The first major crush I ever had, a couple years before Leo came along in the art gallery that fateful day last year, was literally the boy next door. His name was Darius, some wise Bible name, which suited him because Darius was quiet. Like me, I thought. I’d see him bringing in groceries with his mother, her monologuing, him following behind her silently, back and forth to the car. I’d see him mowing the lawn. Putting up Christmas lights. Taking out the trash. I’d watch him walking to the bus stop (to a different school than mine, since mine was all girls), and while the other boys would be laughing and teasing each other and trying to act cool, Darius would just be cool by default. When he did speak, the other kids listened. I liked the sound of his voice, too, the low, gentle timbre of it, although I never caught what he said. I was never close enough to hear.
I started drawing him. His face. Ears. Hands. The way a long-sleeved tee draped across his shoulders. The shoes he wore. I’d always made quick sketches of people, but I did so many of Darius that year that Pop finally noticed. “Is that the boy next door?” he asked one morning at the breakfast table, leaning over my sketchbook, and I blushed so hard I could have passed out, and Pop said, “Oh. So that’s how it is.”
That’s so how it was.
Pop said, “That’s a good likeness,” which felt like a perfect summation of my feelings at that point. “You should ask him out.”
“You should probably stay out of my love life,” I said.
“Fair enough.” We dropped the subject until it came up again, naturally, a few weeks later when we were in SF at a Giants game. I was just sitting there watching the game, minding my own business, when suddenly Pop poked me in the shoulder.
“Look over there,” he said, and gestured very subtly with his head to two rows ahead of us, where Darius was sitting with his family. “Now’s your moment, Ada. You could go over and talk to him.”
But that was impossible. “What would I even say?”
“You’d say, ‘Hi, I’m Ada. I live next door.’”
I shook my head. “He knows I live next door.”
“You’d go from there,” Pop said.
But go from there to what?I think you’re cute? Nice weather we’re having?
“Now you have something in common to talk about,” Pop said.
I stared at him blankly.
“You both like baseball,” Pop explained.
Oh.
“So go talk to him,” Pop said. “Carpe diem. You go, girl.”
I shook my head again. “I . . . I can’t.”
Pop shrugged. “Your call. I guess everybody has to go through unrequited love at some point. I get that. If you don’t even try, that’s safer. And that way he doesn’t get messed up by, you know, reality—people can stay perfect if you never get to know who they are. But it’s not very satisfying. I’d want something better for you. Something real.”
“You’ve got to be the first dad in history who wants his teenage daughter to talk to boys,” I pointed out. Then, out of the blue, I pictured Darius and me standing in my room, Darius turning to look at my art on the walls.
“These are great,” he’d say in his deep voice.
And then he’d be startled, because he would have spotted a drawing of himself. And I’d be embarrassed, because I’d essentially been creeping on him, I guess, but then I could tell that he was flattered. He liked it.
“You’re really talented,” he would say, and I’d breathe, “Thanks,” and then who knows what would happen, in my room, with the door shut and Darius whispering that he liked my work.
“I’m not saying you should make out with the guy,” Pop said loudly. “I just don’t want you to miss out on the best parts of life because you’re afraid of getting hurt.”
Essentially Pop was calling me a coward. I knew that. And I also knew that my daydream would never happen if I didn’t start by actually talking to Darius. So I stood up.
“You got this,” Pop said.
“We both like baseball,” I whispered to myself as I awkwardly stepped sideways around a bunch of people to reach the aisle. Then I went forward a couple of rows and stood for a minute watching Darius as he was watching the game. He was wearing a black-and-orange Giants jersey with his own last name (OLIVERA) printed on the back, and the number 07. A shirt that meant that he was more than just the casual baseball enthusiast. He was a real fan.
Not like me, who came to one or two games a year. I barely understood the rules of baseball. I was mostly there for the food and because Pop loved it.
I couldn’t possibly talk to Darius about baseball, I decided. So what could I say?
“Do you need to get in?” asked the lady at the end of the row, who I realized all at once was Darius’s mother.
“I just came over to say hi,” I said.
She frowned. She clearly didn’t have a clue who I was.
“I’m your neighbor,” I explained. Maybe if I talked to Darius’s mother, I could then somehow work my way up to Darius himself. (Which is sort of the way it worked out with Leo, too, now that I think of it.) “From next door. Ada Bloom?”
“Oh.” Her frown didn’t go away. “Oh, that’s nice. Hi.”
“Hi.”
Something happened on the field. Everybody lurched to their feet, cheering.
Mrs. Olivera looked put out that she’d missed the action. “Well, it’s good to see you, Ava. Thanks for stopping by.”
I didn’t care that she got my name wrong or that she made it sound like I was one of those solicitors who ring your doorbell to talk you into buying solar panels. I was trying to figure out how to ask her if she wanted to have dinner: her family and my family. Something about how we never get to know our neighbors these days, and how sad I thought that was. But she wasn’t looking at me anymore.
I would have given up right then, but that’s when Darius glanced over, and his eyes brightened like I was the person he most wanted to see. He even smiled. Smiled. At me.
I could have passed out.
Then he got up and edged his way over to me.
“Hi,” I practiced under my breath. “Enjoying the game?”
He stepped into the aisle with me.
“Hi,” I said breathlessly.
“I’ll take two,” he said in that soft, rich voice of his, and reached behind me to give the hot dog guy his money. Because he was buying hot dogs, dummy.
Then, hot dogs in hand, he went back to his seat.
It was so much more than him not recognizing me. He didn’t even register that I was there.
I did not exist in his world.
I hurried back to my seat.
“How’d it go?” Pop asked as I slumped into place beside him again. He saw the look on my face. “That well, huh?”
“Do me a favor, okay?”
“Anything. Within reason, of course.”
“Don’t give me any more advice about boys.”
“Okay.”
“Like ever.”
“Okay.”
“I mean it.”
“I got it.”
“Good.”
That was the first time I think I realized that I wasn’t that kind of girl, the ones that boys look at and want to kiss. Like they all apparently wanted to kiss Afton at the first sight of her long blond hair. They just didn’t see me that way. If they saw me at all.
I was—my stomach churned at the revelation—unkissable.
I would never have thought the word unfuckable, but that, too.
Until Leo, that is. But that was a fluke. Or not. The more I think about it, the more I think that maybe Leo wasn’t that interested in having sex with me. Maybe he was simply interested in having sex. Which is not the same thing. Not the same thing at all.