by Sarah White
I spent my Sunday at home, lounging in bed and trying to recover from the embarrassment of the night before so I could go to school with my head held high on Monday. Nisha and Regan had begged me to go out to lunch with them, and when I’d refused, they brought lunch to me and had stayed long enough to watch a few episodes of a new serial show we’d been hearing about on Netflix. Nolan had been texting me all day, trying to get me to leave my house even if it just meant going over to his, but I had told him I was hanging out with the girls and that he should probably spend some time with Erin since he had to bail on their time together last night.
Before the girls went home, they asked me about my feelings for Jude. Nisha wanted to know, “Do you think about him all the time? I remember when Declan and I first got together, he was all I could think about.”
Before I could even answer, Regan jabbed at her: “He’s still all you can think about.”
The three of us laughed, and Nisha didn’t even try to deny it. I thought about Jude and how much I’d enjoyed the time we’d spent together. I liked him. We had a lot of the same interests and he made me laugh. I knew he was caring and genuine, which were important qualities for me. But I didn’t think of him all the time. “Not really,” I answered honestly. “I mean, I like him, but I don’t think it’s anywhere as intense as you and Declan.”
Regan and Nisha traded glances quickly. Nisha asked, “Are you going to go out with him again?”
“I think so,” I answered, but the way she’d asked the question had me wondering if maybe she thought that wasn’t a good idea. “Why?”
“I’m not saying you have to be head over heels in love with the guy, but maybe he’s not the right guy for you.” She shrugged her shoulders and blew on her nails, which had a fresh coat of polish on them. “Let me ask you this—you have been single the entire time you’ve been in high school, so why all of a sudden have you decided you need to start dating?”
I gave her a soft kick with my foot, careful not to smudge my own freshly painted toenails. “Because you guys always made such a big deal out of it. And, I don’t know, I guess I thought it was time to take that step.”
“Well, you took it,” Regan said. “Now you need to figure out if it was the right one or not. Jude is a great guy, but he isn’t the only one out there.”
“How do I know if he’s the right one?” I asked.
“He’ll give you butterflies in your stomach. He’ll be the first person you think of when you wake up in the morning and the last you think of when you go to sleep. You want to be with him all the time and learn all the little details that make up his life. Nothing about him is boring.” Nisha smiled as she listed the signs.
Regan nodded in agreement. “But,” she added, holding up her finger and wet fingernail, “the real test is happiness.” She sighed. “You know you’re with the right person when you want them to be happy even if what it takes to make them happy makes you unhappy. And they would do the same for you. Sacrifice their own happiness for yours.”
“Well, aren’t you Miss Sunshine?” I asked sarcastically. My brain felt like it was swimming around inside my head. How could I apply any of this to Jude? I guess only time would tell.
After Regan and Nisha left, my phone chimed with a text from Nolan.
TOP FIVE REASONS YOU NEED TO COME HANG OUT WITH ME.
I fought the smile that pulled at my lips. Another text came through.
1. Telling me you don’t want to hang out is mean and hurts my feelings. You don’t want to be mean, do you? Well, you are. . . .
I laughed out loud as the three dots appeared, chasing each other on my screen.
2. Many people in California are deficient in vitamin D. You must go outside in the sun to get it (right now you are locked up in your room like a hermit instead of soaking up the rays with me). Symptoms include explosive diarrhea, uncontrollable vomiting, beard growth in women, clucking like a chicken . . . ok I’m making these up but don’t you want to go down to the beach or something?
I didn’t even have time to respond before another came through.
3. I want a Blaze Pizza from the mall but I can never remember where to park. If you make me go on my own there is a chance I’ll go missing and it will be all your fault. You know I won’t ask for directions. Don’t be selfish.
He was dead serious. I had to give him step-by-step directions every time. It was as if his brain did not have the capacity to store the information necessary to learn the parking lot schematics of our local mall.
