The New Guy (and Other Senior Year Distractions) Part 6

"And then I got to be Mom!" Mom says. "Which was a huge relief by then."

"That's nice," Alex says, which from someone else might be a dismissal, but I can tell from the warmth of his voice and how he's smiling that he really thinks it is nice, as nice as I know that it is.

"Can we take the dogs into the backyard?" I ask. I don't need permission to go with my own dogs to my own backyard, but I do think they'll take the hint.

"Of course," Darcy says. "We bought a new Frisbee, if you'd like to try it out."

"Yeah," Alex says with a surge of enthusiasm. So we get the new Frisbee and an old tennis ball, and we head to the backyard. Mom and Darcy have stayed inside, and I try not to just stare at Alex. This must be it, though, the moment things really happen. I might be inexperienced, but I feel how my nerves seem to rise up through my skin in Alex's direction.

"We're alone," Alex says, and I stare at him, and he bursts into laughter. "I don't know why I said that like a creep."

"It's okay," I say. "I know you're not a creep."

It's as if now neither one of us knows what to do with this moment. I decide to make the moment mine. I turn a little, and even though we're not standing exactly facing each other, it seems close enough. I gently rest my hand on his side, even though I've never just reached out and touched a boy before. He feels solid and warm and so real beneath my hand. Something in his expression s.h.i.+fts, and while Alex is always smiling, this smile is different. This smile is new, and it's somehow focused right on me.

Peanut barks, and I manage not to yell at him. Alex grabs the Frisbee and races down the length of the backyard before throwing it in my direction. I have no idea where he's gotten the idea that I'm athletically inclined, but I do manage to catch it. The dogs leap around in glee, so I fling the plastic disc toward Alex, but not really, so that Peanut's able to leap up and catch it in his mouth. Alex thinks he can just take the Frisbee back from Peanut, but I don't say anything so I can watch a fifteen-pound dog and a full-grown boy battle it out.

Peanut wins, of course.

We keep playing until the dogs are lying, panting, on the gra.s.s. I'm not sure if I can just pick up again where we were, but then Alex is right next to me.

Then we move at the same time, and though this is only my second kiss since Pete Jablowski, it doesn't matter-every cell in me knows what to do. Everything's in sync, how I have to rise up on my toes just a little, and Alex leans over the tiniest amount. My hands suddenly aren't at my sides but meeting each other around his neck. Alex's have slid around my waist, skimming lines that feel drawn onto me permanently.

And the kissing. The kissing! Our lips have parted, finding new and newer ways to overlap. He's still sugary and salty from the Bacon 182. I'm convinced we're breathing through each other, that we're all the oxygen we could possibly need.

"That was so good," I say once the kissing's ended. And then I try to figure out how to reverse time and pull those words back inside of me. "Oh my G.o.d. I'm sorry."

"Sorry why?" Alex grins down at me. His hands are still on the small of my back, and as long as he keeps making tiny little movements with his fingertips, I'm probably going to release stupider and stupider things from the depths of my brain.

"That was the dorkiest thing I could say."

"You know what I hate?" He leans down and kisses the corner of my mouth. "People who calculate everything that comes out. Who think they're supposed to be a certain way or like a certain thing, and it's all some act. I've had enough of that."

I'm afraid of what other words I might blurt out, so I lean into him and find his mouth with mine. I'm aware it's my third kiss with Alex, fourth overall, but then, so quickly, I lose count. Some of the kisses are brief, like a spark in the darkness, while some go on slow and deep and dizzying.

"Should we go in?" Alex leans his forehead against mine, so we're still close like we're kissing. My lips actually ache. "I don't want your moms to be angry."

The dogs seem to be over their temporary Frisbee-based exhaustion, so we distract ourselves by throwing the tennis ball for them before heading inside. Mom and Darcy are working on a recipe at the kitchen counter, but they pause to share a knowing look.

"We're making biscotti," Mom says.

"You two should go out for lunch," Darcy says. "We have nothing in the house."

I know for a fact that it's not true. We freeze leftovers, and we have sauces and jams preserved in the cabinet, and there is always fresh produce from the farmers' market. My parents are just encouraging me to be alone with a boy.

My parents are amazing.

Even though we could walk to lunch, if I really wanted that, now that we've kissed, I want car time with Alex. We act as we did before, but after our lunch at Taco Spot we pile back into the car and kind of right into each other. Normally, I'd be completely against public displays of affection, but I parked farther away than I needed to for this exact reason.

