Chapter 1 #4
Julia flushed. “They weren’t ‘getting down.’” (They might be, now.) “And she wasn’t being rude.
She’s just . . . taking what she wants from the moment.
” That was something Chloe talked about a lot.
Seizing the moment. Visualizing what you wanted and then grabbing it when you could. “She doesn’t pass up opportunities.”
“She sounds a little selfish.”
Julia turned to frown directly at him. “You don’t know her. She does so much for me.”
“Sorry,” Wyatt said, looking away from Julia and biting into the Twizzler. “I guess I’m just assuming that everyone’s friends suck tonight.”
“I wouldn’t even be here, at the drive-in, if my friend hadn’t invited me.”
“Sorry,” he said again.
They were both quiet.
Then he said—“What else does she do for you?”
“What?”
“You said your friend does so much for you.”
“Oh . . . well . . . I don’t know.” Julia twisted her hair around two fingers. She did know—there was a long list of things that she was grateful to Chloe for, but all of them were kind of embarrassing. “I guess she just assumes that I’m up for things.”
Wyatt was listening. Waiting for her to explain. His brown eyes were open, and his eyebrows were serious.
“Like,” Julia said, “she assumes that I want to do things. And that it will be fun to have me around.”
He was still listening. This clearly wasn’t a factor in any of Wyatt Hardy’s relationships—there was no question in anyone’s mind that he was fun. She’d seen him crack up their principal.
“Like, I don’t have to prove anything to her,” Julia said. “I don’t have to wonder whether she wants me around. Or whether she’s bored with me . . .”
Julia’s finger was tangled in a curl. She pulled it out and smoothed down her hair. “She texts me. And I don’t have to worry about what I text back, or if I’m texting back too much . . .
“I don’t have to worry that she won’t invite me somewhere, because I’m always invited. Even when she’s with her boyfriend.”
Wyatt’s face hadn’t changed. He was still just listening.
“You don’t know what it’s like . . .” she said.
He moved his knee up on the bench, so he was facing her. “What what’s like?”
Julia moved her knee up, too. “Worrying about whether people want you around.”
Wyatt didn’t disagree. He chewed his candy.
Julia kept trying: “When you’re worried about that all the time with someone, you never feel like they’re really your friend. The whole relationship is just the worry.”
The more Julia talked, the more pathetic she sounded. It felt as revealing as saying her name.
“Why do you think I don’t know how that feels?” Wyatt asked.
Because she’d watched him. “You seem pretty confident,” she said.
“So do you.”
She rolled her eyes. “No, I don’t.”
“You don’t get to decide how you seem,” he said. “You seem like someone who doesn’t waste time on unserious people.”
Julia didn’t want to talk about herself. “I can tell that you’re confident—I just saw you with all your friends.”
“But you saw us arguing.”
“I saw you before that,” she said. “And even when you were fighting with them, you didn’t seem that worried about what they thought of you.”
He grinned. “You saw me before that? Were you watching me?”
“No.” She couldn’t help but smile. “You were ahead of me in line.”
Wyatt took another bite of Twizzler. “I don’t worry about what my friends think, but . . .” He lowered his eyebrows. “I worry that none of it is real.”
She lowered her eyebrows, too. (All of Wyatt Hardy’s expressions were communicable.) “What do you mean?”
“I mean . . . I spent the whole summer in Michigan, and none of my friends have asked me why.”
“Nobody?”
He shook his head. “Not really. They were all too busy with their own things. We don’t really get together much over the summer. There’s still the group chat, but . . .”
“Nobody said, ‘What are you doing in Michigan?’”
“No, they did.” He chewed some more. “I guess they didn’t ask any follow-up questions. And they didn’t notice I was depressed.”
“You were depressed?” She couldn’t imagine Wyatt Hardy depressed.
“I was down.”
“Did you tell anyone?”
“They’re my best friends! Shouldn’t they be able to tell when I’m down?”
Julia looked at his handsome, open face and his easygoing shoulders. “I have a feeling you’re pretty good at hiding it.”
Wyatt looked out toward the cars. “Maybe I want friends who know me well enough that they see past that—who care enough to look closer.”
He held the Twizzlers package out to her again. She took one.
“It sounds like you’re testing them,” she said.
“I’m not testing them . . . I just feel like this summer was a test. Incidentally. And they all failed. Or—worse, they all got C’s. They all cared just enough.”
“So maybe it’s not real,” she said.
He looked in her eyes. “Yeah. Maybe we’re not actually friends. Maybe we’re just passing time with each other in the same space.”
“In the back of Coty’s truck.”
“Yes.” Wyatt sounded relieved. “Exactly.”
Julia bit her lip. She wondered if it was still pink. “Okay, well . . . now you have to tell me why you were in Michigan. Really.”
Wyatt laughed. “That’s okay, you don’t have to ask. You have nothing to prove—we hardly know each other.”
