by Nina Beck
“Look, did you ever think that I might want to be involved? I might want to know what’s up with you. I might actually want to know what your plans are…and God forbid that I want to say good-bye before you jet back to NYC to be with that guy that you think is so much better for you than I am.”
“Eric—”
“No, answer me this,” he says, not turning to face me. He’s still facing the road and his knuckles are white—he’s holding the steering wheel so tightly. “Do you love him?”
“Him who?” I ask.
He gives me a look.
“No.”
“No?” he says. “HA!”
“HA?!” I say back. “You asked me a question and I responded.”
“I wanted an honest response.”
“And I gave you one.”
Now I’m looking out the window and calculating how long it would take me to walk to the station from where we are: One girl, going . 5 miles per hour, on a long, dark wooded road. Add some suitcases, one Gucci bag, and three potential murderers…how long does it take before they find the body? Word problem, anyone?
“Look, I don’t think I love him,” I say. “I mean, I love him as a friend. I think. I just want the opportunity to talk to him face-to-face. I wanted to go and see him to be sure.”
This honesty racket is so totally overrated.
“It means a lot to you?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“Fine, I’ll drive you,” he says, turning the ignition—the van sparking to life once more. He turns the lights on and pulls back onto the road.
“What?”
“I’m driving you home.”
“You’re crazy,” I say, but I’m smiling like an absolute fiend. He still loves me. He’s still perfect. Well…perfect for me.
“I must be,” he mutters, pulling the van up to speed.
Manhattan is a 4.2-hour drive. I call up the MapQuest directions on my phone; it’s going to be a long drive. It takes Eric four turns to get onto the highway because he refuses to ask for directions. We have our second fight before he finally pulls into a gas station and makes me get out and find out where the highway is.
He calls his mother and leaves a message saying he isn’t going to be home. I ask him if he is going to get into trouble and he shrugs. “Sometimes you ask for forgiveness because you know you’ll never get permission…and if it’s worth it…”
I smile. I like that I am worth it.
The first hour we spend in the minivan we argue over what to play. I want to use my iPod to play Chicago or some other girly pop. HE wants to play hard rock. I can’t sing along to hard rock. We turn the radio off.
Then we talk about everything but why we’re driving to NYC. We talk about school and our ambitions and goals. We talk about our favorite movies (Me: Love Me If You Dare—a French film about screwed-up relationships. Him: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I’m not even kidding). We realize that we both love Bruce Willis. He admits that he might be a little weird about how much…We discover that we both lost our front teeth at the same time and lisped for almost six months before they began to grow back in. I tell him more about my mother dying. He tells me more about his father leaving. I tell him about how much I like to play volleyball in gym class, even though it’s seriously uncool. He tells me how much he enjoyed his art class even though he was expected to take all these AP classes and never get below a B, how much he wanted to take more electives.
A little while later we find an old eighties station on the radio and are both singing along. Badly. Apparently neither of us can sing. We bond over bad vocals.
Three hours in, we are friends again. And I love him.
By the time we are about half an hour outside the city, I am ready to kill him again.
“Tell me about this guy,” he says.
“I’d rather not.”
“I’d rather you did.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because I’m extremely jealous and want to gauge the possibility that you’ll see him, fall madly back in love with him, and I’ll lose you to some douche-bag New Yorker who wears a bloody kimono.”
Whoa, never heard him swear before. “He’s British.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“What?”
“Of course he’s British. Why wouldn’t he be?”
I just smile and don’t say anything.
Twenty minutes of silence later he babbles something like, “I bet he’s tall too.”
Another fifteen minutes later, as we enter the city, he says, “He better not call you darling, sweetheart, or any of those other stupid pet names British men think are cute.”
I turn toward the window so he can’t see my face.
I call D from the car and wake him up. I don’t even care at this point and he finally wakes up when he realizes I’m in the area. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, I don’t know—I live here maybe.”
“I know but I was coming to pick you up today.”
“I texted you.”
He is quiet for a moment before responding, “I got it.”
“I’m sorry I lied to you.”
“Come over,” he says. He asks me to give him five minutes and then I should come up. I tell him it would take us that long to park anyway.
“Us? Park?”
I tell him I’d explain when I saw him and hung up the phone.
“So I get to actually meet this guy?” Eric says, looking for a parking spot.
“Yeah, looks like.”
“Swell.”
“Be nice.”
“I’m always nice,” he says. Which is mostly true, but I guess if he was going to be not nice, this was the time he would do so.
We walk up to D’s building. The doorman greets me and I hear (if not see) Eric roll his eyes. “Of course there is a doorman.”
Wait till he sees my place. I am worried.
We take the elevator up.
“Of course it’s the penthouse.”
And the door opens right into the apartment. I try to see it how Eric must be seeing it. “Listen,” he says, pulling me around to face him. “I just want you to remember one thing.”
“What?”
He pulls me closer and kisses me, and I feel everything he wants me to remember. I think I’m curling and twisting on the inside.
