He stared me down. “So talk.”
Slowly, tentatively, I told him what had happened on the swings the night before. I couldn’t look at him; I could barely stand to hear my own voice. I’d thought telling him would make me feel better, but instead I felt like I was handing over something I would have rather kept to myself.
“It’s all right, Codi,” Ricky said when I was finished. He sighed and rubbed his hand down his face again. “Kissing can be scary.”
“Don’t patronize me,” I snapped.
“I’m not.”
“Yeah, you are.”
His mouth tightened. We stared at each other, and then he said, “Look, did I ever tell you about my first kiss?”
“You know you didn’t.”
He ignored my sass and dove into the story. “It was with this girl, Alex Pickens,” he said, staring out over the water. “We were in seventh grade, at a service project site our moms made us sign up for, and we were stocking shelves with canned food. She got cold, so I gave her my sweatshirt. Then we kissed.”
I’d expected a better story, or at least something with a point. “And … did you like her?”
“I thought she was cute, but I didn’t want to kiss her in a warehouse.”
“But at least you did.”
He rolled his eyes, and not in a playful way. “The point is, it was stupid. She wasn’t someone I had a major crush on, like you do with Lydia, so it didn’t matter.”
“Then tell me what it’s like to kiss someone you do have a major crush on,” I pressed. “Tell me what it’s like to kiss Tucker.”
Ricky went dead silent, glaring at me.
“Really?” I said.
He shook his head. “Don’t start on this, Codi.”
“Fine. We’ll just pretend it’s not real, like always.”
“Did I do something?” he asked, his voice rising. “Or is this just you being pissed off that you fucked up your first kiss?”
I looked away from him, unable to believe he’d said that.
“You know,” I said, taking a shaky breath, “the thing about being friends with someone is that it’s supposed to be a two-way street. That day when I came over to your house, you told me that I wasn’t allowed to make you into some kind of project. But you know what, Ricky? You’re making me into a project. You always jump at the chance to help me because you think I’m this emotionally stunted wallflower who doesn’t know what she’s doing, but you won’t let me do the same for you. Would it be so bad to tell me how you really feel about Tucker? How goddamn upset he makes you?”
Ricky lashed at so quickly that it seemed like he’d had the words prepared for days. “Has it ever occurred to you that maybe you’re projecting your own feelings onto me, Codi? Our problems are not the same. I’m not even sure that I’m gay! You keep pushing this thing with me and Tucker because you want to have a model for all the things you’ve been missing out on, but I can’t give that to you! I can’t act like Tucker and I are in love, like we go on dates and hold hands and kiss each other like we’re in some romantic comedy, because that’s not the truth! I’m just a guy who’s trying to feel his way through everything without getting boxed in by labels!”
“I’m not trying to box you in!” I yelled. “I don’t care about labels and identities and—”
“Are you sure about that?” he said harshly. “Are you sure you haven’t been sabotaging yourself this entire time with these stupid fucking ideas of how you’re supposed to be?”
“I don’t have a single issue with being gay—”
“But you do have an issue with being shy, and being anxious, and being someone who never went to parties and never went on dates and never kissed anyone before! How much of that stuff is actually you, Codi, and how much of it is you thinking that it’s you? It’s not like you’re some defective, half-alive seventeen-year-old who can’t make friends or talk to people. You’ve been doing it all fucking summer! You have an incredible opportunity with Lydia right now, and you’re blowing it because you can’t get over yourself and stop imagining that you’re so different from everyone else!”
His words knocked the breath out of me. For a minute all I could do was sit there and let everything crash over me, my stomach chilled and my throat blocked up.
Ricky was looking straight out the windshield, breathing hard. He was more agitated than I’d ever seen him.
“I’m not trying to tell you who you are and what you want,” I said roughly. “Not like you just told me. But something’s bothering you, and whatever it might be, I’m your friend and I just want to be here for you.”
“I don’t need you to be,” Ricky said, jamming his key back into the ignition.
That hurt worse than anything; it felt like another way of him saying I wasn’t truly his friend. All I wanted was to be there for him like someone he’d known since kindergarten, when every feeling shared was pure and guileless and true. But none of that mattered; the conversation was over.
We drove back to our neighborhood with no music and no apologies. When we pulled up to my house, my brother was in the driveway, shooting hoops by himself. He looked up, his eyes widening at Ricky’s truck, but I slammed the car door and stormed into the house before he could ask me any questions.
* * *
I was off-balance for the rest of the day. Ricky’s words latched on to my skin, scratching away at me until my whole body felt like an exposed nerve. I shut myself in my room and paced around like a crazy person, huge adrenaline rushes surging up through my chest every time I thought of another cutting retort I should have thrown at him.
Then I lay on the floor and stared at the ceiling. I grabbed my phone and turned on some music, closing my eyes and replaying every moment of this summer in my mind, trying to understand how I’d gotten to this place.
My little pity party was interrupted by the sound of a text message. My heart leapt, hoping for Lydia, hoping for Ricky, but it was neither one of them.
Maritza Vargas: Can you come over?
