Meet Me at Midnight

by Jessica Pennington

  I sit on the bed and lie back, letting the smell of Asher’s sheets wash over me. It’s strangely comforting. I love this smell, how it’s just as much a part of my summer as all of the other smells of the house, and the lake. The necklace is long, and I hold the chain away from my chest, running my finger over the details of the two fish tangled together there. A tear slips down the side of my cheek, and then another, and it would be so much easier if it were Asher and not me who was the absolute worst right now.

  Asher

  When I get home that night, the house is dark and quiet. Dad’s SUV is gone, so the parents must be out, reliving their glory days once again. They all seem to be taking this impending empty-nest situation really well. I grab a can of beer from the refrigerator, since no one’s going to miss it tonight. Sidney’s door is closed, and no light seeps from the gap, but she’ll probably be home from her date soon. Or maybe she won’t. It’s the second date. The second time she’s gone out on a date with another guy after I’ve kissed her. She’s basically screaming what she wants at me; I don’t know why I can’t just listen.

  Sidney out on a date shouldn’t irritate me as much as it does. It’s not like kissing someone gives you any sort of claim to them. There’s not some binding contract of exclusivity that goes along with a kiss. It doesn’t even mean she likes me, just that she was bored enough, or lonely enough, or mean enough to put her lips on mine. I think about all of the girls I’ve kissed just once. One time, no expectations. Maybe it’s the fact that she kissed me back last night that’s really irritating me. That second kiss was all her.

  As I walk into my room, I pull my T-shirt off, flinging it onto the floor. Like all of the bedrooms, my room only has a fan—that I leave on all the time—and several little lamps scattered throughout. By the time I reach the bathroom door, my shorts are around my ankles, sent flying with a gentle kick. I flick on the light, and I’m about to close the door when I notice something illuminated by the crack of light streaming from the bathroom. It’s Sidney. In my room. In my bed.

  I whisper her name from the open door, but she doesn’t move. So I close the door and use the bathroom, trying to figure out why she’s here. As I brush my teeth I come up with four possible explanations:

  1.  It only looks like Sidney. It’s actually an elaborate pile of pillows, or a strategically placed mannequin or something equally creepy.

  2.  It’s some stranger she paid to lay in my bed, who will undoubtedly murder me.

  3.  I’m hallucinating. Or drunk. I haven’t cracked the beer sitting on my counter yet, so the first is more likely at this point.

  4.  She’s drunk, and wandered into the wrong bed. Maybe I should pour some lemonade on her and even the score in the morning?

  I look at the unopened can of beer sitting on my bathroom counter and shake my head. I sort of wish I was drunk right now, because any of these things seems more likely than the idea that Sidney Kristine Walters could actually be sleeping in my bed right now. Willingly. I’m tempted to open her bedroom door, just to confirm nothing horrible has happened in there.

  I pull on a pair of gray pajama pants, because I don’t think talking to her in my underwear is going to help matters at all.

  She’s sleeping right on the edge, which seems like a very Sidney thing to do. I don’t even know why, it just does. I squat down next to the bed and just look at her for a second. My annoyance over Caleb and the necklace, and the fact that she thinks I’m a total douchebag, has melted away. I set my hand on her shoulder and rub my thumb on her bare skin, trying not to startle her. She makes a little purring sound, and the crack of light slashing down onto the carpet illuminates the way her nose scrunches up. I want to laugh, but that feels like the absolute rudest way I could wake her up. “Hey, Sid?” My hand is still on her arm when her eyes slowly open.

  She looks startled for a second, but she doesn’t make any noise. With a shake of her head she blinks up at me, scans her eyes around the room, and then opens her mouth in something between a yawn and a deep breath.

  “Shouldn’t you be at the movies?” I whisper, and all of the anger from before has seeped out of my voice, leeched away by the shock of her in my bed. She’s still in the old T-shirt and cotton shorts she was wearing when I brought her into my room earlier. Has she been here the whole time?

