I guess that means Bryce just scored.
When Jackson settles back down on the bleachers, his eyes scan the sidelines, almost like he’s looking for someone, and they land on me. For a second, it’s almost like he doesn’t recognize me, like I’m someone who’s been gone and now looks like a completely different person, even though we saw each other in first period this morning.
And then, surprisingly, he waves me over, and I have a flash of the week before we started dating. I had walked into our history class, looking for a place to sit since my normal seat was taken, and he did the same thing, waving me over, accepting me when it seemed like maybe no one else could even see me.
“Where is everyone?” I ask, sliding onto the bleacher beside him. He usually has an entourage at these things.
Jackson rolls his eyes. “Tony’s parents are out of town and his brother is in town from Berkeley. He offered to buy beer, so people are kind of having a party at his place.” Jackson leans toward me a little but keeps his eyes on the court, and I don’t know if he wants to be closer to me or he’s just trying to see around the cheering father sitting in front of us. He smells like Old Spice and dryer sheets. “What are you doing here, anyway?” he says when the court goes quiet, and a foul is called. “You hate basketball.”
“I don’t hate basketball,” I lie. “I just don’t understand the appeal of it.”
In the eleven months that we were together, Jackson never attempted to explain the rules of basketball to me, and he doesn’t try now. “God, it’s cold,” I say. My fingers are going numb. I flex them to get the blood pumping, but they’re still cold as ice. The gym has always been a little drafty, and it’s snowing outside.
“Here,” Jackson says, and before I really know what’s happening, he’s cupped my fingers between his hands and has his mouth pressed to them, blowing warm breath onto them in puffs. I watch him blow and then rub his hands together around mine. He used to do this for me all the time, when we were lying in bed together and my fingers had gone cold.
“What are you doing?” I whisper, because it feels like speaking too loud will ruin everything.
He stops, lets his hands drop and mine stay suspended between us. “I don’t know,” he says. “Habit.”
That’s what happens when you do the same thing with someone for almost a year. You form habits. We stare at each other, and I get this strange feeling in the pit of my stomach. Because this is how it’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to be Jackson and me, together. I can feel it, and I know he can, too.
“I’m going to the concession stand,” I say, hopping up. Part of me hopes that he’ll offer to come with me. I imagine us walking along the sidelines, out to the lobby where the Booster Club sells candy and drinks, confessing to one another all the emotions that still exist between us. But he doesn’t. He goes back to watching the basketball game, and I walk to the concession stand alone, tucking my jacket around me. It’s a little too big for me. It fit last winter.
I stand in line behind a group of rowdy girls, keeping my eyes straight ahead and trying to decide what I want.
“Can I have a hot chocolate and a bag of M&M’s please?” I say to the basketball mom as soon as I get to the front of the line. I want to hurry up and get back to Jackson, but the cold is killing me, and some hot chocolate will definitely warm me up. She sets the cup and the bag in front of me and smiles. I reach into my jeans and fish out the money to pay and then take my hot chocolate and M&M’s. The candy is for Jackson. His favorite.
I try to move quickly while also trying to keep my hot chocolate from sloshing out onto my hands. Unfortunately, I’m so focused on my hot chocolate that I don’t realize Jackson isn’t alone until I’ve made it up the stairs to our spot on the bleachers, until I’m standing in front of him, the M&Ms outstretched.
I freeze. Jackson and some girl are both looking down at the candy in my hand, and then they both look up at me. My brain takes in details it refuses to process: Jackson’s jacket draped across the girl’s shoulders, their fingers entwined on Jackson’s thigh.
And then it hits me like a truck.
The girl’s face is completely blank. She obviously has no clue who I am. But Jackson’s face has an emotion written all over it: shame.
I’m still just standing there, blocking the people on the rows behind us, my hand wrapped around the bag of candy until finally, I let it fall to the bleachers with a thunk. And even though it doesn’t make any sense, it feels like being broken up with all over again. Even though nothing really happened, my mind keeps playing back the moment that Jackson held my hands against his mouth.
And then my hot chocolate goes the way of the candy, splattering liquid all over me and Jackson and the guy in the row in front of us before I turn and rush down the stairs, back to the floor.
“Amy!”
I’m already halfway through the lobby. I can’t stop. What happened to my perfectly crafted life? What happened to my plan for my senior year? What did I do to deserve this?
“Amy, please!”
I finally get to my car, but when I have to stop to fumble with my keys, Jackson catches up with me. “Amy, don’t go.”
I throw my car door open with so much force that it bounces on the hinges and slams shut again. “Don’t go? Are you kidding? And what should I do instead? Stay here so I can watch you snuggle with your new girlfriend?”
His eyes move down to my pants, where hot chocolate spans from my knees to my shoelaces. “Can’t we just be friends?”
I grind my teeth together and throw open my car door again. “I don’t have time for friends.”
OLIVER
I FIND DAD passed out in a stone courtyard, between two tall business parks, at three in the morning. There are two benches in the center of the courtyard, facing each other, and my father is stretched out on one of them. His cell phone lies on the concrete beside the bench. He must have dropped it after he called me.
I shouldn’t be surprised. Why should my father give up drinking just because some judge told him to? Why should picking up trash on the side of the highway have any kind of permanent effect on him whatsoever? Why did I think he would ever have a real reason to give it all up?
I press a hand to his chest. It rises and falls slowly, so I take a seat on the other bench. It’s cold, the way only three in the morning can be cold, but oddly, it feels nice. I suck in a breath, my lungs burning against it.
This late at night, it feels like the world is moving in slow motion, or the gravity of the Earth has shifted, and you could float away into the atmosphere if you just spoke loud enough.
My eyes travel through the courtyard, painted orange and yellow in the lights from the buildings around us, finally falling on a strange metal sculpture right in the center. It’s long and metallic, a series of flat pieces of metal that curve around each other, one on top of the other, like nesting dolls. I step up to it, touching my fingers to the metal, the cold almost painful against my skin.
And then, on the highway in front of me, a car races by, and the whole sculpture vibrates, sound waves moving through the metal and coming out like a groan that’s haunting. I smile up at it, goose bumps rising on my arms.