“Meneik...” She reached for his arm but he pulled it away. A heartbeat later, her seat belt was unlocked and she was practically in his lap, telling him that she wanted to be with him, no one else, and she was sorry. She had to repeat her apology so many times that I started to feel ill. When I glanced at Jolene, she had turned to stare resolutely out the window, the hem of her skirt wrinkled but no longer caught in her tortured grip.
A few minutes later, Cherry and Meneik dropped us off outside a strip mall, and I couldn’t say I was sorry to see them go. Cherry had made sure every ounce of her attention was focused on Meneik when we got out of the car, even though he remained stiff and indifferent toward her. It was messed up, and Jolene obviously didn’t like seeing her friend endlessly apologize for no reason that I could see.
“Hey,” I said, drawing Jolene’s attention away from Meneik’s fading taillights. “I’m sorry about your friend.”
Her gaze was weary when it lifted to mine. “Yeah, well, she’s the one who wanted a boyfriend.”
I started to laugh like she’d made a joke, but Jolene didn’t smile. Mine quickly died. “Okayyy, but that doesn’t mean she should be treated like that. No girl should.”
Jolene shrugged and started to turn away. I caught her arm lightly so that she’d turn back.
“That’s not—” I broke off, gesturing in the direction Cherry and Meneik had gone “—the way it should be. Ever.” I felt my face heating along with my voice, because the bland expression on Jolene’s face told me that she didn’t believe me. I started to open my mouth again but snapped it shut, thinking of all the stellar examples of relationships in her life and how they’d probably played a role in the cynical view she held.
“Look, it’s just not, okay? I mean, do you honestly think I’d treat a girl that way? Make her—” I was so disgusted by the scene in the car that I couldn’t even finish the sentence.
“Erica,” Jolene said.
I frowned.
“Her name is Erica. You said ‘a girl,’ but you have a girlfriend, so the question you should have asked is, do I think you’d ever treat Erica that way.”
My face was now blazing for a different reason, because I’d forgotten about Erica. Again. “Fine, okay, Erica then.” I half expected her to study me for a moment, as though she had to consider the question, but she answered without even blinking.
“No, you never would, but you’re strange and special and there are more guys like Meneik than there are guys like you, so.” She shrugged again.
“Strange and special?” I said, thinking that if there was supposed to be a compliment there I couldn’t find it.
“You know what I mean.”
I wasn’t sure I did, but I also wasn’t going to stand there and force her to say things about me that she didn’t want to on her own.
She spared one last glance after her friend and sighed. “I just hate that he’s like that to her.”
“Yeah, I get that.”
Then she visibly shook herself. “Okay, I really don’t want to think about them all day. This was supposed to be fun. Ferris Bueller fun. So what are we going to do on this beautiful day?”
I just wanted to go somewhere that wasn’t outside. Jolene wanted ice cream. We both won.
She slipped her chilled hand into mine to tug me down the street, and even though she let go the second I started moving, the heat that somehow suffused my entire body stayed with me.
The ice-cream parlor was empty when we entered. It smelled like vanilla and waffle cones, and Jolene drew in a breath so deep that she practically levitated.
“How can you want ice cream right now?” Her hand had been so cold that I’d made a crack about checking for frostbite.
She shrugged and ordered from the sleepy-looking guy behind the counter. When he turned his half-lidded eyes to me, I shook my head. After he handed Jolene her cone—and it was covered in so many toppings you couldn’t even tell there was ice cream underneath—we found a table and sat down. Me to thaw and Jolene to snake gummy bears off her cone with her tongue.
I thawed out very quickly.
I was worried my staring would become creepy in another second, so I said the first thing that came to my mind. “I read your essay.”
Jolene paused in the act of biting the head off a gummy bear but said nothing. Even when she finished decapitating the bear, I could see the tension holding the rest of her stock-still.
“Jo, it’s really good.”
She didn’t relax. If anything, she grew more tense.
I usually felt like I was getting only half the story with Jolene. That she was deflecting with her biting humor and brash demeanor. Sometimes she’d let me see more, but not often. Her essay though... It was Jolene stripped raw.
And it was really good.
If I wasn’t half in love with her before I read it, I was after.
Except there was no half anything with Jolene.
I really needed to talk to Erica. Whether or not I ever had more than friendship with Jolene, I had no business having a girlfriend when I felt this way about someone else.
Jolene looked tense enough to snap, so I knew I had to come at things in a different way than straight compliments. They always made her uncomfortable, unless she was paying them to herself.
“I couldn’t really tell at home but—” I leaned across the table and brought my face close to hers “—did I get all the blood out of my eyes?”
A relieved smile relaxed her face and body. “I’m always so sweet to you, and yet you say stuff like that to me.”
I leaned closer and angled my head. “Right in the left tear duct. That one gushed when I read the last paragraph.”
Jolene smushed her ice-cream cone in my nose.
I licked at a gummy bear that started to slide down my cheek. “Yeah, you’re a sweetheart.”
It was cold, but she was laughing, and I’d been the one to make her laugh.
“Really though,” she said a few minutes later, leaning toward me and scrutinizing a place on my jaw that she’d wiped clean with a napkin. “You didn’t hate it?”
I stilled her hand with my own. There were a few sentences that could be smoothed out, and her opening paragraph was a little scattered, but the heart of her essay—Jolene’s heart—beat beautifully through the whole thing.
“No, I didn’t.”
She gave me a funny look and sat back. “Will you help me though, just a little? I need the film program people not to hate it either.”