Auggie #2
“Auggie has a crush on her, but he won’t admit it,” Kate says, tossing some popcorn into her mouth.
“No, I don’t!” I shout with much more passion than I should.
“So defensive,” Kate says. “You’re making all of us totally believe you.”
“And if you did,” Mom says, “you could do much, much worse.”
Dad rustles my hair. “She speaks sarcasm like the rest of us. She’d fit into the family so well.”
“Stop!” I say. “We are not having this conversation right now. We are eating popcorn and we are drinking Coke and we are watching a movie and not talking about my love life. Which is nonexistent anyway, so we’re just talking about something nonexistent, which doesn’t make sense anyway so—”
“Oh my gosh, shut up,” Kate says. “No one cares.”
Dad starts scrolling through Netflix and Kate and Mom reject everything he lingers on. I stare at my feet, hoping all of that was just teasing and everyone will forget about it later. But when I look up, Janko is still staring at me with a silly grin slapped across his face.
I swear, Janko spends half of Paul Blart: Mall Cop (for the seven hundredth time) smirking at me like a creep, and after Mom and Dad go to bed and Kate goes to her room, I know he is not about to let this conversation go.
“So, Mayte,” he says, sitting next to me.
“Stop,” I say.
“You’re into her?”
“No.” I roll my eyes. “Can you all stop it with this? She’s my friend. Guys and girls can be friends. I don’t know why so many people think that just because a guy is friends with a girl, they have to—”
“I’m not talking about a guy and a girl being friends. I’m talking about Auggie and Mayte being into each other,” Janko says.
“Well, she’s not into me,” I say. “So being into each other is definitely not the way to phrase that.”
Janko raises his eyebrows. “So what you’re saying—”
“Man, I’m not saying anything. Can you please just drop it? I don’t want to make things weird with us. I really like her. As a person. I think she’s a cool person, and I’d like to continue being friends with her.”
Janko lies on the couch, kicking a pillow onto my lap. “I’m not trying to make things weird. I’m just… trying to gauge something.”
“What do you mean gauge something?”
He meets my eyes and then looks away, that sly Janko grin reappearing. “Nothing.”
“What?” I ask. He won’t look at me, and I punch him in the gut. He flexes his abs, so it hurts my hand significantly more than I’m sure it hurt him. “Janko, what?”
“Nothing. If you’re not into her, it doesn’t matter,” he says.
And then my stomach is doing so many somersaults that I put my hands on it as if that’ll do anything. “What does that mean?”
Janko shrugs dramatically. “Really. If you don’t like her like that, it won’t change anything for you to know.”
“Did… did she say something about me?” I try to ask casually, but it does not come out casually.
“And if she had?” Janko asks.
I sigh and stare at the floor again. “I don’t know. I mean, obviously she’s gorgeous.”
“Obviously.”
“And, like, we’ve been spending a lot of time together, and I think she’s really cool, obviously.”
“Obviously,” he repeats.
“And I’m not trying to make anything happen with her, especially with what happened with her sister and all that.
I just don’t know if it would be a good time for anything even if I did want to start something, and I’m me and she’s her, and so it’s not like it would be a thing anyway because I’m just like blah blah blah writing blah blah blah nerd and she’s… she’s…”
“Do you like her or not?”
“Yes,” I say, and the admission is a weight off. “Yeah. I know it’s stupid and I don’t have any chance whatsoever—”
“Would you stop it with that shit?” Janko says. “The whole, ‘no hot, cool girl could ever like me because I’m me’ shit? Would you cut that out?”
“I… I—”
“Man, she’s into you,” he says.
“Shut up,” I say, shaking my head. “No, she’s not.”
Janko laughs. “Augs, I’m serious. No joke. She told Leo.”
“What?” I ask, my head starting to spin. “There’s no way.”
“I guess you wore a sweater or something and her switch flipped. She’s totally into you now.”
“Leo told you that? And Mayte told Leo that?” I shake my head again, trying to come back to reality. “Nah, man, I’ve been hanging out with her, like, every day now and she hasn’t said anything.”
“Because she doesn’t think you’re into her,” Janko says.
He stands up and points out the window. “She’s sitting over there doing exactly what you’re doing.
Trying not to mess up the friendship because she doesn’t just think you’re hot.
She thinks you’re kind. She thinks you’re cool.
And she likes spending time with you so much that she’d rather not chance romance than risk losing you as a friend. ”
There’s no way.
And yet there are feelings in me that I’ve been pushing down since the terrible blind date.
Feelings I haven’t been able to push down very far.
Every time I’m with her, I can’t get over how beautiful she is.
How strong she is. How smart she is. How awesome her writing was without even trying (that part did make me a little bit jealous).
And I can’t get over the way she looks at me—like she sees something worth seeing.
I mean, I’m so overwhelmed by Mayte that I literally made her the protagonist of what I’m convinced is the best short story I’ve ever written.
But I’ve got the real version of her in my life every day, and I haven’t even realized there’s a chance I could take.
Or should take. A real chance, not just fictional.
She’s not expecting a storybook hero to sweep her off her feet.
She’s expecting me.
“You’re kidding me.”
“I’m not! I’m not kidding you, Auggie!” Janko says, shaking my shoulders. He sits back down beside me. “Man, I didn’t know if I’d ever see the day.”
“Um, ow,” I say.
“Well, like, eventually, when we were, like, forty or something.”
“Yeah, still, ow,” I say.
“So what are you going to do?” he asks. “Like, you’re going to tell her, right?”
What am I going to do?
The whole “I’m not a storybook hero, but Augustine Peterson is good enough” inflation begins to lose air.
“I…” I sit there, holding the syllable, looking for the right answer to give Janko while I continue to think, but then the total deflation happens. “I am going to do absolutely nothing.”
Janko stares at me, one eyebrow raised, jaw dropped, and for a moment I am certain he’s going to punch me in the face.
I flinch, and he says, “Like hell you are.” He grabs my phone from the table, leaping off the couch.
“Janko!” I shout, running after him. “Janko, give that back.”
“You will not ruin this for yourself!” he yells. “I will not let you!”
He takes the stairs two at a time with his athlete legs, and I follow behind, already winded. When I reach the landing, my parents are standing at their bedroom door and Kate at hers, watching Janko sprint into my room.
“What the hell is going on?” Kate asks.
“I will not let your brother be a sad boy for the rest of his life!” Janko announces as he slams my door shut.
I turn the handle and push my bodyweight on the door before he has a chance to lock it. “I’m about to stick my hand in the crack and if you push you’re going to break it and pay every one of my hospital bills and type up every one of my stories for the rest of my life!”
Janko stops pushing and I go tumbling into my bedroom, rug burn sliding up my palms. “Dude, stop!” I shout as I get up and try to snatch the phone from him.
“I will stop, if you swear to me you’re going to do something,” he says, standing atop my bed and holding the phone in the air.
I take a moment to gauge whether I can jump for it.
“You can’t go your whole life waiting for rejection, Augs.
It’s not always going to come, and you’re going to hate yourself when you realize you’ve kept every story in your head and will never figure out how they’re going to end. ”
It’s a punch in the gut that winds me more than I think his fist could’ve.
He notices and lowers my phone, sits down on my bed. “You hear me?”
I nod and he hands me my phone.
“You gonna say something, man?”
“I really don’t think I’m good enough for her,” I admit, and it’s finally the truth.
Janko takes me by the shoulders. “Auggie Peterson, that’s the most unbelievable piece of fiction to ever come out of your mouth.”