19
Ice Cream Is Not the Point
Kylie
In my ten o’clock, Dr. Nakamoto spends fifty minutes on whether a strike counts as a protest if the people striking don’t want anything except money.
Elias and I end up on the same side for the first time in three weeks, which neither of us enjoys.
I spend my two-hour gap in the library, get through most of a reading, and buy the good coffee from the place across the street, because it’s Thursday and I’ve earned it.
At one, my sociology professor hands back our papers.
Excellent synthesis in the second section, in blue pen, and then, next to my conclusion: The prompt asked you to compare — this is one example.
Points off here. I sit there looking at it and think about Declan in the library saying it says an example in a very confident voice, and me saying that’s what I thought, and then going home and writing it exactly the way he told me to.
An eighty-nine, because I asked a boy who had no idea what he was talking about.
I put it in my bag and go to my next class.
Tessa is on her bed when I get back at four, sitting up against the wall with a book and her hair in a low bun. There’s an apple on her desk that she cut into slices with a knife she keeps in its own little case. I drop my bag and pull off my shoes.
“How was your day?” she asks.
“Good. Yours?”
“Good.” She reaches over for an apple slice and holds it without eating it. “I’ve been meaning to ask. Where did you go on Tuesday?”
“Tuesday?”
“There was banging on the door. Your friend sounded like she was panicking.”
“Oh. Yeah.” I look at her.
“Is everything okay?”
I mean to give her the version I gave Kenzie, which is that some hockey guys got in a fight and Paige dragged me out of bed for no reason.
But Tessa asks one question and then another, and she turns out to be good at keeping me talking, and somewhere in the middle, I’m sitting cross-legged on my bed telling her almost everything.
About Declan. About the party two weeks ago, where a guy handed me a drink while everybody else laughed at me.
About blocking him, and how he invited Nash to his house Tuesday with six of his friends in it.
“He hit him with a hockey stick,” I say. “From behind, while he was trying to leave.”
Tessa doesn’t gasp, and she doesn’t say oh my God. She stops, completely, and looks at the wall over my shoulder.
“And there was a whole fight,” I say, “and somebody filmed the part where Nash was—”
“Really?”
“—and now Declan has this video and he’s using it to make Nash give up his spot, or something like that.”
I don’t tell her about the scar on Nash’s side. I notice myself not telling her. It isn’t mine to tell.
“Wow,” Tessa says. She’s very still. “Was his roommate involved?”
“Rafe?” I shake my head. “No. Well, he was there. I think maybe he and Koda fought some of the guys to get Nash off of Declan. But I know he’s the one who got Nash out.”
She nods slowly. “Was anyone else from this building there?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “Nash and Rafe are the only hockey players I know of on our floor, and Koda’s up on five. Why?”
She swallows and shakes her head. “No,” she says quietly, which doesn’t answer anything.
“Sorry,” I say. “What?”
She hesitates, and then she says, “I don’t like violence.”
It’s such an obvious, reasonable thing to say that I almost laugh, and then I don’t, because of how she says it.
“Yeah,” I say. “Nobody likes it, but—”
I’m about to give a hockey excuse, but she looks at me.
“Sorry,” I say, shaking my head. “That was insensitive. You don’t like it, and I understand.”
“It’s okay,” she mutters quietly.
I swallow, watching her closely. I ask slowly, “Did something happen?”
She blinks like she hadn’t thought I’d ask. She nods, then she says, “I got bullied in high school. Pretty badly.”
I sit there like an idiot. “Oh. Shit. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“No.” She brushes it off.
“I shouldn’t have told you all that. I was just babbling.” I stop and start again. “Those guys aren’t that violent. I think it’s just hockey, right?”
She nods and opens her book.
“Don’t tell anybody,” I say quickly, realizing I’ve just handed her something heavy without asking. “About Nash, or any of it. He’d be so mad. Nobody’s supposed to know.”
Tessa looks up. “Who exactly am I going to tell? It’s not like I have any friends.”
It’s a real joke, from Tessa Canten, deadpan, at four in the afternoon on a Thursday, and I laugh. It lightens the mood, so I fall sideways onto my pillow. “Tess, that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”
She smiles. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
“Thank you.”
I’m still thinking about it ten minutes later while I pretend to do homework.
“Hey,” I say, when she reaches for another apple slice. “For what it’s worth, not everybody’s like that. Whoever it was, in high school, it’s in the past now. You’re good here.”
There’s a pause that goes on a second too long.
“Yeah,” she says. “It’s only like that for me.” Then she eats her apple and turns the page, and I go back to my reading and decide right then that I’m never bringing her another story about somebody being violent.
The girls come over at six and take over my entire half of the room.
Kenzie brings her laptop and a blanket, Bianca brings snacks, and Paige brings a bag of gummy worms and her whole personality.
