by Wendy Brant
Maybe to my mom, too, because she looks at me almost longingly. “Oh, Ev. You look —”
I cut her off before she starts to sound like the gushing Instagram posts of my peers. I’m not going to the prom. It’s just a date, if even that. I glance at my reflection in the microwave and do a double take.
Holy crap. I am a fricking princess! Makeup is amazing!
“It’s not too much?” I ask.
My mom reaches out and touches my cheek lightly. “No. Just enough.”
All my negative feelings about Jessica disappear and I’m grateful that she tutored Charlotte so she could help me in my moment of need. Charlotte hasn’t met Zenn yet, but she rightfully senses that it would be weird for her to be waiting with me when he shows up, so she gives me a hug and whispers, “Text me later. I want details.”
She pulls out of the driveway just moments before Zenn is supposed to arrive.
“Mom,” I say quickly, “I don’t really know if this is a date or what so I’m not going to have him come in, okay?”
She touches my hair. “You don’t think it’s a date?” Her voice is skeptical and I understand why: the hair products suggest otherwise.
“Maybe. I don’t know. But can we not make a big deal out of it?” I kiss her on the cheek. “I won’t be too late.”
“Okay.” Her voice is disappointed. “Have fun. Be careful.” It’s what she says every time I leave the house.
“I will,” I reassure her, though for the first time in my life I don’t feel like being very careful at all.
I walk out just as Zenn pulls in the driveway.
I get in his truck and he smiles kind of shyly. If he notices a major transformation, he doesn’t show any shock. “I was going to come to the door,” he says.
He was going to come to the door! I add that to evidence that this may, in fact, be a date.
“We’d never get out of there. The E’s are still up and they’d have you drawing animal pictures all night.”
“The ease?”
“Oh. Yeah. E’s, like the letter E. That’s what we call them sometimes. ’Cause all their names start with E.”
He nods, and then cocks his head. “Libby?”
“Elizabeth.”
“Right.”
Since neither of us has any money, or at least not any money we want to spend at a sit-down restaurant, we decide to pick up some pizza and take it up to the bluff that overlooks North Beach. The huge playground there is deserted — it’s after seven on a Friday night in November — so we have our pick of places to hang out. I timidly point to a sign: PARK CLOSES AT DUSK.
“You nervous, Walker?” Zenn teases. “Not much of a rule breaker?”
I pretend I don’t care. But I am nervous. Eva Walker doesn’t break rules. And maybe that’s not the only reason for my nerves.
Zenn takes a blanket from the back of his truck — I think the same one that I sat on that day I got drenched — and I carry the pizza box and we climb up the gigantic wooden play structure to a platform sheltered from the breeze by a low wall. We sit with our backs against the cedar planks, eat pizza and talk.
Zenn tells me his dad has been out of the picture for a long time, that he’s only seen him a few times his whole life. He doesn’t tell me what that’s done to him, what it’s like for a kid to grow up without his dad. But I can hear some of it in his voice.
He tells me his mom held it together pretty well when he was younger. She kept jobs for a while at least. He said he didn’t need a math tutor back then.
“I wasn’t ridiculously smart like you,” Zenn says, “but I was an honor-roll kid until my mom went off the rails. I mean, I am a quarter Asian, after all.”
“Your dad’s side?” I ask, and he nods.
“My grandpa was in Vietnam. Brought home a wife.”
“Like Miss Saigon,” I say, “with a happier ending.” I can’t believe I said something so dumb. Clearly his life hasn’t been that happy, and he’s probably never heard of Miss Saigon. The only reason I know it is because my mom saw the musical in Chicago when she was a teenager and obsessively played the sound track my entire childhood.
He gets it, though. “Moderately happier than a prostitute who commits suicide, sure.”
“When was that?” I ask. “That things went downhill with your mom?”
“I was probably twelve, thirteen? When I was old enough to stay home alone for longer, she started waitressing at night. Then working at bars. And then … well. Yeah.”
His life started unraveling at about the same time mine did, when everyone I touched became a minefield.
