I’d miss him, of course, but I could probably use the time to focus on me. I needed some space to sort out everything happening to my body, everything I was feeling for no clear reason.
I slipped in through his back door and made my way along the familiar path up to his bedroom. Nate’s back was to me as he leaned over his keyboard, typing, and I paused in the doorway, admiring him—his perfectly tousled chestnut brown hair, the summer freckles that sprinkled over his warm golden skin, the way the sleeves of his old soccer jersey stretched over his strong, athletic arms.
No matter how long we’d been dating, I still couldn’t always believe that Nate Landis was actually my boyfriend—probably because I’d had a crush on him since the very first day of kindergarten, a crush that I certainly never thought would come to anything at all. I was the nerdy, chronic overachiever—though nerdy in an endearing way, I hoped—the highest ranked in our grade and likely valedictorian next year. But Nate was the wonder boy of both academics and athletics: straight As, captain of the basketball and soccer teams, president of our graduating class, head of a community service group that he had started up during our freshmen year.
Somehow, regardless of any social imbalances, we had become the power couple who everyone assumed would last long past high school and college. I had visions of us going off to some Ivy League school together, maybe Princeton or Brown, and of the late nights studying and having sleepovers in each other’s dorm rooms, traveling for our semester abroad in the same city, making new friends who we’d have for the rest of our lives. After graduation, Nate would go to law school, and I’d follow him there. I wanted to be a writer—or an English teacher to start maybe, with novels later down the road—and teachers and writers could live anywhere. Nate and I didn’t talk about the plan much, but that was because we didn’t have to. That was just how it would be.
I stepped lightly across the room and slid my arms around his waist. “Hey,” I whispered, hugging him closer as he jumped, startled. “Sorry for being so spacey lately. It’s just thinking about our last year, college, all the applications . . . But I’m fine. Really.”
It felt like a lie as soon as it was out of my mouth. But at least Nate seemed satisfied, squeezing me closer to him and pressing us together, hip to hip. And I was fine. Probably. Or at least I felt fine then, with his arms around me, and that was what mattered.
He bent down to kiss me, easing me backward until I was on his bed, my legs wrapping around him. His hair tickled my forehead as he dangled over me, and I closed my eyes, letting the total happiness of the moment fill me.
No, I definitely had nothing to worry about.
Nate pulled back, a lazy grin on his face. “Your nose is bright red, Meen. I warned you.” He leaned down and kissed the tip of my nose, a soft brush of his lips that then traced up to my forehead, my hairline. “But luckily, it’s adorable on you.”
The front door slammed, and his mom called from below. Nate sighed, pushing himself up. Our kisses usually ended with him sighing these days—sighing because that was all there ever really was. We’d fooled around a little, of course, but we’d still never even rounded third base. I had been scared to take it any further, scared that if we did, we’d both let it go all the way. Nate didn’t pressure me, but I wasn’t naive. I knew that he’d be more than okay with it if I decided I was ready. But I’d always wanted to wait until at least college to lose my virginity, until I was living on my own and old enough to make the right decision. Now that we had been together for almost two years, though, I was starting to reconsider. I was starting to think that maybe, just maybe, it could happen soon. That I actually wanted it to happen soon, and waiting for college was a pointless and outdated notion. An arbitrary moral rule created by a much younger, more innocent Mina. But I wasn’t ready to tell Nate, not yet, just in case I changed my mind again.
He tugged me up and gave me another quick peck on the nose. “I guess I should finish packing anyway. You shouldn’t distract me like that, Meen. I have important things to do.”
I laughed. No one could distract Nate. Not really. He was too determined for anything to throw him off track. Ever.
But that didn’t mean I would stop trying.
• • •
I woke up at Hannah’s house the next morning to the smell of bacon and eggs wafting up from the kitchen—and the immediate urge to retch out my insides all over the side of her bed. I was, very unfortunately for all of us, squeezed between Hannah and Izzy, and therefore prevented from any easy access to the floor, let alone a trash can or a toilet. And so I was forced to take the only possible option available—I threw up on myself. All down the front of Hannah’s old YMCA T-shirt that I’d borrowed the night before, and all over her bright pastel paisley comforter.
“Jesus, what the hell, Meen?” Izzy said, throwing the covers back and launching herself off the bed. Her already very large, very pronounced brown eyes were wide open and staring at me with horror. “That’s so completely nasty. Why in God’s name didn’t you go to the bathroom?”
“She’s obviously sick and couldn’t help it, Iz. Don’t yell at her,” Hannah chimed in from my other side.
I ignored them both and proceeded to puke, once again, right onto my lap.
“Izzy! Get the trash can! Don’t just stand there staring at her,” Hannah said, her instinctive need to nurture kicking in. She grabbed a wad of tissues from her nightstand and started dabbing at my chin and lips.
Izzy sighed dramatically as she pushed back the hood of her Green Hill High basketball sweatshirt and pulled her stick-straight black hair up into a ponytail. She picked up the trash can as commanded and held it out to me, arms stretched, refusing to get any closer.
Hannah leaned over me and grabbed the trash can with one hand, keeping the other on my shoulders as she rubbed gentle, calming little circles.
“What’s wrong, sweetie?” Hannah asked. “Did you just wake up feeling sick?”
I wanted to lie. I’d planned on lying, actually, the words all set to pop from my lips, when suddenly tears burst out and made my decision for me. Not just tears, but the type of heavy, racking sobs that make any sort of intelligible speech impossible.
“Mina? What is it?” Izzy asked, her voice softening, the tough girl from a minute before immediately gone and replaced with the best friend I’d known since second grade. She balled the infected comforter into a heap at the bottom of the bed and sat down next to me.
It was a few minutes before I could slow down, take some deep breaths, and pull myself together, and in the meantime Hannah and Izzy patted my back, pushed my knot of hair behind my ears, and covered me in a fresh, untainted blanket.
“What’s going on, Meen? Talk to us,” Izzy said, staring straight into my eyes with her trademark blend of concern and impatience.
“I don’t know,” I whispered, shifting my gaze down to my pale hands, still clasped and shaking around my knees. I focused on the dull, rhythmic hum of the air conditioner, whirring from Hannah’s window as it blasted frigid puffs of air into the room. I pulled the blanket tighter around my shoulders, though it wasn’t just the cold that was making my body tremble.
“Well, you obviously know something to be crying like that. Right?”
“Isabelle, stop pushing her,” Hannah said with an unusual edge to her voice that caught me by surprise. “She’ll tell us when she wants to tell us, okay?” I turned to look at Hannah, her soft blue eyes so full of love and worry. She had a stray blonde curl tucked in between her small pink lips, a nervous habit she’d had since the first day I’d met her in preschool.