, probably.”
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