I’ve never been on a date. Chris and I could never go anywhere for fear of what people would say if they saw us together, and Klein and I couldn’t drive at the time, so we met up at parties and made out in empty bedrooms. The closest we came to an actual date was winter formal freshman year, but we went in a group, so it didn’t feel like one.
“Who’s in there with you?” Hosea asks, leaning against the fence.
“Klein.” My hands are starting to sweat, despite the cold. I tuck my wallet under my arm.
“No shit?” He looks as surprised as I was.
I shrug. “Desperate times, I guess.”
“Really fucking desperate,” he mumbles.
“He’s actually been on his best behavior,” I say with a straight face.
Hosea lifts an eyebrow enough to make me laugh.
“Well, for Klein.” A breeze whips through the field, cold and unexpectedly sharp, and I wrap my arms around myself, cup my elbows in my hands.
“What are you up to when you’re done here?”
What? Is he trying to hang out with me or something? I haven’t seen her tonight, but if Ellie walked up right now and saw us talking alone—again—her head might actually explode.
“I’ll go find Phil, I guess.” Phil and I had the first shifts at our booths because no seniors had been assigned to them, but Sara-Kate’s hour at the face-painting station doesn’t start until ours ends. “Are you sticking around?”
“Yeah, I need to meet up with a few more people.” He pauses, threads a couple of his fingers through a diamond-shaped space in the chain-link fence. “And I have to grab a couple of drinks for me and Ellie.”
Of course she’s here. I paste on a smile.
“I should get back to my popcorn duties,” I say, half turning toward the brick building. “We’ve been pretty busy all night. Fake butter is in high demand, you know.”
He’s standing at the vending machine next to mine now, feeding money into the slot. “What do you want?”
“I can get my own.”
“I didn’t ask if you could get your own, I asked what you wanted,” he says evenly as he looks over his shoulder to make eye contact.
“Diet Coke,” I say quietly. Like that first day I saw him in ballet, I want to look away first, but this time I don’t. I wait for him to turn back to the machine and then I let out a breath. He makes me nervous. It’s exhilarating, in a what-happens-next sort of way, but I’m nervous all the same.
He pushes the button and seconds later, a can comes tumbling noisily down the machine into the bottom tray.
When he hands me the can, our fingers brush against each other and I tremble. I can’t tell if he noticed, but I snatch my hand away because I’m embarrassed.
“Thanks. Now I owe you a clove and a soda.” I smile at him as I shift my weight on the concrete square. “In case you’re worried I’m not keeping track.”
I almost drop the cool metal can as his soft eyes land on me and he says, “I think I know where to find you, Theo.”
The way he says my name, the way his voice dips a little lower, sends heat flaming across my chest and up my neck and over both sides of my face. I want to take his hand in mine, hold it against my skin, ask him if it’s normal to react to someone like this.
I’m not brave enough for that, though. “I guess you do,” I finally say.
We share a long look before I head back to the concessions building, arriving lighter than when I left and a thousand times more confused. Klein looks up from his phone as I come through the door and at first, I’m worried he’s mad that I was outside so long, but there’s nobody at the window. He’s probably just sending dirty texts to Trisha anyway.
“Mixer for your drink?” He slips the phone back into his pocket.
“I think I’m good.” I look down at the soda in my hand. I kind of don’t want to open it now. It’s stupid, but part of me wants to save it because Hosea bought it for me.
“Hey, Legs?” He does this little waving motion with his hand, even though I’m two feet away from him.
“Hey, Klein?” I settle onto the stool in front of the window, place the soda can on the counter next to me.
“Why do you think we never got together?”
His voice is so subdued, I can barely hear him over the sounds of the carnival outside. The shrieks and subsequent splashes from the dunking booth; the chatter surrounding a group of freshman cheerleaders passing by in a cloud of vanilla body spray and cigarette smoke; a guy from my math class standing a few feet away from the service window, telling someone they can go fuck themselves.
This night is becoming more bizarre by the second. I would think Klein was screwing around if he didn’t look so vulnerable. Right now, he’s somewhat sober and serious and my God, are we really going to have this conversation?
“I don’t know . . . You started hanging out with Trisha.” My eyes dart to the window. Quickly, as if she’s going to bounce over at the sound of her name.
“Because you didn’t seem into it.” He scratches at the back of his head with the heel of his hand. “I was into you, Legs,” he says, without quite looking at me.
“I had a lot going on back then . . . I was kind of a mess.”
A total mess. I was eating again—Juniper Hill had taken care of that—but food wasn’t the same for me. I ate because people were instructed to watch my habits: teachers, counselors, Marisa, Phil. I ate because I loved ballet and never wanted it taken from me again. But I mostly ate because my parents might have resorted to something more drastic if I didn’t.
Besides that, I was adjusting to a new school, new people, a new routine—all without Donovan. And it had been two years since Chris had left without saying goodbye. Klein was a diversion—a sly, smooth-talking diversion who looked like he’d been created in a factory of beautiful people and came with instant popularity—but I knew we were short-term from the start.
“I was messed up, too,” he says with a shrug, like, hey, everyone was messed up back then.
You still are.
“I guess we just weren’t right for each other,” I say, hoping he’ll drop it.
I don’t know how to answer his question any more than I know why there is something between Hosea and me. Klein was good for a while and then he wasn’t. And it was pathetic to tell someone that you were still hurting from a breakup that had happened two years before.
Klein swallows hard, looks at me harder. “What about now?”
I shake my head a little as I play with the clasp on my wallet, sitting snug against the can of soda. “Dude, you’re with Trisha.”
“What if I wasn’t?” His gaze is so intense, I have to turn away.
“I don’t know, Klein.”
What I do know is that I never felt an ounce for him of what I feel for Hosea, and the most physical contact Hosea and I have shared is accidental finger brushes. I knew everything about Klein before I ever spoke to him, but with Hosea, there’s something new to learn each time we talk. A look or a laugh that surprises me. A story I never would have expected from him.
“Well, when I give Trisha the boot, you’ll be the first person I call, Legs,” he says, his eyes flickering over me from top to bottom and back again.
Luckily our second rush of the evening starts up just then. A gaggle of freshmen are making their way across the field and form a line in front of the window. Total lifesaver.
Klein doesn’t get another word in until Mrs. McCarty is back to refill the popcorn maker and the two sophomores taking over for us have arrived. I walk out first and Klein follows as I trek across the field to rescue Phil. The earthy, pungent scent of wood smoke drifts over from the other side of the field; Principal Detz is manning a portable fire pit so people can roast marshmallows for s’mores.