Untouchable - Chapter 16
Thursday
As I hurried back toward my locker, a terrible realization crept into my mind.
Worse than the fact that my first kiss had been stolen.
Worse because what if…what if…I swallowed hard.
God, what if I was related to Matt? I’d only gotten the all-clear about Felix.
What if my first kiss had just been stolen by my half-brother?
And Matt was right…I’d freaking kissed him back. No. I didn’t. Did I?
“Are you okay?” Kennedy asked. She was leaning against my locker. “All ready for our three amigas dinner? I’m excited that we can all walk home together.”
“Yeah. No. No, I’m not okay.”
“What’s wrong?” The smile that seemed permanently affixed to her face the past few days disappeared. “You look really pale, Brooklyn. Are you going to be sick?”
“I just…I…just…he…”
“Hey,” Felix said from behind me. I spun around and the guilt I felt from kissing Matt grew tenfold. I’d promised Felix he’d be my first kiss. And not just that…I’d wanted it to be him. Stupid fucking Matt!
“Are you okay?” Felix asked. “You look a little pale.”
Because Matt literally just sucked all the oxygen out of my body.
Stop it. “I’m fine.” I did not sound fine.
But I needed to immediately or everyone would know what just happened.
And Felix could not know. No one could know.
God, I may have just kissed my brother. And I liked it. No. No, I did not like it.
“Do you need to go to the nurse?” Kennedy asked.
“I’m fine.” I took a deep breath. “Really. Let’s get going.”
“If you’re sure?”
“Definitely”
“Okay.” Kennedy maneuvered herself between Felix and me.
I was so grateful. It was like she could tell I needed a minute to myself.
We all started walking. I wasn’t sure if the silence was awkward because of me, but it certainly felt that way.
I kept my eyes trained straight ahead as I walked past the auditorium. Was Matt still in there?
“Earth to Brooklyn,” Kennedy said and lightly nudged me with her elbow.
“What?”
“Your hand,” she said like she’d just asked me a hundred times before. “What’s in your hand?”
I looked down at my hand. Matt’s most recent note was balled up in my fist. “Nothing.” We walked by a trashcan on our way out of school.
I wanted to toss it. I wanted my mind to tell my heart that the kiss meant nothing.
But I found myself quickly smoothing out the note, folding it, and sliding it into my blazer pocket.
His words were stuck in my head on repeat. Please, tell me I’m not too late.
“So…” Felix said.
God, he knows. He knows what I just did. It felt like my heart was ricocheting against my ribcage. Is this what guilt felt like? A heart attack?
“What’s your uncle like?” he asked instead of accusing me of making out with Matt in the auditorium.
“He’s so nice,” Kennedy said.
Felix laughed. “I meant Brooklyn’s uncle. You know…the one I’m meeting.”
“Right, I know. But I call him Uncle Jim too. He’s always lived down the hall from me. He’s like a surrogate uncle I guess you could say. And he’s going to love you.”
“Okay.” Felix sounded more confused than anything. “So what does he do, Brooklyn?”
I’d completely forgotten about the awkward conversation we still needed to have.
I pulled my jacket tighter around myself, trying to keep my heart from bursting out onto the dirty city street.
The fabric was growing threadbare and it was too cold for the rapidly decreasing temperatures.
And too thin to cover up the sound of my rapid heartbeat.
“She hasn’t told you?” Kennedy asked. She turned her attention to me and whispered, “You haven’t told him?”
Felix cleared his throat. “Told me what?”
That I kissed Matt! No. That he kissed me. Stupid kiss thief.
“Um…” Kennedy looked at me and then back at him. “It’s not my place to say. I’m sworn to secrecy.”
I knew she was waiting for me to start talking. But I was afraid if I opened my mouth I’d confess everything.
“Is he like in the CIA or something?” Felix asked.
Kennedy didn’t respond as we turned down a dingy side street. Well, not just any dingy side street. The street my apartment was on.
They were waiting. Waiting for me. Felix thought he was about to have dinner with a CIA agent and a girl who had never been kissed. I took a deep breath. “Kennedy, could you give us a minute?”
“Yeah.” She smiled reassuringly at me. “But just a quick one. I’ll meet you guys at Uncle Jim’s. I want to change real quick anyway.”
There was no such thing as a quick minute. A minute was 60 seconds no matter how you looked at it. And probably 80 heartbeats. Scratch that. My heart was beating at twice that rate.
