The Education of Hailey Kendrick - Eileen Cook [58]
“I’m a big believer in faking it until you make it. If you’re going to do something, you can’t always sidle up to it. You have to jump in with both feet.”
“No guts, no glory, huh? Not everyone has that kind of courage. Some of us have a normal sense of fear.”
“You know what courage is, don’t you? It’s not a lack of fear. It’s being scared and doing it anyway.” Drew put his feet back on the floor and leaned forward. “Like asking your friend what’s up with her and Tristan, instead of letting it eat you up inside.”
I choked on my Diet Coke. “Now you’ve lost your mind. There’s nothing going on between them.”
“You don’t need to convince me. You’re the one bothered by it.”
“I’m not bothered by it,” I yelled. The people at the tables near us turned to see what was going on. Hanging out with Drew was turning me into one of those people who hangs out in cheap bars and has screaming matches in public. I pressed my mouth into a smile, lowered my voice, and repeated myself through clenched teeth. “I’m not bothered.”
“I can see that.” Drew pulled the straw out of his glass and chugged his Coke.
“I’m not.”
“Okay. You’re not. My mistake.” Drew took another long drink. “All I’m saying is that life is too short to sit back and wait to see what happens, what everyone else decides. You’re in charge of your own life. If your dad is ticking you off, then you should tell him. If you don’t want to see Tristan anymore, then break up with him. If you think your friend is dating your boyfriend, then ask her.”
I shook my head. “You’re reading too much be-all-you-can-be poetry. That, or all that sucking the marrow out of life has resulted in an oxygen shortage. It’s not that simple. In polite society we don’t always do whatever comes into our head.” I glanced down at my watch. “I should get back. I need to sneak back into my room before eleven.”
Drew shrugged and pulled his coat on. I followed him out into the parking lot. The silence seemed jarring after the loud music in the bar. I could hear the squeak of my shoes in the fresh snow.
“I suppose you always do what you want,” I said. “You go out and seize every day like some sort of motivational speaker.”
Drew pulled on my jacket to make me stop. “If you don’t seize the opportunity, how do you know what will happen? Sometimes you have to take the chance.”
I started to disagree with him, but Drew leaned in and kissed me. Not a friendly peck on the cheek, but a full-on tongue-in-my-mouth face-sucking kiss. My mind went completely blank. Before Tristan the only person I had kissed was Wilbur Trent in seventh grade. Wilber sat behind me in class, and his mom had invited me to his birthday party, where he kissed me in the living room while we were supposed to be watching a movie. He had tasted a bit like the Juicy Fruit gum he was always chewing. There was no tongue with Wilbur. That summer his dad was transferred to Colorado and our young love affair never had another chance. Once at Evesham, I started dating Tristan the fall of freshman year and hadn’t kissed another soul until Joel had planted one on me that night by the statue. Now Drew was kissing me out of nowhere. I couldn’t tell what was going on in my life that suddenly people felt the urge to kiss me without being invited. I must have been giving off some kind of hormone scent that made people think I was easy. I could feel the sharp brush of Drew’s stubble as it ground against my face. He pulled back and stared at me. I knew he was waiting for me to say something. I waited for the words to form, but my brain was blank.
I slapped him hard across the face. The crack of my hand against his skin sounded unnaturally loud in the quiet parking lot. Drew’s face went bright red in the perfect shape of my hand.
“Well, that answers that question,” Drew said.
“How dare you.” I forced myself to take a deep breath and calm down. “I don’t know what gave you the idea that that was something I wanted. I’ve enjoyed getting