“Ahem.” I can hear D clear his throat.
Eric pulls away slightly but doesn’t let go of me. “Remember he didn’t know what he had. You’re perfect. You’re amazing and everything a guy could ask for. I knew it before I even met you.”
I look at him and wonder.
“Ahem!” D clears his throat a little louder.
I pull myself out of Eric’s grasp, but not before I see the slightly smug look on his face. This doesn’t look like it’s going to go well.
I don’t quite understand the look on D’s face when I turn around to face him. Later, I’d realize that it was a mixture of possessiveness, envy, and perhaps curiosity. None of which was jealousy, which is what I used to hope for, but it was more than he had ever shown me before.
I’m looking at him and thinking, Did I really love him? And then he walks over and gives me a wraparound hug that is very D in an overwhelming D way. I’m about to fall over when he gives me a loud smack on the cheek and says, “How are you, darling?”
I hear a snort from behind me, and while I’m still in the precarious position of having to hold on to D for my life, lest I fall, ass-first, onto a very hard-looking marble foyer, D looks over me at Eric. Looks him up and down in a way that I’ve only seen British people and women in Vogue do, and asks, “Who’s your little friend?”
I struggle my way out of his arms and right myself. My bags are already on the floor, but I’ll worry about that later. “D, this is Eric. Eric, this is my best friend, D.”
I watch D’s face as I introduce them.
“Nice apartment,” Eric says.
“Nice shoes,” D says, pointedly looki
ng at Eric’s brightly colored Adidas originals.
“Nice outfit. From Riley’s description, I was expecting a kimono.”
“Hmm. I suppose I should be flattered I received a description at all,” he says, turning his back on us and walking farther into the apartment. “I didn’t even know you existed.”
I gasp a little, but Eric just has a wry grin on his face, and we both follow D into the sitting room—where we sit side by side on the couch. I feel like this is worse than sitting in front of Mrs. Hotra once she knew that I had basically mouth-assaulted her son in my tent at New Horizons. This is probably worse than it will be when I introduce Eric to my father. If I introduce Eric to my father. I meant to say if.
D sits on a chair, his legs crossed, ankle at his knee, and looks at us both. “So, what have you kids been up to?” I feel more than see Eric’s smirk, and in an attempt to head off any future collisions, I jump up and ask D if I could talk to him in the other room.
There are a lot of bug-eye movements and head jerks to the right. He finally agrees and follows me away from Eric, who looks small and out of place in the Hammond family sitting room.
We stand in the kitchen, the silence positively deafening.
Why is it that I could be fabulous in all things…but not here, not now? Not with this guy who has been my best friend for years?
“Do you like this guy?” he says when we’re out of hearing range.
“Yeah.”
“He’s not your type.”
“I know,” I say, smiling. He looks at me, surprised.
“Wow, you really like him,” he says, then runs his hand through his hair. I don’t feel a thing, which bothers me. “What about us?”
“Oh, we can still make out,” I say.
“Don’t do that, Riley,” he says.
“Don’t do what?”
“Don’t make this into something you know it isn’t. Are we OK? You’re my best friend. I still need you to be my best friend.”
I look at him. No coyness, just a blank stare, and I feel like I want to vomit. “I still want that,” I say softly. “But I lied to you.”
“Yes, and the public flogging shall commence at high noon,” he says, and then his voice drops. “I just don’t want this thing hanging over us.”
“Meaning?”
“The thing where we kissed. I don’t want to constantly be wondering whenever we talk or whenever we hang out if this is a thing.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “I don’t think I was being honest with myself when it came to you. I thought I loved you, but I think I was wrong.”
“How do you know you’re being honest with yourself now?” he asks.
“What?”
“I mean, you say you were in love with me,” he says, and before I can correct him he finishes, “but then you say you really weren’t. How do you know it’s gone?”
“Gone? I’m not sure it was ever there,” I say.
“Well, I think it’s worth checking, for the both of us,” he says.
He puts his hands on my shoulders and pulls me in close. I, on autopilot, tilt my chin up and kiss him. Then the autopilot begins speaking in my brain as D kisses me:
He’s actually a very good kisser. He doesn’t spit.
I wonder what it would be like if I really loved him. And then I wonder about how much has changed in such a short week, but then again, I hadn’t kissed Eric the last time D and I were in this position.
There has been a lot of kissing going on lately.
Kids do like their kissing…
And then I start to laugh.
D pulls away. “Not exactly the reaction I was going for.”
“Oh God, I’m so sorry, D, it’s just that…It’s…”
“Riley, don’t worry about it,” he says, covering my lips with the tip of my finger. He smiles at me and then starts to laugh. Giggle, really.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “But did it feel like…” And then I start to giggle too.
“You’re a good kisser,” he says. “But I didn’t feel—I mean, I love you.”
“And I love you.”
“But…”
“Yeah.”
