“Shocking,” I supplied.
“Uh… no. That’s not the word I would have chosen.”
“It’s not shocking?” I asked, surprised.
“To be honest, the only shocking thing about it is the fact that it hasn’t happened sooner.” She raised an eyebrow. “I know you guys do the platonic thing, but no one does the platonic thing like you two. You cuddle and snuggle and you sit on his lap. For a long time, I thought maybe something had happened and you didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Well, technically something happened two weeks ago, and I didn’t want to talk about it right away.”
“I’m talking all the way back to high school. Like even when you told him you liked him. It was as if that didn’t change anything between you. You were still the cuddle bugs you’d always been.”
“I don’t think telling him I liked him changed anything for him. But having sex with him definitely did. For both of us.” I drained my glass and Hollis began opening the second bottle. “And now things are weird, and I don’t know how to get back to how we were before.”
“Hate to break it to you sunshine, but you’re not going to get back to before.” I opened my mouth in protest and she shook her head at me. “Telling him you have a crush on him is one thing. Having sex with him is another. The crush thing only affected you, right?”
I nodded. “I mean, it did, but it didn’t.”
“How?”
Thinking this much was hard, but only I knew how I’d felt after that night I’d admitted my feelings. “I think, in some ways, it made me close a door I’d kept wedged open. Like, there was always this thing, telling me we could be more if only I said something. And when I did say something, and it didn’t land the way I’d wanted it to, I shoved all of that behind a door and closed it. But I couldn’t totally board it up.” I twisted the stem in my hands. “And when I was confronted with his first few girlfriends in high school, it was like that door opened on its own volition all the time—like it was blown open by the wind. But all that brought me was hurt—through no real fault of Keane.”
“Did he ever ask you about that crush later on?”
I snorted. “Thank God, no. Not that I would’ve admitted it had hurt anyway.”
“Hm…” Hollis stared into her wine glass.
“What’s that ‘hm’ for? What do you mean by that?”
“He was your best friend, but you didn’t tell him that seeing him with girls bugged you?”
“No. No way. How humiliating would that have been, telling him that I hadn’t completely been able to block my heart to him?”
“So you kept him distant then, emotionally?”
“It was the only way to really keep that to myself.”
“And so, after the sex, how’s that door faring now?”
I could visualize that door in my mind: heavily battered and dinged up from years of shoving it shut. But the problem was, the door wasn’t there anymore. “Now, it’s just a doorway. I don’t think the door is even in its general vicinity.” I shook my head. “But it’s just sex, sex isn’t deep and emotional.”
“It is for you. And when it’s sex with someone you care about, someone you… love.” She tiptoed over the word. “That’s different.”
“Ugh,” I groaned, dropping my face into one of my hands. “What am I going to do?”
“He’s your best friend. You know him probably better than anyone else. Surely, you can figure out a way to talk to him about this.”
“You’d think so, but I’m both too afraid to talk to him about it and also not sure what to even say.”
“You do this. ‘Hey, Keane, so remember how I told you I had a crush on you in high school? Well, since we had sex, things are weird because I’m realizing that those feelings never really went away and I’m still in love with you.’”
My stomach churned. “I don’t know if that’s true.”
“Hey, you can’t lie to me. I can see it on your face. You’re heartsick. He’s your person. Not just as a friend.”
“But he said we were better as friends—”
“Yeah, and you didn’t argue. I’m not saying you should have—but he told you that when he couldn’t even legally drive a car. Things have changed a lot since then.”
“But in some ways, things have stayed the same. Whatever courage I had back then? Well, I definitely don’t possess it now.”
“Are you listening to yourself right now?”
“I think so,” I mumbled and sipped the glass Hollis had blessedly refilled. “But it’s been a long week, maybe I don’t even know what I’m saying.”
“You’re fraying at the ends. We don’t have to talk a game plan for this, but I really think you and Keane to have a talk.”
“I’m just not sure what it would accomplish. He’s not exactly trying to settle down, as you well know. And I’ve got a lot of baggage.”
“And he seems perfectly comfortable helping you with said baggage—when you’ll let him, that is.”
“It’s hard to rely on people.”
“It’s harder to do it on your own.”
I sighed.
“You trust him, right?”
“Yes.” That wasn’t even a question.
“Then trust that he’ll be receptive to whatever you feel like saying. Trust that he has grown up since high school. Otherwise, your friendship might be irreparably altered.” She shrugged. “You don’t know until you find out, right?”
“Right,” I said. I paused the movie we weren’t even watching to grab more snacks from the kitchen. It didn’t make sense, that I was so tired but filled with this restlessness I couldn’t tame. Maybe it was that pesky L word being tossed around like a volleyball, but I felt a bit hollow. And maybe I just needed some greasy snacks to fill the void.
But I only made it a handful of steps when I heard a noise in the backyard.
It was nine o’clock. Aunt Isabel’s backyard backed up to some woods; there was no reason for anyone to be in our backyard unless they had nefarious plans.
“Did you hear that?” I asked Hollis in a sharp whisper as my heart rate spiked.
“Someone’s out there.” Hollis got up off the couch and joined me at the back door. “Grab the baseball bat,” she directed when I froze with my hand on the doorknob. Behind the back door, between the wall and a bookcase was a metal baseball bat that my aunt had hidden years earlier, when we were all much younger.
Hollis pressed her head against the door. “Whoever it is, they’re laughing.”
“Laughing?” Driven by a bravery I hadn’t known I had, I opened the door, armed with the baseball bat. “What the…” Jade was in the yard, illuminated by the flood lights that had turned on from her movement. She froze.
“Jade?” I asked. I took her in as the fear that had been coursing through my veins faded into shock upon seeing my sister. She was wearing skin-tight black jeans, a leather jacket, and her face was perfectly made up. Her bold red lips fell open. “What are you doing?” This didn’t look like someone getting ready for bed, at all.