I drive to Toby’s nervously, my hands gripping the steering wheel tightly. It’s not like I haven’t been to parties before, but I’ve never gone to one with the express purpose of kissing Noah Reed.
“First time for everything!” I say cheerily as I adjust the radio. Brentley gets, like, three stations, and one of them is conservative talk radio, so I have to be content with listening to a country song about a guy with a broken heart. Surprisingly, it isn’t the pump-up jam I’d hoped for.
I’m just going to have to pump myself up. “You can do this, Jolie,” I whisper to myself as I park a street away from Toby’s so as not to alarm any suspicious neighbors (“I live next to some seriously unchill senior citizens,” Toby told me). “Carpe diem! Seize the day! Kiss a boy! You can do it!”
I feel a pair of eyes on me and look over at the sidewalk, where Peter is watching me. He waves.
I get out of the car and lock the door. “How long have you been watching me, Peter?”
“This is a terrible parking job,” he comments, and holds out his arm. “Would you like to walk into the party as my plus-one?”
“No, I would not,” I say politely. “Also, this isn’t a wedding. I don’t need to be your plus-one—I was invited.”
Toby greets me with a hug as soon as I step into the house. “Jolie!” he shouts, and I’ll admit, it’s nice to be so enthusiastically welcomed. “Let me show you around my humble abode.”
“This is the kitchen,” he says as we walk into a kitchen, where people are crowded around multiple bowls of potato chips.
“And there’s the beer,” he says, pointing to a cooler in the corner. Several stage crew guys are crowded around it. “Do you want something to drink?”
“Um…,” I say. I should say no. I don’t usually drink, both because I think beer tastes disgusting and because I have a pathological fear of being caught.
But I want to take chances tonight. I want to be someone different. I want to be a girl who can drink a beer and not loudly say, “Why does this taste so bad?”
“Sure,” I attempt to say breezily.
Toby grabs a can and hands it to me. I crack it open and take a sip as he leads me into the dining room. I hide my grimace behind my hand. Yeah, this is just as awful as I remembered. I scan the room for places I can hide my almost-full can.
I spot Noah across the room, talking to a huge group of people. He looks good, just like he always does. He runs his hand through that hip British-boy-band hair, and I wait to feel my heart flutter.
Nothing. I feel the way I did when we watched Magic Mike and Abbi thought the stripping scenes were so hot, and I was just like, “Wait, why would I want some sweaty stranger to pick me up and rub me all over his chest?” Like, I get that there’s an appeal for some people, but it’s just not working for me. Apparently, fake-kissing Noah killed any last lingering bits of my crush on him.
This is good, though, I tell myself. I can kiss Noah for real and we can keep feelings out of it and not have to worry about anything scary or weird. I can go into my surgery and my possible death without any regrets.
He looks up, sees me staring at him, and waves with a smile. I wave back.
Then I look a few feet to the right and see Derek talking to Evelyn. My heart stops, then comes roaring back to life, beating a million times a second.
He changed out of his stage crew shirt and he looks good—God, he looks good. He’s wearing a white T-shirt that looks like it was made especially for him, and I’m stuck wondering how something so basic looks so amazing on him.
I hate that I feel this way about my best friend, because I know the odds. How many people actually stay with someone they dated in high school? Pretty much none, right? And the thought of losing Derek like that … well, I can’t even think about it. And I know, I just know, that he would come to his senses sooner or later and realize that he can do better than me—that if he can date girls like perfect Melody, with her pretty hair and her perfect face, that he doesn’t need to mess around with a girl like me. Someone who’s laughably far from perfect, someone who wears all of her imperfections on her sleeve (or face, as the case may be). And even if we did date and stay happy together forever, I would have to know in my heart that he only liked me once I changed. He only liked me once he knew I was getting fixed.
Toby’s still talking his way through the tour, but I can’t focus on his story about the time he “majorly bit it” and fell down the stairs because I need to get out of here. I can’t stop myself from imagining what it would be like if Derek and I were more than friends, if we spent Terrible Movie Night with his arm around me instead of my feet in his lap, if we …
It would never work, Jolie. It just wouldn’t.