“I guess I always knew you’d find a guy you really like,” he says, and I’m all ears. “I mean, I thought he’d be taller and I didn’t realize he’d paint his nails.”
I smile. Big.
“But I’m glad you found someone. Just don’t be one of those girls.”
“Those girls?”
“The kind that ignores their best friends just because they fall in love.”
We smile at each other, shyly, and I think it’ll be fine. We’re going to be friends again, perhaps even better friends. I’ll be a better friend. I make that promise in my head.
We walk back into the sitting room and Eric is gone. My phone buzzes in my pocket and I pull it out.
Mr. Right texted me.
Perhaps it’s time for me to make a graceful exit. So it’s not messy.
WHAT?
I text him back, and all I get back is You kissed him.
How do you write the guy you like that you just tongue-kissed your best friend to make sure you were really in love with the guy you like?
I try calling him, but he doesn’t pick up.
“He’s not picking up!”
“Tell me what happened,” D says.
I want to cry about it so I tell him the entire story—perhaps highlighting the responses made a little too much.
“That’s everything?” he asks.
I sniff and say yes, that’s everything (mostly—I do leave out a few of the more psycho foot-stomping incidents, because even now, only twenty minutes later, I can see how psychotic foot stomping can be. What is WRONG with me?).
“Well, this is easy,” he says.
“Really?”
“Yes,” he continues. “You’re psychotic. I mean, a guy will be led by his dick for only so long. Eventually his brain kicks in. And yes, it does happen.”
“That part is obvious, but the part that confuses me…”
(How he could possibly not love me?)
“Is how you could possibly think you could do all that to him and have him still?”
“What do you mean?”
“He loves you. You love him. You acted psycho,” he says. “I personally would’ve told you to screw off.”
And it hits me.
I’m brought low by the truth of it all.
“You can’t keep doing this, to yourself or to him,” he says.
“But what am I supposed to do now?” I ask. Sniff. Cry. Moan. Bemoan. WAIL.
“Let him go. Or go get him back.”
“But I don’t know how.”
“You’ll figure it out,” he says, rumpling my hair. “Stay here. I’ll call a car and take you home.” And my tombstone would say: “Riley Swain, the great and fabulous, brought low by a boy. A boy from upstate New York.” It is too sad to contemplate.
D gets out of the car, holds the door open for me, and tells me, “Go get him, tiger,” which I take to heart.
Except Marley is standing on my front steps.
“Oh, hey, D,” she says, fixing her hair. Tramp. “Riley, I was just about to knock and ask your parents if you were in.”
I sigh. I look at D and he just shrugs at me. No help, great best friend.
“What’s up, Marley?” I ask.
D cuts in, “Ladies, as much as I’m into all sorts of fun little girl-on-girl catfights, I’m going to excuse myself.” We both look at him with pissed-off expressions. “Riley, call me later. Marley.” He nods and then gets back into the car—it speeds off so fast that it makes my head spin.
“Chicken,” Marley says, watching the taillights, and I smile. I think it’s the first thing she ever said that I full- heartedly agree with.
“How long have you been here, an hour?”
“Almost two,” she says, stretching out her legs.
“Did you rat me out to the ’re
nts?”
“Not yet,” she says, pulling a lip gloss out of her bag, applying it, and smacking her lips.
“They’re not home, you know,” I say.
“That’s fine, I can always catch them later,” she says. And I can always send a dirty video of you to your parents…I don’t say this. I’m a new Riley. I’m a new Riley. I’m a new Riley.
“Look, I’m sorry I made out with Timothy.”
She doesn’t look up.
“I’m sorry. It was horrible of me. I just…” I sit down and look at her. “You told everyone I was fat and going to fat camp.”
“Well, you were.”
I give her a look.
“I don’t mean you were fat, but you did go to a fat camp. And you lied to us all about it.”
“Of course I did.”
She looks down. “You’re supposed to be my best friend and you don’t tell me anything.”
Excuse me? What? “We’re not really best friends, Marley.”
She looks at me and I can’t believe it, but she has tears in her eyes. Or maybe her LASIK went wrong? “I know you don’t think we’re friends, but you’re my friend. Except you treat me like shit all the time, and I can’t seem to do anything that makes you like me, and so I try to be like you. And that seems to get your attention. You like me when I’m a bitch.”
My face goes slack and I don’t really know what to say.
“And then you went after Timothy and I realized that you really do hate me, and it’s not just an act.”
“Why would you think it was an act?” I ask.
“Because you’re the same way to D, and I know you adore him.”
“What way?”
“You treat him like you hate him, but I know it’s only because you love him so much and that you’re scared that he’s going to reject you so you reject yourself first,” she says, sniffing.
“Someone has had too much therapy,” I say.
“True,” she says. “Doesn’t make it any less true.”
I sit and think about that. “You always act like you’re better than me,” I say.
She shrugs.
“You always flirt with D.”
“You KISSED the boy I like!”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m sorry about that. I mean…I think you should still make out with him, if you want.”