by CL Walters
Instead, I reach out and ruffle Liam’s hair, which I know he hates. “But you like him like him.”
“Stop!” He lurches forward to get out from under the destructive force of my hand and adjusts his hair back into place, not that I could have done much to those product-laced locks. “And shut up. I don’t.” His ears turn red.
“You are so lying.” I grin and search for Atticus’s IG feed on my phone. “He is really handsome,” I say when I find it.
I select a gorgeous picture of Atticus and turn my phone to show him. Liam glances at it but looks away, aloof and noncommittal. Even I can’t detach from the beauty. Atticus is gorgeous: tall, black, stylish, fit. He’s a basketball player at our high school and got a full ride to St. Mary’s in California. All of his pictures have this low-key, I’m-so-casual vibe in a matching filter, so there’s no way it’s casual. But, damn. “Liam. He’s so hot, you have my approval,” I tell him, even though I know how horrible and objectifying it sounds. Not that Liam needs my approval.
He groans. “Stop, Emma. For real. Atticus is like–” He pauses and turns his shoulders so he’s facing me. “Look–”
“Mr. Liam, sir, I don’t much feel like one of your lectures,” I interrupt in my best patronizing student voice, because Liam is always lecturing me. Mansplaining. The jerk.
“Atticus is like — out of my league. And that’s if he’s gay.” He looks down at his phone again. “I mean, I think I got some vibes, but my vibes are inexperienced. I have no idea what I’m doing. Besides, how many openly gay men do you think there are in this backwater, hick-horrible town?” He offers an old man grunt of disgust and readjusts himself with his back against the couch’s seat again. “I can’t wait to get out of here.”
I understand his sentiment, though my prison is of a different kind: Christian family, striving for perfection where nothing real ever happens. Okay, maybe that’s not fair, but it’s how I feel sometimes. I can’t wait to leave and distance myself from stifling expectations to experience my own version of freedom.
I try to give Liam a pep talk anyway. “None of us know what we’re doing. We’re all faking it. Ferris is the only one who seems to have it all figured out, and he’s a fictional character. No one is like that.”
“Has what figured out?” Ginny asks from behind us. Liam and I turn and watch her walk into the finished basement from the stairs. “Your dad said to come down, and he’ll bring us some fresh cookies when they’re out of the oven.”
The third of our Bueller troop flops onto the couch next to me with her fresh-coated vanilla scent. She’s been on a new kick to live as a 1970’s hippie in order to explore the ideology of antidisestablishmentarianism, mostly to annoy her dad and stepmom. The outfit today: tie-dye cotton maxi-skirt she made herself and a black shirt without a bra (which is very noticeable because of her gorgeous boobs and high beams she’s been very proud of since she got them). The whole no bra thing has really pushed the buttons of her stepmom which Ginny loves to do more than anything. She lays her head on my shoulder and threads her arm through mine.
“Life,” I say, in answer to her original question.
“Our parents don’t even have life figured out. Obviously,” Ginny replies. “Case in point: my dad and step-monster. How could we — mere eighteen-year-olds? I take that back. We might have it more together.”
“Something new?” I ask. The last installment of The Life and Times of Ginny Donnelly had her stepmother forcing her to paint her bedroom since she’s leaving for college soon. Her stepmom is determined to convert Ginny’s room into a fitness haven and has been taking measurements for her equipment.
“Besides Operation Kick Ginny Out of Her Room? Nothing new. I don’t want to talk about them, or the fact that she made me go through my closet to consolidate everything into boxes for storage.”
“Sorry, Gin.” I squeeze her arm with mine. “On a happier note, we were discussing something intriguing. Specifically, Liam’s crush on Atticus Baker.”
He turns his back to us and resumes his stylish leaning against the couch, looking like a modern James Dean. He’s got it all: the hair, the glasses, the pout.
Ginny sits up. “Atticus Baker? Man, he’s hot.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Is he gay?”
“We could run a new operation: Find out if Atticus Baker is Gay,” I offer. “We could all slide into his DM, and see?”
“Emma.” Liam’s voice is threaded with a warning, like a brother who has reached the threshold of annoyance.
