THIRTEEN
WREN
“WREN, YOU SHOULD HAVE STAYED,” JAZZ SAID, bringing her mug to her lips.
Our hot party personas had quickly returned to their former state—the two of us in flannel jammies sipping hot chocolate with a half-eaten package of double-chocolate Milanos between us on my bedroom floor.
“In my movie Grayson would be outside right now, throwing a snowball at this window to get my attention,” I said, peeking out my bedroom curtain at the sound of a car passing. Two red taillights pierced the falling snow as they disappeared down the street. I let the curtain drop.
“And you’d race downstairs . . .” Jazz continued.
“. . . and throw my arms around him, and he’d take my face in his hands, and we’d have one of those movie kisses that make you shift in your seat just imagining what it would feel like,” I said, thunking back down on the floor next to her.
“‘Since the invention of the kiss, there have only been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind,’” Jazz said, tilting back her head, eyes closed, smiling. “The Princess Bride. I bet your kiss with Grayson would be more epic than that.”
I sighed. “Yeah, well. I got nothing, not exactly the après-party debrief Mads was hoping for.”
We sat silent, the party ghosts of what might have been dancing around us. The night had started with such . . . promise.
“We’ll call her tomorrow,” I said. “Maybe the Darby details will be enough.”
“How I wish I could unhear that,” Jazz said.
“You really can’t tell me?”
“Nope. What I don’t get is why she told me. Maybe because she was drunk . . . no, wait, schnockered . . . off her ass and wanted to shock the science geek. But it’s the way she said it, like she could have been telling me how she ordered her sandwich at Subway.”
“Sandwich?” Maybe some things were better left to my imagination.
“Do guys really want a girl like that?”
“I don’t think so,” I answered, wrestling a Milano out of the bag. “At least not all the time, I guess.” With my track record, I had no business offering advice.
“Yeah, great, but sometimes they do. I’m not like that, Wren. I don’t want to be like that,” she said, leaning on the edge of my bed, her long, dark hair fanning out against the flowered comforter. “And then the whole king’s cup thing . . . I didn’t get it. They called me out for not drinking when I didn’t even know I was supposed to be having one. Logan took the drink for me.”
“Well, that sounds kind of sweet.”
“You’d think after watching all these romance movies I’d have some clue how to talk to a cute guy, but I was completely dumb about it. I couldn’t think of one thing to say, and even if I had it was so freakin’ loud. How could anyone hear anything? I wanted to make Maddie proud of me tonight. Dare to be great . . .”
“Jazz, it’s a stupid drinking game.”
“I know, but . . . Logan was cute. Nice. And I was so . . . pathetic around him.”
“Pathetic? There’s no way anyone would use that word about you. Jazz, you have such a clear vision of what you want out of life, and you’re running a freakin’ half marathon, which is about the furthest thing from pathetic I could think of. You blow me away. As corny as it sounds, some guy, someday, will appreciate that. And it won’t involve king’s cup.”
“Well, you’re my friend. You have to say that . . . thanks. But before that elusive perfect boy arrives, I’ll be dateless for prom.”
“You and me both,” I said.
“What are you talking about? You have Grayson,” she said, jabbing me in the shoulder.
“Have? Yeah, right.”
“Wren, seriously, Grayson is into you. Why can’t you see that?”
“He introduced me to someone as his friend—more specifically ‘not my girl, just a friend.’ What does that sound like to you?”
“Really?” she asked, sitting up straight. “That’s . . . weird. He does not act like he wants to be just friends.”
“Well, that’s what he said. Maybe it was the party. One-on-one we’re great, but being around all those people like Ava . . . it just didn’t feel right.”
“You’d better watch out for her,” Jazz said.
“Why?”
“She was next to me during the king’s cup game and kept grilling me about what we were doing there and if you and Grayson had a thing. Her words, not mine. She’s morbidly curious about you guys. Seriously, sort of creepy.”
“That’s what I mean—like even though everyone is there having a good time, getting along to each other’s faces—all this other unspoken stuff is going on,” I said, thinking about the way Luke Dobson had acted around me.
Jazz stood up and tightened the drawstring on her pj bottoms. “If I don’t stop eating these cookies, I’ll be dragging my ass on my long run,” she said, before leaving to go to the bathroom.
I got up and peeked out the window again. Steady snowfall covered the street in a blanket of white. Was Grayson still at the party? I didn’t want to imagine him there, playing the drums, smiling at someone else. Maybe one little text to let him know I was thinking of him wouldn’t hurt.
I grabbed my cell off my nightstand, punched in a text, and pressed Send before I could change my mind.
The text had been simple.
Hey. Sorry I had to leave.
A friendly gesture to make sure Gray and I were “okay,” as he’d said.
I waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
Complete. Radio. Silence.
Not that I expected him to drive over to my house to profess his . . . intense like and shower me with a dozen roses. But I expected . . . something.
And the expecting something sucked more than the party itself, because Grayson Barrett was the most unexpected something to come along in my semester of discontent. It was never about looking for him, it just . . . was. So I hated the feeling of twisted anticipation. I kept checking my phone and searching for him after school, hoping to see him leaning on the Chrysler like he had been for the last few weeks.
Nothing.
Both Jazz and Maddie knew enough not to bring it up anymore. We’d exhausted all the party talk by Tuesday. So by Wednesday, at least outwardly, life was back to normal. I thought of texting Grayson again, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. There was a huge wedding booked at the Camelot for Friday, so I knew he’d be working, and I supposed it wouldn’t be out of line to send a “Hey, are you working Friday?” text. So I did.
Crickets.
Which was worse. I tried to reason it away. Maybe he’d lost his phone. Maybe the battery was dead . . . for four days. Maybe he was busy with his dad, or school, or his life in general. But there was no reason for him not to text me. And while I went through the school day, absorbing most of what was taught, having lunch with Mads and Jazz and not bringing up the G-word at all, there was still that niggling little part of my brain analyzing the details to death.
The very last person I expected to discuss Grayson with was Ava.
Ava strolled up to me in Lit, a thick haze of flowery perfume following her. She wore her green blazer with the sleeves pushed to three-quarters, her cuffs peeking out the bottoms, making the Sacred Heart uniform as trendy as anything you’d see in a Teen Vogue fashion spread. She perched on the desk adjacent to mine playing with the silver heart that hung from her necklace as she spoke.
“Could you meet in Mrs. Fiore’s office for lunch, Wren? We have to talk about the Spirit Club Christmas project.”