“Both solid bands. You’d better not be knocking them.”
“I am a bit.”
“We can agree to disagree.”
“They’re a bit more … simple than this.”
“I guess. They’re pop punk junk food.”
Will laughed. “I love that. That’s perfect. Pop punk junk food.”
Rejuvenated, I started flicking through my albums. “If you like them, you should check out these guys. They have this thing they do with harmonies that’s just argh, and the drummer, God, I could listen to a whole album of just his solos. Hold on, I’ll find them—what?”
Will was staring at me with a funny little smile. “Nothing. It’s cute how passionate you get about music. I feel like you could convince Bach all he was missing was some heavy bass guitar.”
“I really like music, I guess. So sue me.”
“Yeah, well, I really like you. So sue me.”
Tuesday, 4:02 PM
I’m sorry.
I didn’t speak to Will again after that morning in the closet. He did try to text me, once, later that day, but I forced myself to ignore it. I knew myself, and I wasn’t much of a “let’s stay friends” kind of person. If I didn’t cut Will off cold-turkey, I’d end up pining over him, all hopelessly devoted, and hurt, and unrequited. Well, like, more than I was currently.
I did spend quite a chunk of the week replaying my reaction in my head. Depending on my mood, I interpreted the memory differently. Sometimes I internally congratulated myself for having the strength to storm out and slam that door. All I’d needed was a Destiny’s Child song playing as an overture, and it would’ve been the greatest “screw you” since Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind.
Then other times, I convinced myself Will still had feelings for me, and that I’d ruined a beautiful future— culminating in marriage and three adopted children—with a five-second tantrum. Those times were way less fun.
One night, in the middle of one of these fits of despair, I asked Mom if she had any huge regrets from when she was a teenager. She apparently thought the appropriate response to that question was to break out into an off-key rendition of “Let It Be” by the Beatles. Word for word. From beginning to end. A performance I was expected to watch in full. I made a mental note never to ask Mom for relationship advice again.
At school, I was settling into a rhythm. Juliette and I often escaped to the music room during lunch. With band practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the music room was fast becoming my favorite place in the school. Everything about it, from the cheesy inspirational posters lining the walls, to the collection of crappy-quality guitars and violins, to the microphones and amplifiers stored in the nook at the far end of the room, was familiar. Comforting. Music was music, whether in California or North Carolina.
Thursdays, I had Music Appreciation right before lunch. When the bell chimed, I packed up my stuff and wandered to my locker, all dreamy and happy. I was too busy dwelling in my own little world of melodies and advanced beats to notice anything different when I first made it into the cafeteria. But you can bet I sure as hell noticed when I got to the lunch table and found Will sitting in my seat.
Sitting in my damn seat like a smug, seat-stealing, little …
Oh, no, wait, the other guys were there, too. They’d dragged over extra seats and crammed around the perimeter of the table, shoulder to shoulder to fit everyone in. My first thought was that Will had made them come here so he could talk to me. My second thought was, holy shit, you are the poster child for narcissism, Oliver Di Fiore. Not everything revolves around you, get all the way up and over yourself. Juliette had said some of the basketball guys sat with us from time to time. Well, here was one of those times. No stress. Be cool.
Please, for the love of God, be cool.
Then, oh yeah, silly me, I remembered I hated these guys for making homophobic jokes with me as a punch line. So, basically, fuck every single one of them.
“Ollie-oop, I saved you a seat.” Juliette waved me down and gestured to the empty seat next to her. Just in case I thought she was referring to one of the taken seats, I guess.
As soon as Juliette said my name, Will’s head cocked to the side, and he glanced up in a not-very-subtle way. Without looking at him, I breezed past and Tetris’d my lunch tray into a tight gap between Juliette’s and Niamh’s.
Matt sat directly across from me, with Will on his left side. On Matt’s other side, Darnell, one of Will’s other friends, was leaning his elbows on the table to speak to Niamh. Darnell wasn’t a short guy by any means, but compared to his friends, he was practically a pixie. He had warm, medium-brown skin with a smattering of freckles over a wide nose, and tilted eyebrows that gave him a permanently concerned, kind sort of look. From the way he had zeroed in on Niamh, you could tell he’d forgotten anyone else was sitting at the table. “… You basically don’t eat a thing for almost two days,” he was saying. “Last year I raised two hundred bucks. It’s not that hard.”
Niamh tossed her hair and simpered in a very un-Niamh-like way. I was used to the Niamh that mostly looked pleasant, and a little vacant. This was Niamh on a mission. A mission involving a hot guy. “It kind of sounds like that fasting diet you see all over Instagram. Doesn’t it mess with practice, though?”
“Nah,” the guy said.
“Yes,” Matt spoke over him. “He was useless the whole week after the famine last year.”
That earned him a hard glare from Niamh’s Prince Charming. The message was clear: you are actively cock-blocking me, and have precisely one second to stop that. “It’s for charity, man.”
“Yeah, well, if you could help the poor when we don’t have a game against Williamstown, that’d be sweet.”
Will stayed quiet, watching the exchange. He kept glancing up at me, like a pigeon that feels mostly safe, but also wants to check that it isn’t about to be ambushed. Is that what he thought? That I’d do something to out him in front of his friends? Although to be fair, he’d made it pretty clear that acting like I knew him at all would doom him forever. Because he might catch the gay, after all. He probably hadn’t even told the guys we’d ever met. Aaaand this was supposed to be my Prince Charming. I kind of felt like Niamh had gotten the better deal here.
Niamh swirled her mashed potatoes with a fork. She’d spent more time playing with her food than eating it. Did she not want to eat in front of the guys? Or had she lost interest? “I think it’s really selfless,” she said. “I might have to try it one year.”
“You could time it with a casting,” Lara suggested through a mouthful of bread.
Niamh frowned. Juliette and the guys seemed to miss it, but I knew too well what it was like to be on the receiving end of Lara’s jabs. Time it with a casting so Niamh could lose a bit of weight. That’s what she meant. Even if she said it innocently. This was the first time I’d noticed Lara directing her nastiness at someone other than me. She must have woken up on the wrong side of the bed. Or maybe she didn’t like the attention Matt was giving Niamh right now.
The conversation went on around me. I didn’t join in. It wasn’t super unusual for me to be quiet at lunch, and there was no way I felt comfortable enough to speak up with this audience. The weird thing was that Will didn’t speak, either. This was the first time I’d really seen him around the basketball guys up close, so I had no way of knowing if that was out of character for him or not at first. Then Matt asked him twice why he was so spaced out and I had my answer.