"You taste like nachos," I tell him, and he cracks up. We're still as close as we were when we were kissing, so I feel his laughter warm into my neck. Once, a few months ago, I was walking a dog around my normal Stray Rescue route and saw a couple kissing in their parked car. I tried imagining wanting to kiss someone so much that the public didn't matter.

And now I don't have to try.

After I get home from dropping Alex off at his house, I'm planning to review all the freshman submissions for the Crest. But Sadie texts what I know is not an innocuous So what's up??, and I find myself typing what's practically an essay about walking dogs and eating doughnuts and meeting my parents, and I save the kissing for the very end of the story. It takes so long that Sadie sends two follow-up texts (TELL ME EVERYTHING and then You've been typing for an hour so maybe you should just CALL ME JULES) in the meanwhile. But I finish the whole thing and hit send, and then I'm holding my phone and thinking about Alex.

Is it too early to text? No, I'm pretty sure once you've kissed someone a bunch of times, you can at least text them. Thanks for walking dogs with me today! feels like a safe start, but I don't have a chance to see how long he'll take to respond, if he responds at all, because Sadie's calling.

"Oh my G.o.d, Jules," she says before I can even say h.e.l.lo.

"Is it surprising?" I ask. "Are you surprised?"

"After seeing how he's been looking at you for this whole week now? No. I just want more details."

"I texted you every detail!" I say.

"I don't care. Tell me everything again."

I can't blame Sadie. This is definitely the only non-dorky exciting thing that's ever happened to me.

"Did you feel like you were kissing in outer s.p.a.ce?" Sadie asks after I repeat the whole story.

"Sadie, I still don't know why you think that means something romantic."

CHAPTER EIGHT.

Alex is at my locker when I get to school on Monday morning, and even though we're in a crowded hallway, we have the briefest kiss. And even though it happens in a flash, my heart still thuds just as heavily as it did on Sat.u.r.day, when we didn't have a time limit or an audience. I think about every overdramatic pop song I've ever heard about pounding hearts, and it turns out they aren't actually overdramatic at all.

As I open my locker, a bright blue slip of paper falls out, and when I lean over to pick it up, I see that this is happening to everyone around me too. TALON IS ALMOST HERE, it says, and it has the same eagle icon as last week's flyers.

"This is so weird," I say, crumpling it up.

"Maybe it's something cool," Alex says, and he does his c.o.c.ked-eyebrow thing again. I want to try for another brief kiss, but already there are so many more people around, and also I'm turning it over in my head how something to do with a boy's eyebrows could make me feel so weak. Another thing from songs that I'm now seeing as total reality. The weakness, that is, not specifically the eyebrows.

"Guys, what is TALON?" Sadie is holding up the slip of paper as she walks over to us. "You know mysteries irritate me."

"Things don't usually stay mysteries for too long," Alex says, and I have the urge to correct him. Lots of mysteries, like Amelia Earhart and Stonehenge and what happened to the pea puree in that episode of Top Chef, have never been solved. But I guess TALON is probably not exactly at that level of mystery or importance.

Sadie smirks in my direction. I notice that the tips of her purple hair are now hot pink. "So, what's new, everyone?"

"Your hair looks cool," Alex tells her.

"Thanks! The great Paige Sheraton wasn't happy, of course."

Alex scrunches up his face in confusion. Even this expression makes me want to grab him and kiss him. "Why would Paige Sheraton care about your hair?"

"She's Sadie's mom," I explain. I want to add that, actually, Paige Sheraton doesn't care about Sadie's hair, but if she shows mild surprise at Sadie's new hue, Sadie takes great offense.

We split up in the directions of our cla.s.ses, and even though I've told Sadie nearly everything on the phone, it's strange to be in person with her and for her to possess all this knowledge.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she asks as we walk into Ms. Cannon's cla.s.sroom. "It's my hair, right? I was trying for this whole ombre thing, but I'm worried it didn't come out like I wanted."

"Your hair looks fine," I say, and then I feel bad because Sadie's probably aiming for better than fine. "I figured you'd tease me about Alex. Sorry."

"TEASE YOU?"

Everyone already seated stares at Sadie, even though they should be used to her volume by now.

"Jules. We're not in middle school. You're falling in love with a dreamy guy. This is awesome, not tease-worthy, you weirdo."

Her volume's still, well, up, which means everyone seated around us swivels to look. No one asks aloud, but it's as if everyone's asking with their eyes, and this is not what I want. I don't even know how real it's going to be. This is new and crazy and dreamlike, and people wake up from dreams or return to sanity or grow tired of new situations. For Alex and me, it could be any of those things. But also, maybe it won't be.

