“How do you tell if a guy likes you?”
Neta and I are over at Kolbie’s house, which is almost as nice as Carlos’s. Her parents are super-overprotective and huge on family time, but they’re usually cool about letting us hang out in the theater room in the basement.
Yeah. Her parents have a theater room. Her dad is some COO of an IT company, which means it’s super-tricked-out, too, and there are speakers legitimately built into the floors.
“What do you mean?” Neta says. “And can you please pass me the Tiffany blue?”
I pass her the blue nail polish. We’re all doing pedis while Sixteen Candles plays on the big screen. We’re doing an old-school movie night. We try to do these at least once a month. Some are, like, super-old-school, à la Audrey Hepburn, and some are, like, 10 Things I Hate About You, which is about a five on the old-o-meter.
“Did you not see Zayne at the party?” Kolbie asks. “Or the way he was drooling all over you and laughing at, like, every half syllable that fell out of your mouth?” She grabs a white polish and tosses it to me. I’m trying to give my toes French tips. “Trying” being the operative word.
“I know like that.” I grab the tiny polish and spread out a newspaper under my feet. “But, like, what about when it’s more subtle?”
“Subtle like how?” Neta asks. She started to paint her toes, but now she’s distracted and diving into popcorn. Her fingers are covered in butter.
Like when he has your scarf in his pocket. And when he keeps looking at you and touching it.
And when he’s your teacher.
“Like, what if instead of trying to get you to sink balls into beer pong cups and tongue your neck, he’s trying to just be nice to you or something?”
“RJ licked my neck on our first date,” Neta says defensively.
“Look how great that turned out.” Kolbie holds her foot out. “Do I like this pink? I think I like this pink better than the blue.”
Neta throws a handful of popcorn at her.
“You’re cleaning that up later,” Kolbie warns. “My mom does not play.”
“Stop dissing RJ, then.”
“Stop defending someone who treated you like something he put down the garbage disposal.”
Neta throws another handful of popcorn because she knows Kolbie is right, and Kolbie stands up. “Seriously?”
“Can we get back to the point?” I ask. I smudge a little bit of the white on the bottom of my toenail. Damn it.
“It would help if we knew who you were talking about,” Neta points out. A piece of popcorn falls onto her chest, and she licks it up with her tongue.
Kolbie raises her eyebrows. “You are so classy I can’t even deal.”
Neta winks at her. “More where that came from.”
I giggle. “Seriously, though. It’s not a particular guy. I’m just talking about mature, non-drunk dudes who are maybe a little bit past their beer pong stage of life. Like, what’s the protocol?”
Kolbie points at me with a pastel-pink-painted brush, and a glob of paint falls off onto the newspaper. “As the only one here who has experienced an actual healthy relationship, I think I should speak to this. First of all, he will find an excuse to touch you. And not in a creepy, grind-on-you-in-the-club kind of way. In a sweet way. Like, he’ll touch your hand or something. Or pick an eyelash off your cheek. Or whatever.”
“You’re telling me,” I say, “that Jamal picked an eyelash off your cheek? And that you didn’t steal that from The Notebook or, like, Insert Cheesy Date Movie Here?”
“It was an actual occurrence. And he also started leaving stuff around so I’d have to return it. And I did the same. Like, I left an earring at his house once. And he left his iPod at mine.”
I think of my scarf, and feel my face color slightly. Maybe it does mean something that he has it. And he’s holding on to it. It has to.
I think of the way he looked at me when he touched it, and I feel something in my lower belly.
“It might take longer,” Neta adds, “but he’ll let you know. And that’s when you know it’s a good one. Like Jamal, right, Kolbie?”
Kolbie settles back into her recliner, satisfied with her toes. “Just like Jamal.”
“You’re lucky,” Neta says. “I’m still on the neck-lickers.”
“More serious topic,” Kolbie says, pointing at the screen. “Can we talk about how messed up this movie is? Like, could we have a side of humor with this load of racism, please?”
“I was still stuck on the massive amount of date rape.” Neta reaches for the remote. “Because that is just exactly the kind of message any girl wants to hear.”
“Can we veto this movie?” I ask. “I’m over it.”
We binge dating reality shows instead, and while they aren’t, like, completely free of sexism or anything, they’re at least a little better.
• • •
The next day in French class Mr. Belrose announces that the class will have a lot of homework coming up.
“Why?” whines Thea, pulling on her hair. “I thought you liked us, Mr. Belrose. I thought we were, like, your favorite class. And didn’t we just finish the giant essay of doom?”
“Well, I’ll have a lot of extra time in the next couple of weeks,” he says. His eyes shift to me. “My wife’s gone. She’s visiting her mother.”