He’s tearing apart a pizza crust, breaking it into a hundred little pieces.
“We started having serious money problems. Kept moving. I got my first job when I was fifteen and …. here we are.”
Besides the time he told me about his back-to-school shopping trip, it’s the most personal he’s ever been with me, the most open. It could be the moonless dark, the unusual quiet of the park, the feeling that we are the only ones around for miles. It could be the hug that maybe broke down a wall between us. Whatever it is, I like it. I like sitting here, our shoulders pressing lightly against each other, hearing his deep, smooth voice giving me a new piece of his puzzle.
He peeks into the paper bag that holds the napkins and little packets of parmesan cheese and red pepper flakes that came with our pizza.
“Oh, man. Jackpot,” he says, and pulls out a couple of mints, the chalky vanilla kind, wrapped in a tiny sleeve. We suck on our mints and he’s quiet and I think maybe he’s waiting for me to say something. Even though I’m secretly in awe of him, of his responsibility and his work ethic and just his overall toughness, I don’t want to make a big deal of what he’s just told me. Instead I admit that I’ve been avoiding finishing my college applications.
“Why?” he asks. “Are you afraid you won’t get in?” I can tell by the tone of his voice that he thinks that’s ridiculous.
“I’m almost more afraid that I will get in, but I won’t be able to go and my parents will blame themselves. And that maybe I’ll blame them a little, too.”
It feels good to finally say it out loud, to admit that my fear is as basic and selfish as that. I don’t tell him that the guilt feels worse because they didn’t choose to have me. They rescued me and they owe me nothing, and yet I still feel like they’ve let me down somehow. Like, maybe I wasn’t enough for them so they had to have four more of their own kids, sucking dry any hope for my college fund.
I look at his mouth, wondering if his mint is gone. And then I realize I’ve looked at his mouth and I feel my cheeks grow hot. But I think he’s looking at my mouth, too, so maybe it’s okay.
“Can I …” he starts.
I nod quickly.
“You don’t even know what I was going to ask.” He’s teasing.
“Doesn’t matter.” If he asked to shave my head and paint a fractal on it, I would let him.
He looks at me for a moment and then looks down.
So I look down.
And then we both look back up at the same moment, and he tilts his head ever so slightly before he leans in and presses his mouth against mine.
His lips are soft and barely parted, hesitating for a second, maybe waiting to see if I object. I most certainly don’t. I kiss him back, hoping my mouth doesn’t betray my eagerness. God, he tastes like peppermint and vanilla and hope. Date, I think to myself. So this is a date.
My hands hover, clenched, just an inch from his chest. I fight the urge to touch him. Not just to touch him, to slide my hands over every inch of him. The kiss deepens a little more, his warm, rough hands finding their way to my neck, cradling my face, his thumbs tracing my jaw.
I can’t take it anymore. Maybe … maybe it’ll be fine. Actually, I don’t really care if it’s fine or not. I want to touch him even if I have fractals. I have to touch him. I unclench my hands and press them against his chest, tentatively at first. I can feel the steady beat o
f his heart beneath my palm. I brace myself for the fractal that I hope will be worth it. I pause, waiting, and it seems like he hesitates, too, our mouths just barely apart, our breath mingling. I do feel light-headed and dizzy, but it’s not a fractal. Just … lust, maybe.
I forget about bracing myself. If it comes, it comes. He can scrape my sweaty, dizzy body off the playground equipment for all I care.
Without realizing it, I’ve grasped his jacket in both hands and I notice for the first time that the fabric feels different, softer. The army jacket is gone tonight and in its place is a soft, thick cotton hoodie with a fleecy lining. I don’t know why I didn’t notice before. Maybe the hoodie is new, maybe it’s something else, but whatever it is seems to be negating my fractals.
The white steam of our breath swirls around us like a little passion cloud and even though it’s cold, my body temperature has gone through the roof. I feel like I’m melting from the inside out, like lava might flow out of me at any moment.
