What happened after I left the party wasn’t a discussion I wanted to have with my friends, partly because I still don’t even know how I feel about it. I so badly wanted to throttle Blair for what she’d done to my truck, and the next minute, I wanted to pull over on the side of the road and haul her into the back seat. It’s the age-old problem I’ve always had when it comes to her; there are just too many mixed emotions. I don’t know which way is up when it comes to Blair Oden, and it leads me to do irrational things.
Like right now, when I’m about to get into a fight with my best friend. It’s like Matt is doing this on purpose, just to piss me off.
“That’s why I’m doing it, because I love the challenge.” He wags his eyebrows.
“You do realize you spent the last two years treating her like dirt on my behalf?” I try a different tactic.
“Yeah, but girls love that shit sometime. The meaner you are, the more they want you. I hope that’s what this is, kind of. Plus, I could always just tell her you forced me to do that, and grovel appropriately. Chicks love groveling.”
“No.” My voice is steel.
“What?” He smirks.
“No. You can’t ask her.” Jealousy rages like a wildfire inside me.
“And you don’t get a say in who I fuck.” Matt rises from his chair.
The word comes out of his mouth and I’m flying over the table at him. I don’t know how it happens, or when my control literally just snaps, but it does. The lunchroom erupts around us, and Matthew and I topple over the plastic chairs, food items flying onto the floor. Something soaks my T-shirt, but I barely notice. Because I’m too busy trying to clock my best friend in the jaw for saying that he’s trying to fuck the girl I both simultaneously hate and want beneath me, moaning my name.
“Dude, what the fuck?” Glavin is there, trying to pull me off of Matt.
My advantage isn’t going to last long, Matt has at least twenty pounds and two inches on me. I’m a big guy, but I’m lean like a soccer player, and even for a quarterback, Matt is stockier. I sink a punch into his jaw and am subsequently knocked to my back, then he’s coming at me. My hand stings as I grapple his shoulder with it, and we’re scuffling like a bunch of schoolyard morons. He sucker punches me to the eye and guaranteed there will be a big black circle there tomorrow. I land one to his ribs, and my anger suffuses through me like adrenaline, numbing everything else but the fury at the thought of him putting his hands on Blair.
“Break it up!” I hear a deeper, louder voice than Glavin’s shout at us.
Suddenly, Matt is being pulled off me, and when he comes away, there is blood dripping from a cut on his lip. I’m panting as I’m hauled up by a teacher I don’t recognize, and then my junior year Spanish teacher is directing us both toward the principal’s office.
Everyone in the cafeteria is tracking us with their eyes, the whispers coming in our wake. I can’t believe I just got into a fight—I’m usually pretty levelheaded—much less one at school. Much less one with one of my closest friends. But the spark kept fizzling closer and closer on that ignition line inside me as he went on about Blair. Then he had to throw out wanting to get her underneath him, and the dynamite had blown up in my face.
Neither one of us even looks at each other as we sit side by side, waiting for our turns in the principal’s office. We’ll patch this up eventually, but it’s too soon, and I feel scorched when it comes to my friend.
When it comes to Blair, my emotions are completely unpredictable. And I can’t explain why to a bunch of dudes, even if they’re my friends. I’m not even sure they’ll get it.
It’s not just that I was embarrassed, or that I lost my closest pal. Blair’s betrayal hurt so much because one, I had been confused about our relationship for some time before then. And two, the trust that existed between us is irrevocably broken.
Since we hit puberty, my mental state had been torn apart when it came to Blair. On the one hand, she was still my best friend, the girl who was like my sister since we were born. We had all the same inside jokes, could hang out for hours without anything being weird, and she knew all of my fears, secrets, and interests. But on the other hand … she was turning into a woman. Gone was the girl I played in the mud with, or the child I spent all my days with. It’s not like I didn’t know she’s a girl and I’m a boy, but as soon as we hit eighth grade, I started to notice the curves of her growing breasts. I noticed the way her hair smelled like clementines and how my stomach dipped when she smiled.
And then we got to high school, and I couldn’t stop noticing. My brain flitted to the possibility of kissing her almost every other second, but she was supposed to be my sister, right? I had all of these weird, conflicting feelings about a girl I’d spent my entire life knowing, and then I wanted to know her in a completely different way.
So when we went into that closet during seven minutes in heaven, I was going to take my shot. I wasn’t going to beat around the bush or make some grand gesture; I was just going to kiss the hell out of her and see how we both felt about it.
But then Blair pulled that shit, and all the trust we had went out the fucking window.
The trust between us … it had been airtight. Aside from my parents, Blair was the closest thing I had to family. She was the other half of my whole, in every way. We knew how to get each other out of trouble, the things to say to cheer each other up, and everything in between. I never saw it coming, what she did to me. Blindsided is an understatement. Then Blair doubled down and destroyed any hope for a reconciliation.
To this day, I don’t know why she did it. Maybe that’s why I’m so fucking angry.
Clearly, from our conversation when I drove her home the other night, she’s never going to give me an answer. So I’m not sure this rage will ever go away.
9
Blair
My crafting scissors cut into the hundredth piece of lime-green printer paper, and I sigh.
“How many more of these do we have to go?”
Nate looks around us at the floor littered with glue, tape, paper, and a hundred other craft supplies. “Oh, only about two thousand more.”
“Ugh, I really hate this part. I want to make change and organize events, not be a glorified arts and crafts teacher.” I pout.
“Well, this comes with part of the territory. And just think, being a glorified arts and crafts teacher could get you into college, so there is that.” He shrugs.
“I highly doubt the Ivy Leagues are checking into how well I can make a homecoming nomination ballot out of felt and pipe cleaners,” I grumble.
We’re on our free period and up to our elbows in homecoming decor, ticket-making, nominations, and everything else having to do with the most popular school event on the fall calendar. Not only does the game garner hundreds more fans than normal, including alumni, but the dance is the biggest social gathering in the first two marking periods. Everyone tries to secure a date, girls drop hundreds of dollars on hair and makeup, over-sexed teens gather in the school gym to grind on each other until their parents come to pick them up in the carpool lane out front of the school. It’s all fun and games, except for the two of us who have to do all the manual labor and typically get no thanks whatsoever.