4. The models on my board are cold.
I was expecting another funny text so when the last one came through it made my heart feel too big for my chest.
5. I’m worried you’re sitting in your room alone unhappy and it’s killing me. If there is really nothing I can do to make you happy, then let me come over and be unhappy with you. At least I won’t have to imagine you’re alone.
I told myself I’d text him back in an hour when I might be feeling up to doing something. I knew he’d push me to get back on my feet, and I was feeling petulant and wanted to procrastinate picking up my pieces a little longer. I grabbed a book and made myself comfy on my bed.
I could hear my parents downstairs making dinner as I sat on my bed, lost in the pages of my latest romance novel. As I turned the page, I heard my mom let out a little yelp and then the low timbre of my dad’s laugh. Nolan was there. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but their voices rumbled from downstairs. When that quieted down, I knew he was headed up to my room. My door slowly opened and he peeked his head in.
“You’re missing a beautiful day,” he mentioned as he closed the door behind him and moved to sit in the chair at my desk. “Are you ever coming out of here again or will I need to start moving some of my clothes over so I can stay here and not miss you?” That would be lovely, I thought. Maybe I could just stay in here forever and not have to face anyone who saw me last night.
“Bring them over.” I looked back to the page I was reading.
“What are you reading about?” I knew he really didn’t care and was just trying to make conversation.
“It’s a romance.” I held the cover up so he could see the hands clasped on the cover.
“That makes me a little sad.” He made a pouty face.
“Me reading a romance makes you sad?”
“No, a romance book without a buff dude with his shirt hanging open and a woman clinging to his leg on the cover makes me sad. I thought that was a requirement. You know, half-dressed woman with bits and pieces almost falling out of her dress and a guy too interested in the horizon standing there with his foot propped up as she hangs from his body. Isn’t that what you said should be on the cover?”
I laughed for the first time all day. “Maybe the ones at the library. Not the ones I have to bring to school.” I tried to find my place on the page but was distracted when a Hershey Kiss was tossed and landed right on the page before sliding off and landing in my lap.
“I’m bored and you are being boring. Let’s get out and do something.” He stood up and slowly folded my book shut.
“I don’t want to go anywhere.”
“Staying inside won’t change anything,” he countered quickly.
“It will change that I have to face people today. Why do it today if I can put it off until tomorrow?”
“You have to just get back out there. People might be curious about what happened, but if you hide away, it lets them fill in the blanks with their imagination and that is way worse.” He reached for my ankles and clamped his hands around them.
“I don’t want to see anyone yet. I’m just going to sit here and enjoy the evening in the comfort of my air-conditioning. Besides, I would hate to leave the poor characters of that book hanging just when they were getting to the good stuff.”
“First of all”—Nolan narrowed his gaze on me—“you’re not sitting.” I was about to protest when he tugged my ankles quickly, sliding me down onto my bed. “Secondly,
those characters can just put their throbbing, pulsing, hard, erect”—he paused a minute, as if he was trying to think of another descriptive word—“wet, and excitable body parts away for a little bit while you go enjoy real life with your friend.” He left me lying on the bed as he retrieved my purple bikini from the top drawer. I crossed my arms and waited for him to explain the plan so I could shut it down.
“And third and finally, we aren’t going somewhere you are going to see anyone, so there are no more excuses.” He tossed my bikini onto my face.
“Where are we going, then?” I stood up, knowing that he was too persistent to try to fight off. I was leaving the house because if not, he was going to drag me down those stairs and shove me out the door. Nicely, but effectively nonetheless.
“We have”—he stopped long enough to look at his watch—“twenty minutes before the park sprinklers go on and I want to run through them with you.”
“Waking up to the sprinklers trying to drown us the other day at the campout was not enough? You need to throw caution to the wind and jump right into another yard full of them?” I passed him and slipped inside my bathroom.
