Right now I feel hopeful.
“Look, about Friday night,” he says with a laugh. It seems harmless, so I smile back. Maybe this is a joke we’re going to share for a long time. Maybe we can recover from Friday and be friends, or—
“I would really appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone what happened,” he says, almost urgently.
I feel nothing. Everything I thought I felt vanishes, and all my brain leaves me is a stupid look on my face.
“What?”
Adam runs a hand through his blond waves and grimaces. “It’s nothing personal. It’s just—you know, my parents—and I had too much to drink—”
I interrupt him. “What do your parents have to do with anything?”
His eyes flit across mine, begging me to let him off the hook. He doesn’t want to say it out loud. “You’re not the kind of girl I usually go out with.”
“What does that mean?” I’m shaking.
“I don’t usually date Asian girls, that’s all,” he says finally.
I blink and my eyes go blurry.
“I don’t have anything against girls like you,” he insists, “but my parents, they wouldn’t understand. This is kind of a small town, you know?”
WHAT I WANT TO SAY:
“So you want me to lie about my first kiss because your parents are racist?”
WHAT I ACTUALLY SAY:
“You were the one who kissed me.”
My throat tightens. My face burns. It’s not that I wanted our kiss to mean anything—I’m just not sure I’m comfortable with it being erased. I’m not comfortable being erased.
Adam shrugs, his jaw clenched. “I was drunk. It didn’t mean anything.”
I don’t know exactly why I’m so mad. I mean, I know why, but I don’t know which reason makes me the angriest. I don’t know if I’m furious that I wasted my first kiss on a smoking racist, or if I’m enraged that he won’t apologize, or if I’m mad that it meant so little to him.
Because it didn’t mean a thing to me. It was the worst first kiss in the history of first kisses. But I guess I was going to be okay with that as long as he cared a little bit.
“So.” He waits, looking at me with a crazed smirk. “Are we cool?”
I wait a long time before I answer. Not to punish him, but because I can barely breathe. Finally, when my heart slows and I can feel oxygen fill my nose, I show him my teeth.
“We’re cool.”
He smiles wider. “Thanks, Kelly.”
When he walks away, I swallow the lump in my throat that contains the last bit of emotion I had toward Friday night and Adam, and I push it all away.
? ? ?
I draw a boy kissing a girl and the girl shattering into a billion pieces.
CHAPTER EIGHT
All right, spill,” Emery says, leaning toward me like she’s waiting for me to tell her something important.
I tap my pencil against the blank page of my sketchbook. Mr. Miller is grading papers at his desk. There’s not enough time left in the year to get anything in the kiln, so those of us who bothered to show up to ceramics at all have been left to our own devices.
“What do you mean?” I ask quietly, my voice full of shame because I hate what happened on Friday and I hate what Adam said to me today.
“You were being weird at lunch—weirder than usual,” Emery points out, smiling. “So, what’s up?”
I don’t want to tell her about Adam, and not because he told me not to. I don’t want to tell her because saying it out loud—forming the actual words of what happened—is humiliating.
Besides, if I tell her about Adam, I’ll have to explain why I didn’t stop him—why I froze up and couldn’t move.
I can’t tell her that. I can’t tell anybody that.
So I tell her about Jamie instead, because it’s a good deflector. Besides, I feel like I’ve waited long enough—if I leave my thoughts in a corner any longer, I might start to forget them. And forgetting about Jamie is the last thing I want to do.
Emery squeals giddily. “Why didn’t you tell me he was there? I would’ve totally been your wingman. I can’t believe he offered to drive you home. How long is he in town for? I hope you got his number or something.”
“It wasn’t like that. I think that other girl might have been his girlfriend.”
“He can’t have a girlfriend. Doesn’t he know you’ve been in love with him for more than a decade?”
My face breaks into a smile, and I bury my head into my folded arms. The wooden table still smells like clay. “You’re going to make me more nervous than I already am.” I lift my head back up so my voice isn’t so muffled. “It’s been years. He doesn’t see me like that. Not anymore.”
Emery frowns. “Honestly, you don’t understand how this works. People don’t insist on driving random people around for no reason.”
I pin my eyes to the blank page. “I would. I mean, if someone needed a ride home, you know? What are you supposed to say?”
“You say, ‘No. Go call a taxi like a normal person because I don’t know you.’ Some variation of that.” She shrugs.
“Saying those words would cause me actual, physical pain.”
“You need to work on that.”
“I know.” I sigh.
Emery nods. “I bet he’ll try to get in touch with you. You’ll see.”
I twist my face. “I don’t know. I think you’re reading too much into it. He was just being nice.”
“Why do you find it so hard to believe that guys might find you attractive?” she asks seriously. “You are, Kiko. You’re exotic-looking. People love that.”
The word makes me wince. Exotic. Like Princess Jasmine. It’s how Adam sees me. It’s probably how everyone sees me. Like I don’t belong.
“I don’t want someone to like me because I’m ‘exotic,’?” I say. “It makes it sound like I’m an acquired taste, or something someone tries once in a while.”
“It doesn’t mean anything bad. It just means you’re different,” she says.
“Exactly,” I say.
She narrows her hazel eyes. “Are you trying to tell me you’d rather be mashed potatoes than crème br?lée?”
“I’m saying I don’t want to be the thing that people like once in a while, or because they think it’s unique or exotic.” I don’t want to be kissed by someone who is ashamed about it later because I don’t have blue eyes and blond hair and I might disappoint their parents.
I hesitate, pinching my fingers against my leg nervously. I know it’s Emery—the last person in the world who would probably be mad at me—but I still worry I might’ve upset her. Confidence is a foreign concept to me, and saying how I feel, out loud, is horribly unnatural. It sounds like I’m yelling my feelings.
I don’t want her to think I’m yelling at her, and even if it is completely illogical, I don’t want her to be angry with me.