Chapter 21 Bird
BIRD
For the past week I’ve been trying to get Jessa to talk about it.
“It” being our unbelievably steamy make-out session.
The night I thought should have changed everything between us.
The morning kiss outside, the way she kissed me back, grabbed my collar—I keep replaying that memory the most for some reason.
In journalism on Monday, when we broke off into our pairs to work on the zine, I tried to touch her hand, and she jerked like I’d burned her. I tried again, this time under the table, and felt the electric brush of her skin against mine as she allowed me a moment before she moved away.
I get it, to some extent. I remember the morning after the first time with Silas I felt so awkward, so vulnerable, so weirdly happy yet somehow sad, too, that I could barely look him in the eye.
But he was sweet and understanding and made it easy to talk about.
He made it so even though I knew we probably didn’t feel exactly the same about each other, I still didn’t regret it.
And that’s what I’m trying to do for her, but she’s not budging.
I would think that she just isn’t feeling it the way I am, but I could tell—I could just tell—it meant something to her. At least I thought it did.
But now, days later and still no indication that this amazing connection we had isn’t all in my head, I’m starting to think maybe it’s some kind of karmic payback for Kat.
For how I treated her after our last amazing kiss in my dorm room.
How I couldn’t let myself go there even though I wanted to.
She was so much kinder to me than I deserved after I abruptly ended things with both her and Silas, but somehow the three of us fumbled through the last weeks of the summer as friends.
They stuck with me, even though my guilt over hurting them both was eating me alive and made me try so hard to pull away. They wouldn’t let me.
So, I’m trying to do better. I’m trying to learn from my mistakes. Trying not to hurt anyone ever again. Especially not Jessa, who I imagine has been hurt a lot more than she’s willing to let anyone see.
With Kayla currently not speaking to me and grounded until next weekend, I thought Project Break Up Dade-La was over, but instead Jessa has zeroed in on it, making it our sole topic of conversation all week.
Hyper-focused, she came up with a new plan on her own, which she shared today when I cornered her at our lunch spot, praying that it would be a good time to have our talk.
“Bird, tell me something…” she begins, looking at me so thoughtfully.
“Anything,” I answer, inching closer.
“Did Kayla like Titanic?”
I don’t know what I thought she was going to say, but it definitely wasn’t that. “Yeah, who didn’t?”
“Of course you loved it,” she says, with an eye roll and then the grin that I’ve learned means she’s joking. “Well, Dade hated it.”
“Yeah, why am I not surprised?” I mutter under my breath, and Jessa’s careful smile twitches. “Sorry. Okay, so… Titanic?”
She holds up two tickets.
“Special showing at the dollar-fifty theater, happening this Saturday, when Kayla gets off her grounding, which also happens to be when Dade was planning to sit at GameStop for the midnight release of Soulcaliber. If sitting through that ‘abomination of a film’—his words—instead of the release of the year doesn’t show him what he’s missing out on by letting this relationship take over his entire life, I don’t know what will. ”
I feel like I’m missing out on something.
Why won’t she talk with me?
Why won’t she touch me?
Why won’t she look at me like she’s seen me?
So many whys about us and still we’re talking about Dade and Kayla. I want to put this whole Operation Break Up on pause, because, god, what if we’re in the wrong, what if we’re making a huge mistake? But I’m afraid she’ll stop talking to me altogether if we don’t have this anymore.
“Okay,” I tell her, taking the tickets from her hand. I haven’t told her yet about my fight with Kayla, but this could be a good peace offering. “I can try to get them there.”
I’m sitting on the edge of my seat in my last class of the day, jacket on, bag shouldered, tickets easily accessible in the front pocket, ready to book it as soon as the bell rings.
When it finally does, I’m tearing off through the halls, pushing past people so I can be there, waiting at Kayla’s locker.
I see her walking down the hall before she sees me. As soon as she does, she stops cold in her tracks, before she resumes pretending I don’t exist.
“Hear me out?” I plead.
She spins the combination right, left, right, and her locker clangs open in my face. I catch it before it hits me.
“I’m sorry, Kayla. I really am. I hate how we left things.”
She flicks her eyes to mine for a second.
“Truce?” I ask. “Please. Pretty please?”
Eye roll.
“My queen?” I try, seeing something beginning to soften behind her glare.
She narrows her eyes now, but doesn’t look away.
I clasp my hands together, just like she did with me earlier in the year, when she wanted me to spend the night.
