It’s ridiculous, but the word is like a key turning into a lock. And then impossibly, even though some part of me knew it would happen the moment I saw Pepper walk out of the subway, we lean in and our lips touch and we’re kissing on my couch.
It is awkward, and messy, and perfect. We’re so bad at it, but even in the first few seconds I can feel us getting better, her hand hesitant and then sure as she sets it on my shoulder, our lips giving way to each other’s, this self-conscious, giddy little laugh escaping Pepper and humming in my teeth.
“Wait.”
The laugh is already dissolving out of her face when I pull away, and crap, I don’t know what I’m doing or why I’m doing it now, but I was wrong. I can’t lie to her. I can’t start something that feels this big built on what still feels like a lie. I just didn’t understand how big it was until it was already happening.
“You’re right,” Pepper blurts, a mile ahead of me. “I mean, we’re just — I don’t know. My mom, and the whole thing, and I…”
“No, not — I don’t care about that.”
She looks equal parts panicked and exasperated. “You were the one who said wait.”
“It’s just that there’s something I need to tell you.”
“Oh.”
Her eyes are already starting to dim, and my brain is scrambling for the words I need to recover when, without warning, the front door cracks open and a woman says, “Pepper Marie Evans, what on earth do you think you’re doing?”
Pepper snaps herself away from me so fast, I might have burned her. My back is turned to the front door, but judging from the sheer horror in Pepper’s eyes, I don’t need to fully turn around to know it can only be her mother.
What I’m not expecting to see when I finally turn is my dad walking in right behind her, looking both exasperated and furious. It isn’t until his eyes meet mine that I realize the fury is reserved for none other than me.
“Mom?” Pepper bleats. “How did you — what did you—”
“What, you didn’t think I’d see this plastered all over the internet?” says Pepper’s mom, walking into our apartment without even a beat of hesitation, as if her name is on the lease. She shoves a phone in Pepper’s face, pointedly ignoring me. Pepper tilts the screen so I can see it too — the picture of the two of us with the middle schoolers has already accumulated four hundred retweets, with both the Big League Burger and Girl Cheesing accounts tagged.
I gulp. Literally gulp, like I’m in some bad sitcom, or maybe just a really off-the-wall dream that I’m going to wake up from any moment now. But it only gets weirder from there.
“Ronnie,” says my dad under his breath, “there’s no reason to—”
“I rarely, if ever, have set rules for you, Pepper.” By now she is towering over the both of us, and we’re sitting on the couch utterly paralyzed. “But I told you very specifically to stay away from that boy.”
She says “that boy” as if I’m not even here, but I can’t even let that demoralizing fact wrap around my brain — Pepper and I are both staring at each other, my dad’s “Ronnie” still an open question dangling in the air between us.
“I–I needed to use the oven.” Pepper is redder than I’ve ever seen her, and I can tell it’s every bit on my behalf as it is for hers. “There’s a bake sale tomorrow, and I know you didn’t want me to bake, so—”
“Get your things. We are leaving, and having a very long discussion about the appropriate punishment on the taxi ride home.”
Pepper reaches for her backpack, shoving her phone into it and zipping it up with shaking hands. She looks back at me, her eyes searing with a desperate kind of apology in them. I’m too stunned to react, my mouth hanging open, still buzzing from a kiss that feels like it happened in some other lifetime.
In her panic, Pepper reaches for the half of a Kitchen Sink Macaroon she hadn’t finished yet. Her mom reaches her hand forward and picks it up first, holding it up and scrutinizing it. Out of context, I would have laughed — I’ve never seen a grown woman look so inexplicably furious at a dessert before.
“Figures,” she mutters to herself. Then, for some reason, she turns to my dad. She opens her mouth to say something, and he tilts his head sharply — not quite shaking his head, but making enough of a movement there’s no mistaking its intention.
She lets out whatever breath she was going to use to say something to him, sets a hand on Pepper’s shoulder, and guides her out of the room. Then they’re gone, the apartment door slamming behind them, leaving me and my dad in total silence.
I’m not sure what to say or if I should even speak. The air in the room is so thick, it feels like it’s slowing down time. I glance over at my dad, cautious at first, but he’s not even looking at me. He’s leaning on the kitchen counter and scowling at his knuckles.
“Dad?”
He blinks, looking over at me. I’m expecting some kind of punishment of my own. A Time-Out Booth — level lecture, maybe. Something on par with whatever the hell just happened here.
But he seems so distracted that even when he does get around to the whole disciplining thing, it seems like more of an afterthought than anything else.
“You shouldn’t be bringing a date into this apartment without supervision.”
“It wasn’t…”
Well. It kind of was. But it’s not like Mom didn’t know we were up here. And Grandma Belly is technically home.
But my dad’s already pacing out of the kitchen, heading for his bedroom. He’s not even waiting for me to apologize. And he’s certainly not waiting for me to ask the dozens of questions on the tip of my tongue, chasing Pepper and her mom out the door.
“Sorry,” I say — partially because I am, for Pepper’s sake, and because I want him to stop for a second, so I can figure out what to ask and how to ask it.
My dad just nods.
So that’s it. I’ve gotten away with … whatever it is I got away with, I guess. I’m still puzzling out what exactly that is, but my dad’s Ronnie and Pepper’s mom’s Figures and the absurdly weighted look between the two of them just before they booked it out of here is still rattling around in my head like a pinball in a machine.
And then there’s a thud from the other room, and both my dad and I stop in our tracks, everything else forgotten faster than it takes for us to get to Grandma Belly’s door.
Pepper
Approximately eighteen hours after my kiss with Jack Campbell — my kiss with Jack Campbell—I am sitting at a card table with Pooja in the front entrance of the school behind our veritable army of baked goods, overanalyzing the situation to such an absurd degree, it is now less of a kiss and more of an FBI investigation.
Pooja, however, isn’t having it.
“He likes you. You like him,” says Pooja. “Honestly, it’s old news. Even preteens in Iowa on the Hub realized it before you.”
“But last night…”
“Talk to him.”
“I’ve tried.” It’s a humiliating thing to confess, but Pooja needs context if I’m going to get any advice: “He hasn’t texted back.”
In fact, Jack has all but turned into a ghost. He mysteriously did not show up for homeroom. I only know he’s here today because I saw him in the cafeteria at lunch, but he was way across the room and had slipped into his calc class before I could catch up to him. And now he’s conspicuously absent from the bake sale too — the only reason we even have the baked goods is because Ethan, in a rare moment of actually participating in his dive captain duties, dropped them off at the front office for us.