When Zenn pulls away, I nearly follow, not wanting him to stop. He leans his forehead against mine and takes a breath. I try to loosen my death grip on his sweatshirt.
“I have to tell you something,” he says. His voice is serious and I swallow the lump that forms immediately in my throat.
Oh, God. No bad news. Nothing bad. This is a happy place.
I try to pull myself together.
“I applied for that scholarship you told me about.”
My mind is still a little fuzzy from being so close to another human for so long. I’m having trouble processing his words.
“Scholarship?”
He nods. His thumb traces my cheekbone. “The big one.”
“Oh,” I say, trying to make sense of this news. “Okay.”
He pulls back a little more and I want to grab him so he doesn’t go far. “I applied right after you told me. That night of homecoming? I mean, I’m sure nothing will come of it — I’ve never won anything in my life — but it’s been bothering me that I never said anything.”
“A lot of people apply for that scholarship. The odds are against both of us, probably.”
“You’re not mad?” he asks.
“Why would I be mad?”
“I don’t know. I mean, you told me about it and then I try to get all up in your action.”
It’s shameful how much I want him to get all up in my action.
“It’s open to everyone, Zenn. There’s no reason you shouldn’t apply.”
He looks relieved.
“You seriously thought I would be mad?”
“I don’t know … maybe?”
I’m more upset that he stopped kissing me.
It’s getting late and we seem to have broken the spell. I want him to kiss me again, but I’m not sure how to get him to do it. I’m definitely not bold enough to grab him and pull him closer. So instead we talk a little more about school and his jobs and little things until he stands up, signaling it’s time to go home. When he drops me off, he leans in and kisses me again, but this time it’s a soft brush of his mouth against mine, light, sweet, crazily romantic.
I’m not sure how I got into the house. I’m sure I walked, but I don’t remember at all. All I remember is the minty-vanilla taste of his mouth.
Chapter 24
Essie presses her tiny, cool hands against my cheeks. I can tell it’s Essie because she is gentle and quiet. If it were Libby she’d be bouncing on my mattress, screaming, Wakeupwakeupwakeupwakeup! I open my eyes to find the sun shining brightly through the crack in my curtains. Essie’s hair is a tangle of fine blond curls. The night has slipped away. The world is still spinning. Nothing has changed.
Except everything.
I give Essie a piggyback to the kitchen and set her up with a bowl of Cheerios and slices of banana stacked in a cylinder. She likes it when I arrange her food in shapes. I’m sure she’ll love it someday when I teach her how to calculate the volume of those shapes (cylinder = Πr²h). Once she’s set up I study the contents of the fridge, exhausted by the effort of not spilling my heart to a three-year-old. It’s tempting to gush to someone, anyone, about Zenn. About his mouth and his hands and his delicious smell. I shove a bagel in my yapper to keep myself from telling Essie something completely inappropriate, like how I wonder if anyone has ever lost their virginity on the play set she goes to every Friday morning.
Yeah. So not cool.
But, God, I want to touch him again. I want to feel his actual skin with my fingertips — its heat and probable silkiness. I want to see if the lack of fractals was a fluke. I want to run all sorts of experiments on him, touching every inch of his bare skin to see if all of him is safe. Wouldn’t be a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
And if he is safe … then what? My breathing gets shallow at the thought of it.
I promised Charlotte details and she’s a more appropriate audience than Essie. I grab my phone and text her.
Me: Hey!
I’m amazed and flattered by how quickly she texts me back, even after being sort of estranged. She’s always been a better person than me.
Charlotte: Hey! How’d it go???
Me: So good. So so good.
Charlotte: AAAAAHHHHHHH! I want to hear but I have riding this morning.
(Did I mention that Charlotte is an equestrian? Ralph Lauren picture complete.)
Me: That’s OK. We’ll talk later.
Charlotte: OK, but … was there … lip action?
God, she’s such a goofball.
Me: There was.
Charlotte: AAAAAHHHHHH!!!
I smile at my phone. God, I missed her.
Charlotte: Tongue??? Tongue action??!
Me: I’ll text you later.
