Five #2
The smell hit my palate then, tangy and saccharine.
My teeth pushed at my gums, almost a tearing feeling, as saliva pooled beneath my tongue.
I wasn’t anywhere near his neck, and I’d drunk my fill the day before, and yet I was swept up so fast it was dizzying.
My hold on his sleeve had set his shirt askew, the neck stretched around his collar.
In a panic, I pushed myself away with both hands. The relief was instant but short-lived; my mind was clear for maybe half a second before knuckles slammed into my cheek and I thought I felt my brain rattle. I went stumbling into a rack of resistance bands.
“What the hell?” I shouted, half at the fact that he’d hit me, half at the fact that it had actually hurt.
Detangling myself from the latex ropes, I straightened, cracking my jaw.
For what it was worth, I did consider, for an instant, telling him I hadn’t intended to pick a fight. I punched him in the nose instead.
Mason tripped backward but didn’t go down, so I lunged while he was still off-balance, and we fell together.
Mason hit the floor gasping. My jeans were rubbed thin against the concrete on either side of his ribs.
He reached up, planted a hand to my chest, twisted it in my shirt, and slammed me against the floor.
I coughed wetly. Something dripped down to my chin and I licked my lips, tasting blood, either from his fist or my own teeth. Mason was strong. As strong as me, maybe. I regarded him with owlish shock. He stared down with the same.
“Kieran?” Cella shouted from the gym. Mason startled, jumping straight to his feet. He wiped his nose with his sleeve as his chest heaved. A second voice joined Cella’s, that Lara girl, calling for Mason.
“I’ve . . . got to get to practice,” he said, distracted, pushing unevenly through the door. I sat up, scrubbed my chin clean, stared dumbly at the winking otter on the floor, then followed him out. Cella asked if I wanted to come over and work on Macbeth, just us. I answered from somewhere else.
***
After I had left the day before, Cella and Mason had comprehensively outlined the play based on Cella’s suggested plot—a high school gang war.
She said she was compromising between our ideas, but I was pretty sure she’d based it on an anime she liked.
Either Cella had done all the heavy lifting, or there was something other than hot air in Mason’s brain after all, because the work looked good. It was easy to begin drafting lines.
Cella and I worked quickly together, Cella nestled beneath her fluffy blanket, me using her Yoshi plush as a pillow.
It was easy to build off someone when, half the time, you could predict the end of their sentences.
It was another communication she and I had perfected during ten years of friendship.
And another easy routine Mason had disrupted.
“Cellisima,” I said when we were starting to flag. Cella instantly looked wary.
“You only call me that when you have something unsavory to say.”
“Noted. You know how we tell each other everything?”
“I’m not gay, either—though I did have a moment when I went to that mermaid show, remember that? The aquarium field trip in fifth grade?”
“Not that, but also noted. Are you seriously into him? Mason? Or—why are you into him?”
“Oh.” She held her blanket closer around herself. It folded to a point at the top of her head. “He’s, I mean, for starters, you’ve seen him.” She waited, so I begrudgingly conceded, a barely-there nod. “And he’s sweet. Er, to me. I can’t speak for the dick-measuring thing between you.”
“I wouldn’t really call it—”
“And he’s called me Cella since he met me. Not, you know. Kieran’s friend, or Celia, right? Or groupie.”
“Someone called you groupie?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “Middle schoolers are mean. Am I making sense? When I walk next to you, I’m a magnifying glass.”
“Cella,” I said. “I’m sorry. You know I never think of you that way, right?”
“ ’Course. But it’s nice to know you’re not the only one. Mason doesn’t look through me hoping to get a closer look at you.”
I winced. “I need to tell you something. About him.”
She raised her head quickly, dislodging her blanket hood. “What?”
“Mason’s not the guy you think he is,” I said, rubbing my cheek where he’d hit me though the pain was long gone. “He’s using you. To mess with me.”
Cella nodded in what felt like slow motion. “I can’t believe . . .”
“I know,” I said, reaching out.
“That you could be so conceited!” She jerked away, shedding the blanket completely.
My fingers grasped around nothing. “That’s—what?”
“Mason’s using me. The sky is blue, the grass is green, and the world revolves around you.” Cella stood and started moving around the bed, collecting her supplies. “Kieran, my love, this has nothing to do with you. I’m not asking you to like him, so you don’t get to tell me how to feel either.”
“That’s not it, Cella. He told me.”
“Really? In those words?”
“Not those words exactly.”
She threw her hands up.
“Haven’t you noticed how he keeps pitting us against each other?” I said. “Yesterday—”
“Yesterday, you stormed out on me because I didn’t jump immediately to your defense after getting talked over for minutes! Do I only get to speak up if it suits your purposes, Your Majesty?” It stung, hearing the old nickname spat like an insult. “I think we’ve gotten enough done.”
She had started tidying up my things too.
“You’re kicking me out?”
Cella zipped up my bag, then deflated. “I’m tired,” she corrected me. “Plus, I’ve still got to finish your gift.”
Without much else to do, I took my bag. I thought in frantic circles, trying to find the right words to convince her, but anything I could say would only fuel her fire. Thoroughly chastised, I scrounged up the nerve to ask, “How mad are you?”
“If you’re lucky, I’ll sleep it off.” She was practically herding me off her bed. “Just to be clear, I’ll still like Mason in the morning.”
“Even though it’s my birthday?”
She laughed on her next exhale, steering me to the door with both hands.