Chapter 8 #2
She looks at me in the mirror. “God,” she says, “I think you got taller since I last saw you.”
I shake my head. “And you’re exactly the same.”
Her brows pull together.
I smile. “It’s not a bad thing.”
She looks at me in the mirror. “I’m exactly as you remember?”
I nod.
She is exactly as I remember her. She is the same girl that I watched fall asleep with her hand on my chest, exact same girl, with the exact same eyes, and standing next to her in the mirror — me in white wings and a halo, her in my jersey and a backwards hat and a crooked mustache I drew on her face — I see for half a second what Benson clocked across the kitchen island when she walked in two weeks ago.
Same blue eyes.
Same dark hair.
We match.
I don’t know what to do with that information.
A new song comes on, and she turns around fast. “Can I leave my costume in here?”
I nod. “Can I leave the wings and halo in here too?”
She shakes her head. “Nuh-uh, sir. You’re coming with me.” She pauses. “Unless you want to go back to hating me?”
I look down at her. “I don’t hate you.”
Her face — it falls. Just a little. Just enough that I see it before she puts it back up. She doesn’t believe me.
She thinks I hate her?
I’ve spent years building a wall between us that was supposed to make her stop wanting me, and what it’s actually done is make her think I don’t want her. Those are two very different walls, and I’m beginning to understand that I built the wrong wall.
“We can be friends,” I offer, resorting to Benson’s advice.
She brightens. The whole room lifts. Thank you, Benson Reeve.
“Friends? Yeah, Blue. Let’s be friends.” Her grin is back. “Friends can dance, right?”
I inhale. “I don’t know about that.”
She rolls her eyes and opens my bedroom door. “Let’s go.”
She turns off the light on her way out.
I follow her. When I step out of my bedroom, I remember that there’s a party going on downstairs with all of my teammates. Melly is in my jersey, my name on her back, my hat on her head, my number on her, and I am wearing fucking wings.
There is no version of this that goes well. I walk down the stairs anyway because she’s already at the bottom.
Mila is at the foot of the stairs. “There you are!”
She looks at Melly. She looks down at Melly’s outfit. She looks up at me right behind Melly. She looks at the halo on my head and then the wings. She eyes Melly’s shirt and the mustache. Mila’s whole face does a calculation that takes about one full second.
“Where the hell did your costume go?” she says to Melly. “Why is he the angel now?”
“I had a wardrobe malfunction.” Melly’s voice has tightened. “And I didn’t have my phone on me. Blue helped me figure out a new costume.”
“So you’re him for Halloween now?”
Melly nods. She points at me. “And he’s an angel.”
“No, babe.” Mila looks at me. “He’s no angel.” She turns to me and says, “Where’s your devil mask? That suits you better.”
I look at her and don’t say anything. I don’t have anything to say. Mila hates me, and I allow her to. I hate myself for what I did, too. The fucked up part is that I haven’t stopped being that person. I deserve worse from her. I deserve worse from Melly.
Melly steps in front of me. It’s the smallest possible defensive movement a girl can make on behalf of a boy, and Mila catches it too.
“Mila.” Just one word in a specific tone.
Mila reads Melly’s face. And Mila’s body language changes.
“Fine,” she says, lighter. “Penelope said we’re doing shots in the kitchen in five.”
Melly turns to me and lights up again. “Want a shot?”
I should say no. I should say I’ll catch up. I should say, give me a minute. I should stay on this staircase, take the stupid fucking halo off my head, peel the wings off my shoulders, hand them to her, turn back upstairs to my room, shut the door, and do twenty pushups against the floor and reset.
“Yeah.”
Mila’s eyes flick to me.
She doesn’t say anything.
She turns and walks ahead of us toward the kitchen.
I follow Melly through the living room.
The party guests all look at me. I hadn’t anticipated the people. I’d been so focused on the team — on Stanley, on Benson — that I hadn’t, until I’m six feet into the living room, accounted for the fifty other people at this party who don’t normally see Blue Golding wearing angel wings and a halo.
A girl in a witch hat stops mid-conversation. Five freshmen on the team look over at me and nod. A girl in a cat costume taps her friend’s shoulder and points at me with her chin. The math is being done all over the room at once.
Wings on his back. Halo on his head. GOLDING on the girl in front of him.
I keep walking.
The kitchen is bright after the dim of the living room.
Penelope is at the island with a line of shot glasses already poured.
Mara is climbing onto a barstool with the energy of a girl who is already drunk and wants to drink more.
Gianna is yelling at Stanley. Benson and Lucy are in the corner with his arm around her shoulders, and her head turned up to his.