  Sidney doesn’t say anything; she just shakes her head. Honestly, it seems rude to show up in someone’s room and then refuse to answer their questions, or to even speak. But then she rolls onto her back, and then over again, until she’s facing me, but this time from the other side of the bed. I look down at the empty space where her body used to be, and then at her. I am so freaking confused right now. When she doesn’t move, I lie down next to her, hoping my bed isn’t as squeaky as hers.

  Her voice is soft. “I didn’t go to the movies.” I can feel her breath on my cheek as my eyes focus on the ceiling.

  “I see that.”

  “Do you know why?”

  I turn my head toward her. “Because you knew Caleb wouldn’t create a movie-watching experience half as awesome as I did?” I smile at her, and realize our faces are only inches apart. “Because you wanted to hide in my bed like a creeper and wait for me?” She scrunches her nose up like I’ve offended her, but a smile is pulling at her lips, so I keep going. “You were sitting on my bed, thinking about how awesome I am, and you suffered a narcoleptic episode. Am I getting warm?”

  “You’ve had this necklace for years now.” She puts her fingers to her chest where the necklace rests. “Two summers ago.”

  “That’s the basic math of it, yes.”

  “You suck at this.” Her voice is annoyed, but amused.

  “What?”

  “Talking about serious stuff.”

  “Yeah, pretty much.” I don’t think it’s that I’m nervous to talk to Sidney about this stuff, it’s just that my head is spinning, and the room is dark, and she’s in my bed wearing way too little. It’s a lot to think about.

  “I kind of like that you suck at this.” She smiles and rolls onto her back, and I’m relieved by the extra few inches it puts between us. “So if you’ve had that necklace for two years…”

  “Do you have a question you want to ask?” I’m still looking at her, but she’s looking at the ceiling.

  “Do you have anything you want to tell me?”

  I roll my eyes and wish she could see it. “You suck at this, too.”

  “Yeah. But you should have told me. I thought you hated me, and we could have had … we could have had less of us being dysfunctional and horrible.”

  “Maybe I liked us dysfunctional and horrible.” She levels me with a stare and I let out a long breath. “What should I have told you?”

  She doesn’t say anything, she just stares up at the ceiling. And after a minute, she closes her eyes, and I wonder if she’s just going to go back to sleep in my bed and hope she wakes up to find out this entire day was just a bad dream.

  I take a deep breath, and decide that I don’t have much to lose; this is a game of chicken that Sidney is never going to willingly let me win. “Hey, Sid…”

  She tips her head back toward me, her voice soft. “Yeah?”

  “Ask me how much I hate you right now.”

  She closes her eyes for just a second. “How much do you hate me right now?” It doesn’t have the teasing edge it usually does; her voice is nervous, almost shaky.

  “I don’t.” It’s such a cop-out. I should have told her the whole truth—I like you. I’ve always liked you—but I can’t bring myself to do it without knowing if she’s going to lose her shit and stop talking to me the rest of the summer. So, baby steps.

  “I…” She looks back to the ceiling. “Don’t hate you, either.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”

  She looks at me and smiles, but it’s a little sad. “Me, too.”

  Sidney is like the stray cat we had at our house one summer. We fed her for a
few weeks, and she purred and acted like she’d stay forever, but then suddenly she was gone. So before Sidney decides to bolt, I turn and press my lips to hers. She shifts, so she’s facing me, and props herself up on her elbow so we’re level. My hand rests on her waist, and hers wraps behind my back.

  We’re still pressed together when a door slams and voices filter into the house. All four of our parents are home. Footsteps enter the hallway, and Sidney bolts up. I whisper in her ear, “My door is locked. Just be quiet.” And just to see what I can get away with, I kiss her behind her ear.

  “Mine isn’t,” she says frantically, and launches herself off of the bed. In two long steps that are almost leaps, she’s in the bathroom, the door softly shutting behind her. A faucet turns on, the crack of light under the door goes dark, and just as strangely as Sidney appeared in my bedroom, she’s gone.

