Loneliness.
The guilt I felt for declining her invitation, for not inviting her to my house intensifies. Mixes with shame.
Before I can decide what I’m doing, I start up the porch steps.
“Where are you going?” Sam calls after me.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell him. I cross the wide porch and stand in front of Whitney. “Uh…hey.”
“Hello, Hadley.” Her gaze flicks past me and I know she’s looking at Sam, that he’s probably standing by his car waiting for me, ever the gentleman. She leans forward, stopping the swing, and lowers her voice. “Is everything all right?”
“Yeah,” I say, wondering if she’s worried that Sam is a stalker or a kidnapper or, at the very least, an unwanted presence in my life. God, if only that were true. The problem is, he’s not unwanted. Not completely. “Everything’s fine. Sam and I” –I jerk my head in the direction of the SUV— “are going to a party.”
“Oh.” She sits back, sets the swing moving again with her foot. “That’s nice,” she says as if I came up here just to inform her of my whereabouts, my comings and goings. But I stay silent too long because she adds, “Ya’ll have a nice evening.”
“Thanks.” I shake my head. “I mean, no, that’s not why I’m telling you. I thought… Do you want to come? With us, I mean. To the party,” I add just in case she thinks I mean to the moon or something.
She seems to be having a hard time following me.
“You want me to come with you to a party?” she asks, stopping the swing once again.
Definitely having a hard time following me. “Am I talking too fast? I mean, I know you talk slowly, but does that mean you hear slowly, too? Or maybe you’re not quite getting my northern accent.”
“I understood you just fine,” she says, speaking so slowly a normal-paced talker could have given a dissertation in the time it took for her to say those five words.
I think she did it on purpose.
I like her even more for it.
She may have understood me, but she still hasn’t answered me.
“Well?” I ask, regretting this impulsive decision. But, hey, what’s one more added to the list? “Do you want to go or not?”
Pursing her lips, she studies me, her head tipped to the side so that her long fall of hair brushes over her shoulder.
I fidget. Glance back at Sam, who is still waiting ever so patiently for me. For us. The silence grows and sweat forms at the base of my back. I’ve never done this before. How pathetic is that? I’ve never invited someone to do something with me. Sam made all the overtures. Asking me to his house, seeing if it was okay if he came over to mine.
Once I became a part of his group of friends, Kenzie and Tori were the same way, including me when they went shopping in Erie or picking me up so we could go to a football or basketball game together.
I’ve never had to put myself out there in any way. In this way.
Not sure I’m going to make it a habit after this.
The waiting, the possibility of being rejected, is terrifying.
But when she speaks, it’s not to send me on my way. And it’s not to gleefully, gratefully accept my invitation, which was sort of how I’d pictured this whole thing going.
“Is this a joke?”
I frown at her. “What?”
“A joke? Or a prank? You invite me to a party where you and your friends get the hottest guy in school to flirt with me. He’ll talk me into going into a dark bedroom with him, tell me how much he likes me, and just when I’m tipping my head up, eyes closed, for our first kiss, the lights will turn on and we’ll be surrounded by people who pour pig blood over my head.”
Pig blood?
I glance at Sam but he’s looking at his phone, giving no indication he can hear our conversation.
Our very weird conversation.
“Wow,” I say. “That was oddly specific. What kind of lives do you people live down there in the South?”
She blushes. “I read a lot. And watch a lot of movies.”
“I guess. But you’ve got it wrong. For one thing, the people at the party aren’t my friends. For another, the hottest guy in school would never set you up that way.” Sam holds that title and he’s way too decent for anything like that. “And honestly, I can’t imagine anyone there going through all that trouble to do something so mean. And pig blood? Forget it. Look, there’s no joke or prank. I just thought maybe you’d like to go with me.”
“If they’re not your friends, why are you and your boyfriend going to the party?”
And wouldn’t that take all night to explain?
“They’re Sam’s friends. And he’s not my boyfriend.”
Words I’ve said hundreds of times over the years. But this is the first time they give me a pang. But not the first time I’ve wished things could be different.
Whitney is looking at me like I’m ten pounds of crazy in a five-pound bag. “You’re going to a party with people who aren’t your friends with a boy who is not your boyfriend?”
Well, when she puts it like it, it does sound a bit…off.
“That’s the plan.”
“You,” Whitney tells me, “are a very confusing person.”
“I’m trying to be nice, here,” I say, even as part of me thinks that if I was really being nice, I wouldn’t have to point that out. Then again, nice is overrated. Dangerous.
And a good way to get hurt.
But I’m not mean, either. And I want desperately to prove it.
“Look, I saw you sitting here and I felt bad for you. If you don’t want to go, just say so.”
To my surprise, her shoulders straighten. Seems little Miss Southern Sunshine has some pride. And a backbone. I can’t help but admire both.
“This is a pity invite?” she asks, her accent thicker in her affront.
“You are spending Friday night at home.”
No sense telling her that until Sam showed up, I was in the same situation. Had been in that same situation every weekend for almost a year.
Except Whitney’s dark trailer and empty driveway tell me she’s alone. At least my night came with Devyn, Taylor and Cinderella’s mice friends.
“And I’m going to a party,” I continue, “with people who aren’t my friends with a boy who is not my boyfriend.”
“Ah.” She links her hands together at her waist, a wise and sage Southern belle in a long, floral skirt and ruffled sleeveless top. “I’m a buffer.”
“That’s also part of it. But the main reason I came over here, is because I know what it’s like.”
“What what’s like?”
“What it’s like to be alone.”
To be lonely.
Once again she studies me but this time it’s thoughtful. Knowing. And I can’t help but think that, in that moment, something shifts between us. We understand each other.
I may not be nice, but I can be kind.
She may be sweet, but she’s also strong.
Don’t judge a book by its cover and all that.
Another of those lessons learned.
“I’d love to go,” she finally says. “Thank you so much for inviting me. I’ll just run inside and leave my mom a note. Will I need a sweater?”