Sticky Fingers (12 page)

“Is she getting things pulled together?” I know she was planning to work on her essays over break, because
she asked me—well, before the mall incident—if I’d help her out.

“I guess. I think she’s worried about getting into BU She says she might apply to Syracuse now too. Apparently they have a good communications program there.”

Courtney in Syracuse? “She’s never mentioned Syracuse to me.”

He shrugs as he clicks on his blinker and changes lanes. “Sounded like the whole idea just occurred to her. Or maybe she doesn’t want you to know, in case you’ll get upset if she goes to a college outside of Boston where you can’t see each other as much. Or something like that.”

“Maybe that’s it.” But I don’t think so.

“Hey, don’t tell her I told you, okay? She probably won’t end up applying there, so no need to get into it.”

“I wasn’t,” I say, because my gut is telling me that the Syracuse thing is totally made up, that something else is going on and he doesn’t want to spill the beans.

I just have to hope I can trust him. Trust that maybe he
was
talking to Courtney behind my back,
hoping to patch things up between us and not wanting me to know he was trying. I could totally see him doing that. And each of them making the other promise not to talk about it.

“Jen, it’ll work out. She said she wanted to give you your Christmas gift, and she seemed really anxious to talk to you. Wait and see what comes of it.”

I agree, though every time he opens his mouth, I only have more questions. Did he tell Courtney I got her a gift? Did he use that fact to poke Courtney into talking to me again?

And if so, is that going to be a good thing?

I wish I would’ve gone into the store a couple minutes earlier. Maybe I’d have heard enough of what they were saying to know for certain.

Scott changes the subject to bowling, though, and a flash of excitement lights his eyes when he suggests we place bets on our scores. As he talks, I gradually feel comfortable again. Like we’re the same two people we’ve always been. Competitive, driven, connected.

Like we’re viewing the world through the same pair of glasses.

And like my flaking out at the hotel is something he really can live with.

He must be feeling the connection too, because when we’re forced to stop and wait for an eighteen-wheeler to move off of Route 9, where it’s blocking traffic as it backs into the parking lot of a furniture store, he leans over and kisses me. “I love you, Jen,” he whispers. He’s looking at me with a smile so decadent, it would make any female want to grab him and hold him forever, and it makes me realize how lucky I am.

He believes in
us,
and in what we have. And he’s willing to wait for me—when a lot of guys would’ve gotten fed up, given the hotel incident—and do what’s best for both of us.

Which makes me realize that if he believes things will work out between Courtney and me, then I need to allow myself to believe it too.

“I can’t believe we’re eating ice cream in the dead of winter,” I tell Scott as he hands me a cone. Triple chocolate, of course.

“I can’t believe this place is open. I noticed it
yesterday when I had to drive a Christmas gift over here to a friend of my mom’s.” He takes a few licks of his mint chocolate chip, then winks at me. “I knew you’d love it, though.”

The look on his face is pure adoration. Not for the ice cream, but for me.

As he talks about how he even looked at the ice cream flavors to make sure they’d have my faves, I realize that the look on his face—the same look he gave me on the way to the bowling alley, the look that always reminds me of how Scott and I connect on so many levels—is the same look Mat gives Courtney.

My brain seems to pause as I notice our economics teacher, Mr. Evans, walk up to the counter, order a grilled chicken sandwich to go, then stand off to the side to wait. When he gives me a smile and a wave, I suddenly flash to the image of Scott standing at the hotel counter, telling the clerk he wanted a room for Mr. Evans.

“You all right?” Scott asks. When I smile at Mr. Evans, though, Scott just grins at me and says, “Oh. Gotcha. Didn’t see him come in.”

I watch Scott clean a bright green ice cream drip off the table with his napkin. He folds the dirty napkin, then slides it to catch any more drips that might fall—a habit he picked up from me, the neat freak. And I slowly begin to grasp why Courtney felt secure enough to sleep with Mat. Why she and Mat suddenly seem like they’re in a different world from the rest of us, and why she’s so incredibly happy with him. How it’s not just sex, for either of them.