I smile. “I’m sorry, Liam. Am I hurting your feelings?” I lean toward him and nuzzle his ear.
He moves to get away from me again. “No.” He swats at me. “And no offense, but we know how the last operation you planned went.”
I glance at Ginny, who raises her eyebrows and tilts her head. “He has a point.”
I know they’re referring to the junior year debacle. To be fair, if I was going to sneak out and go to a party, I was going to go all in. Especially if getting caught by my parents was a risk. I hadn’t gotten caught, but I had gotten what I’d been after: a kiss — a gorgeously memorable hot kiss that I hadn’t been able to forget. From Tanner James. “Everything turned out okay. We didn’t get into trouble. Really, when you list out the successes against the failures, that was a win-win.”
Liam looks at me like I’m delusional, and perhaps I am. “Emma, if you think you won in that situation, you’re wrong. You haven’t stopped infatuating about the school’s biggest douchebag since. And for someone who claims to be a feminist, that’s some contradictory bullshit.”
I look to Ginny for backup, which I don’t get. “He’s right.” She shrugs and flops against the couch. “It’s been over a year, and you’re still struggling with it.”
They’re both right. I sigh because I am infatuated with Tanner James, and I know better. “It doesn’t matter. Graduation is two weeks away. We’re going to kick ass, say our smarty-pants speeches, and leave for college. Which I will cry about later. Tanner James will be old news. My infatuation with him will be spent as I walk onto a college campus as a co-ed surrounded by beautiful men and women and a playground of sexual awakening.”
Ginny and Liam glance at one another with saucer-shaped eyes and then collapse with laughter.
“Emma! I can’t believe you just said that.” Liam laughs even harder.
“Sexual Awakening. Emma.” Ginny shrieks, falling away from me at her waist.
“Wow. You’re giving me a complex.”
When their laughter subsides, Liam climbs up onto the couch.
With me in between them, sulking, my arms crossed over my chest, I say, “You make me sound like a prude.”
“That’s not what we mean.” Liam pats my leg. “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. I just–” He pauses and looks at me over the top of his glasses, reminding me of his dad. “Emma, you’re pretty conservative when it comes to stuff like that. And scared about, like everything.”
“What? Sex?” I say, still pouting but knowing he’s right. I haven’t done much in my eighteen years besides masturbate. I’m not ignorant about sex. I may have been raised with Christian parents, but they have been open and frank about sex. While the discussions have moved around the naturalness of the act, the underlying message has been an expectation to wait until marriage. Besides the junior year operation, I’d kissed a couple of other guys. Add to that my date for junior prom, Chris Keller, who tried to pressure me into sex and went so far as to grope me in the limo. I’d slapped him (so much for uncomplicated). Without a doubt, I’m curious and interested in sex, but it’s clear my wiring leads to the red wire, not meaningless romps in the back of limos.
“Yeah, sex,” Ginny says. “You overthink everything. Sex, like, isn’t a thinking endeavor. It’s all feeling.”
I stand up to get away from them and their words, which I recognize as true but don’t want to. “I’m not scared of sex.”
Liam stands and m
irrors me. “Emma — you’re Claire.” He points at the TV screen where Pretty in Pink waits for us.
I narrow my eyes at him. “I’m not Claire, who’s in The Breakfast Club, by the way. I’m not a stuck-up, snobby, princess, tease.”
“No. Not like that part. Like the sexually repressed part,” Ginny says. “The one who secretly likes the bad boy but won’t act on it.”
“Except–” I hold up a finger for emphasis– “I went into the closet with bad boy John Bender just like she did, only it was junior year with Tanner James.” I want to lash out at Liam who’s checking out a guy but is too scared to find out if he’s gay. And Ginny, who slept with her last boyfriend because she wanted to “get over” her virginity. With my hands on my hips, ready to deflect, I pause and bite my tongue. It’s petty and mean, and I love them too much.
“Emma.” Ginny’s chin falls against her chest, and she stares at me under her lashes. “You had to be drunk to do it.”
