The Upside of Unrequited Page 4

  I can just picture her flopped back on her bed, hand covering her face. Abby doesn’t blush—kind of like Cassie—though Abby has dark-brown skin, so it’s hard to tell. But her mouth does this tiny upward quirk in the corner when she’s embarrassed or awkward or pleased with herself.

  I can actually hear it. I can hear that little mouth quirk in her voice.

  “How was it?” I ask.

  “It was . . . you know. It was good.”

  But I don’t know. I’m bad at this. I never know what to ask.

  “Better than Darrell?”

  She pauses. “Yeah,” she says finally. “Definitely.”

  “Well, awesome!”

  “You don’t think I’m a slut, right?”

  “What? No!”

  “We’ve only been together five months. It’s kind of slutty.”

  “No it’s not,” I say. “Not at all.”

  “I know. But ugh. So, there’s this girl I know here, and she’s the actual worst. Like, you need to hear her talk about her metabolism, which is apparently superfast, and apparently we all need to know this, and I don’t even know why I listen to her—but anyway. She made this comment the other day that couples in high school shouldn’t have sex until they’ve been dating for a year. And I can’t get it out of my head. You know?”

  “Oh, Abby. I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s fine. Like, she didn’t actually use the word slut, but I felt like it was implied, and now I’m just like, great. I’m a slut.”

  There’s this catch in her voice, and I don’t know what to say. I’m not really the expert on this.

  Here’s what I would never, ever admit out loud: a part of me always thought it was some kind of a secret compliment when someone got called a slut. It meant you were having sex. Which meant people wanted to have sex with you. Being a slut just meant you were normal.

  But I think maybe I’m wrong about that. Maybe I’m so wrong.

  “Abby, you are not a slut,” I say firmly. “Who is this girl? She’s full of shit.”

  “I know, I know. I’m being ridiculous.”

  “Olivia’s had sex. Cassie’s had all kinds of sex. You’re fine. And it’s not anyone else’s business.”

  “No, you’re right.”

  “So, tell me how it happened,” I say. “Like, tell me the whole story leading up to it.”

  “Okay.” I hear rustling, and I picture her sitting up straighter. “So we were actually at a concert. We saw the Weepies—tell Cassie that. But anyway, afterward, we were hanging out at Simon’s house, and we’re watching TV, and then Nick gets a text from his mom.”

  “Uh, I’m not seeing how this story ends in sex.”

  “Ha. She was letting him know she was called in to the hospital for work.”

  “Ohhhh.”

  I can hear Abby grinning. “Yup. So then we left . . .”

  “So, you and Nick were home alone . . . ,” I say. “And?”

  “And yeah!”

  “Hey, well done.”

  “Why, thank you.” She yawns happily. “So what about you?”

  “Did I have sex last night?”

  “No!” she says. “Unless, I mean—did you?”

  If Abby were physically present right now, she’d be feeling the wrath of my side-eye. She would so be feeling it.

  “Oh, totally,” I say. “You know me.”

  “Molly! I want to know what’s going on with you. Hey, whatever happened with the sideburns guy?”

  “From my SAT class?”

  “Yes!”

  Crush number twenty-five: Quinn of Test Prep. I never exchanged actual words with him, but I’m 80 percent sure that was his first name. Once, we shared a potentially significant moment of eye contact after finishing a math practice test.

  “I have no idea. I hope he did well.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “On the SAT.”

  “You are ridiculous.”

  I shrug, and even though she can’t see me, it’s like she can sense it through the cellular radio waves.

  “How come you never tell me about boys anymore?”

  “There’s literally nothing to tell.”

  We hang up, and I scoot backward against my pillows, feeling off-kilter. So, Abby had sex with Nick. That means she’s had sex with two guys. I haven’t even kissed two guys. Actually, I haven’t even kissed one guy. I know it’s not a competition, but I can’t help but feel like I’m falling further and further behind.

  Of the four of us—Cassie, Abby, Olivia, and me—I’m the last virgin standing. Which has been the case for a while now, and I don’t know why it suddenly bothers me. But it’s not about the sex, exactly.

