I pulled into his driveway and put the car in park, expecting him to get out and run for it while he was at least partly dry. But he just looked at me across the car, through the rain that was pouring down into my cupholders.
“What were you thinking about?” he asked, his expression serious and searching. “You haven’t been talking to me this whole week. What was it?”
“Nothing,” I said, looking away from him. “I told you, I’m sorry. You should go inside, you’re getting soaked—”
“I don’t care,” he said, leaning forward. “Tell me what it was.”
“Nothing,” I said again, trying to brush this off, trying to go back to something that felt more like solid ground. I reached for the game we’d been playing all summer, the phrase I knew by heart. “You know, in an well-ordered universe . . .” But I looked at him, at the rain running down his face, his white tuxedo shirt getting soaked, and realized I couldn’t finish it this time.
Or maybe I could, because I leaned forward, into the rain, and kissed him.
He kissed me back. It lasted just a moment, but he kissed me back, right away, without hesitation, as though we’d always been doing it.
But then he pulled away and looked at me. We were both leaning forward, which was ridiculous, since that meant we were directly underneath where the water was coming into the car.
I looked back at him through the rain that was pouring down between us and took a breath to try and say something, when he leaned forward, cupping my cheek with his hand, and kissed me again.
And it was a kiss that felt like it could stop time. The rain was falling on us, but I didn’t even feel or notice or care about it. We were kissing like it was a long-forgotten language that we’d once been fluent in and were finding again, kissing like it was the only thing either of us had wanted to do for a long, long time, kissing with the urgency of the rain that was pounding down all around us and onto the hood of the car. His hands were tangled in my hair, then touching my bare back, and I was shivering in a way that didn’t have anything to do with the cold. His face was wet as I ran my hands under his jaw and over his cheeks, as I pulled him closer to me, feeling my heart beating against his, feeling that despite the rain, despite everything, I could have happily stayed like that forever.
Until, abruptly, Frank stopped.
He broke away and dropped his hands from my hair. He sat back heavily against the side of the car. “Oh my god,” he said quietly.
I sat back as well, trying to catch my breath, which was coming shallowly. “Frank . . . ,” I started, even though I didn’t have anything to follow this.
“Don’t,” he said quickly. He looked over at me, and I could see how unhappy he suddenly looked—because of me. I had done this. Reality came crashing down on me in a horrible wave. He had a girlfriend. He had a very serious girlfriend and I knew it and I had gone ahead and kissed him anyway. I suddenly felt sick, and looked down at my hands, which were shaking.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, hearing how scratchy my voice sounded. “I shouldn’t have—”
“I have to go,” he said. “I—” He looked over at me, but nothing followed this. After a moment, he opened the door and got out, closing it hard behind him and walking up the steps to his house, not running, his shoulders hunched, just letting the rain beat down over him. I waited until I saw that he had gone inside. And then I waited a moment more, to make sure he wasn’t going to come back out and somehow make things okay again.
When it was clear that wasn’t going to happen, I put the car in gear and headed home.
And when I started to cry as I pulled into my driveway, it was coming down hard enough that I could pretend that it was only the rain hitting my face, and not the fact that I’d just lost another friend.
“Em?” my mother knocked on the doorframe and stuck her head into my room, her expression worried. “You okay, hon?”
I looked up from the floor, where, in an effort to try and deny the fact that everything in my life was falling apart, I’d been cleaning out my closet.
The morning after the kiss, I’d texted Frank, but had gotten no response. I’d spent the day staring at my phone, waiting to hear from him, glad for once that Paradise was totally deserted, since I would have been useless to anyone who wanted ice cream. I’d finally run out of willpower that night and had called him, but it had gone right to his voice mail. I still hadn’t heard from him the next day, and I finally told Beckett to hide my phone somewhere high so I’d stop staring at it. On the third day, trying to pretend I wasn’t stalking him, just getting some exercise, I’d walked past his house, and saw that his truck was gone. I figured maybe he was at work, but it was still gone at night when I drove past. It was that night, when I’d begun to think I really was never going to hear from him again, that I got a text.
Hey, can’t talk right now.
Sorting through things. More soon.
As someone who had been raised by two playwrights, I understood subtext. And this text, coupled with the fact I hadn’t heard from him in three days, meant Frank was brushing me off, acting like I was a stranger. He clearly wanted to forget what had happened, and act like the kiss had never taken place—as though that would make it go away.
I’d been dodging Dawn’s calls, not wanting to tell her what happened until I spoke to Frank. But since I no longer felt like I owed him anything, the next day, when Dawn called, I picked up.
“Oh my god,” she said, before I even said hello, her voice high and excited. “I’m so glad you’re finally around! Have you been sick or something?”
“Well—” I started, but she was already continuing on.
“I have a date tonight! With Matthew! He asked me yesterday. We’re going to the movies, isn’t that great?”
“Yes,” I said, feeling myself smile for the first time in days, beyond glad that Collins had taken my advice. “That’s fantastic.”
“So you have to help me figure out what to wear,” she said. “But maybe later tonight? I’m at work now anyway, and it’ll help to be in front of my closet.” She took what sounded like a much-needed breath. “What’s up with you? Are you okay?”
“Frank and I kissed,” I blurted out. I knew I wouldn’t be able to make small talk about anything else with that on my mind, since it was pretty much the only thing I had thought about for the last three days. “I kissed him,” I admitted. There was just silence on Dawn’s end, and I went on, in a rush, “And now I don’t know what’s going on. He texted me back, but it doesn’t seem like he really wants to talk to me. And I just want things to go back to how they were. . . .” Even as I said this, I knew it wasn’t true. I didn’t really want that at all. But I would have preferred that over whatever we were doing now.
“Emily,” Dawn said, and her voice was colder than I had ever heard it. “He has a girlfriend.”
I blinked, a little startled by Dawn’s change of tone. “I know,” I said slowly. “And I feel terrible about this. I—”
“Do you?” she asked. “Because you knew he had a girlfriend when you went ahead and kissed him, didn’t you?”
“Dawn,” I said, trying to regroup. I had actually hoped to talk to her about this, to get her take on things, and instead, it felt like I was being attacked. “I—”
“Did you honestly think I would be on board with this?” she asked, her voice rising. “After what Mandy did to me? After what Bryan did?”
I closed my eyes for just a second and rested the phone against my head. “No,” I said. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know what to do, and—”
“Look, I can’t really talk right now,” she said, her voice clipped and cold. “I’m at work.”