It’s love. A connection that’s simply indescribable.

And it also hits me that, while sex might be fine for Courtney and Mat, it’s not fine for me. I did the absolute right thing at the hotel when I balked.

I watch as Scott’s tongue stops a stream of melting ice cream from traveling down the side of his cone, then I swallow hard.

I want Scott more than ever, but I also know, deep in my gut, that I want to wait. Not because of religious beliefs, really, or because I’m afraid I might get some heinous STD. Not even because of Mark’s warnings that Scott might dump me and I’ll regret having slept with him—though I do get a flash of
fear every single time I see one of the homecoming queen types eye him with more than a slight case of lust.

It’s all of those things, in small ways. Most of all, though, it’s that I love Scott enough to know how much having sex with him is going to affect me, and right now my primary goal in life is to finish out my senior year and make salutatorian. To have Mr. Evans and all my other teachers still think of me as one of the best students who’s ever graduated from South Framingham High School. To have a clear head when I start college at Harvard, so I can do just as well there as I have the past few years. To never, ever have to rely on anyone else to earn a living for me, or pay my bills, or have to cover any of the other things I want to do in life. I want to have complete control.

I’ve worked too hard to be distracted, and moving our relationship to the next level will more than distract me. Maybe that makes me a prude or a geek, but it’s who I am, and it’s what keeps me feeling bulletproof. Staying away from distractions. Staying the course. Spending that extra ten minutes to get the cale problem right, even when my friends are just
slapping something onto the page to get it turned in on time.

I smile to myself, then take a huge bite of my triple chocolate. This isn’t how people are supposed to get those “hit by lightning” realizations. I mean, they’re supposed to actually get hit by lightning. Or a truck. Or have some other life-altering episode wake them up to the fact they haven’t been living life the way they want to, and so they change. These things don’t happen over ice cream at the Ashland Tasty Treat with Mr. Evans standing nearby, waiting for his sandwich.

Guess my horoscope was right. There was no way I could have predicted today’s events: from my conversation with Anne, to running into Courtney, to making the most wild—and yet the most basic—realization of my life. That I’ve worked hard for what I have, and I can’t let myself risk that success.

And, of course, there was the other part of the horoscope. Scott’s part, about Leo being in a romantic mood.

I have no clue how I’m going to break the news to Scott about the whole sex thing—that I don’t
want
to relax, that I like being this uptight, wonky me that I am. I’m going to have to think about the best way to explain it, but as I start to crunch the side of my cone, I know I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. Or more at peace with myself.

And I also know that, from now on, no matter whether it’s Scott or Courtney or whomever, I’m not going to allow pressure from anyone else to influence my life any more than I can help it. I know myself best, and I’m simply going to do what’s best for me.

If they love me, they’ll know it’s best all around.

“Jenna, this is incredible! You know how fabulous this belt is gonna look with my new jeans? Or with that pair of black pants Anne gave me for Christmas?”

Courtney’s standing in front of the full-length mirror in my room. She’s wearing an old pair of Levi’s and a figure-hugging, low-cut blue sweater I remember her getting at Daffy’s in New York City a couple years ago when her mom took us there shopping for the weekend. She looks mind-blowingly good, despite not even having on any makeup.

“I think it looks pretty fabulous just like that,” I say. “I’m glad you like it.” It feels awkward that we’re being so giggly and girly given the Bennigan’s thing, but I’m doing my best to roll with the moment, to not worry about what’s going on with her, but to focus on the life I can control: mine.

“It’s going to go with everything,” Courtney agrees, doing a final spin and finishing it with a little butt wiggle. Not that she has much of a butt to wiggle these days. The belt I bought her is on its tightest hole.

