LEO AND MADISON have a presentation in their Spanish class due next Monday. It’s an oral presentation where they have to have a conversation between each other about whatever topic their teacher suggests.
“This is going to be an actual disaster,” Madison moans when they meet up on Friday to practice.
“We’ll get through it,” Leo says with false positivity, grabbing Madison’s arm and shaking it a little. “I’ve heard you speak Spanish before and it’s fine.”
“Yeah, but in front of everyone? I turn into a deer in headlights, Leo. A small, adorable, baby deer in really bright headlights. I’m not good in public speaking situations.”
Leo just holds the door for her as they walk into Starbucks. Madison had suggested meeting at the one directly across the street from their school, but Leo remembered the last time she had been to that location, how nice everyone had been to her. She couldn’t go through that again. “They’re super stingy with the whipped cream there,” she said instead, and felt grateful when Madison didn’t push or ask any questions.
This location is pretty busy and there’s a line, so Madison and Leo wait their turns. Most of the seats are taken by people sitting alone, but there’s a table near the back that has three teenagers, two girls and a boy, sitting at it, their heads together as they chat. One of the girl’s drinks has a chewed-up straw in it and they’re teasing her about it.
Leo turns away, tries not to think about the fact that Nina will never tease her again, will never do things like stand directly in the doorway of her bedroom and say, “But I’m not in your bedroom,” when Leo yells at her to get out. That used to make Leo so mad, Nina’s smirking face staring into her room when she just wanted to be alone, but now she would give anything to see Nina standing there again.
“Leo,” Madison says, nudging her. It’s their turn to order, Leo’s been daydreaming, and so she says, “Oops, sorry” as she steps forward, looks at the barista, and comes face-to-face with Brayden.
It’s clear he recognizes Leo immediately, his eyes going wide and round and making him look more like a little boy than the asshole guy she had seen at that disastrous Christmas party. “Hi,” she says before she can stop herself. “Madison, why don’t you—I’m not ready—I’m not sure what I want yet.”
“Iced chai tea latte,” Madison rattles off, needing no urging. She’s still looking at the refrigerated section, trying to decide if she wants a cookie or not, and Leo is just praying that she doesn’t remember Brayden at all.
“Holy shit!”
Leo truly has no luck sometimes.
“You’re Brayden!” Madison continues and Brayden goes splotchy pink again, looking more like he’s having an allergic reaction than an embarrassing moment in public.
“Yep,” he manages to say. “What size?”
“Oh, uh, grande.” Madison turns to Leo. “Remember Brayden?”
Leo thinks that Madison is one of the most genuinely nice people she’s ever met in her life, and Leo would never advocate for violence, but in that moment, she wishes she had a shovel so she could hit Madison in the head with it and just end this entire conversation.
“Hi,” Leo says again.
“Hi.” Brayden actually replies to her this time, but it’s clear he’s not thrilled to see her. Leo can’t say she blames him.
“So what are you doing here?” Madison says, then doesn’t wait for Brayden to respond before she says to Leo, “What are you getting?”
“I just started—”
“I don’t think I want anything,” Leo says.
“What?” Madison is aghast. “C’mon! It’s no fun to go somewhere to eat and then you’re the only person who orders.” She’s about to continue but then the three kids stand up and leave their table. “Ooh, I’m going to grab it!” she says, then sets down a twenty-dollar bill and scurries over like a squirrel with her eye on a nut.
Which leaves Leo looking at Brayden.
“Uh,” she says.
“And what can I get for you today?” Brayden asks in a voice that sounds both robotic and pained.
“An iced latte,” Leo says. She feels like she can’t order Nina’s regular drink just in case Brayden recognizes it, and her mom usually gets an iced latte, so how bad could it be?
“What size?” He sounds like he’d rather be at the dentist.
Leo runs her hand over her eyes. “I don’t care, okay? I really don’t.”
Brayden punches something into the register and then takes the twenty that Leo hands him. “Look,” she finally says. “Can we talk or . . . ?”
He sighs and his shoulders sag forward a little, going from looking like a little boy to a tired old man in a blink. “I have my break in ten minutes,” he says. “I usually go out in the back for a smoke.”
“Cool,” Leo says, even though smoking sort of grosses her out. “Can I . . . ?”
Brayden nods, but looks none too thrilled about it, and Leo carefully pulls off one of the bills from the change Brayden hands her and puts it in the tip jar. It may look generous, but she knows what it really is.
It’s penance.
“Why do you think he’s working here?” Madison asks in a hiss-whisper as soon as Leo sits down at the table and throws her backpack on top of it.
“Why anybody works anywhere.” Leo shrugs. “He either needs or likes money.”
“Needs it,” Madison says. “His mom had to sell their house last month to pay for the lawyers.”
