“Have you kissed her or done anything else since it happened?”
“No. She hasn’t really seemed open to it anyway.”
“Well, maybe she’s thinking she’s following your lead by acting like it was no big deal. I mean, you kind of have a reputation.” She held up her hands in an apology shrug.
“But she’s Navy. I wouldn’t treat her like that. To me, it was a big deal. You know I don’t have sex with my friends.”
“Except me.”
“You’re different. What we did was fun. I didn’t love you when we first hooked up, I wasn’t in love with you.”
You could have heard a pin drop in the silence that followed that comment.
“Well.” Tori rubbed her lips together, her eyebrows raised meaningfully.
“You know what I mean.”
She cocked her head to the side. “Uh… not sure I do, bud. I mean, I know you were never in love with me. You might’ve been in lust—we both probably were. But we didn’t have that kind of connection.” She rubbed her fist over her heart. “This kind. The stuff that hurts.”
“It hurt when you rejected me,” I protested.
“Your pride.” She leaned forward, running a hand down the side of my face. “Not in here,” she said, laying her palm flat on my chest. “What you and Navy have is good stuff. I don’t have any guy friends like that—not even you.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Don’t act offended. I’m not a Navy for you either, idiot.”
She was right. The part about her not being another Navy. And the part about me being an idiot. “I know we need to talk it out, but she doesn’t like confrontation.”
“It doesn’t have to be one.”
“To her, it is. And I get it, because I can be the same way.” With my mom, with my brother. With Navy. “So I’m kind of stuck. She doesn’t want to talk about it, but I do.”
“But you definitely have feelings for her that are not strictly friend feelings.”
I nodded. I did. I kept making excuses to see her when two weeks ago, it’d been natural to see her all the time. I never needed an excuse to see her, to text her. So, yes, part of me missed the friendship we’d had before everything got messy. But it was more than that. Deeper. And the mess we’d made didn’t put me off like it would have if she’d been just anyone. Navy and I had a history, we had more. What that more was, I wasn’t certain.
“Probably an obvious question, but have you launched the meat missile ever since?”
“With her? No.”
“With anyone else? Maybe you just need to hook up with someone else and you’ll get it out of your system.”
“Not with anyone else.” I couldn’t even think about anyone else. “I don’t know what the hell’s going on. For the first time since I met her, I feel strangely empty when I’m around her. Not that she makes me empty. There’s just this hole inside of me that I can’t explain. Like, I’m full because she’s near me. But I’m empty because it’s not enough.”
“You love her.”
“I’ve always loved her.”
“Don’t be dense. You love her. Not strictly as a friend.”
That was where the waters got murky for me. What I felt for Navy was complicated and different than anything I’d ever had with anyone else. Who was I kidding, how could I talk to her about it when I didn’t even understand it myself? “I don’t think I want to talk about this anymore.”
“Oh, no. You look like that time I made you ride that rollercoaster in Salt Lake five times in a row. You gonna puke? Where are your buckets?”
“I’m not going to puke.” But I did feel sick. Sick of all these feelings that I couldn’t figure out.
“This is the shit you miss when you check out of those relationships early, Keane. That’s why it feels so weird, why you don’t like it.”
“This is different than those relationships,” I insisted.
“Well, duh. Because you never really liked those girls that much. You’ve been playing it safe, choosing girls you knew wouldn’t be able to get too close. And now that someone has—someone who was supposed to be a friend and only a friend—you’re vulnerable. Sucks, right? And you wonder why I’m so cynical about love. It’s because the greatest emotion known to man can make you feel like someone just ripped a chunk of your heart out of your chest and nothing else you try to replace it with fits in that empty space. Everybody talks about what love can give you, but they forget to mention what it can take from you, too.”
“You’re getting a little too deep for me, Tori. Appreciate the pep talk, but all of this is hypothetical.”
Tori groaned and flopped back to her side of the couch. “You’re really dense, Keane. Good thing we’re going to spend the next several hours in the same house with Navy.”
“Don’t talk to her about this,” I said, an edge sharpening my voice. “I want to tell her I talked to you before you do. It wouldn’t be fair for her to be ambushed by you before I’ve had a chance to say anything.”
“Okay, be my guest. But that gives me an open invitation to mediate.”
“We don’t need a mediator.”
“What’s that sound?” Tori rose and went to the window. “Oh, looks like your paramour has arrived.”
Suddenly and not surprisingly, I was regretting inviting Tori along.
20
NAVY
I could see Tori in the window, peering out at us. This was a bad, bad idea. It had been a while since I’d seen Tori and until this moment, I’d nearly forgotten how it made me feel to be around her: like I was somehow, someway, deficient.
It isn’t her fault that you feel that way about yourself. I couldn’t blame her for my feelings. But Tori represented that deep-seated belief I held onto since before her, about not being enough. Not being enough for my parents to give up their ways and be the mother and father we needed. Not being enough for my sisters, to keep them out of trouble and safe. Not being enough for Keane, to love me back.
Tori was the life of the party, the one the guys talked about, the girl that people gravitated toward. I was the person who cleaned up messes in the kitchen while Tori was doing keg stands and getting piggyback rides. Tori was the first girl who’d really captured Keane’s attention. When I’d wanted him to look at me, he was looking at her.
Again, my feelings weren’t Tori’s fault. I’d need to put on a brave face, to play it cool.
Pulling the tube of lipstick out of my purse, I flipped the visor down. I never wore bold colors, but for some reason I felt the need to wear this one—to stand out.
As I stared at my lips in the mirror, I wondered if this was even worth it. If I had to wear lipstick to get a guy to notice me when Tori was around, what did that say about me? Or the guy?
Violet was already out of the car and striding toward the cabin, her hands laden with grocery bags; completely oblivious to the turmoil in my head. After seeing her with blonde hair for the last nearly two weeks, it was oddly jarring to see her with a hair color that was more natural, more her. The dark color suited her, but it had been unexpected when I’d picked her up an hour earlier. I was impressed that Keane had managed to find the correct shade of brown in a sea of color at the drugstore. Touched, too, that he’d done that for her.