  It’s the other stuff. I can picture it: Abby and Nick hanging out after the concert, sleepy and content and surrounded by friends. Her feet in his lap. This text coming in. And the way all their friends must have teased them when they left so abruptly. I bet they looked sheepish. I bet they held hands the minute they stepped outside.

  I think that’s what I’m jealous of. I’m jealous of the moment Nick slid his key into the lock. And I do not mean that as a euphemism. Just a key in the lock of an empty house. Just that sweet, anticipatory moment. I wonder what Abby was thinking and feeling at that exact second. I’d be wrecked with butterflies, if it were me.

  Here’s the truth: I want this so badly. To the point where it’s almost physically painful sometimes.

  I want Olivia’s soft-voiced conversations with Evan Schulmeister, where she takes five steps away from us before she even answers the phone. Just to be alone with him. And I want the palpable waves of electric crush energy that radiate off Cassie these days. I want to know what it feels like to have crushes that could conceivably maybe one day turn into boyfriends.

  All this wanting.

  I pull out my phone. My mind is spinning. I need to zone out on BuzzFeed or something. I know this doesn’t exactly make me unique, but I love the internet. I love it. I think the way I feel about the internet is the way some people feel about the ocean. It’s so huge and unknowable, but also totally predictable. You type a line of symbols and click enter, and everything you want to happen, happens.

  Not like real life, where all the wanting in the world can’t make something exist. I don’t even think Cassie has the ability to make this come true for me. It’s just hard to believe in the concept of Molly-With-a-Boyfriend.

  Especially a cute hipster boyfriend. Especially Will.

  But I want it. The wanting is almost too big to hold.

  THINGS FEEL MORE MANAGEABLE IN the morning. I don’t know if it’s the sunshine or the Zoloft or just the fact that I’m working today, but I feel completely energized. I’m even a little amped up.

  As soon as I get to Bissel, Deborah starts me off setting a tableau of baskets and things around a raw cedar coffee table. Here’s a fact about me: I’m excellent at arranging vintage stuff into rustic, artful displays. Abby calls me a Pinterest Queen, which is a compliment. I think. I guess it’s my one skill set.

  The storage room door nudges open, and Reid slips through, carrying a cardboard box. He sets it down on the counter and talks to Ari for a minute.

  And then he looks up at me and smiles and walks over. “Hey, Molly.”

  “Oh hey! I was wondering where you were.”

  God, I don’t know why I do this. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I’m amazing at shutting up, but every so often, it’s like I lose my filter. And it comes without warning.

  I was wondering where you were. Way to sound like a happy little stalker on your second day of work, Molly. But Reid just smiles again and picks up a basket. “What are you working on?”

  “Oh, Deborah wanted me to update this display.”

  “Cool.”

  He ruffles his own hair, which is a pretty cute thing for a boy to do. And then he stands there for a minute, like he doesn’t know what to say.

  Poor, awkward Middle Earth Reid.

  Though he’s wear
ing what appears to be a Game of Thrones T-shirt today. So, I guess he’s House Lannister Reid now.

  The silence is a little painful. It’s funny, because you always think the hard part is meeting someone the first time. It’s not. It’s the second time, because you’ve already used up all the obvious topics of conversation. And even if you haven’t, it’s strange and heavy-handed to introduce random conversational topics at this stage in the game. Hi, Reid. Let’s converse about topics. HOW MANY SIBLINGS DO YOU HAVE? WHAT BOOKS DO YOU LIKE?

  I mean, I could probably answer the book one.

  “So, what’s your favorite thing for sale here?” I blurt.

  Excellent conversational topic, Molly.

  “Oh, I’ll show you,” Reid says. He starts walking toward the stationery corner, peeking over his shoulder to see if I’m following. So I follow. He goes straight for the greeting cards, and pulls one off the display.

  A greeting card. This store is essentially Anthropologie’s cooler, hotter big sister, and Reid’s most cherished item is a greeting card.

