“True, dat,” I agreed.
She snorted. “Oh my God, you are so white. Listen,” she said, her voice turning serious, “I want to talk to you about them.”
“Nat and Trip?”
“No. The binoculars,” she said impatiently. “Can you come over later?”
“Tonight?”
“Well, that would be most convenient,” she said. “But if you’re booked, maybe next week or a month from now . . .”
“No, tonight’s fine. When?”
“I have to go to the Hull with Trip. Can I text you when I’m home?”
I nodded mutely.
“Great. Thanks.” She put her hand back on my arm and squeezed gently before walking off. A few steps away, Sarah turned back. “And, Ri?”
Her voice was husky, and I could still feel the warmth and tingle where her hand had been. “Yeah?”
“Bring them with you. The binoculars,” she added. “Not Nat and Trip.” Then she jogged away, down the hall.
CHAPTER 19
I SAT IN THE LIVING room, willing her to text me. It was past eight, and I’d been there for over an hour, fiddling with the binoculars, wanting badly to look into them again. Just in case I’d see what I did that first time. Get to feel her bare skin.
I’m sure it seems pathetic, my puppy-dog crush on my best friend’s girl.
The thing was, she wasn’t his girlfriend when it started, sometime between Kelly Lipman’s party and when Trip asked her out last year.
At first she was just this girl I was kind of amazed by. She’d smile at me in the hall sometimes, and I’d smile too, feeling a twelve-year-old’s embarrassment. I wanted to talk to her but had no idea what to say. By ninth grade most of the girls had started wearing makeup, crimson lips and heavy-ringed eyes, but not Sarah. Her face stayed fresh, dark eyes striking against that powdery skin. I realized sometime that year that I liked her, but I was still so consumed with the awfulness of the previous twelve months—my dad dying, shit with my mom, Trip and me hanging out less and less—that doing something about it was the last thing on my mind. It took till the start of junior year for me to finally work up the nerve to ask her out.
“I’ve been thinking about that stupid dance next weekend,” I told Trip one day. We were walking into town ten days before homecoming.
Trip and I had started hanging out again that summer, as randomly as we’d stopped. One June day he’d just showed up at my house like we hadn’t spent the past two years barely speaking. I’d gotten used to it by then—us not being friends—chalking it up to some combination of sports and cool kids who were a lot more fun than the mopey kid with the dead dad. Even if that kid used to be like a brother to him.
I was distant with Trip at first. Not putting too much faith in whether he’d come back the next day or show up when we had plans. But for the most part he did, and as that summer wore on, I remembered what I’d always liked about him, what I’d missed. It felt like a piece of me had come back.
A couple times I thought of asking him about it. Why it was okay to hang out with me now. But why bother? What was the point in acting like a jealous needy girlfriend? Trip was just Trip. Capricious, fearless, self-centered, fun, charismatic, loyal when he wanted to be. Instinctively I knew I either took him as is or not at all. He wasn’t going to change for Riley Larkin.
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that dance too,” Trip said, kicking a pebble that skittered into the gutter. We were going to the library to work on a research project for history. “You know who I think I’m gonna ask?”
“Who?”
“Sarah McKenzie.”
And just like that I lost my chance. Unbelievable. I stared at him, trying to figure out how to fix it. What could I say? She’s mine? I thought of it first? Ridiculous.
“How about you?” Trip asked. “What are you thinking?”
I’m thinking how much I wish we hadn’t started this conversation. And that I’d had the guts to ask her out last week or the week before or two years ago when I realized how into her I was. I’m thinking how irritating it is that you always one-up me like this. Even when you’re not trying and probably don’t mean to.
“I’m thinking I’m going to skip it,” I told him. “It’ll probably be lame anyhow.”
“Yeah,” Trip agreed.
And the rest, as they say, is history. Trip went with her, I stayed home, and from then on I got to watch the two of them—my sometimes best friend and the girl I’d been crushing on—fall in love. Un-fucking-believable.
Around nine I finally heard from Sarah. Home, she texted. Sorry it’s so late.
No prob, I wrote back right away. Want to talk?
Yes, can u come over?
Be there 15 min. It’d be more like twenty-five, I thought, pulling on my hat and gloves and steering my bike out to the road. But if I pedaled hard, I might make it sooner.
The air whipping past was bitter, but at least I wouldn’t be a disgusting sweatball by the time I got there.
I made it in just over twenty minutes, pausing to catch my breath and tame my hair before ringing the bell, my inner fourteen-year-old crowing, Alone with Sarah! Just her and me!
The door opened, and Sarah smiled, making me feel every bit like a fourteen-year-old who had no idea what to say or do with girls, instead of the . . . well, seventeen-year-old who had no idea what to do with girls. She ushered me in, glancing up and down the block.
“Where’s your car?”
“Right there.” I pointed to my mountain bike lying in the shadows beside her house.
“You biked here?” She shook her head. “Oh God, Riley. I’m such an idiot. I’m sorry. I didn’t even stop to think—”
“Sarah,” I stopped her. She looked so upset that I felt bad. “It’s no big deal. Really. It’s what? Two miles? This is Vermont; we’re outdoorsy here.”
Sarah smiled gratefully, then closed us into the small, warm living room. I took in the white walls hung with old posters and tie-dyed tapestries, the mismatched sofas and blankets, and scattered everywhere—plants. Lots of them, their greenness surprising after weeks of seeing only the browns of dead grass and mud. The walls between the plants were lined with books, and boxes of more books were piled haphazardly beside half-filled shelves, like Sarah’s parents were still unpacking.
“You guys going somewhere?” I asked.