“I need some air, okay?” I pivot away from him and walk toward the porch.
It’s just slightly chilly, the good kind where you can snuggle up in a jacket and feel comfortable, so there are plenty of people on the porch. But it’s still quieter out here than it is inside. I sit down on the front steps and cross my arms over myself. I idly take another sip of beer and then make a face.
“That bad, huh?”
Derek sits down beside me.
“Oh!” I say. I didn’t think he’d follow me out here, didn’t think he’d even seen me. My eyes dart around as I wonder if I can make a break for it, but running away would probably be even weirder than staying.
“You really bolted out of the auditorium,” Derek said.
“Couldn’t wait to get to the party! I, um, love partying!” I smile as wide as I can and take another sip, wincing.
“Yeahhhh,” Derek says slowly. “You’re acting really weird.”
“Am I, though?” I give him a who can say? look.
“Listen,” he says, looking at his hands. I look at them, too. His fingers are intertwined; I think about how my fingers would look tangled up with his.
Stop it, Jolie.
“I’m just gonna say it.” He looks up at me. “I broke up with Melody.”
“What?” I feign surprise, but apparently I’m not as good an actor in real life as I was in the musical.
“Evelyn already told you?”
“Yes,” I admit.
I think that maybe, just maybe, we’re going to sidestep all of this and avoid talking about what’s been going on. Maybe we’re just going to ignore all of the electricity between us, the way the air practically crackles when we touch. But then, he just blurts it out.
“I broke up with her because I can’t stop thinking about you.”
I drop my can and we both watch the beer flow out onto Toby’s mom’s decorative walkway.
“Did you hear me?” Derek asks.
I swallow hard. “Yeah.”
“Are you … going to say anything?”
I don’t know what to do. Like, yeah, Right Now Jolie would love to grab Derek’s face and smash it into mine. Right Now Jolie would love to get rid of this gross beer taste by finding out what Derek’s mouth tastes like. Right Now Jolie would love to inhale his sweet laundry-and-sweat boy scent.
But Future Jolie knows it’s a bad idea. Future Jolie knows that eventually, he’d come out of this temporary fog and figure out that he could date someone much hotter.
I try to bite back the question that’s threatening to tumble out of my mouth, but finally I let it spill.
“Do you only want me now that I’m going to be fixed?”
I meet his eyes slowly, and he’s looking at me with nothing but confusion. “What?” he asks.
I shrug dejectedly, my eyes back on the now empty beer can.
“It wouldn’t work, Derek. Okay?” I say, tears in my eyes. “Look at you, and look at me. Doesn’t something seem off to you?”
“What are you talking about, Jolie?” he asks, his brows knitted in confusion.
“I mean … you’re, like, basically some Greek god. You’re all perfectly proportioned and your muscles aren’t too big or too small and your smile’s so shiny and your eyes are like museum paintings that I could stare at all day and still find new things in!” I throw my hands in the air.
“I’m not sure I’m following you, but … thanks?”
“I’ve looked like this my whole life.” I point at my face. “I’ve always known there’s something wrong with me. And you’ve known it, too, because you’ve looked at me, day in and day out. I know I’m not pretty. You know I’m not pretty. It’s common knowledge.”
“Jolie,” he says softly. Just hearing his mouth say my name physically hurts me, because I’m starting to sense that this isn’t going to turn out well and I’m afraid I won’t ever hear it again.
I pull my hands up inside my sweater’s sleeves. It’s getting chilly. “I don’t know why you suddenly think you like me, Derek, but this is a phase. Melody was, like, some Academic Challenge supermodel. That’s not me. And if you think you like me now because I’m going to be prettier after surgery … well, that kind of sucks.”
Derek sits back. He opens his mouth and closes it a few times. Finally, he says something I haven’t been expecting.
“What the hell, Jolie?”
