The Beautiful Between - Alyssa B. Sheinmel [32]
“I really am fine, Jeremy.”
“Whatever. I’m walking you home.”
We stop outside my building and Jeremy lights us two cigarettes.
“It’s nice out.”
“No it’s not, kid. You’re just too drunk to notice how cold it is.”
“Am not!”
“Are too!”
I stick my tongue out at him and he grabs me and messes up my hair.
He tosses the butt of his cigarette on the ground.
“Now remember, lots of water, and try to sober up some before you fall asleep.”
I nod obediently.
“You’re going to have a hell of a headache in the morning,” he says, almost apologetically.
“I don’t mind,” I say cheerfully. I’m such a dork that I’m excited to have a hangover.
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
He kisses me on the cheek goodbye and walks to the corner. I watch him get into a cab. I don’t know exactly how this has happened, but it turns out that Jeremy is the first best friend I’ve ever had.
12
At school on Monday, I feel like everyone is looking at me differently. I wonder if they think I’m Jeremy Cole’s girlfriend, or if that would ever even occur to them—because what would Jeremy be doing, dating me? But I feel like more people are smiling at me in the hallways, rolling their eyes at me when a teacher assigns a lastminute paper, exchanging looks with me in between classes. Something is different, I’m sure of it.
Before first period, Emily Winters comes up to me.
“So what’s going on?”
I look at her blankly. I’m sitting on the floor by the lockers, going over our English reading. I know what she’s getting at. In a minute I’m going to have to say “just friends,” and I’m fine with that, I’m happy about that—but once I say that, the significance with which she’s looking at me, the importance she’s attaching to me, will go away.
“I heard you went to Fisher’s party with Jeremy Cole. I didn’t even go!”
I’m not sure what to say. That isn’t really a question.
Emily sits down next to me, leans in conspiratorially. “Why didn’t you tell me you guys were hanging out?”
What would I have told her? I didn’t even know what we were doing at first; whether we were hanging out, how long it would last. There might have been nothing to tell.
Emily continues without waiting for an answer. “So come on, tell me—you guys hooking up or what?”
My hands start to sweat. I don’t know how I feel about the fact that people are talking about me. It’s strange enough that people I never talked to before are now talking to me. I feign nonchalance. “Emily, no, that’s gross—he’s a friend.” I purposely don’t say “just a friend,” because the word “just” doesn’t feel accurate.
“Honey, ain’t nothing gross about Jeremy Cole.” I notice for the first time that Emily is actually only trying to sound older and wiser; before, I always felt like she really was.
Nonetheless, I feel my face turning bright red. Not because I have a crush on Jeremy—yes, of course, he’s gorgeous and a girl would have to be blind and deaf not to have some kind of crush on him—but it’s more than that. There is so much that’s private and there’s so much I don’t want to give away, that I want to keep for just Jeremy and me.
“Dude,” Emily says before heading off to class, “it is so not fair not to dish.”
I wonder if Emily will spread gossip about us. It doesn’t matter, because the gossip she’d spread wouldn’t be the truth—the truth is way too complicated for gossip.
Jeremy isn’t in physics class, and I don’t see him at lunchtime. I think something must be wrong—maybe Kate has taken a turn for the worse—and I want to call him. I go so far as to sneak into the nurse’s office to use her phone (she never seems to notice that the entire student body uses her phone for personal calls, since we’re not allowed to use cell phones in school) when I realize I’ve never called him before. I don’t even have his home number, though it would be easy enough to get it from the class directory, where I imagine he got my number. But I can’t imagine calling when he’s never actually given me his number