  He hands it to me, and I hold it gently in both hands. And I have to admit: this is a pretty fancy greeting card. It’s on heavy card stock, intricately painted with a portrait of—I’m almost positive—Queen Elizabeth I. She’s wearing this outfit with epic puffed sleeves and a collar that basically looks like the sun, and she has the world’s greatest Don’t Fuck With Me expression on her face. Underneath the portrait, in old-fashioned script, is the quote “I observe and remain silent.” I read it aloud.

  “That’s Elizabeth the First,” Reid says.

  “Oh, I thought so.” I look up at him. “That’s a quote from her?”

  He nods seriously. “As far as I know.”

  “That’s a really ominous card to send someone.”

  “What?” He laughs.

  “It’s like, I’m watching your every move, and I choose not to say anything . . . yet. Look at her expression.” I hold up the card.

  “Noooooo!” The faintest dimple appears in his cheek. “No. Don’t ruin Elizabeth for me. She is perfect.”

  “Is she, Reid? Is she really?” I flash him the Molly Face. Everlasting skepticism.

  “Yes. She is. She is perfect.”

  Now he’s looking at me, and I have to admit: his eyes are a cool shade of hazel. I don’t know if his glasses kept me from noticing before. But now I’m noticing.

  “Okay,” I say, because I need to say something. “So, is this like a romantic thing, or . . . ?”

  His head whips toward me. “What?”

  I hold up the card. “You and Elizabeth?”

  “Very funny.” He plucks it out of my hand, smiling.

  “So, that’s a yes?”

  It’s the strangest thing. I am not like this. I mean, I am around my family, but not around boys. I’ve never really joked around with a boy like this before. Not where I was the one making the jokes. I think I like it.

  “We should look busy,” Reid says suddenly, glancing over his shoulder. I follow his gaze, catching Deborah’s eye.

  She smiles and waves, and I feel my cheeks go warm.

  Crap. Yeah. Job. Work.

  “We can rearrange stuff in the baby section again,” Reid says.

  “Okay.”

  “It’s kind of like . . .” He lowers his voice, glancing briefly at Deborah again. “There’s not always a lot to do here? I guess it depends on the day.”

  “Ah.”

  I fall into step beside him, walking toward the baby section—which is essentially Pinterest come to life. The ceiling is draped with softly patterned pastel bunting, and there are hanging hot air balloon decorations (not for sale) and impossibly soft stuffed animals (for sale) and everything is organic.

  Reid turns to me suddenly. “You’re not going to quit though, right?”

  “What?”

  “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “About there not being a lot of work to do here?”

  He bites his lip.

  “I love not doing work,” I assure him. And it’s true. Not doing much work is my favorite thing. And my other favorite things include: being around a lot of mason jars, rearranging table displays, and teasing geeky boys about their fondness for historical queens.

  “Well, good.”

  I smile.

  “Otherwise, I was going to have to bribe you with Mini Eggs,” he adds.

  “Wait, really?”

  “Absolutely. Too late, though. That’s a shame.”

  I give him a glare, and his dimple flickers, and hey. Looks like House Lannister Reid knows about jokes, after all.

  Here’s the funny part: all the way home, I replay this conversation with Reid in my head. I don’t even realize I’m doing it until I arrive at my own doorstep.

  Admittedly, this is the kind of thing a person might do while establishing her twenty-seventh crush. Hypothetically speaking.

  But Reid isn’t a crush. I don’t know how to explain it, but a crush is a very particular thing for me. Like crush number eight: Sean of the Eyelashes. It was the second-to-last night of camp, the summer after eighth grade, and it was raining, so we were all watching Wet Hot American Summer in the Lodge. By coincidence (or fate. It felt like fate), Sean was sitting next to me. I found him massively cute: kind of short, with spiky dark hair and bright-blue eyes. And the eyelashes. At least 75 percent of Sean’s body weight was eyelashes. He was sitting in one of those folding nylon camp chairs, and at one point, he leaned toward me out of nowhere to say, “This movie rules.”

  I agreed with this statement. And at the time, that felt cosmically significant.