She’s right. Operation Kiss Tanner James required me to be drunk, because I couldn’t muster up the courage to be bold. But then when had I ever? If it wasn’t about church, or school, or duo with Liam — things that I could control — when had I ever been brave?
“Fresh cookies, hot from the oven.” My dad with plate in hand maneuvers down the steps into the basement. He looks up with a smile when he reaches the bottom and pauses a moment, assessing the tension in the room. “Everything alright?”
“Perfect.” I cross my arms over my chest.
“Those cookies smell delicious, Mr. Matthews,” Liam says, turning on the couch to face my father.
Kiss ass.
“How many times have I said it’s okay to call me Mo?”
Liam snags a cookie from the plate as my dad sets it on the table between the couch and the TV. “Thanks, Mo.”
Dad straightens, walks over to me, and gives me a side hug.
“Thanks, Dad.”
“Pretty in Pink night?” His eyes bounce from me to Liam to Ginny. He lingers and clears his throat. “Not many of these left, huh?”
We all mumble affirmations at him. I’m sure none of us are truly ready to come to terms with that fact yet, even if we say we’re ready to leave.
“I’ll leave you to it, then.” He squeezes me against his side once more and then disappears back up the stairs.
After he’s gone, I look at my friends feeling hurt and vulnerable. They might as well have just said I was the most boring person on the planet — and they’d probably be right.
Ginny pats the couch cushion next to her and holds her arms out to me.
I walk into them, flop forward, and lay against her awkwardly.
“Your Emma-think isn’t a bad thing. It’s an Emma thing. You’re awesome. When you’re ready — you’ll know,” she says. “In fact, because you’re you, you’ll probably have the best first experience of us all. All that thinking and analysis to make sure.”
I move off of her to sit.
“And,” Ginny says, “believe me. You don’t want a Dean on your hands.” Each of us snorts in reference to her first, the aftermath of just trying to “get over it.” She shudders and takes my hand in hers. “Maybe it will be like a sexual awakening in college next year, or maybe it will be a hot someone this summer. Perhaps it will be in four years, or maybe it will be on your wedding night. It doesn’t matter. What matters is YOU get to decide that for yourself, and that will make it perfect.”
Liam sits down on the other side of me and takes my hand. “And I’ll be there cheering you on for your first encounter with the D, or the V — whichever you prefer.”
“I don’t know why this suddenly became about me.”
“Here. We can make it about me,” Liam says. “I’m still a virgin.”
“A status you’d like to change with Atticus Baker.” I wiggle my eyebrows at him.
He smacks my shoulder. “Shut it, bitch.” Then he chuckles.
“Let’s get this John Hughes night moving already. Turn on the movie. Wait, Pretty in Pink? Maybe we should switch it to The Breakfast Club.” Ginny lets me go and leans forward for popcorn. “We’ve got some analysis to do on that dialogue between Allison and Claire tonight, I think.”
After an argument about sticking with our planned movie schedule, we watch Pretty in Pink. Ginny relents because Andie needs analysis of her attitudes about men: douchebags versus the best-friend. I point out one of my best friends is gay and the other one isn’t; it’s not an option in all circumstances. We’re all in agreement that Andie should have ended up with Duckie (cue giant eye rolls), but as the movie plays, I’m distracted. I attempt to stay in it with my friends since our John Hughes movie nights are dwindling down to a handful. My mind keeps turning back to junior year. I think about how I’d played that night and the aftermath and wish I’d been braver.
Coming Soon!
A NEW Cantos Novel
Fall 2022
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About the Author
CL Walters writes in Hawai’i where she lives with her husband, two children and acts as a pet butler to two pampered fur-babies. She’s the author of the YA Contemporary series, The Cantos Chronicles (Swimming Sideways, The Ugly Truth and The Bones of Who We Are), the YA/NA Contemporary romance The Stories Stars Tell as well as the adult romance, The Letters She Left Behind. In the Echo of this Ghost Town and When the Echo Answers are her sixth and seventh YA/NA Contemporary novels. For up-to-date news, sign up for her monthly newsletter on her website at www.clwalters.net as well as follow her writer’s journey on Instagram @cl.walters.