Kennedy walked out in front of us and I stopped Felix, pulling him out of the way of the passersby.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked and grabbed my hand. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I shook my head. I needed to tell him what I’d just done. I couldn’t risk introducing him to my uncle and letting him in on my secret if he had no intention of forgiving me for Matt practically assaulting me. He didn’t assault you. “I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry.”
“Hey.” Felix moved a fraction of an inch closer. “What’s wrong?”
I tried to swallow down the lump in my throat.
“I know this is kinda awkward,” he said and discreetly nodded toward Kennedy. “But she put us in a position where we couldn’t exactly say no. And it’s fine. After I get your uncle to like me, I’ll be able to take you out just the two of us. No three amigas bullshit.”
He thought I was being weird about Kennedy. I wasn’t even able to process how awkward her overly enthusiastic third-wheeling was because I was stuck in my own threesome from hell. One that included Matt and his stupidly kissable lips.
“Really, it’s okay.” Felix squeezed my hand. “Let’s just have a fun night. I’m excited to meet your uncle and see your home.”
Home. For the first time the thought was comforting. And I realized that my uncle’s apartment was quickly becoming my home. It was the first thing I’d thought of.
A part of me felt like a traitor. Like believing this was my home was somehow forgetting about my mom and my real home back in Delaware. The one with the foreclosure signs in the windows. The one with the yellow kitchen and the memories of dancing. Laughing. Not being sick.
“I live in a 500 square foot apartment.” I said it more to convince myself it wasn’t a home.
Not Felix. But it was a double-edged sword.
It made me feel guilty for making it seem like I didn’t love that my uncle had given me a place to call home now.
And I think a part of me was hoping it would make Felix leave.
As much as he said he didn’t fit into the world of Empire High, he did.
I’d seen his fancy apartment. I’d seen how different we were.
And it would be a hell of a lot easier if Felix decided to leave now rather than me telling him that I’d kissed Matt and him leaving because of that.
“Is that what this is about? Brooklyn, I don’t care where you live.”
That. That right there was why my first kiss should have been with him. Because he was kind and caring. And he didn’t make me feel small. He didn’t hide me away in a dark auditorium and leave unsigned notes in my locker. He wasn’t ashamed of me. I was the one acting ashamed of myself.
“I really like you,” he said.
“I really like you too.”
He smiled. “So let me see this awesome 500 square foot apartment.”
I laughed. “Okay.” He turned to start walking again, but I stopped him. “There’s one more thing. Well, two more things.” I focused on the fact that his hand felt comforting in mine for a second. “Can you keep a secret?”
“Don’t tell me I really am related to you,” he said with a laugh.
“No. Nothing like that.” I really wished I’d never told him I was worried he was my brother.
I wasn’t sure the teasing would ever end.
I swallowed hard, trying to figure out how to word what I needed to say.
“I’m not a scholarship student.” God, that felt good to say.
“And my uncle isn’t in the CIA. His name is Jim Sanders.
” I waited a beat, hoping that Felix would just figure it out on his own.
I’d heard a few faculty members at school call my uncle Mr. Sanders before.
But Felix didn’t react. “The only reason I go to Empire High is because my uncle is a janitor there.”
Felix laughed. But he quickly stopped when he saw I wasn’t laughing. “Oh.” He cleared his throat. Finally the realization hit him. “Janitor Jimbo is your uncle?”
“What?”
“Janitor Jimbo. The one with the big beer belly?”
I pulled my hand out of his. “Don’t call him that.”
“I didn’t mean anything by it. It’s just what everyone calls him.”
“I’ve never heard anyone call him that.”
“Brooklyn, literally everyone calls him Janitor Jimbo. It’s not a big deal.”
“It is to me. Don’t call him that.”
Felix held up his hands. “I’m sorry. I won’t call him that anymore.”
“Good.”
“Can we just rewind until a minute ago? I meant to say…Jim Sanders is your uncle? Oh, right Sanders . I should have put that together faster. Awesome. Now I know his profession and I’ll have something to talk to him about because I love fixing stuff too.”
It was really hard to be mad at him when he was smiling at me like that. And when he was trying so hard to make peace.
“I’m excited to meet him,” he added. “Come on. If we’re lucky you can give me a tour of your place before Kennedy gets there.
***
“And that’s my bedroom.” I nodded toward the open door without walking toward it. The tour had taken all of two minutes.
“I never got to show you my bedroom,” Felix said and walked over to the open door. “Aren’t you going to finish the tour?”