I expected senior year to be different, because of the Crest, and also because, well, senior year is just supposed to be different. And of course I'm already filling out practice applications and outlining my college entrance essays.

But now there's Alex.

And my life, like the lunchroom table, seemed like it was already too full for him, but maybe things that I didn't think had any flexibility actually do. And instead of the jittery sensation that normally accompanies my realization that I might have been wrong about something, I still feel like me.

We work together again at Stray Rescue on Wednesday. After, we hit Donut Friend; and after that, we walk along York past the cl.u.s.ters of shops and restaurants.

"My mom wants to have you over for dinner," Alex tells me. "She just says we have to unpack more first."

"I don't mind if you aren't unpacked," I say.

"Mom does," he says. "Warning, if it's not obvious: My parents aren't as cool as yours. Dad teaches some advanced mathematics thing I don't even understand, and Mom teaches kindergarten."

"I'm sure they're fine," I say. "And you saw mine at their very coolest."

"I guess I feel like mine are still..." He takes a pause. "Trying to make stuff up to me."

I turn to look at him. "What stuff?"

"The whole Chaos 4 All thing..." He shrugs. "It was a weird life."

"Everyone loved you." I try to say it with a smile he can hear. "The world did."

"Our music," he says. "Our one song, which we didn't even write. Not so many people cared about the next one, and by the third single... Most people don't notice that the world isn't revolving around them, but once it feels like it does, it's hard to go back. And there was other stuff, which I don't even want to talk about."

"I'm sorry," I say.

"I'm fine now," he says. "But then it was hard, I guess. No one tells you how to suddenly not be famous."

"No one tells you how to be famous either," I say, and he laughs.

"Nah, people are hired to teach you how to be famous. Media training, publicists, all of that. I was good at it. I could teach you how to be famous if I wanted."

"If you wanted?"

He turns and kisses me. "If you wanted. But I wouldn't do that because it's bulls.h.i.+t and fake, and it's all behind me now. Also, you'd be bad at it."

"What?"

"We'd have to call in the best media-training team in the world," he says. "Your face shows everything. You couldn't smile at a dumb entertainment journalist. You made, like, seven different weird faces just in the last thirty seconds."

"Sometimes I feel like my face just does its own thing," I say.

"It's cute," he says. "Don't gain control of your face. I'd miss all your weird looks."

We've made the full loop around and are back at my car. "I should probably go home," I say. "There's so much calculus."

"Sounds scary," he says with a grin. "You should go conquer calculus."

I take Alex home and-after losing plenty of time kissing while parked down the street from his house-head home. Mom's almost finished making dinner, and even Darcy's home before me, and I wait for a lecture on how late I am as they carry the salad, sole, and quinoa to the table. But it's just a normal dinner.

After we eat, I stack my textbooks on the kitchen table and realize I have more homework than usual, and I should have started hours ago. I feel guilty for ignoring it for the extra time I spent with Alex, and then I feel guilty for regretting any moment with him, and then I'm back to feeling like an underachiever, and it just keeps circling.

"Do one thing at a time," Darcy tells me gently after I've shooed them off again and again. "It's not even that late, kiddo. You'll be fine."

"Why aren't you disappointed in me?" I ask while flipping through my economics textbook. "I'm throwing away my academic career for a boy."

"You lost your afternoon because you were spending time with someone you like," she says. "It isn't a crime."

"Brain food," Mom says, bringing me an orange she's already peeled and segmented for me. I don't think oranges are considered brain food by any experts, but the gesture is so nice I just thank her.

"I don't understand why I'm not in trouble," I say. "I'm not responsible."

I don't say the rest of it, which is that I've done plenty of Googling, and my sheer existence must have been really expensive. I once overheard Mom and Darcy say to Paige and Ryan, Sadie's parents, that if it had been financially feasible, of course they would have had another baby, but it seemed more important to give me the best life they could. Me! So I have to turn out to be better than average. I don't want to be irresponsible. I want to be worth the money.

"You're the most responsible person I know," Mom says, which makes Darcy furrow her brow. "Sorry, hon, you're fifty-one. You're supposed to be responsible. Relatively speaking, Jules is much higher-ranked."

"If we had a discussion about all the irresponsible things the two of us have done in the name of love," Darcy says, "you'd never finish your homework. So you'll have to trust us that you're in good company."

My face flushes. "Don't say love."

"In the name of like, then."

The name of like actually seems like a good place to be.