Stanley sees me first. His head turns toward the doorway. He is mid-sip of his Solo cup, and he freezes. He lowers the cup.
He says, slowly and very clearly, “No. No.”
The whole kitchen turns.
Stanley walks across the kitchen toward me with his arms out at his sides like a man approaching a vehicle accident.
“Bluey. Golding. What is this? What are we looking at? What is happening on your back right now?”
Benson is grinning.
Gianna is grinning.
Even Percy, in the corner with his paperback closed in his lap, looks up.
“Stan.”
“No. No, no, no. Don’t Stan me. You explain this. You explain this to me right now.”
Melly, lightly, beside me, explains, “Wardrobe malfunction.”
Stanley turns to her. He looks at her like she has just landed in his kitchen from the moon. “Wardrobe malfunction?” His eyes go to her costume. The jersey. GOLDING on her back. The hat. The mustache.
Stanley’s whole face changes.
“Golding.” His voice has gone reverent. “Blue. You gave her your jersey.”
“Her zipper broke.”
Stanley doesn’t seem to care. “You gave her your jersey.”
Benson is laughing into Lucy’s hair. Lucy is laughing — small, into her drink, shoulders shaking. Gianna is still grinning. Mara has appeared at Stanley’s elbow with her phone out, taking photos.
“This is going on Instagram immediately.”
“Mara,” Melly says.
“Immediately.”
I stand in the kitchen in white wings with a halo on my head, and I don’t say anything.
I don’t say anything because I can’t. I would normally be backing out of this kitchen, walking up the stairs, and locking myself in my bedroom for the rest of the night.
I’m wearing fucking wings in front of my whole team.
My feet don’t move. I’m still standing here. I’m not, somehow, dying.
Penelope pushes a shot glass across the island toward me. “Welcome, angel.”
I grab the shot. Melly is next to me, so she grabs hers. We make eye contact over the rims as we tip them back. She’s grinning at me with the crooked mustache I drew on her face two minutes ago, and her eyes are crinkled at the corners, and I —
I laugh. Once. Out loud. A real laugh.
The rest of the kitchen grabs their shots.
Stanley lifts his and says, “Cheers to the angels.” He looks at me. “Fucking bastard. After that talk we had at dinner the other day.”
Benson puts his shot glass down. “Don’t listen to him, Blue.”
A song everyone knows comes on in the living room.
The girls start screaming. Mara grabs Melly’s hand and yanks her toward the doorway.
Gianna grabs Mara’s other hand, and Penelope follows them with her shot glass empty in her grip, and Lucy follows Penelope, and the four of them are gone in the space of about three seconds, leaving Melly looking back at me over her shoulder as Mara pulls her through the doorway.
She doesn’t say come. She lets Mara pull her into the living room, and she trusts that I am going to follow her, and that trust is going to be misplaced, because that is where I stop. The kitchen is the line. I don’t dance.
I stand at the island. Benson passes me a beer, and I drink.
She’s wrong about me. I won’t follow her, and she can have fun with her friends while I wear these stupid fucking angel wings and a halo. I can feel the damn thing bouncing on my head.
I stand there for a full minute. Percy walks next to me. We watch the living room together.
Mara is shaking her ass. Penelope is laughing in a way I haven’t ever seen Penelope laugh. Gianna is yelling along to the lyrics. Lucy is twirling Benson by the hand, and Benson is letting himself be twirled, and Melly —
Melly is in the middle of them in my jersey, with the hat backward, dancing the way a girl dances when she’s drunk. Then her eyes gaze up, catching mine watching her. My heart drops through my body.
She smiles, pointing at me. “You promised,” she says, reaching for my hand.
I stay where I am. She’s too small to force me.
“Blue,” she scoffs. “You said.”
“I said I don’t dance.”
She takes the beer from my hand and puts it on the countertop. She pulls both my hands with both of hers. “Come on, Blue. We’re friends now, right?”
I look at her. I don’t know, are we?
I let her pull me into the middle of my crowded living room.
She starts jumping to the beat, singing the lyrics at me.
I stare at her for a beat. Benson’s dancing to my right.
I catch Stanley bouncing his knees across the room with a few of guys from the team –– Walker, Trent, and Drew.
They’re all talking, laughing, and swaying to the beat.
I look back at Melly. She’s swaying her hips now, and I can see the pleading in her eyes.
I let her start dancing with me, and I slowly start to dance with her — badly, terribly, the way a hockey player dances, all stiff shoulders and locked knees and feet that don’t understand what to do with themselves outside a skate.