  DAY 26

  Asher

  Today should feel different. At least I thought it would. But mostly it just feels the same. And not in a good way. In a really weird, déjà vu kind of way that is making my skin crawl like it used to when I was waiting for one of Sid’s pranks. When she jumped—literally—out of my bed last night, I didn’t expect to wake up this morning and make out at breakfast or anything. I didn’t even expect pancakes. That would have been sort of weird, too.

  But I also didn’t expect that the kitchen would be empty when I walked in at six thirty. I’m not sure at what point it became our thing, but not having breakfast with Sidney feels wrong. And not just because I had to eat cereal and not pancakes.

  “Ash?” I’m still sitting at the table at seven thirty, scrolling through my phone, when my mom files into the kitchen followed by my dad. “You’re up early.” You have no idea.

  I tell her I couldn’t sleep, instead of telling her the truth: that I show up at six thirty every morning, hoping Sidney hasn’t decided to start taking it easy this summer. I wonder what my mom would say if I told her that after all these years of dragging me out of bed, I basically lie awake in my bed at 6 a.m. every day. That I can hardly make myself wait some mornings. Thinking it, I’m positive that saying I couldn’t sleep was the right choice.

  Fifteen minutes later Kris and Tom filter out of the hallway, and Sid is a few steps behind, still in the shorts and tank she was wearing last night. In my bed. It’s almost eight o’clock, and I literally can’t remember the last time I saw her get up this late. Except for yesterday. The morning after the kiss. The day she decided that kissing me made her want to stay in her room the entire day, and then go out with another guy. Cue the ominous foreboding. Will that kiss forever be a before and after for me and Sidney? At the table, over my mom’s scrambled eggs and her dad’s coffee—which I know for a fact is not nearly as good as what I usually make her—we are silent. With each other, at least.

  Sidney tells my mom she’s excited when she asks her about college starting in a month. She tells my dad she already got her dorm assignment. McLandry House, right across from one of the dining spots. Of course she already looked up her dorm on the map. My assignment still says PENDING and I’m starting to wonder if I’m going to be sleeping on a sidewalk somewhere.

  Everyone eats, and I shove bacon and eggs into my mouth, not because I’m hungry, but because I don’t want to leave the table. I’m glad we don’t have to swim this morning, because watching her cross the lake not knowing where we stand would be pure torture. But deep in my gut I know it: I’ve royally screwed this all up. The kiss, the necklace, the second kiss in my bed—obviously it’s all too much. Not to mention that first kiss, the night of the party. There’s a good chance I’ll go to my grave without admitting that—drunk or not—I remember every second of that kiss in the grass.

  * * *

  I spend most of the morning in my room, trying to convince myself I’m not panicking. Or hiding from Sidney. But I’m totally hiding from Sidney. Or maybe I’m waiting for her. Right. Maybe she’ll just show up in my bedroom again. Yes, I’m a delusional idiot. I text my best friend Todd and tell him the whole gruesome story of the last few days.

  Sidney’s lying in the water, stretched out on her inner tube, her neck arched back, hair billowing in the water behind her. There’s a rope tethering her raft to the dock, like she’s our very own buoy. If she had a warning painted across her, I suspect it would say STAY AWAY rather than the usual SWIM ZONE.

  Seeing her out there reminds me of the first summer we met, and there’s nothing perilous in those memories. Except for that summer being its own kind of ending. Though I’ll never be able to explain how something that never started could be snuffed out so abruptly. I could walk to the end of the dock, but I don’t. Because she’s probably fallen asleep out there, and if I scare the crap out of her that won’t help my case. Or maybe because I’m a coward. And if this is another ending instead of a beginning, I’m not really in a rush to get there.

  At dinner Sidney is quiet. Not when my mother comments about all of her running, or when hers asks about her future roommate—a girl from the other side of the state named Ellie. But when I finally will myself to say something—to bring up the fact that our meet schedule has gone up and two of our first three meets are at home—I get a two-word answer as she jabs a chicken breast with her fork: that’s exciting. I wonder if our parents notice the quiet between us, or if it’s just me.

