I looked at Carter. He was watching me. And he would watch me for the rest of the night if I let him, just like he could maintain stony silence for hours on end if I didn’t say something. My queasiness grew. So did my frustration.
I unfastened my seat belt, slid across the seat, and kissed him.
He made a soft noise, something between a groan and the word no. I paused, wondering if I’d heard wrong. I definitely didn’t want to kiss him if he didn’t want to kiss me. I must have misheard him, because he put his hands in my hair and kissed me back.
But only for a few seconds. The kiss didn’t come to a natural end. He stopped in mid-kiss like he’d suddenly remembered something. He pulled back against the door and looked me in the eye. “Same time next week?”
I had pledged at the restaurant that I would not go out with this group again. I would extricate myself from this strange, silent boy and his gorgeous friend. Addison could find her own way to convince her mother to let her out of the house. People would stop talking about me in band, and I would sink back into the hole I’d crawled out of.
As I looked into Carter’s blue eyes, I knew that was not going to happen. My heart was beating ninety to nothing. That had not happened since . . . every conversation I’d had with Max. And before that, majorette tryouts.
I was not willing to let that rush go.
“Yep,” I said. “See you next week.”
Carter should have given me one last peck on the cheek then, because he liked me and we’d bonded. But he just took off his seat belt and backed out of the car. I got out on my side to move to the front seat for the ride home.
Max and Addison still stood in front of the car. He gave her a peck on the cheek, and they laughed and parted. Max followed her over to Carter’s truck. He patted Carter on the back guy-style, then punched him on the shoulder, hard enough to hurt from the looks of it. Carter glared at him.
Max folded himself into the driver’s seat and watched as Carter’s truck sped across the empty parking spaces.
We sat there in silence for longer than was comfortable, way longer than was normal for Max. I wondered what he was thinking. He was angry with Carter for something, obviously.
Finally I broke the silence. “The band was amazing.”
He turned to me with a grin. “They were, weren’t they?”
“Thanks for planning the whole thing. I’m glad we went.”
“Me too.” He bit his lip. “Addison didn’t like them very much.”
“Carter didn’t either.” I paused. “Sometimes I feel like Carter doesn’t like me very much.”
I expected Max to reassure me and tell me I was wrong. Instead, he started the car. We were all the way across the parking lot and turning onto the road before he said, “That didn’t seem to matter too much to you when the two of you were going at it.”
His eyes met mine. He looked like a stranger now, much older than me, his goatee rugged.
“Going at it?” I croaked.
“You and Carter hardly ever say anything to each other. I can’t imagine how you’ve gotten close. But every time I looked over at you during the concert, or in the backseat, you were letting him put his hands all over you.”
“If it bothers you, don’t look,” I snapped. Then I processed what he’d said. “He had his hands all over me, Max? You’re exaggerating a little. We kissed at the concert, and we kissed in the car. Carter was my date. Isn’t that what we were supposed to do?”
“That’s just it. I don’t think you’re supposed to do any particular thing, but you seem to think so. You think girls let their dates maul them, so that’s what you do. Have you ever dated anyone before?”
I glared at him. “Why do you ask? You think bigger girls never date?”
His lips parted, and he glanced over at me before turning his head to the road again. “You’re not bigger.”
“I was bigger.”
He settled back in his seat then, relaxing, retreating out of the attack mode he’d been in since Carter and Addison had left the car. “I asked because you’re fifteen years old—”
“Excuse me, Mr. Sixteen, but you’re not that much older than me!”
“—and because you’re acting like you just got released from a girls-only reform school in Antarctica.”
We were on a darker winding road. I puzzled through what he’d said. He had no reason to insult me about kissing Carter unless he was jealous. If he wanted me for himself, he would not go out with Addison instead. Maybe my fantasy had come true, and he’d realized he’d asked out the wrong girl.
Testing this theory, I said, “You have the opposite problem. Addison says you hardly touch her. But that must be because you’ve dated before, and you have limitless experience. You know how this works.” My words came out more bitter than I’d intended. I hadn’t meant to attack him. I was fishing for information, dying to know why he hadn’t made a move on Addison, even when she was wearing that shirt.
I was disappointed when all Max said was, “Exactly.” He carefully turned the long car into my driveway.
I hadn’t noticed we were so close to home. I didn’t want to get out of the car. I wasn’t sure where this conversation was going, but I felt like we had something else to say to each other.
He must have felt that way too, because he rolled down his window to let the warm, humid night inside, and turned off the engine.
He scooted his back against the driver’s-side door, facing me. The spotlights on the corners of my house slanted weirdly across his smooth face and his goatee. “There’s a reason why you and Carter hardly spoke all night, but you were perfectly okay with sucking face with him. I have a theory.”
“Oh no,” I said. This was not how I’d wanted to finish our conversation. “You know how you make girls mad? You’re about to do it again. I can feel it.”
Max leaned in and looked straight into my eyes. He concentrated on me like he was trying to see into my mind.
My heart raced and my cheeks burned like we were sharing a long look for another reason. Because we were in love.
“You’ve said Addison didn’t want you to lose weight,” he said, shattering my little romantic dream. Max was deconstructing me. “Your other friends didn’t want you to lose weight either. Even your mom didn’t. That means your relationships with all of them were affected by what you looked like. If you lost weight, your relationships would change, and you knew it.”
He paused. Maybe it was just that my eyes had adjusted to the spotlight on my house shining into the car, but Max’s face seemed harsher than before, the lines more angular. This time I looked away.
