We stare at each other for a moment, me gripping the doorknob with one hand and holding my dish towel over the bottom half of my face with the other.
“Hey,” he says, and then, gesturing at my face, “Is … this a bad time?”
I shake my head. “No, just blending some SpaghettiOs. Come in.”
He looks confused, but he doesn’t question it. He hands me a glass container filled with something orange. “Mom sent over some soup for you. It’s butternut squash with coconut milk and it’s supposed to be heart-healthy or whatever.”
“Tell her thanks for caring about my heart,” I say as we walk into the kitchen. I put it in the fridge, and then I feel self-conscious because, well, our hearts have caused a lot of problems lately.
“Yeah, um.” Derek looks around the room anxiously. “Can we talk?”
“Okay,” I say, a little too high-pitched. “Let’s go sit down.”
“Do you…” Derek gestures toward the blender.
“Oh, no!” I squeak, my dish towel still in place. “The SpaghettiOs can wait.”
We sit down on the couch in the living room in our respective Terrible Movie Night spots. I lean against the very comfortable, non-matching throw pillows Mom bought in an attempt to be stylish yet edgy, and Derek turns to face me. I don’t put my feet on him, because this seems like a feet-free conversation.
Finally, Derek is here, right in front of me. Now that I’m not flinging text messages into the void, I’m about to launch into one of my much-rehearsed speeches when Derek takes a deep breath and says, “Do you remember the loneliest whale?”
Out of all the things I thought he might say, this wasn’t one of them. “What?” I ask.
“You know, the whale I told you about when I was doing Deep Dive research. The one who’s just roaming around the ocean, making weird whale noises that are unintelligible to other marine life.”
“Uh … yeah,” I say, still unsure where he’s going with this.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about that whale, and not just because it’s a ridiculous story and I spent so long researching it. I’ve been thinking about what you said to me at the party, about how I should talk about my dad sometimes…”
“I shouldn’t have said that,” I mumble from behind my dish towel.
He shakes his head. “No, you were right. Because I’m always thinking about him, even if I’m not saying anything out loud. And I don’t want to be the loneliest whale, you know? I don’t want to swim around all by myself, with no one understanding anything I’m actually going through.”
I smile a little bit, even though he can’t see it. “You’re not the loneliest whale.”
He doesn’t look at me. “I talked to my mom about it—for basically the first time ever—and I’m starting therapy next week. I think it’ll help.”
“That’s great!” I say encouragingly.
He shakes his head. “But that’s not why I’m here. I feel like such a jerk for what I did. Or the way I did it, I guess. I had a crush on you, so I read into what you were saying and doing.”
My mouth drops open in shock, but of course he can’t see that behind my dish towel.
“And, honestly, Melody and I had needed to break up for a pretty long time, so I don’t regret that. But I do regret ambushing you at Toby’s party. That was shitty, and I’m sorry about it. It’s cool if you don’t have feelings for me—or, it’s not cool, but it’s okay. You’re my best friend—you’re the person who helped me realize that I can’t just never talk about my dad—and I don’t want to lose you.”
He looks down at his hands. I realize that they’re shaking.
I swallow. “You had a crush on me?”
Derek stares at me. “What?”
“Is it past tense? You had a crush? Or do you still have it?”
Derek’s shoulders slump. “Jolie,” he says softly. “Please don’t do this to me. I want us to be friends, but we can’t if you’re gonna make me—”
“Because I have a crush on you,” I say. “And I have for, like, forever, even though I didn’t really know it. I’m glad you broke up with Melody, and I’m glad you said you liked me. I’m the one who should apologize for being too scared to do anything about it. But I’m not scared anymore.”
Derek opens and closes his mouth, looks at the ceiling and then at me. “Then why…”
I shrug. “Because what if it doesn’t work out? What if we kiss and it totally sucks? Or what if we start hating each other? I’ve spent my entire life thinking that there’s something wrong with me, so I just assumed you thought there was something wrong with me, too. I figured there was no way you could ever possibly like me, and you only wanted me once I was going to be fixed—”
“You didn’t need to be fixed,” Derek interrupts me, but I hold up a hand to stop him.
“I just never let myself think about what it would be like if you liked me back, because I never thought you could. And now that I know you do, well … the thought of us trying and it not working and us not being friends anymore makes me want to barf. But the thought of not trying … it kind of makes me want to barf, too.”
“Barfing is sort of a thing with you,” Derek says, a small smile playing across his face.
“I regret bringing up barfing at a time like this,” I say.
“I have a question.”
My heart skips around in my chest, and I will it to stay in place. “Okay.”
“Can I kiss you? Now?”
The unfairness of this moment suddenly feels unbearably heavy. “No.”
“I am … very confused,” Derek says.
“My jaw,” I say. “Not only do I not want you to see my swollen face, but I wouldn’t even be able to feel a kiss right now. And I want to feel it.”
Derek smirks. “Let me see.”
I shake my head.
“Come on,” he says, drawing out the words like this is a joke. “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your dish towel.”
I sigh, then let it drop.
“Jolie,” he says, leaning forward and looking straight at me. “I like you, and I think you’re beautiful. I would think you were beautiful if you looked like Nicolas Cage, or Nicolas Cage with John Travolta’s face in the terrible movie Face/Off. And when your cheeks aren’t swollen to three times their normal size, I’m going to kiss you, okay?”
I nod, swallowing hard.
He leans forward and my breath catches in my throat. His lips brush softly against my forehead, one of the few places on my head that actually isn’t swollen. And even though my lips aren’t involved at all, it feels like fireworks. Like soda bubbles. Like a red convertible.
“Ahem.”
We look up to see Abbi standing in front of us, holding the baby, giving me a meaningful look.
“This is Margaret,” she says to Derek. “Are you staying for dinner?”
Derek looks at me. I nod.
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m gonna stay.”