I stared at the message. I hadn’t heard from Maritza in days, and the last thing I wanted right now was to try to make sense of where we stood with each other.
What’s wrong?
She started typing, stopped, and started again. I waited another two minutes before her message came through.
Maritza Vargas: You were right about Rona.
I sighed. I was still upset with Maritza for the way she’d talked to me last week, but I knew something pretty bad must have happened for her to admit to being wrong. For a long minute my anger battled it out with my deep-seated loyalty, and finally the loyalty won out.
Give me 15 minutes.
* * *
Maritza’s garage doors were shut; the house was all locked up. I wasn’t sure why until I remembered that her parents had left for Panama the day before. A stab of guilt dug into my stomach. The old Codi never would have forgotten about Maritza’s parents leaving her alone; I would have invited her over in a heartbeat.
I knocked on the back door until Maritza answered, a fleece blanket draped around her shoulders and an exhausted expression on her face.
“Hey,” she croaked.
“Hey.”
It was strained between us. For a second we hovered there on the threshold, merely looking at each other. Then Maritza stepped back and gestured me inside.
I followed her into her parents’ elegant, renovated kitchen with its cold floors and marble counters. There was no sound except for the ticking of a clock. A bowl of her mom’s arroz con pollo sat half-eaten on the table.
“Thanks for coming over,” Maritza said, not quite catching my eye. “I felt like I was going crazy sitting here by myself.”
I studied her; it looked like she might cry at any second, which was something I’d only seen twice in the six years I’d known her.
“What happened?” I asked softly. “Does Rona not feel the same way?”
She swallowed and looked at me, but her response had nothing to do with R
ona.
“You’re such a good friend,” she said shakily. “I don’t even deserve to have you here right now. I’m so sorry for how I talked to you last week.”
I exhaled. I wasn’t prepared for her apology, and I didn’t know how to explain that the conversation we needed to have was much bigger than a single instance of “sorry.” I barely had the emotional bandwidth to deal with her Rona problem; there was no way I could work on fixing our entire relationship.
“Let’s worry about that later,” I said, pulling her over to the couch. “Just tell me about Rona.”
Maritza sighed and pulled her legs up, tucking herself into the corner of the couch. I spread out across from her, wrapping a cashmere blanket around my legs.
“My parents left yesterday morning,” she said, swallowing. “I told Rona she should come spend the night, and she seemed really, really into the idea; we talked about it all week at camp, and she kept saying how much fun we were going to have.”
I bit down the weird feeling inside me. It felt wrong that Maritza was telling me about these plans after they had happened, when in the past I would have known about them in real time.
“So last night she shows up,” Maritza went on, “and I was all spastic and excited, and we ordered Chinese food and watched a movie … and then she convinced me that we should drink some of my dad’s Puerto Rican rum.”
“Uh-oh,” I said, knowing how carefully Mr. Vargas guarded that rum.
“So, against my better judgment, we took a couple shots … and she started being all touchy-feely … and then…” Maritza inhaled. “We started making out.”
My stomach plummeted. It was a jarring feeling, watching your best friend beat you to the finish line and remembering that you’re not supposed to feel jealous of her for getting there first. All I managed to say was “Wow.”
“I can’t even explain how it happened, but suddenly she was kissing me and it felt … it felt so good, dude … I mean, I could have done that for hours.”
“Wow,” I said again.
“But then…” Maritza shook her head like she was trying to make sense of something impossible. There was a distant, defeated look in her eyes. “I don’t know, it was like she got bored or something. She stopped kissing me and started talking about how we should invite these guys over.”
“What?”
“Yeah. I guess she has some friends who live near me, so she texted them and told them to come over. And I was so confused that I didn’t even object to the idea. She was like this force of momentum that completely knocked me over. So these guys show up, and Rona was outright flirting with them, both of them, and she tells me we should give them some rum, too, and I told her my dad was going to notice that so much of it was gone, and she was like, ‘He can get more while he’s down there.’”
“Wait—what?”
“She thought Panama and Puerto Rico were the same thing.”
“Ugh, Maritza…”
“I know. And then, she told the guys that she and I had been ‘having fun’ before they got here.”
“No,” I groaned, actually covering my eyes with my hands. “Please tell me she didn’t—”
“Yes, she did. So of course they started being complete assholes and trying to get us to make out in front of them.”
I stared at her, worried about where this was going. I hoped Maritza wouldn’t be desperate enough to turn her sexuality into a show like that, but with the way she’d been obsessing about hookups lately, I couldn’t be so sure.
“Please tell me you didn’t…”
“Of course I didn’t!” Maritza shrieked. “Do you know me at all? God, Codi, I was freaking out. Rona kept telling me to relax, that there was no harm in kissing, but I lost my shit and screamed at the guys to get out of my house.”
“Good!” I said, my neck flushing with heat. “Did you kick her out, too?”
“I couldn’t; she was too drunk to drive. Neither one of those asshole guys offered to take her home, so I got stuck with her. We didn’t even speak the rest of the night. She was as pissed at me as I was at her. It’s like she thought I was just being a prude and a loser, like she had no idea that making out with her had actually meant something to me.”
