Chapter 23 Bird
BIRD
I wish I hadn’t promised Jessa that we could keep this all on the down-low.
Because, god, the way my heart is hammering, and my face will not stop smiling, and I keep getting this leaping feeling in my stomach—it’s all making me want to dance down the halls.
I want to sing about it and jump on my desk and shout for everyone to hear how ridiculously giddy I feel, knowing that after the bell rings in only two minutes and forty-three seconds I get to see my girlfriend.
Girlfriend.
Everyone needs to know how amazing I feel.
She’s waiting for me at my locker when I get there. “Hi,” she says, smiling and looking down at her feet.
“Hi,” I echo, and even though I’m stupid excited to see her after existing in her absence for the past three hours since journalism, I keep an arm’s length from her and make sure I’m not showing my excitement.
It takes me three tries to enter my combination because I keep getting distracted by the way she’s standing there. Her back against the locker next to mine, one knee bent, with the bottom of her boot perched on the wall.
“So,” she begins quietly, only meeting my eye for a second while I gather my books. “What do you wanna do right now?”
“Bad news. I didn’t get a chance to tell you earlier, but I’m supposed to be babysitting the twins after school today.”
“Oh,” she mutters, and even though she’s also trying to hide her emotions, I can see disappointment etched all over her face.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
She shrugs and pushes herself off the locker, shoving her hands into her pockets. “No worries. Want a ride home, at least?”
“Yes, please.”
We make it to her car, and as we close the doors on the outside world, it feels like we’re entering our own private protective bubble of metal and glass. On autopilot I lean across the console, my hands reaching for her.
“Bird!” she snaps, backing up against the door and whipping her head around in all directions with this wild look in her eyes. “People…” is all she says, gesturing to the outside.
“Sorry, I forgot f-for a-a sec-second.”
“We have to be careful,” she says, her voice still sharp.
“I’m s-sorry; I was just happy to f-finally be alone with you, I just forgot.”
“It’s okay,” she mumbles absently, inspecting her rearview mirror. “I don’t think anyone saw.”
She barely even looks at me as she maneuvers through the student parking lot and out onto the drive that leads past the back doors and the faculty lot.
It’s not until we reach the stoplight onto the main road that she lets out a long exhale, like she’d been holding her breath all day.
When it changes to green, she turns, and waits two blocks before she finally rests her arm on the console and lets me take her hand.
It’s a strange feeling to know she’s only willing to touch me like this now because no one can see.
But then I interlace my fingers with hers, and when she looks over at me and smiles, I decide I don’t really mind that much.
“So, you have to go right home? You’re sure?”
“Unfortunately, yeah,” I tell her. “The twins are usually at Daniel’s parents’ house until my mom gets out of work, but they couldn’t watch them today for some reason. I don’t know. I promised I’d come right home so he could leave for work.”
“What about Olivia? She can’t do it?”
“Oh please, Liv does not babysit. Besides, she can’t miss”—I pause to try to get the Valley girl voice right—“cheer practice! I mean, as if !”
“Oh no,” she laughs. “God forbid!”
“I love when you laugh like that.” I lean my head back on the seat to watch her.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, like a sweet little giggle.”
“Sweet? Giggle?” she repeats. “God, what are you doing to me, Bird?”
Now I giggle—at the idea that I might be doing something to her, especially if it’s anything like what she’s doing to me.
We get to my house too soon. I keep my hand on top of hers as she shifts the gear into park in my driveway. “Well, you wanna call me later?” she asks.
“Hey, what if you stay for a little while? I mean, we’ll still be babysitting, but they’ll take a nap at some point, and no one will be home until at least six.”
“Umm.” She squints at my house and holds her breath. “I don’t know.”
“I really, really, really don’t want you to leave, so please say yes?”
“No Olivia?” she double-checks.
“No Olivia,” I confirm. “And no parental figures. Just us and two toddlers.”
“Really, you want me to stay?”
I nod emphatically, and she starts smiling slowly. I unbuckle my seat belt, then reach over the console to unbuckle hers. She does that sweet little giggle again. I turn the key in the ignition to off and dangle her massive, endless chain of key chains in the space between us.
She smirks and gives me the side-eye as she takes them from me. “You’re dangerous, you know that?”
Inside, my house is chaotic as usual. Toys everywhere.
TV on, volume blasting. Ava is sitting in the playpen in the middle of the living room, chewing on the remote control.
And Aimee is standing up, dumping cereal all over the couch, because, being the bigger of the two, she just recently learned how to climb out of the playpen.