  It’s probably just me.

  Sidney

  I haven’t been actively avoiding Asher all day, but I wasn’t going out of my way to be near him, either. Which made me realize that for a while now, I was. I was putting myself in his way, making excuses to be where he was. I hadn’t realized how much of our time was spent together until today, when we spent almost none of it together. It felt … wrong. And that realization feels wrong in my head. It’s like a misshapen puzzle piece that doesn’t fit with everything I’ve always thought about Asher. About what the two of us have always added up to. But I can’t avoid him forever, and if we’re going to talk, I’d rather it be alone. So when I see him sitting on the couch, watching TV after everyone else has gone to bed (even though he has a TV in his room) I wonder if he feels the same.

  He’s sitting on the small sofa, leaning to one side, his elbow propped up on the arm. Our parents all went to bed over an hour ago. Too many late nights, I guess. I sit on the armchair across the room from him, curling my legs under me and shoving a pillow under my side. I lean onto the arm like he does. We sit in silence, the sound of the TV filling the room, though it seems to float right past my ears. I’m not paying attention to anything but the fact that I’m in the same room as Asher, alone in the dark, for the first time since he told me he didn’t hate me. Since we were in his bed together. My cheeks flush at the thought of it. It was less than twenty-four hours ago, but it’s already starting to feel like a long-gone memory. Or a dream. I was in bed, maybe it was a dream.

  “You could sit, you know.” Asher smiles at me, and I’m completely unnerved by it. At how casually he does it now, and directed at me.

  “I am sitting.” I glance down at my chair, offering it as evidence.

  “You could sit by me.”

  I don’t move and Asher laughs. “You can’t see the TV over there. I know you can’t.”

  I can see the TV just fine, actually. Not that I’m watching—I’m way too preoccupied to even process what’s flashing across the screen. But maybe he knew what I needed. An excuse. A reason to make myself walk the ten feet from my chair to his couch.

  I get up and deposit myself on the couch next to him. Not too close, like someone who thinks they’re going to be kissed again, but not so far that it looks like I think he has something contagious. I am a very normal, not-enemies distance from him on the couch. Do I want him to kiss me again? It’s the question that’s been going through my head all day. The short answer is yes. A million times yes. No one has kissed me like Asher kissed me, or made me feel the electric jolt that zips up my body when we touch. But kissing Asher isn’t that simple. K
issing Asher is, in one word, complicated.

  Asher pushes himself up off of the couch and pauses. “I’m getting a drink, do you want something?”

  “Can I trust you with my beverage?”

  Asher looks down at me like I’m being ridiculous. As if last year he didn’t fill my Sprite with salt, and gleefully offer it to me right before a dinner with our parents, only to stare at me in shock as I sputtered and gagged.

  “I’m good.” I swallow down the panic rising up in my throat. Sometimes I think you’ve forgotten how to say anything nice to me. “Thanks.”

  The room is dark and it feels like we’re trapped in a tiny, suffocating little box, not the biggest room in the house. Now that he’s gone, the empty space next to me doesn’t look big enough for Asher anymore; it looks more fitting for a toddler. A toddler I’m going to be on top of when he returns from the kitchen. Oh god.

  Asher returns and sets his can on the little wooden end table. And when he sits, he fits, but the space between us is diminished even further.

  “I’m not sure how to do this.” The words are almost a whisper, but I wonder if he hears them for what they really are: a scream for help.

  He looks over at me, his brows pulled tight. “Do what?”

  “This,” I say, waving my finger between us frantically. “Us.” I say the word a little too harshly, a little bit too much like it’s something dirty and unnatural. I’m still not sure that it isn’t.

  “You’re overthinking this, Sid.” Asher lifts his arm up onto the back of the couch, and it takes me a minute to register the action. The invitation that lays there, under his arm. It would only take a few inches to close the gap between us, yet it feels like a monumental movement.