I’ll beg her. I don’t mind. “Please!” I say louder, pulling the tickets from my bag and holding them out to her.
“Please, oh Kayla, queen of all queens, accept this humble peace offering.”
She can’t hide her smirk. So I throw my arms around her, pretending to sob into her neck.
“All right, all right. Please stop.”
I let go and meet her smile with mine, placing the tickets in her hand.
She looks down at them. “So, what? You want me to go see Titanic with you?”
“No. Although, that would be an effective balm to smooth over our regrettable fight,” I say, not quite ready to let go of the old-timey-speak. “I want you to go with Dade. A date. On me.”
“What?” she mumbles.
“An apology for being such a bitch to him.”
She pulls me in for a real hug now, and even I almost believe it’s the truth.
We were supposed to meet at the theater early and sit in the back row where they couldn’t see us.
I had to beg a ride off my mom, who bribed Olivia and her stupid boyfriend to drop me off on the way to whatever exciting party they were lying about going to.
Fucking embarrassing. Garrett asking me what I was seeing to try to be polite and make the car ride less awkward.
Olivia laughing, even though she knows damn well she still has a whole series of postcards from Romeo + Juliet hanging up on her side of our room, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes.
Not that I don’t like looking at both Leo and Claire…
or Leo and Kate, for that matter. But still.
“Have fun, wild woman,” Liv says as I exit the backseat of Garrett’s car.
“Thanks for the ride.”
They speed off, tires screeching. The movie started at eight o’clock and it’s eight fifteen.
As I wait outside in the cold, alone, watching the last of the stragglers rush in, I feel myself getting annoyed.
It was Jessa’s plan, so where is she? I was silently worried when she didn’t offer to drive me, but now I’m pretty sure.
She’s trying to stand me up. I walk over to the pay phone by the theater, drop a quarter, and dial Jessa’s cell number, which I took the time to memorize after her lips touched mine.
It rings and then a gruff “Yeah?” follows.
“Jessa, it’s Bird.”
“Oh,” she says, gentler. “Hi. Sorry, what number is this?”
“The pay phone by the theater,” I say, pausing. “Which you are supposed to be at right now.”
“Oh fuck!” she says. “Sorry, I forgot to tell you, Dade made me wait in line at GameStop for him. That game release I told you about?”
“Why would you do that?”
“Um, I dunno. The miracle of friendship?”
I look across the parking lot to another bank of buildings in this strip mall, where there’s a GameStop with a familiar blue-haired girl sitting in line in a folding lawn chair.
“Is that you?” I ask, hoping it’s not just wishful thinking making me delirious. I wave my arm high over my head.
“Yep,” she says, raising her hand back.
I hang up, and walk across the football-field-sized parking lot.
“Are you seriously gonna sit in the cold until midnight?” I ask her once I’m close enough for her to hear me.
“He asked me to. I couldn’t say no. We were supposed to be waiting together, me and Dade.”
“Well, so what? He’s not here.”
“Yeah, but I couldn’t think of an excuse.”
“But you told me you’d go with me to the theater,” I say, trying my best not to sound like a jealous girlfriend, even if that’s what I’m feeling like right now.
“I’m sorry. I guess I was just trying to… I don’t know.”
“What, avoid me?”
“No, I just don’t want him to be mad at me.”
“Jessa.” I reach for her hand to try to pull her up out of her sad little seat. “You’re not sitting here in the cold for the next four hours.”
“But I said I would,” she argues, resisting the pull of my hand.
I take both of her hands now.
“Please?” I try, glancing back across the vast parking lot. “Don’t make me sit in that theater all alone.”
She stands up now but lets go, placing her hands deep inside her back pockets. So, clearly, she’s not okay with public displays of… affection, friendship, anything.
I step closer to her and say, quietly, so the gamers can’t hear, “It could be like a date, sort of?”
“Bird,” she says, even quieter. “You know I don’t need that.”
“Need what?” I ask, though I can feel tears trying to work their way up the back of my throat.
She looks around us. “Dates and… and all that.”
“Fine. I’ll go alone, then.” I turn around before I give away how much she’s hurting my stupid sensitive feelings.
I make it past two lanes of parked cars when I hear her footsteps running.
“Hey, wait! Bird, hold on.” She grabs my arm and lets her hand stay there at the crook of my elbow for one, two, three seconds, and pathetically, that’s enough to make whatever hurt or anger that’s been building up in me all week just melt away.