A few guys from the basketball team were playing quarters on the kitchen table. It was unclear where the bathroom was, so I wandered through the first floor for a minute, finally trying a door off the living room. It was locked.
“There’s another one upstairs,” Neel Nair, a hot senior from my Spanish elective, said as he passed. His breath smelled like bong smoke.
Jen Klein didn’t seem to care that her friends had started a dance party in the living room. She messed with the stereo, switching on “Baby Got Back.” It was cliché and obvious but everyone was just drunk enough to love it, doing this silly stomping dance. Chris Arnold slammed into the wall as I went up the stairs.
The bathroom linked Jen’s bedroom with her older sister’s—the kind I’d only seen on 90210, where Brandon and Brenda Walsh ran into each other brushing their teeth. I closed the door behind me and locked it, enjoying the quiet comfort of being alone. I could’ve stayed in there for hours, reading the stack of YM magazines next to the sink, or just lying on the furry bathmat and listening to music. At home the bathroom felt like the only place I could relax. Maybe it was how good the acoustics were when I sang, or maybe it was that no one bothered me when I was taking a bath or drying my hair, but those private spaces always calmed me.
I smoothed on my lip gloss, careful to blend it to the corners, taking my time. I had this horrible feeling Patrick would be waiting for me right where I’d left him, and Kristen had no interest in helping me dodge the Spring Formal invite.
Then someone was at the door, two quick knocks echoing in the bathroom. At first I worried it was Patrick, so I ignored it, but then I got paranoid people were waiting outside and they’d think I was doing something weird. When I peeked out there was only one person there. He inspected the CD tower by Jen’s bed, running a hand through his mop of red hair. Tyler.
I just stood there, unable to speak.
“Jess! It’s you…”
“It’s me.”
Then he smiled that smile, and everything switched on inside me. I was suddenly hyperaware of the strip of exposed skin by my waist, where my sweater cropped up, or the spot where my hoop earring brushed against my neck. I wanted to go back into the bathroom and reapply my lip gloss and pinch color into my cheeks.
“Who knew Jen Klein was obsessed with Chumbawamba?” His finger rested on some CD spines in the middle of the stack. “I didn’t even realize they had other bad songs.”
“I actually wouldn’t mind that stupid song if it wasn’t so lazy,” I said, stepping toward him. “Have you ever listened to the lyrics? It’s the same two verses over and over again. He says the same line three dozen times.”
“But also, what is the guy in the song even doing?” Ty was still smiling as he said it. “He drinks four drinks in a row, all different. Like, I’m no bartender dude, but I’m pretty sure mixing a whiskey drink and a vodka drink and a lager drink, then chasing it down with hard cider, is not going to be good.”
Did I love him? Was it possible to love someone you’d never even kissed?
“You hiding out in there?” Ty asked, glancing over my shoulder into the bathroom. He had on this green flannel that he was obsessed with and a vintage Tears for Fears tee shirt underneath, the fabric faded from so many wears.
“Maybe. Don’t tell anyone.”
“You kept my secret about that weird cat statue.”
“The statue! I forgot about that.” I laughed.
“That’s how good you are at keeping secrets.”
When I was younger, my mom bought this abstract cat statue and displayed it on a pedestal in our den. Ty and I were rolling around inside a refrigerator box, pretending it was a carnival ride, when we slammed right into it, knocking it to the floor. I put the head back on with Crazy Glue. You could only tell it was broken if you held it an inch from your face.
“What is that?” he asked, peering at the pink stuff in my cup.
“Some weird lemonade drink. Wanna try?”
“With that rave review?”
Ty stepped closer. That one small movement sent me spinning, and even though I could still hear the music from the party, we were suddenly in another universe, one all our own. I’d spent so much time wondering what it meant that Ty always stopped by my locker on his way to gym, or that he’d volunteered to play drums for me last month in the talent show. Did he feel anything when he threw his arm over my shoulder as we walked down the hall, or was it just another version of the hundreds of other hugs he’d given me over the years? He answered me now with this smile, with the way he let the silence linger between us.
“You look…nice.”
“Nice?”
“Pretty.”
And then he shrugged this tiny, awkward shrug, like he couldn’t help himself—like he’d had to say it. I laughed, because it seemed like the only thing to do, but then he leaned in closer. His lips touched down on mine and he kissed me slowly, carefully, like he was just learning how. His hand wandered to my hair, his fingers getting tangled inside it. His breath warmed my skin. As we kissed, my hands found their way to his back, and I tried to pull him closer, but no matter how close we were, it wasn’t enough.
At some point the overhead light flicked on. Jen Klein stood in the doorway, a Zima in her hand. Her eyes were bulging out of her face—the melodramatic, drunk version of someone in shock.
“You guys aren’t supposed to be in here,” she said, stepping forward. She shooed us away like dogs. “Come on, get out of here. Get out.”
Tyler and I ducked around her, bursting into laughter as we ran down the stairs. She yelled something else that I couldn’t quite hear. His hand found mine and squeezed tight.
8
I could have survived on that memory for years. I kept reliving it over and again in my mind, slowing it down to savor the tiniest details. There was the moment Tyler stepped toward me, and that question: Nice? Pretty. I rewrote the dialogue so I was sharper, funnier. Every version started and ended just as it had on Friday night, but they were each special in their own way, and I never got tired of any of them.
“You’re doing it again,” Sara said. “That smiley, staring off into space thing.”
“Sorry.” I pressed the picture of Fuller against her wall. I’d taken it a few weeks ago—it was the closest he’d ever come to being photogenic. “Here? Or lower?”
“That’s great.” She was sitting up in bed, watching me cut and tape and organize.
“I’m just distracted. Tyler hasn’t been online all weekend.”
When we rejoined the party on Friday, Kristen already had her jacket on and was ushering me out the door, muttering something about curfews and Kim trying to be a club kid instead of accepting that she wasn’t any cooler than the rest of us. Tyler and I still hadn’t had a chance to establish what we were now. After that kiss, after his hands were in my hair, after it was so clear we were more than just friends.