“It’s on our list and we’re running out of time.” His words were muffled by the bathroom door. My heart missed a beat. I hated being reminded that one day he would no longer be my neighbor. “And I’m hoping the water will wash off your sad mood so I can have my friend back.”
I tied the straps of the bikini top and slipped the bottoms up my legs, which luckily were already shaved thanks to the shorts I had to wear because of the heat. I shimmied a little to get them over my butt and then took my pump out of the pouch I had it in and clipped it like a pager to my bottoms. I grabbed a hair tie from the drawer and pulled my hair up into a messy bun.
“Fifteen minutes,” Nolan sang outside the door. I rolled my eyes but laughed at the same time.
“You’re very bossy, you know that?” I shouted through the door.
“I do know that.”
I opened the bathroom door and stepped into my room, tossing my clothes into my hamper near my closet. “I hope you’re enjoying this. You’re ruining my quiet evening reading.” I walked up to stand right in front of him. He was sitting on the edge of my bed, reading out of the book I’d been reading when he walked in.
“This is really dirty,” he whispered, giving me a wink. “I knew you read romances, but I imagined cowboys and corsets, not this.”
“It’s a great love story. I read it for that.” I tried to take the book but he pulled it away gently.
“Sure it is.” This time his wink was really big and exaggerated.
“Stop,” I laughed, taking a firmer grip on my book and pulling it from his hands. He just laughed and stood up next to me.
“Let’s go. I don’t want to miss it. With all this drought talk they are only watering it twice a week.”
I grabbed two towels out of the small closet outside my room. I tossed him one and we headed downstairs. My parents looked up as we entered the kitchen and I hated the relief that flitted across their faces seeing that I was actually leaving my room.
“We’ll be back soon,” I said as we opened the back door.
“Take your time. Dinner won’t be ready for at least another hour.” My mom stopped cutting the vegetables and wiped her wet hands on a towel. “Nolan, I’d just like you to be aware that you’ll be the one at fault if you scare me again while I have a knife in my hand. I can’t help what happens.” She smiled at him, but there was a spark of evil behind her eyes, and it made Nolan and me laugh.
We moved along the side of the house and out the front gate. I opened the towel and made it into a small cover-up for me as we walked down the block to the park at the end of our street. “So how do you know the sprinkler schedule?”
“I called the city. Told them I was concerned it wasn’t being watered. They assured me—well, Mr. Walker, homeowner and concerned citizen—that they would have them on right at eight this evening and will let them run a bit longer to make sure the lawn gets adequate moisture.”
“That was a lot of work.” I shrugged and held tighter to the towel as a car drove past.
“Not really. Besides, it will be worth it when we are running through them. I was cooking up there in my room.”
“No air-conditioning again, huh?” I laughed. His father thought that opening all the windows and turning on a few fans would cool the house down just as well as the air-conditioning would. Nolan hated it. He had tried proving to his dad numerous times that even with all the windows open and every fan they owned blasting at top speed, the house temperature barely dipped a degree. It didn’t matter; his protests fell on deaf ears.
“I think the heat bakes his brain or something.” He shook his head and looked defeated.
It was still a little light outside, but the sun was no longer visible in the sky. When we got to the park, Nolan set his towel down on a bench near the playground and waited for me to do the same. I looked around; there were still a few kids riding down the street on their bikes, or kicking a ball around on the grassy field. “Quit overthinking it and put your towel on the bench.”
“Listen, Mr. McBossy. I hate just hanging out in my bikini. Sorry we can’t all be as confident as you.” I loosened up my hold a little. Nolan pulled his shirt off over his head and tossed it down into the pile he was creating. It made me happy to see that his shoulder was almost totally better. He’d been working on it at physical therapy every day during the week.
“Listen, Ms. I’m Beautiful but Refuse to Believe It, you are going to be freezing cold walking home dripping wet when we are done here if you don’t have a dry towel.” He kicked his flip-flops off under the bench and then put his hands on his hips, waiting for me to undress.