Her voice cracked on the last word. I reached for her hand and squeezed it.
“I’m sorry,” I said gently. “You deserve way better than that.”
She swallowed. “You and JaKory were right.”
“I wish we hadn’t been.”
Maritza looked at our hands. Tears were building in her eyes. “I wish I’d never agreed to be a summer coach. I could’ve just worked a retail gig, like you, and then I could’ve taken time off to go to Panama.” She was really struggling not to cry now, her expression twisted up and her eyes blinking fast. “I can’t believe Mom and Dad are down there with everyone and I’m stuck here by myself, crying over some dumb girl.”
“She’s not some dumb girl. She meant something to you.”
Maritza shook her head. “I made her mean something. I did the exact same thing I’ve accused JaKory of doing: told myself something was possible when it was really just wishful thinking. I was an idiot.”
“Stop being so hard on yourself,” I said, pushing at her shoulder. “You’re not an idiot. You’re someone who knows what she wants and works hard to get it. It’s one of my favorite things about you! So forget stupid Rona. Some other girl or guy is gonna come along and kiss you like it means something, and until then, you just have to keep being the person you are.”
Maritza breathed in a slow, steadying breath. “You really think the person I am is okay?”
“I think the person you are is amazing.”
She gave me a watery smile. “I believe that, coming from you.”
“You should.”
She squeezed my hand. For an infinite moment, all was right in the world.
But then she said something else, something that made my insides harden.
“You’re an amazing person, too. I shouldn’t have judged you for wanting to stay the same. I know you’re not the type to throw herself out there and make a million things happen, and that’s okay. We can’t all be movers and shakers. Some of us have to keep things steady and sure.” She paused, smiling at me like we were in on the same joke. “I’m glad you’re still the same old Codi. I went out there and got my heart stomped on, but you were here this whole time, waiting in the wings to help me feel better.”
She bumped her shoulder against mine, like we’d just shared something tender and heartwarming, but I could only blink at her; an angry flush was creeping up my neck, and suddenly I was hardly breathing.
Was I angry with Maritza, or with myself? She couldn’t fathom that I was capable of risk and change and growth, but was that her fault for not believing it, or my fault for not showing her?
“Dude,” Maritza said, eyeing me in alarm, “what’s wrong?”
I shook my head like a warning.
“I’m sorry,” Maritza said, sounding completely bewildered. “I—I meant all that stuff in a good way—”
I stood up and jerked away from her, my face and neck still burning. “I’m gonna go.”
“Wait—Codi—I’m really sorry, I was trying to say something nice—”
“Well, you didn’t,” I said shortly, grabbing my keys off the table.
“I’m sorry,” Maritza said again. She sounded very small. “I thought we were having a heart-to-heart—I didn’t mean to ruin it—”
“How can we have a heart-to-heart when you don’t know anything about me?” I asked bitterly.
She looked like I’d walloped her. “What?”
“Never mind, it doesn’t matter.”
I was halfway to the door when her voice stopped me.
“But what about tomorrow?”
I stopped, confused. “What about it?”
“Am I still coming over? For the Fourth?”
I had no idea what she was talking about. I couldn’t remembe
r making plans with Maritza for the Fourth of July, and although I wasn’t planning on going to Lake Lanier anymore now that I’d messed things up with Lydia and Ricky, I wasn’t sure I’d be in the mood to do anything else.
“Did we make plans?” I asked, my voice wavering.
Maritza seemed frazzled, unsteady. “My mom called your mom last week to make sure I could come over for it. She wanted to make sure I had somewhere to go, since she and Dad are gone.”
The rage burned me up again, threatening to burst out of me and spill across the Vargases’ fancy living room. I stood there, paralyzed, too angry to speak.
“I’m lost here,” Maritza said in a small voice. “What’s going on?”
I didn’t answer the question. Instead I turned my back on her and stormed out of her house before she could say anything else.
* * *
I didn’t go home. Instead I went for a long drive. I followed the path Ricky always took to the river and parked by the water, gripping the steering wheel tightly, trying to squeeze out my toxic energy.
I called my mom, and before she could do more than ask where I was, I started yelling, demanding to know why she’d made Fourth of July plans for me without telling me.
My mom sounded as bewildered as Maritza had been. “Codi,” she said, leveling her voice the way she always did when Grant or I got out of hand, “what exactly is the problem here?”
“You just assumed I would want to have Maritza over!” I yelled. “You didn’t even ask me! What if I’d made plans to do something else?!”
“What other plans would you have had?” Mom asked, like I had just said the most impossible thing in the world.
A numbness coursed through my body, threatening to swallow me up. “Never mind. I’ll be home later,” I said shortly, and I hung up.
I sat there shaking, rubbing my hands up and down my thighs. The fact that my mom couldn’t fathom my having plans beyond Maritza and JaKory made me feel enraged and pathetic and resentful all at once. I knew it was partly my own fault—that I was hiding whole parts of my life from everyone—but just for once I wanted people to believe I was capable of being more than what I’d always been.
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