I hold his.
He wants me.
He does.
My heart wants to beat its way out of my chest.
Around me, the class oohs. “How will you occupy yourself while she is away, Monsieur Belrose?” Teri Von Millhouse asks. She leans forward on one hand and flutters her eyelashes.
“Catch up on my Netflix. And give you more homework.” Belrose shakes his head, and I realize, suddenly, his hair is getting a little long. He reminds me of Alex. Not a teacher.
Just Alex. The guy that I used to know.
“I’ll comfort you if you’re lonely,” Thea says, raising her hand.
“And that’s my cue to tell you to turn to page two seventy-six in your textbook, guys, before things get any more awkward. Questions about my personal life will now result in additional homework. With reasonable exceptions.” His eyes stray to me again, and I press my lips together to keep my feelings from showing on my face.
And I wonder what it would be like to kiss him.
I wonder if he would be tender.
Or if he would be aggressive.
The truth is I’ve never had a real kiss before. Well, at least not one that I count. I suppose there was Erick Canders in third grade during the school play. He slipped me tongue because he was coughing really hard.
Which I don’t. Count it.
And I don’t count the little ones I snuck on the playground when I was a little girl. The meaningless ones with boys behind trees, just to see what it was like.
A real kiss is different. A real kiss is with someone who means something.
And so I have never had a real kiss.
I watch Mr. Belrose as if there is nothing out of the ordinary. I take notes in deliberate, even handwriting, highlighting the most important sections in three different colors, and I write down my homework in my planner, which is a bit more than usual. And I don’t stick around after class to talk to him, because Riley Stone has no reason to stick around to speak to her teacher, not when she has absolutely everything under control.
But when I get home that evening, I find the phone book in the cupboard underneath my parents’ landline (they still have both because they are stuck in the last century and don’t trust cell phones in disasters). I make a mental note of Belrose’s address.
And then I grab my keys.
I know the street, I think—it’s about twenty minutes away, not far from a park on the other side of town. It’s not a wealthy part of town, but it’s not like it’s horrible, either. It’s a typical lower-middle-class neighborhood: chain-link fences, well-tended gardens with chipped gnomes, kids playing basketball in their driveways.
I drum my feelings out on the steering wheel, but I can’t process them. I’m not sure if my heart is working quite right. Or at all.
Am I misreading all the signals? What am I doing? Did he even want me? Am I completely nuts?
I park three blocks away, pull on one of Ethan’s old Denver Broncos baseball caps, and slip out of my car. I stare in the direction of his house.
This is bad.
This isn’t late-to-class bad. It’s not drinking-beer bad. It’s actually bad bad. There is no going back from this bad.
He’s a teacher.
He’s over eighteen.
He’s married.
And I am a good girl.
My mind ticks back to his e-mail.
If I go over to his house, then that’s gone. I’m not just stepping neatly out of the category I’ve been shuffled in—I’m basically blowing it up with a nuclear bomb.
I can’t go back.
But my feet start moving in the direction of his house. The street is friendly enough. There are tons of trees—old ones, with thick trunks, casting the trees in shadows. I glance at the little homes as I walk by. None of them are very big. Some have children and dogs in the yard. Some are empty. Some of the lawns haven’t been mowed in a while.
My footsteps feel too deliberate and strange, like I’ve never used my feet before. Am I walking casually? How does one walk casually?
I pull the baseball cap farther over my head and push my hair behind my ears.
Maybe I shouldn’t have dressed so much like myself—all straight edges and J.Crew and neat. Maybe I should have worn a disguise.
I feel oddly cold, and it’s a nice day. My fingers and toes tingle strangely. What am I doing? Is this who I am now? Am I really interested in Alex Belrose?
Shouldn’t I learn to be happy with Zaynes, drooling over me while I play beer pong? With Robs? Rob is so sweet. Why can’t I be happy with Rob?
Rob and I even have a history. I mean, we never really dated, but we were friends. We sat next to each other in fourth grade, and for my birthday that year, he gave me a pink unicorn pencil with a white heart eraser. Every year since, he’s slipped the same pink unicorn pencil into my locker on my birthday, and every year he smiles at me because we both know but we never say anything about it.
My chest hurts.
Because I can’t.
Not with Rob.
He’s not for me.
I need something . . . else. Someone else.
And suddenly, I’m there. I’m at his house. It’s a smallish brick thing with a barn mailbox. The yard is neatly mowed and there are yellow and pink tulips out front.
And Alex Belrose is sitting out on the porch in a hoodie that says PURDUE. He leans forward when he sees me.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out. I have a new e-mail.
Go around back.