It feels like there’s a bird trapped in my throat, all panicked fluttering, and I can’t get words out around it.
“Okay,” I say, even though it’s not. I can’t feel my fingertips. “Are you—?”
The bird panics harder, claws at my throat and I can’t bring myself to say breaking up with me. Is this how it happens, then? You think something is good and then your family fucks it up and you get dumped in a high school?
“I’ll be fine,” she says, and my heart gives an ugly twist. “I just need some time.”
She’s bright red, her blue eyes pink around the rims, like she’s been trying not to cry and failing. Andi’s clenching her teeth and not quite looking at me, holding her shoulders back like she’s bracing herself.
“How much?” I ask. I’m still as a statue and I feel like one.
She blows out a breath and rubs her eyes, then grabs her hair with one hand. “Can you give me, like, ten minutes? I think if I just calm down a little—”
My brain feels like a car ignition that won’t turn over.
“Ten minutes?” I ask, just making sure I got it right.
“Yes,” she says, her voice still tight, and she snaps her eyes up to mine. “If we keep going like this I’m just going to shout at you more, and that’s obviously not helping shit.”
I stare at her for slightly too long again.
“Is that not cool, or did you really want to—”
“You’re not breaking up with me?”
Now Andi stares. We’re all staring. It’s a hell of a night.
“No?” she says, then frowns. “Are you… breaking up with me?”
“No,” I say, and it’s probably a little to forceful, because she goes a little more pink. “But you said—you couldn’t do this, and it was going bad, and I thought…”
Andi’s face is in her hands and she makes a noise that kind of reminds me of the mating call of certain members of the cervidae family.
“I meant this conversation,” she says, muffled. “Not us.”
“Oh,” I manage, and that syllable doesn’t go very far toward expressing the dizzying relief I feel, but it’ll have to do. “Good.”
“I’m gonna take a walk around the school,” she says, her face out of her hands. “I just need a minute. I’ll be back, okay?”
“Of course,” I say, because if there’s anything I’ve understood in my life, it’s needing a minute alone. “I’ll be… here?”
Andi doesn’t answer, just gives me a peck on the cheek and disappears around a corner.
Three minutes in, my heartbeat’s finally returned to normal. I’d feel like an idiot, but I’m too relieved, all of this still a little alien to me. I can’t shake the feeling that most people got this out of the way as teenagers and would understand what they’re doing by now, not almost fucking it up in a high school hallway.
At seven minutes, it occurs to me that we could have also done this in my car, which is parked outside. I’m slumped against the lockers in the spot she abandoned, and it’s kind of uncomfortable.
At nine or so, I’m drawing up a mental list of places we could move together that aren’t Sprucevale. Where Beth will never corner her in a restroom and Matt will never swing by my house and I’ll never get accosted in a grocery store for being offensively single.
At twelve, I start to worry that she did get arrested for trespassing or something and maybe I should go try to explain the situation, or at least also get arrested in solidarity. Or something.
At about twelve and a half—but who’s counting—she comes around the corner, shoes squeaking a little on the linoleum, and stops.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey,” I say, looking up. Her eyes are still a little red-rimmed and puffy, and the lighting in here isn’t doing anyone any favors, but my mouth still goes dry and my heart feels like it trips over something. “Feel better?”
“Kinda,” she says, comes over, and slides down the lockers next to me. “Sorry for getting into an argument with your dad and telling him he was going to die alone. And for getting mad that you didn’t tell me you weren’t talking any more. And for being the reason you’re not talking, and for being a being a mess and crashing into your life like that cartoon of the Kool-Aid Man—”
“I like Kool-Aid,” I interrupt, and what I mean is most of that’s not true and I don’t mind the rest and what I mean is everything is brighter when you’re here but it’s not what comes out of my mouth.
Andi, for her part, blinks at me for several seconds.
“No, you don’t,” she finally says, and I put a hand on her thigh.
“No,” I admit. “But I like you.”
Andi slides her hand under mine and tangles our fingers together.
“I like you too,” she says. “And I’m sorry I made you think I was breaking up with you. I really didn’t mean to.”
“Yeah. I think that one’s on me,” I say, and look down at our joined hands, at the way the pads of my fingers fit between her knuckles, the bones right below the surface. It’s incredible, how delicate humans are, how easy they are to break. I slide my thumb over her skin and it feels like a small miracle, Andi here with me, putting her complicated, breakable hand in mine like it belongs there. “And you’re probably right that he’s going to die alone.”
“Doesn’t mean I should have said it.”
“Well.”
“He’s still your dad,” she says, tapping her index finger against my knuckle.
“He’s my father.”
Andi raises an eyebrow at me, but leaves that thread of conversation alone.
“When did they…” she gestures with her other hand. “Cut you off?”
I snort because cut me off sounds like I’m a rich kid whose parents stopped making the payments on his yacht.
“About two weeks ago,” I say. Her hand tightens, but she watches me like she’s waiting. “Not long after the matchmaking proposals started rolling in. I asked them to stop trying to set me up with someone else and they… declined.”
“I told you I don’t care,” she says, and there’s a note of panic in her voice, her fingers squeezing mine. “I’m not worried, it’s not like I think it’s going to work—”
“I care.”
“Oh.”
I settle my head against the lockers and they make a soft clang of metal on metal and I try to find some words for why I hated it so much.
“They act like you don’t matter to me. Like you’re inconsequential and unimportant and—like I might not want you just because they toss some other girl in front of me. But I don’t want someone. I’ve never wanted someone. I want you.”
Andi thunks her forehead against my shoulder, so I kiss the top of her head.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
“I don’t accept your apology.”
She thunks her forehead against my shoulder again, a little harder, and I wonder if she’s been spending too much time with Dolly.