“I’m telling you,” she said, “that’s when friendship works best—when you don’t have to prove anything. You can just trust that the other person cares.”
He looked in Julia’s eyes again. Like he was testing her now. She really missed her glasses.
“My parents are getting a divorce,” Wyatt said.
“Oh.” Julia blinked. “Oh, I’m sorry.”
“They were going to wait until I graduated. It’s only one more year. But—my mom is dating someone.” He looked away. “So.”
“Is that why she needed space?”
“Yeah.”
“What about your dad?”
Wyatt rolled his eyes. “He’s a mess. He’s living with my grandma.”
“Oh, wow.”
“So my mom sent me to Michigan.”
“You didn’t have any choice?”
“I guess I could have stayed here and watched her make out with our neighbor . . .”
“Oh my god.”
“It’s fine, Michigan was whatever. My uncle really did teach me to build fireplaces.”
“That’s useful,” Julia said.
He shrugged. “I guess.”
“I’ve never lived in a house with a fireplace,” she said. “My dad told me that Santa used the front door—that the elves made him a magic key.”
Wyatt laughed. “I mean, that makes more sense.”
She laughed, too. “It does.”
He looked down at his knee. Or maybe at hers. “I can’t believe I’m telling you all this,” he said.
“Sometimes it’s easier to talk to strangers.”
He peered up at her without lifting his head. “Is that what you are?”
The breeze picked up just then and blew Julia’s hair into her face. She turned away from it, scrabbling her hair out of her eyes with her fingers. That was a mistake—she was wearing space-age mascara with tiny fibers in it, and she rubbed some fiber into her left eye. “Ah,” she said, blinking.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” She blinked again. Too hard. She felt her contact lens slide up under her eyelid. “Oh my god.”
Wyatt held up his hands but didn’t touch her. “What’s wrong?”
Julia was trying to maneuver the contact back in place by moving her eye. “It’s my contact . . . I just . . .” She was blinking so hard that she blinked the other contact lens out of her right eye. “Oh no.”
She looked down and felt around her chest. It was gone.
The left contact was still wedged in her eyelid. It felt awful. Her eye was watering.
“Did it fall out?” Wyatt asked.
“Yeah . . .”
“Let me turn on my flashlight.”
“No . . .” Julia tried to adjust her left contact through her eyelid. She was holding her eye open and blinking fast. The contact fell out of her eye and onto her cheek. She caught it, for all the good that did her. “Damn it. I lost them both.”
“We’ll find them.”
“No—I can’t put them back in. My hands are filthy.”
“My friend Lucy rinses hers in her mouth.”
“Oh my god, no,” Julia said, rubbing her eyes. Rubbing even more mascara into them.
“Hey . . .” Wyatt said, taking her forearms. “Don’t make it worse.”
She couldn’t help it. “It burns. It’s this stupid mascara.”
“Can I get you something?”
“No, I’m fine.” She was going to die of embarrassment, not red eyes. She tried to blink instead of rub. There were tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Maybe . . .” Wyatt started taking off his overshirt.
“What are you doing?”
“Give me a second here.” He opened Julia’s Coke and scooped out some ice, dropped the ice into the shirt, squeezed it a few times, then shook it to the ground. “Here.” He held out his shirt. “Wipe off your eyes.”
She took the shirt. It smelled like laundry detergent and a little like body odor. (Would that embarrass Wyatt if he knew?)
“Try it,” he said.
Julia held the cold, wet, mostly-not-sticky flannel up to her eyes. She wiped them gently. One at a time.
“Is that helping?” he asked.
It was. A little. “Yeah.”
She pressed the shirt into her eyes.
“Don’t rub,” he said.
“I’m not.”
“Do you want more ice?”
“I’m okay.”
“Here . . .” He pulled his shirt back and got a new spot wet.
Julia blinked. Her eyes felt tender, and a little tacky. “Do I have mascara all over the place?”
Wyatt handed her his shirt. “Maybe? It’s too dark to really see.”
She pressed the shirt into her eyes again. It felt cold and wonderful, and smelled so good. “Thank you.”
“Is that better?”
“Yeah, it’s better.”
“Good,” he said. “Just keep your eyes closed for a while.”
“Do you wear contacts?”
“No, but I’ve had an eyelash stuck in my eye, and I always make it worse . . . How’d you manage to lose both contacts?”
“I don’t know,” she said into his shirt. “Blinking.”
“Next time, get the blink-proof kind. They’re a little more expensive, but they’re worth it.”
Julia laughed. She pulled her head out of Wyatt’s shirt, blinking carefully. Her eyes felt raw, but tolerable.
“You want some more ice?” he asked.
“No, I think I’m okay.” She looked up at him. His face was a silvery blur without her contacts in. He might be smiling?
“Okay,” he said seriously, “you’ve gotta tell people that someone else gave you two black eyes and made you cry.”
“Is it that bad?”
He laughed. “Yes and no. You are still crying.”
She laughed with him. “Sorry. I feel so ridiculous.”