“Fine.” I dropped my towel and tossed it onto his pile. I then slipped off my sandals and pushed them under the bench with my feet. I decided my pump would be fine for the short time I’d planned on being in the water. I double-checked to make sure it was secure on my bottoms. The sprinklers weren’t on yet so we had a little time. I headed for the swings and he followed. I sat down and he stood behind me, grabbing the chains so he could give me a push.
“Do you remember when I broke my wrist?”
“Yes,” I answered harshly. “You scared the crap out of me!” I heard his deep laugh from behind me as he drew the swing back before releasing it.
“I was so sure I was going to land on my feet. I thought I was a cat or something. I didn’t really account for the fact that the ground comes very quickly when you’re flailing around after jumping from the highest point on a swing.” He pushed me when I swung back. I kicked out my legs as I swung forward.
“I guess I should take some responsibility in it. I was the one who said you could do it.” I laughed softly with a sigh. “I guess I’ve always thought you could do anything.” I realized just how true that last sentence was. There was nothing he’d ever tried that he couldn’t do. Jumping from a swing and landing on his feet being one of them, but it took a few more practices.
“That’s why you’re my best friend. It doesn’t matter how crazy the idea was, you always had faith in me. It made—well, it makes me feel like a champion when I’m around you.” He grabbed the chains and pulled me back even farther before letting me go again.
“I don’t think your mom was very happy with me.” I continued to kick out my legs and then pump them back as I gained some height.
“Don’t be silly. She knows you could never talk me out of anything I get my heart set on. I think she was happy you were there to keep me from passing out on the way home. I swear I can still hear that awful snapping sound from when I tried to catch the full weight of my body with just one hand.”
“I loved coming here with you.” I looked out over the rest of the playground equipment and remembered all the hours we had spent pretending to be pirates or spacemen as we ran across the bridges and slid down every slide.
“Me too,” he answered
. “I’m going to miss it.” Neither of us said anything for a few swings, my legs still working and his warm hand catching and then pushing my back. “Do you think we’ll come back here one day with our kids?”
“Maybe.”
It had only taken ten minutes for the sun to finish setting and the night to grow dark. The kids who had been playing outside disappeared into houses. In the stillness of the night air around us, the familiar hiss of sprinklers rang out. I jumped off the swing and the two of us took off out of the sand and onto the wet grass.
It was cold. So. Very. Cold. The water splashed across our chests and legs as we ran side by side through the spray. As we crossed the field, it seemed like we were going back in time. We left our eighteen-year-old minds behind and embraced the immature and playful minds of our younger years.
We laughed and giggled, pushed each other and fell as the cold water rained down on top of us. When the field became flooded, we took running starts, throwing ourselves down and sliding along the wet grass. I remembered being young and doing this so many years ago with Nolan. Memories flashed through my mind, each one brighter and louder than the last. The events of last night had no place in my thoughts when my consciousness was filled with such pure, unadulterated joy.
We were both on our backs, laughing loudly, when the sprinklers retreated and the park fell silent. My skin was cold, goose bumps covering every exposed inch. But even though I felt a physical chill all the way down to my bones, my heart and soul were very warm. Maybe running through sprinklers at the park is childish, but in the still of the night it became clear to me that there wasn’t anything I could go through that laughter and Nolan couldn’t wash away.
Twenty-Five
MONDAY MORNING I made my way up Nolan’s stairs after saying good morning to his mom. I had given myself a small pep talk at home, assuring my reflection in the mirror in my bathroom it was possible to walk on campus with my head high no matter who had seen me at my worst. I knocked on Nolan’s door as I pushed it open. As usual, he was still in the shower. I dropped my bag at the end of his bed and made my way over to his bulletin board to check on my girls. There was only one large poster up of a beautiful woman standing at the end of the stage in her bikini. Below the picture there was an article, which surprised me since he’d never hung anything like that up before.