  I could barely catch my breath for the rest of the movie, and my heartbeat was probably making those giant zigzags. Literally all my mental energy was devoted to trying to come up with something clever and nonchalant to say to this boy—this perfect boy, whom I’d noticed around camp for weeks, who was now miraculously sitting beside me, and who had—even more miraculously—spoken to me first. But I was suddenly frozen and electrically self-conscious. My thighs felt enormous, and I was acutely aware of the waistband of my shorts digging into the fat on my stomach. It occurred to me that Sean—of course I already knew his name—wouldn’t be talking to me if he knew about the shorts and the fat and the waistband.

  So, I just stared at the movie screen, not really watching it.

  But when the movie was over, Sean nudged me and said, “That was really cool, right?” I smiled and nodded really fast.

  I never talked to him again. I haven’t even thought about him in years. But as I climb the stairs to my bedroom, his face is vividly clear to me. And the mental image of him still makes my heart race.

  Molly Peskin-Suso: crushing on the memory of eighth-grade boys. Am I the biggest creeper in the universe? (Check yes or hell yes.)

  I sink onto my bed. So, there was Sean. And Julian Portillo, my friend Elena’s older brother. Crush number eleven: Julian of the Experimental Breakfasts. That’s the main thing I remember: the way he used to make these very complicated gourmet breakfasts for us in the mornings after our sleepovers. I guess I found that really charming for some reason. Even though I’m not a person who experiments with breakfast.

  Anyway, Julian was a senior when Elena and I were freshmen, and their parents were from El Salvador, and they both had giant dimples in both cheeks. Julian had a really loud laugh, too. I kept a diary back then, and I took note of every single time he spoke to me, which was rare. Mostly because I lost the ability to speak when he was around, and I guess cute senior boys don’t like speaking to walls of awkward freshman silence. Anyway, Julian ended up at Georgetown, and Elena got a scholarship to private school, and neither of them is on Facebook, so I have no idea what they’re up to now. Not a clue.

  But the point is, I can’t talk to guys I like. Not really. My body completely betrays me. And it’s a little different with every guy, so it’s kind of hard to generalize—but if I had to describe the feeling of a crush, I’d sa
y this: you just finished running a mile, and you have to throw up, and you’re starving, but no food seems appealing, and your brain becomes fog, and you also have to pee. It’s this close to intolerable. But I like it.

  More than like it. I crave it.

  Because there’s nausea and fog, but there’s also this: an unshakable feeling that something wonderful is about to happen. That’s the part I can’t explain. No matter how unlikely, I always have a secret shred of hope. And as feelings go, that’s a pretty addictive one.

  CASSIE BUSTS INTO MY ROOM at six in the morning, without knocking. “Yo, sleepyhead. Where’s your stringy-ding? Olivia needs bead therapy.”

  I blink up at her. “Now?”

  “She’s on her way over. Some kind of Evan douchery.”

  Right. So here’s a confession: I’ve never entirely understood the appeal of Evan Schulmeister. This is not just me being jealous that Olivia has a boyfriend. I think Evan’s an acquired taste, but without the part where I actually acquire the taste.

  “Should I get dressed?”

  Cassie laughs. “For Olivia?”

  Pajamas it is.

  Twenty minutes later, we’re cross-legged on the front porch, surrounded by magazines and scraps and scissors. I’m bleary-eyed, but it’s cool and breezy and actually kind of nice. I think the whole neighborhood is still sleeping.

  “So what did that dumbfuck do this time?” asks Cassie.

  “He’s not a dumbfuck.” Olivia fidgets with a bead, tugging it up and along the string. This is a thing she and I have been working on for years: our bead strings. Mine is over ten feet long now—maybe thousands of beads. And every single bead is homemade, cut from magazine pages. All you do is cut triangles out of paper and roll them tightly around a coffee straw, starting with the wide point. Seal it with glue and maybe a layer of clear nail polish. Then you slide them onto your string and repeat. Mine’s kind of an ombré rainbow pattern, starting with red, but I’ve worked my way up through the indigo section. Almost ready for violet. When it’s done, I’m going to line it along the top edge of my bedroom wall so it drapes down like lace.

  “So, okay. This isn’t even a big deal,” Olivia says. “It’s just something he said that’s kind of been bugging me.”