We put on The Bachelor that none of us watch, because Kenzie starts a fight about one of the girls not being a girl’s girl, and she hates it. Bianca argues.
Tessa stays at her desk with her headphones on.
I wish she would join us. She doesn’t leave when they come over; she just puts her headphones on and studies with four girls yelling about a movie eight feet away, and once, about forty minutes in, I see her mouth move at something Paige says, which is as close to participating as she gets.
At eight, Kenzie announces she’s starving, Bianca says the dining hall is closing, and Paige says there’s that place on Beall with the fries. Everybody is up and finding shoes in about ninety seconds.
“Tessa,” I say. “Come with us.”
She takes one headphone off. “What?”
“Food. On Beall. They have really good fries.”
She smiles. “No, thanks.”
I count it out. “You’d have to be outside for eleven minutes total, I’ll feed you, and we can have fun.”
“No, thanks, Kylie.”
“Okay,” I say, and get my jacket. At the door, I stop. “I really wish you would.”
“I know.”
“This isn’t high school, Tess,” I say, gently.
She goes still for a second. Then she nods and puts her headphones back on.
The place on Beall is loud and bright and smells like a fryer, with long tables and plastic baskets, and on a Thursday night it’s full of students. There’s a line, and there’s a wait.
Paige says, “Oh,” in a voice that makes me look up and follow her eyes.
Rafe is at the end of a table with his hood up and his arms crossed, looking at his phone.
Koda is across from him with an entire basket of something, already halfway through it.
And Nash is on the inside, facing the room.
His lip is healing and the swelling’s down, though his knuckles are still wrecked, and he sees us about two seconds after Paige does.
Koda turns all the way around in his seat. “Blondie!” he yells across the whole restaurant.
“Oh my God,” I say to Paige, who is looking at me like she doesn’t understand why the guy she’s sleeping with noticed me first. I don’t either, so I shrug.
“Blondie,” Koda says again. “Get over here.”
“There’s four of us, and one of us is blonde,” Bianca says.
“That’s my blonde,” Paige says, pointing at Koda.
We end up at their table, because Paige has already sat down next to Koda. Kenzie and Bianca take the two seats across from him, which leaves me at the end by Rafe. And then I look at Nash properly.
He’s sitting with his back against the wall and his arm along the back of the bench.
I blink twice when I notice that he’s wearing my shirt.
I bought it at a beach store in Myrtle Beach when I was fifteen, for eleven dollars, in an extra-large because I wanted a sleep shirt, and it has been my sleep shirt for three years.
The sleeves sit halfway down his upper arms instead of past my elbows.
There’s a faded palm tree across his chest. His forearms are on the table because he’s got a basket in front of him, and he’s wearing it like it’s his.
“Is that my shirt?” I scoff.
Nash looks down at himself like he needs to check. “Yeah.”
I almost laugh. “Why the hell are you wearing my shirt?”
He shrugs. “It’s mine now.”
I turn my head to the side. “No.”
He looks at me for a moment. “You gave it to me.”
He’s not wrong. I sit down. “Okay, but that doesn’t mean it’s yours. I let you borrow it.”
He eats a fry. “Yeah, and this is me borrowing it.” He leans back. “It’s a good shirt.”
“Your face looks better,” Paige tells him.
Nash doesn’t look at her. He looks at me. “You think so, too?”
“Uh,” I say. I look at his face, and then I nod. “Yeah.”
Rafe laughs once through his nose, stands up, and leaves the table without a word. Nash keeps looking at me, and I don’t know what to do but look back, until the waitress saves me by handing us laminated menus. I hide behind mine.
It’s loud in here. The waitress has to ask the girls to repeat their orders twice.
The conversation at this table is just the girls; the guys don’t include themselves.
I sit at the end and eat my fries and don’t say much, which is not like me, but every time I look up, he’s looking at me.
Not in a creepy way. Like he’s trying to figure something out.
About every two minutes, his eyes come across the table and find me and stay a second before they go back to his food.
The fourth time, I catch him on purpose, and he doesn’t look away. He holds it for a second and a half with his arm along the back of that bench in my eleven-dollar palm tree shirt, and then somebody says his name and he turns to answer them, and my whole stomach turns over.
We leave at nine-thirty. It’s cold outside, and everybody is heading in the same direction, towards Corvin, which is nice. The girls pretend they want dessert, and it turns into a two-minute argument on the sidewalk. Nash comes out last with a hoodie on over my shirt and walks over to me.
“Hey,” he says, glancing at the girls. “Ready to walk back?”
“Ice cream!” Paige announces.
Nash looks at Koda, then at me. “Do you want ice cream?”
I shake my head.
He starts walking. I look at Paige, who mouths, Go. I catch up to him, and we walk the whole way back without saying a word.