“Should I have gotten a smaller one?” I ask. “I still have the receipt. I can exchange it if you—”

“No way! It’s great!” She plunks down onto my bed. “I know I’m looking skinny, but just wait. With all the Christmas cookies still floating around my house and with the treadmill at Dad’s place now, I’m gonna start busting out of everything. Even Anne’s griping that she feels like a slug, and you know how she is.”

“Yeah.” Totally mellow about food-exercise-clothes. Those things just aren’t on her radar.

“So.” Courtney’s eyes open wider, and she nods toward the foot of my bed. “Are you gonna open that or what?”

“I still can’t believe you got me a gift,” I say, since I know she shops at the last possible minute (and sometimes even later—like, the day after Christmas or someone’s birthday) and probably hadn’t bought anything for me when things went all insane between us.

“Of course I got you a gift.”

She sounds totally offended, which makes me uncomfortable, so I cover by saying, “Well, it’s just that you bought me that gorgeous necklace right before break. I didn’t expect you to get me a Christmas gift on top of it.”

“That was a Harvard gift,” she says, relaxing back against my headboard. She looks less wary, which I assume means we’re cool. “A once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing, you know? It doesn’t count for Christmas. So sit. Open.”

I sit down on the end of the bed and pick up the red and green gift bag. There’s a picture of a Norman Rockwell Santa on the outside and tons of white tissue paper inside. “Should I guess first?”

“Of course! Isn’t that the rule?”

We did that with all our gifts when we were in junior high. It was always something like bubble
gum-flavored lip gloss or whatever Japanese-comic-of-the-moment we both wanted, so our guesses were pretty accurate. And it feels like old times to guess now, even when we’re way past gifts like mini-purses with kitties on them.

“Socks,” I say, with an obviously fake grin on my face, then add, “no, no, it’s gotta be underwear. White cotton with pink flowers, the kind I’ve always wanted.”

“Ooooh, that’d be very sexy … just the kind of thing I’d give you, too.”

I push aside the tissue paper, then lift out a neatly folded top that feels incredibly soft. I spread it out on the bed, and I can’t help but think,
Whoa.
It’s sheer aqua, but with a greenish layer underneath. The whole effect is ethereal. It’s the kind of thing a mermaid would wear. “Courtney, this is really, really nice. It feels like silk.”

“I think it is.” She leans forward and flips the hem up, looking for a tag on the inside seam. “Yep, silk. But hand-washable. I thought the color would look good on you.”

“It’s perfect.” And it really is. It’s definitely
something for spring or summer, and I know I’m going to wear it the first day it’s warm enough. “You have the best taste. Thank you!”

She leans forward and gives me a quick hug. I’ve never felt awkward when she hugs me, but I’m surprised that it doesn’t feel awkward now, given what’s happened the last few weeks. “Anything for my best friend,” she says.

When she eases back, she gives me a half-smile. “Look, I’m really sorry I’ve been such an ass lately.”

I want an explanation, but instead of asking for one, I force myself to exercise some common sense and just say, “It’s okay.”

Why get pissy with her when she obviously wants to patch things up? It probably wouldn’t do any good to tell her what I really think, anyway.

“You’re the best.” She bites her lower lip, and I figure we’re done talking about it, until she adds, “And I promise not to skip class anymore. I know it stresses you out, and I’m sorry. I really do appreciate that you worry about me.”

“Always,” I say, though it’s not the apology I was hoping for.

“And I’m also sorry about the whole thing at Bennigan’s.”

That’s the one. “Hey, no big thing.”

I suppose it would have been a big thing if she’d made her apology the day after it happened. Or even yesterday. But now I feel different about it. About
myself.
It’s the whole lightning bolt moment I had yesterday. It didn’t just dissipate when Scott and I left the Ashland Tasty Treat. In fact, it was the first thing I thought of this morning, and it made me feel completely, totally happy. Like I’m back in sync with the world. I even spent the morning surfing the class offerings at Harvard, planning ahead. Geeky, but totally reassuring in an I’m-taking-care-of-myself kind of way.