I open my eyes wide.
“Do you get that you’re the only one who thinks these things about yourself? Like, you know that, right? That you complain about the way you look constantly, but there’s nothing wrong with you?”
“Oh, there’s nothing wrong with me. Thanks for the praise,” I snort.
“What do you want me to say?” he almost yells. “That I think you’re beautiful? Would you even believe that?”
I think about it for a second and then answer, my voice thick. “No.”
“How many times have I told you how stupid your weird scrapbook is, or how great you are? And how many times have you listened to me?”
I don’t say anything.
“That’s what I thought. Look at how great you were in the musical, Jolie. Everyone loved you. You were the lead, for God’s sake. When are you going to understand that you’re the only one holding you back—”
“You know what?” I turn to face him, suddenly full of anger. “Can you maybe not play armchair psychologist for a second? I don’t really need to hear a list of things that are wrong with me from someone who’s spent the last four years ignoring reality and hiding in a tiny, windowless room so he can talk to a bunch of people in Denmark instead of his real friends.”
Derek doesn’t say anything. I hear a bottle break somewhere inside.
“You think I’m ignoring reality?” he says slowly and quietly.
“You used to have friends, Derek. Like, friends besides me and Evie, remember? And then your dad died,” I say, holding up my hands, “and I know no one’s allowed to talk about it, but you quit soccer and you stopped playing video games with all those guys. Now you only leave your house if it’s for school stuff, and you spend the rest of your time holed up in your closet or going down Wikipedia holes.”
“Yeah,” he says forcefully. “I quit soccer, and I stopped hanging out with those guys. You know why? Because I didn’t care about soccer anymore. I didn’t care about those guys. They’re fine, but we never really had anything to talk about, and after my dad died I didn’t want to pretend I had any interest in Grand Theft Auto.”
I chew on my lip, starting to feel like I’ve said some very wrong things.
“And honestly, Jolie? I’m not ignoring reality. Reality is there every day, when I wake up and my dad’s not there. When I come home and he’s not there. When I see the twins and realize they’re never going to get to know him the way I did. That’s my reality. I don’t have to talk about it all the time for it to be real.”
“Well, maybe you should talk about it sometimes instead of making everyone act like it didn’t happen,” I say.
“I can handle it however I want!” he almost yells. “You can’t tell someone else how to deal with their dad dying!”
“And you can’t tell someone else how to feel about her own face!” I shout.
He rubs his hands over his face. “You want to know something ridiculous? I thought … I thought this conversation was going to go a whole lot differently. Because the whole reason I stopped hanging out with those guys is because after Dad died, I didn’t want to spend one single second of my life doing things I didn’t want to do. And all I ever wanted to do was spend time with you. I’ve liked you since we were kids, Jolie, okay? Since that playground kiss, I’ve wanted you to be my girlfriend.”
All the air leaves my chest. Wait, what? Derek hasn’t liked me since we were kids. “That isn’t true,” I whisper.
He ignores me. “And I never pushed it because you never seemed like you were into it, but lately we’ve been having these conversations and you keep, like, staring meaningfully at me, so I thought maybe there was a chance…”
He looks at me and I don’t say anything.
“But I must’ve been imagining that, huh?” he says. “All those things I thought were moments were just … nothing?”
I chew on the inside of my cheek. What am I supposed to say? Maybe I do like you, Derek, but our friendship is one of the only things I can count on, and also I can’t—like, mentally can’t—even envision a reality in which the things you’re saying are true?
I can’t say that, so instead I look at the ground and say, “This is all a mistake, okay? You’ll figure it out, and we’ll go back to the way things have always been, and it will be fine.”
He laughs bitterly as he stands up. “Yeah, sure. I don’t think that’s going to happen. Have a great night.”
He walks off, presumably toward his car, and I’m left alone on the steps. I look behind me to see if anyone on the porch noticed us, but they’re all drawn into their own conversations. The Invisible Girl strikes again.
That’s it. I need another beer.