By the time I get to Den’s for lunch, Micah and Billie are already pigging out over an order of chili cheese fries. My favorite. Billie scoots over when I come in, but I slide in beside Micah, trying to ignore the way Billie’s shoulders fall a fraction. I feel weird after the sunflower maze, and yet I can’t meet Micah’s gaze, either, after I saw him with . . . after he and Heather . . .
A kiss is just a kiss, I repeat to myself what Mick told me before graduation.
Micah nudges the plate toward me. “Something wrong?”
“Of course there is. You couldn’t wait. You ate half the fries before I got here!” I say, taking the fry. I hope I don’t sound fake.
“We’re growing young men,” Micah replies. “You’d have us starve?”
“She might get a kick out of that,” Billie says.
I glare at both of them, stealing another fry. “You two can shove it.”
Billie quirks an eyebrow. “Someone’s had a bad morning.”
“If you had to work all morning with Heather, you’d hate your life, too.”
“Heather?” Micah whistles. “Sorry but I’d probably love my life if I had to look at her all day.”
I scowl.
“She’s a handful,” Billie adds. He won homecoming with her last year. They wore matching blue formalwear and rode in the back of the mayor’s Ford pickup. Just remembering how they looked makes me lose my appetite, and I put the fry back.
Micah cocks his head. “Probably a hand full, too, right Igs? Heeeey-ooooh!” He raises his hand and high-fives me.
Golden Boy’s ears turn an acute shade of red.
Micah goes on, “I’d rather work with Heather than you every day, Billie.” Billie feigns a gasp. “Please. Who set the engine in that truck this morning?”
“I helped.”
“Yeah. ‘Over a bit. No the other way. A bit more . . . a bit more . . .’” Micah mocked, rolling his eyes. “I got it in all by myself, no thanks to your sorry ass.”
“That’s what she said,” I quip.
“Heeeey-ooooh!” Billie cries, and we high-five, too.
“Already talking dirty without me?” jokes a soft voice from behind us. LD, with sunglasses on, slides into the booth beside Billie, neon-yellow scarf almost blinding. She asks the hostess for a pot of coffee.
Billie points to her sunglasses. “What's with the shades?”
She takes them off, revealing a nice shiner on her eye. She takes a menu and looks through it, trying to ignore us. But we stare too long. Is that why she didn’t want to come to lunch today?
She sighs, putting down the menu. “It’s fine. One of Mike’s goons clocked me good the other night is all.”
“Bullshit, he did,” Billie says. “Mike knows better than to hit a girl.”
LD gives him a deadpan look. “Save your chivalry, hero; I’m fine.”
“He should know better than to hit anyone,” I agree.
“And someone should learn not to pick fights,” LD adds, looking straight at Billie.
His ears go red. “I was defending you.”
“You have a scholarship to keep,” she argues, “and I think we can handle Michael jack-off Labouise.”
He throws his hands in the air. “So now I’m the bad guy for helping out?”
“I could’ve handled it.”
“You could’ve handled it,” he echoes, disbelieving.
Micah tries to interject, “I’m not sure who punched what first, but can we all just calm down?”
“Yeah, take a breather?” I agree, nodding. LD and Billie glare at each other, the tension so thick I couldn’t even shatter it with a wrecking ball.
So Micah instead asks LD, “So your parents know about it?”
That seems to calm her down a little, at least. “No. They don’t.” LD’s parents are the town physicians, and they’re also some of the sanest people in Steadfast. When the whole thing with She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named happened, they were the first ones at LD’s side. Aside from us three. We knew Mike wouldn’t still be standing if LD told them all of the shit he put her through these last few years.
She’s a gracious soul like that. Also, she probably doesn’t want her parents in jail.
“It’s nothing,” she goes on after a moment, her shoulders slumping as she disengages from the fight. She sits back in the booth and picks up the menu and stands it up so it blocks her view of Billie across the table. “So, what’s everyone having? The same old same old?”
“Yeah,” I reply.
“If it’s not broke, don’t fix it,” Micah adds.
And just like that, the tension dissipates.
LD flips the page in her menu, eyeing Micah. “So, where did you go after the Barn?”
“Don’t remember. Did things, I guess.”
LD tilts down the menu enough to give Billie a no-nonsense look. “He got laid, didn’t he?”
“He got laid,” Billie agrees.
I stare between the two of them. Laid? But they were only kissing! That’s a total lie—lingo for . . . for . . .
But Micah turns three thousand shades of red over his tanned skin. I like it when he blushes—the color on his cheeks reminds me of late-season apples. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Bullshit, you don’t,” Billie says.
LD agrees. “I think we may need to do some asking around.”
“I think we do. North?”
My mouth goes dry. I refuse to look up from the plate of half-eaten cheesy fries. So it wasn’t just a kiss. It wasn’t nothing. It was . . .
“Leave him alone, guys,” I hear myself say.
LD scoffs. “As if! You three badgered me for two months while I was Internet dating that girl online—”
“Who turned out to be a forty-year-old man,” Micah reminds her.
She ignores him. “Call this sweet, sweet revenge.”
Micah squirms. I put a hand on LD’s forearm. “Seriously, I don’t think—”
“Why’d he be ashamed to tell us? Unless it’s Heather Woodard.”
He bristles.
“Is it?” LD asks. “You can’t be serious.”
I can see this is going downhill very, very fast. “Can we just drop it? Who’s ready to order?” I try to signal the waitress to come back, but she’s flirting with a middle-aged man in a Husker’s baseball cap. Great.
“Heather, really?” she presses.
“She’s not—”
“If you’re about to say she has a nice personality, save your breath,” then she turns to tell me, “I’m pretty sure the only personality he got out of her were a few fake orgasms. ‘Oh, Micah, there! There!’”
Micah makes a move to stand. Aggressively, too. “Care to say that to my face?”
“I’ll say it to whatever part you want me to kick first,” she rebukes flatly.
Billie grabs Micah by the arm to keep him from lunging over the table. Abandoning my coffee, I throw up my arms in a peace treaty.
“Whoa, whoa!” I shout, and shove Micah back down into his seat. “Seriously! Calm down. She was just joking.”
“I didn’t get the joke,” Micah bites back.
LD retorts, “Maybe you’re stuck too far up her—”
“I mean it!” I yell, slamming my fists down on the table.
If anyone should be angry, it’s me. It’s ME. The only person who loved him—loved him so much her heart is breaking, and no one cares. The dishes and cups rattle. Billie saves a fork from falling off the table.
“Now,” I tell them, ripping open a creamer pack and dumping it into my coffee until the dark burned color turns white, “we’re going to act civil or so help me I will body slam each and every one of you to kingdom come. Capisce?”
“Capisce,” Micah and LD mutter in unison.
“Good.” I nod and steel myself, because a kiss is never just a kiss. “Pass me the sugar.” I should have known. I pretend not to care.