Charlotte: AHHHHHH! You better!
I set my phone down, smiling. He likes me. It seems hard to believe, but even I know that a kiss like that is evidence of like.
And if I’m thinking about him this morning, maybe he’s thinking about me.
So, it wouldn’t be that weird for me to … say … drive by his house. See if he’s home.
Before I talk myself out of it, I shower and get dressed and head over to his apartment, telling my mom I’m running to the library. I’m such a nerd that she doesn’t even question it on a Saturday morning. But when I get there, I see his truck is gone and I realize he’s probably at one of his many jobs, trying to support his family. Stupid of me to think he’d be sleeping in on a Saturday morning. Silly to think he’d be lounging in bed, remembering what it felt like to kiss me. Guys don’t do that anyway. Do they?
I sit in my car for a moment, knowing I should leave and text him later, like a normal person. But then I have the genius idea to leave him a note. How cute is that? A real note, like on paper. So I dig up a scrap of paper from the glove compartment — a preschool coloring worksheet of Ethan’s where Jesus’s face is a royal blue — and scribble a few casual words on the back.
Was driving by, wanted to see you. <3 Eva
I think the obviously unplanned quality of it is charming. I get out of the car and am heading up the driveway when the door to the apartment opens and I freeze in my tracks.
Crap, whose stupid idea was this? A note? On a Jesus coloring sheet? I quickly turn back down the driveway to get out of there fast.
“Hey.” A voice rings out behind me. It’s a woman’s, rough and smoky.
I turn and see Cinde halfway down the stairs in her robe and a pair of UGG-style boots, her hair tucked under a baseball cap.
“Eva, right?” she greets me happily. “I was just coming out to get the paper.”
The paper is sitting a few feet to my left. I pick it up and cross the distance between us to hand it to her.
“It’s really their paper.” She nods to the main house, her voice conspiratorial. “I read it real quick and put it back.”
Her covert operations to get some local news make me a little sad, but I suppose a newspaper subscription is a luxury they can’t afford.
/> “You looking for Zenn?”
“I —” I crumple up the note and tuck it in my pocket.
“He’s at work.”
“I figured. I saw his truck wasn’t here.”
“You wanna come up for a cup of coffee?”
“No, thanks,” I say. “That’s okay.”
Her face droops and I realize she’s not just being polite. I’ve seen the look on my own mom’s face a hundred times, searching for connection only to be rebuffed. She shoves her hands deep into the pockets of her robe.
“I guess I don’t blame you. I was awful yesterday. I’ll tell him you stopped by.”
Before I can talk myself out of it, I step closer. “Actually, coffee sounds good.”
She smiles and, despite the mascara smudged under her eyes, I see she’s actually quite pretty. Or she was once. She looks older than she probably is. Her skin isn’t as smooth as my mom’s, and she has deeper crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes, slight wrinkles around her mouth, probably from smoking. But she’s thinner than my mom, too. I guess a mostly liquid-and-cigarette diet can do that.
I follow her up the stairs and she gestures for me to sit down. It feels really weird being here without Zenn and I wonder if I’ve made a big mistake.
“I’m just gonna throw some clothes on real quick.”
I sit at the kitchen table and wait, like I did just yesterday. Was that just yesterday? My mind wanders back to his mouth, his lips, his hands …
Cinde comes out of the bedroom in the Juicy sweatpants and I shake the thoughts of Zenn from my mind.
She takes the Pritzer Insurance mug from its spot on the shelf, pours me a cup of coffee and slides the mug across the table. She removes the lid from the sugar bowl and pushes that toward me as well. I scoop some into my mug. I can’t tell her I don’t care much for coffee, and I’m certainly not going to ask if she’s got some chocolate syrup to make it better.
“I do want to apologize about yesterday,” she says, sitting down. “I know I was obnoxious.”
I shake my head. “No, I’m sorry. I was just …”
“Embarrassed. I know. My fault.” She bites at the edge of her fingernail. “Usually it’s Zenn walking in on me. Poor kid.”