Finally, she seemed to be finished puking, and she sat up. I offered her a paper towel and she wiped her face with it before wadding it up and tossing it in the trash can. Then she closed the toilet lid, flushed, and looked over at me.
“Sorry about that.”
“You don’t need to apologize.”
“That was gross.”
“I’ve seen worse.”
“How?”
“You’d be surprised what high schoolers get up to these days,” I told her. “I’ve seen puke in the hallways, puke in the bathrooms, and puke in the parking lots. They don’t exactly have good aim.”
“Tell me we were better than that when we were young,” she said.
“Oh, absolutely,” I winked. “We were a million times better. Smarter, too. Not to mention, we were better-looking and had better style.”
She laughed, then, and it was such a wonderful sound. I never wanted it to stop. I wanted to make her laugh over and over again. Cordelia was...
Well, she made me smile.
I wanted to make her smile, too.
“Tell me what this was all about,” I gestured to the toilet.
“Apparently, I ate a bad sandwich at lunch,” she said.
“Liar.”
She shrugged.
I pulled her to her feet and she looked at me with her tear-stained face. I stepped aside and she washed her hands and splashed some water on her face. Then the two of us went back to the front of the bakery. She didn’t offer to let me sit down, but I did, anyway. I took a seat and gestured for her to do the same.
Reluctantly, she sat down.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
I just looked at her.
“Really, Coop. I don’t.”
“You know why I’m such a good principal?” I asked her.
The change of subject seemed to jolt her because she just shook her head for a moment. That was all that I needed to keep talking.
“I’m a good listener,” I told her. “And I’m patient. You remember my little brother?”
“James? I remember.”
“You know how he’s in a wheelchair?”
“Yeah.”
“It was hard taking care of him. My parents did their best, but I had to help out a lot. I did everything I could to keep up with his care so they could focus on other things, like work. My dad lost his job when we were in 7th grade. Do you remember?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
It had been horrible. He’d done his best to find something new, but he hadn’t been able to. It had killed him not to be able to provide for us. My mom was working as much as she could, but she could only make so much. Finally, we had to ask for help.
“We had to accept aid from the state.”
“There’s nothing embarrassing about needing food stamps or financial assistance,” Cordelia whispered. “Lots of people need help. That’s why those programs exist.”
“Yeah,” I smiled. “That’s what you told me back then, too.”
“You were the only person I ever told.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yep. After I told you, I kept waiting for the rumors around the school to start. Larissa never said anything to me about it, and nobody else ever did. Do you know why?”
“Why?”
“Because you didn’t tell anyone, Cordelia. You never ran your mouth. You’re the kind of friend who can take a secret to the grave. You never even considered letting other people have a glimpse into my family’s pain. You didn’t feel the need to tell anyone my secret in order to make yourself feel bigger or stronger.”
She shrugged.
“That’s what makes you such a good friend, Cor. What makes me such a good principal is that no matter what people do, I can outwait them. Now I wait when students show up in my office. I wait, and I listen, and eventually, they all talk.”
“You think I’m going to talk.”
“I know you are,” I corrected her. “And I’m going to listen to you when you do.”
“Cooper, I don’t want to talk.”
I waited.
I looked at Cordelia, and I watched the woman who had gotten away. I was filled with regret and pain as I watched her. We’d lost out on so many wonderful years together because we’d both been young and stupid, and neither one of us had known how to communicate.
Maybe things would be different this time around.
Cordelia started to look more and more uncomfortable with me watching her. Soon she started to fidget, and she started looking around the room. Finally, her head swung back around and she stared right at me.
“Okay,” she finally said. “I’ll talk.”
“Good.”
“I hated you,” she said. “You hurt me. I couldn’t understand why you didn’t like me, or why you’d stopped wanting to be my friend. Now I’m older, and I know you were probably overwhelmed and busy. You were helping your parents out with James a lot, and that had to have been tough.”
It had been. Taking care of my brother had been a full time job, and even with me and my parents all helping, it had been hard. My dad did his best, but sometimes it wasn’t enough. My mom tried, but sometimes, she just couldn’t do anything else.
“When I heard the rumors that you’d started...well, that I thought you’d started...I felt hurt. I couldn’t stop thinking about you, though. I just couldn’t. Finally, I confessed to Larissa that you were driving me crazy. Apparently, she knew about my little crush before I even realized what I was feeling. You were the first guy I...”
The first?
“You were the first guy I ever wanted,” she whispered.
“Cordelia...”
“Let me finish,” she said. “Don’t interrupt or I won’t be able to do this, Coop.”
She started crying, then, and it took every ounce of self-control I had not to reach across the table and yank her into my arms. She didn’t need to cry. She didn’t need that. Cordelia was too sweet and too perfect and too wonderful. She didn’t deserve that. She deserved better.
She deserved the entire damn world.
“Larissa convinced me that I should ask you to prom,” she whispered. “I didn’t want to. I didn’t think that you’d be interested. Besides, there was the issue of the rumors...I kind of talked myself out of it and then back into it. Plus, I had Larissa there to help.”
Good ol’ Larissa.
“She said things like, maybe I was wrong. Maybe he didn’t really start them. Maybe he’s changed. She said a lot of different things, and I was wildly confused. In the end, it didn’t matter. I couldn’t stop thinking...”
She blushed, and I wanted to know what it was that she couldn’t stop thinking. What had sweet Cordelia gotten into her head back then? She’d been 16, and I’d been 17, and we’d had our entire lives ahead of us. We’d had so much to gain and everything to lose, and we’d screwed it all up.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about kissing you,” she whispered. “I had this fantasy, you know, about asking you to prom and you saying yes. I thought about everything. I thought about the dress and the corsage and the ride to the dance. I thought about everything, and I totally worked myself up. I was so ready to ask you and then...”