“Daniel?” I call out. “I’m home.”
I watch Jessa take it all in, but I can’t tell from her neutral expression if she’s horrified or if she’s seen worse or just doesn’t care.
Kayla’s never come out and said it, but I know she doesn’t like being here—she’s only stayed over at my house a handful of times in all our years of friendship, compared to the literally hundreds of times I’ve slept over at hers.
Daniel rushes in from the hallway, discombobulated, as always. “Birdie, hi, how was your day? Thank you for getting home so fast. Hey, have you seen my wallet anywhere?”
“Daniel, this is Jessa,” I say, since he has yet to even look at me or notice the fact that someone else is here.
He looks up from the computer desk, where he’s been rifling through stacks of old mail and random papers piled in no particular order. “Oh, hello,” he says, smiling. “Nice to meet you, Jessie.”
She returns his “Nice to meet you,” but doesn’t mention him getting her name wrong.
“It’s Jessa,” I tell him.
“Oh, Jess-ah,” he repeats, emphasis on the A. “Sorry.”
“Uh, is that your wallet?” Jessa says, and we both look to where she’s pointing.
At Aimee on the floor, no longer sprinkling Cheerios everywhere, but now unfolding Daniel’s wallet like it’s a book she’s trying to read and shaking it so that cash and credit cards and receipts are being flung out everywhere.
“Aimee, no, no, sweetie,” Daniel says, rushing over to pick everything up. “That’s Daddy’s.”
I drop our bags at the dining table and pull out one of the board books from the stack on the computer desk, because I know she’s going to start screaming the second he gets his wallet back. And in three, two, one… the glass-shattering shrieking begins.
“Birdie, can you—” Daniel says, but I’m already a step ahead of him.
“Yep,” I tell him, and sit down next to her with the book. She immediately ceases crying. “You can go, Daniel. I’ve got this.”
“All right, thank you.” He kisses Aimee on the head, then leans over the playpen to kiss Ava and says, “Love you, girls. Birdie, just call your mom at work if you need anything, and, uh… that’s it.
I better get a move on. Bye, Jessa,” he adds, as he passes her, still standing in the doorway. “Hope we see you again soon.”
“Nice meeting you too, Mr. Rubens,” she says in an uncharacteristic act of politeness. I’m not sure he hears it because he’s halfway to the car.
“Sorry,” I tell her. “Come on in. It’s always kind of crazy here with the changing of the guard.”
She comes in and walks toward where Aimee and I are sitting on the floor. As she approaches the playpen, Ava pops up and startles her. She stands at the side of the playpen with arms outstretched, ordering in her demanding baby talk, “Uh, uhp!”
“Oh, should I, like, pick her up?” Jessa asks.
“Yah,” Ava yells at her, which makes her laugh. “Up!”
“If you don’t mind?” I cringe a little—I don’t want her to think I actually expect her to help babysit. “Sorry, once I get them settled, we’ll be able to hang out.”
“No, I don’t mind.” She shakes her head and lifts Ava out, holding her under her armpits at almost arm’s length. “Should I just set her down on the floor? Can she stand, I mean?”
“Dow!” Ava yells, squirming in the air.
“Oh, shit,” Jessa gasps. “You actually know what I’m saying. Okay. And I said ‘shit.’ Crap. I said it twice, did I just teach her to curse?”
“Now,” Ava babbles, kicking her feet. “Dow-now.”
“No, she’s heard the word ‘shit’ before.” I have to laugh at Jessa’s unfamiliarity with the ways of two-year-olds. “And yes, you can just set her down.”
Ava runs to where we’re sitting and plops down to share the book.
She and Aimee start naming the colors and shapes and animals in the pictures, looking up at us for encouragement.
I tell them to stay there in the living room while I go get them their sippy cups of juice from the kitchen and nod for Jessa to follow me.
As soon as she rounds the corner, I pull her into my arms and kiss her. She kisses me back for a second before pulling away, all wide-eyed.
“What?” I ask. “I’ve been waiting all day to do that.”
“But what about them?” She hitches her thumb over her shoulder.
“The babies?”
“Yeah,” she says, dead serious. “They can talk, can’t they?”
I laugh at her—I can’t help it. “The two-year-olds are not going to out us,” I joke, but she doesn’t laugh. She clenches her jaw and looks away from me. “Come on, you’re not for real, are you?”
She nods and crosses her arms. “Look,” she begins, uncrossing her arms again, lowering her voice. “The last thing I wanna be is a buzzkill, but you’ve gotta start being more careful, Bird. I mean it.”