“Sure enough,” he said, “you and Addison are at each other’s throats, in your own quiet way. Neither of you verbalizes it, but I can feel the tension coming off the two of you. Your friendship is hard now. Before, it might not have been good, but it was easy. All your relationships were easy. You knew your place with everybody. And that was important to you.”
A shadow flitted across the spotlight beam. Bats were dipping in and out of the light.
“Maybe you worked very hard at a relationship,” he said quietly, “and it crumbled, despite everything you tried. How long has it been since you saw your dad?”
It felt like my heart was beating somewhere down in my gut. I said weakly, “I’ve told you. He lives in Hilton Head and runs all these businesses, so it’s hard for him to come all the way over here just to see me.”
Max didn’t say anything. He could have changed the subject with a joke and made me feel better. But he was content to open a wound and then just sit there and watch it bleed.
I asked angrily, “What are you planning for your college major? Psychology?”
His dark brows knitted. “No. My dad wants me to go to Tech and major in engineering. He says psychologists don’t make enough money.”
“And why don’t you tell him what you really want to do?” I sneered. “Because that would make your relationship hard?”
“I like reading people,” he said. “I think I’m good at it. That doesn’t mean I’m good at reading myself, or solving my own problems.”
“Obviously,” I said, “because you just caused another problem. You’re right. I don’t like complicated relationships. You know what’s really complicated? Being friends with my best friend’s date. So don’t think you have to pick me up anymore. You’re smart enough to arrange another way to go out with Addison.” I opened the door.
“Gemma,” he said. His hand squeezed my thigh. Electricity shot across my skin, up my torso, and across my chest to my heart, which pounded like I’d just finished a workout.
I slid out from under his touch and slammed the door behind me.
10
As I stomped across the yard, I realized I shouldn’t have slammed Max’s door. My mother might have heard it. She might be watching me out a window now. She would know from the way I walked that I was angry. She would hear that anger again if I slammed the front door behind me. Then we’d have to talk about what had happened.
I’d thought I longed to have the chat with her that she kept promising me. But the prospect of talking to her about something this real made me cringe. I didn’t want her to know I had a complicated relationship with Max. Then I would have a more complicated relationship with her. Max was right, and that made me even madder at him.
I closed the front door, careful to shut it the way I normally did, which I probably got completely wrong now that I was thinking so hard about it.
Then I edged to the window to peek out at the driveway. I half expected—or half hoped—Max would still be parked there, staring mournfully at my house, contemplating running after me and ringing the (oh God) gong doorbell to tell me he was sorry. But he was already backing into the street, probably not even thinking about my prissy little fit.
I watched him until his taillights disappeared around the corner.
In the kitchen, I peered into the refrigerator, then the freezer, then the refrigerator again, looking for . . . something. I asked myself whether I was hungry or just wanted something to eat. The answer was neither. I wanted Max to come back. I wanted to erase what I had said, and what he had said, and go back to a time before I saw myself so clearly. I didn’t like what I saw.
I climbed the stairs. My mom was in her office. Really I thought of it as Dad’s office, though it had been Mom’s for the past six years. She hadn’t redecorated after Dad left. The walls were still painted a manly forest green and lined with towering dark wood cabinets. She seemed out of place in Dad’s leather office chair, sitting behind his massive wooden desk and pecking at the computer. A bowl and a spoon sat next to the keyboard. Without looking, I knew the bowl had held cobbler and ice cream, and that it was empty.
When I stood in the doorway, she didn’t glance up from hunting and pecking. My high school made everybody take typing now, but she had missed out on that. And apparently, working for a few years as a secretary before marrying my dad had not taught her any keyboarding skills. Biting her lip, she was really intent on finding that G or whatever.
“Hi, Mom,” I finally said. “I’m back.”
“Oh, hey, sweetie.” She pecked another letter before she looked up. Her brow furrowed. “What’s the matter? Didn’t you have fun on your date with Max?”
“Sure,” I lied. Wait. “Carter. My date with Carter.”
“That’s what I said.” She went back to typing. Over the clicks of the keyboard, she called, “Let me finish this up, and then I want to hear all about it.”
Right. I knew how it worked. We wouldn’t talk again until morning, when she would make me a big breakfast and I’d refuse to eat it.
I wandered down the hall to my room and sank down on my bed, thinking hard about Max. I had lashed out at him instinctively because what he’d said had hurt—like slapping a mosquito when it stung me.
But he had been right about a lot. He was so right about my “friendship” with Addison that I almost felt like I should apologize to her for losing weight and making the majorette line. I’d gained confidence, I’d started fighting for my own friendships with people, and I’d ruined the nice, peaceful princess-and-servant relationship that Addison and I had had before.
I knew I should apologize to Max for getting so angry. And telling him I couldn’t be friends with him anymore. What if he took that seriously?
I pulled my phone from my purse. With a shaking finger, I flipped to his number and called him.
“Hello?” he said.
I’d never heard him over the phone before. His low voice sent a shiver through the center of my chest.
“It’s Gemma.” He should have known it was me, since he had my number in his phone, but he didn’t sound like he knew who was calling.
“Hi, Gemma,” he said evenly.
“I’m sorry about what I said to you,” I blurted. “I didn’t mean it. I guess I got really mad at you for understanding so much about me. You got a little too close for comfort. Like you said, knowing what your problems are doesn’t always help you solve them, and I—”
“Gemma,” he interrupted me. “I do want to hear this story, but can we talk about it later? I’m on the phone with Addison.”
I was so surprised that I let the silence stretch way too long.
I’d thought our relationship was important to him, but I was just his date’s friend after all.
“No, that’s fine,” I said. “I’ll see you later.”