“I can’t go like this.” I am sitting on the edge of the toilet in Seeley’s upstairs bathroom, chin tilted up, as she dabs at my face with gauze and antiseptic.
She leans back to admire her work. “It’s not even that bad, now that all the blood is off.”
“Great.”
She smooths my hair a little, tucking some of it behind my ear. “Besides, we’ll be in the dark anyway. It’s not like he’ll even notice.”
“Perfect, just what I wanted, to not be noticed at all,” I grumble.
“Fine.” She smirks. “Maybe he’ll notice and be really worried about you. Maybe he’ll dote on you and kiss your boo-boo and whisk you off to urgent care in a panic.”
“You think?” I tilt my head enough to see her through the corner of my eye.
“No.” She pulls a face at me, and I know it well. It’s the same face she’s given me every time I’ve said something ridiculous for the past ten years.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” I stand up, wincing at the motion. Apparently, my butt is just as bruised as my ego.
“It’s not that.” Seeley laughs and pulls a few stray bits of grass out of my hair. “Nick is going to be there with his girlfriend, and you’re supposed to be there with yours. He’s not gonna want to cross a line or anything. Besides, if you were Jessa, would you want your boyfriend fawning over another girl?”
“I’m in a committed relationship, remember? But as far as I’m concerned, Nick should be able to hang out with as many girls as he wants. Especially those in committed relationships.”
“You’re a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Seeley says. “It’s freaking me out.”
“You said you’d go.”
Seeley sighs. “I know, but that doesn’t make me feel any less crappy about it.”
“It’s just for a few dates, promise. Then we’ll break up, like I said, and it’ll be fine.”
“Oh really? It’ll be fine?” She tosses the bloody gauze into the wastepaper basket with a frown. “What happens after we break up?”
“We won’t pretend anymore. No more fake dates for us. You’re free to run off with wild abandon, chasing every hot girl that crosses your path,” I say.
“Right, because that’s me: girl chaser extraordinaire.”
I drop back against the wall. “You know what I mean. Things will go back to normal.”
“Right, except the whole park thinks we were together.”
I raise my arms in frustration. “Half the park already thinks we are.”
“And now they all get to watch me get dumped again.” Seeley rests her head on her knee. “It was bad enough last time.”
I scrunch my eyes shut. Shit. I didn’t think about all the dust this might be kicking up in her head about Sara. “I—” I start, but then it hits me. This could actually be good. This could be really good. A smile stretches across my face.
Seeley furrows her eyebrows. “Do I want to know what’s going through your head right now?”
“You can dump me.”
“What?”
“You can dump me. It’d be like therapeutic or whatever. Dumping me will totally help you work out all the crap from when Sara—”
“Stop,” Seeley says, and it sounds like she really means it.
“Okay.” I huff, scowling at my scraped-up chin in the mirror while I fluff out my frizzy hair. “Sorry, forget I said it, then. Bad idea.”
“I’m not mad,” Seeley says, but then she doesn’t say anything else, so it doesn’t really make me feel any better. “Tell me one thing, though: Why Nick? Why are you wasting all your time on a guy with a girlfriend?”
I take a deep breath and turn to face her. “I feel like he sees me, really sees me. Most people don’t.”
“I see you.”
“Besides you, I mean,” I say, smoothing down my hair as best as I can without a mirror. “To everybody else, I’m just background noise, like a water fountain or a slamming locker or something.”
Seeley frowns. “That’s not true.”
“It is. The only time people notice me is when I mess up or do something weird or say the wrong thing. But then Nick transferred in, and even though he’s a year older and popular, he always sought me out and said hi. Even if it was just two-second conversations here and there as we rushed to the next classroom, it felt good.”
“Lou—”
“Are we going?” I ask. “Because if we are, we gotta leave now. The movie starts in a half an hour.”
“It’s five minutes down the road.”
“I know, but I want popcorn and good seats and stuff.”
“And time with Nick before the lights go down?”
I grab my bag off the floor. “Maybe a little bit of something like that.”
“Come on, then.” Seeley slips her feet back into her flats. “Let’s go.”