Leo knows that Brayden’s dad deserves every bit of justice coming to him, but still, seeing Brayden behind the counter, wearing a grimy apron, makes her understand the full weight of his sadness.
“I’m going to talk to him when he goes on his break,” Leo says.
Madison glares at her over her notebook. “Are you serious? You’re going to ditch me for Brayden?”
“Shh!” Leo says just as a coffee grinder starts, drowning out their conversation. “I’m not ‘ditching you,’ I’m just going to talk to him for a few minutes. We have some, um, unfinished business.”
“Oh my God, did you two make out at the Christmas party?”
Leo drops her head down and bangs it on the table a few times, then regrets it when she feels how sticky it is. “No,” she finally says. “We most definitely did not make out. He and East were in a fight.”
“Yeah, I heard about that,” Madison says. “I missed the whole thing, though.”
“Oh, I know,” Leo says, remembering Madison coming down the stairs with mussed hair and smeared lipstick, the boy behind her looking both cocky and dazed.
Madison wiggles her eyebrows at her. “Estaba ocupada,” she says, then flips open her laptop and powers it on.
As soon as she sees Brayden leave the register, Leo slips out the side door and goes out to where the dumpsters are lined up against the curb. He’s there, cupping his hands around a cigarette as he lights it, then lets out a stream of smoke that turns into a loud sigh once he sees Leo. “What?” he says to her. “You come to finish the job? I still got another kidney, you know.”
“Yeeeeeaaaaah,” she says, dragging the toe of her shoe in a line on the ground. “That’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about. I’m really sorry. Like, genuinely. That wasn’t okay, I was just mad and, I don’t know, jealous.”
“Jealous?” Brayden laughs as he sits down on the curb. Leo waits a beat, then sits down next to him. When he doesn’t protest, she tucks her hands under her legs. It’s cold in the back.
“I never knew you dated Nina,” she says quietly. “She never told me. I found out that night.”
Brayden’s head bobs up and down as he takes in that information. “So, what, you had a thing for me, too?”
Some of her benevolence immediately dries up. “No,” she snaps. “I was jealous that you knew something about her that I didn’t know. I thought I knew everything about Nina, she was my best friend. I guess it just scares me to think that there are parts of her that I’ll never understand, you know? And you were one of them.”
Brayden looks appropriately chastised and he nods as he drags on his cigarette. He’s polite enough to aim his exhale away from Leo, which she appreciates.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Yes, I started working here so I could help my mom make rent each month,” he intones.
“No, I don’t care about—well, I mean, I do care. But that’s not my question.” When he doesn’t respond, she plows forward. “Why did you break up?”
For the first time since she’s seen him, Brayden cracks a smile. “You mean, why did she break up with me?”
Leo feels a tiny thrill of sisterly pride. “Okay, yes, that.”
“She didn’t like my car. Thought it was ‘ostentatious.’” His smile gets a little wider.
Leo has a dark thought and decides to share it. “I think she would appreciate the car irony here.”
“Probably,” Brayden says. “At least, I don’t think she would’ve been a jerk about it. Not like everyone else.”
Leo’s not sure what to say to that, so she doesn’t say anything.
Brayden exhales smoke again, dragging a sneakered toe along the pavement. It’s like watching a wave build in the ocean, waiting for him to speak, and Leo waits.
“Look, I’m just telling you this,” he says after a minute. “But Nina, she was . . . I wasn’t like, in love with her or anything, but she just made me feel—I don’t know, she was just special.”
“You felt special when you were with her,” Leo says.
“I know that makes me a total sap or whatever,” Brayden says. “But she liked that other guy better, West or whatever his name is.”
Leo knows full well that Brayden knows East’s name, but she doesn’t bother correcting him.
“She just liked him more, so what can you do?” Brayden shrugs. It sort of feels like he’s not talking to her anymore, talking to himself instead. “And then she got into the fucking car with him and she died. That’s what happened. You can’t go back and change it.
“I was there, you know,” he continues, and Leo startles, thinks of fluorescent lights, screaming, the sound of someone performing CPR. “At the funeral,” Brayden adds. “I snuck in the back because I got there late, but I was there.”
“I wish you would have said hello,” Leo says, but he waves the thought away with his cigarette, the smoke making zigzags in the air.
“Nah, I’m not into that. Just wanted to pay my respects, you know.”
“I’m glad you were there, then,” Leo says quietly. “And I’m sorry about everything else. Really.”
Brayden shrugs again and stomps his cigarette under the heel of his shoe. “Whatever.” He sighs. “Life sucks, right?”
“Sometimes,” she says.
He scoffs, then turns to go back to work. “See you around, Leo,” he says, and Leo sits outside until Madison comes looking for her, hands on hips.
“Did you kiss him?” she demands.
Leo rolls her eyes. “You give him way too much credit,” she tells her friend, then holds the door for her as they head back inside.