Has to Be Love (5 page)

My breathing stops when Mr. Kennedy steps onto the stage with his clipboard.

I slide my hands through my hair, untucking the strands on my right side.

Esther and Abby (drama queens in more ways than one) are staring at Mr. Kennedy—their nearly identical brown, wavy hair bobbing together as they talk in each other's ears.

“I'm Mr. Kennedy, and I'll be here for the rest of the year. Ms. Bellings's daughter is sick, and she'll be spending the final month and a half of the school year in New Mexico to be with her.” His eyes find mine.

Elias gives me a scrunchy eyebrow look that means he's asking what's up.

“I met him last night. Long story,” I whisper.
One I probably won't give you the full version of.

“So, that means
you'll
be here?” Abby bats her lashes at Mr. Kennedy. She's like a pro at this. Lots of practice.

He blinks and scans the clipboard before meeting her too-eager eyes. “I'll be here, yes.”

“Why weren't you here for English?” I ask because I can be stupid and open my mouth when I shouldn't. I sat in class expecting his blond hair, but Ms. Bellings was there instead. I should have been relieved, not disappointed.

We make eye contact again, and I wait for him to scan my face like last night, but his eyes don't leave mine. I'm locked in this weird moment. With Mr. Kennedy.

He clears this throat. Moment broken. “She wanted a couple more days in the classroom before leaving. Any other questions?”

Elias shifts his weight forward, his grip on my hand tightening. “Are you old enough for this?”

“I graduate with my teaching degree after summer semester, and I'm halfway through my MFA at Columbia. I took this semester off aside from student teaching when my aunt said she might need my help, which is why I got the chance to be here with you. So yes.” He releases a breath. “I'm old enough for this.”

“You look too young.” Elias's accusing tone is so totally out of character.

Mr. Kennedy's jaw tenses, but then his shoulders relax. “I graduated from high school early. I got permission to take more credits a semester than normal, and I've done summer school since I graduated from high school. That's all.”

“So, how old are you?”

I push Elias's shoulder. “What is this, twenty questions? Interrogation of the new guy?”

Elias shrugs.

“Not important.” Mr. Kennedy stands up a little taller.

I try not to notice him. I really, really do. I try not to see he's wearing worn Chucks with his fitted khakis. That his tie is perfectly skinny cool. That his plaid shirt looks like it was tailored to his waist and sides, and I also try not to notice how his shoulders are just slightly too wide for his shirt, even though he's a slender guy. And I even work not to stare at the sinews in his forearms exposed by the way he has his shirt rolled up or the worn, orange band on his watch.

“Clara?” Mr. Kennedy asks as he raises his brows.

“Sorry, what?” I'm reeling, wondering how long I was lost in an imagined world I should not have been in.

“Ms. Bellings said that we were walking through Act II
of Arsenic and Old Lace,
and you know all the staging.”

My cheeks heat up as I frantically flip through my script. I can feel Elias staring at me, practically boring holes in my temple, which nearly makes me rip a page out when I forget to let go of it. I'm sure the whole theater group of ten is staring at me, which is exactly what I don't need. My reactions to Rhodes make no sense.

Just a guy. Too old. Too grown up.
Just a guy. Just a guy. Just a guy.
And I
have
a guy. A great one. A nearly perfect one.

“Yes. I'm ready, but we've walked through it quite a few times, so hopefully everyone remembers where to be.”

“Thank you.”

When I look up, Mr. Kennedy's leaning back on his stool, holding his book with his very nice, strong hands, watching me and waiting …

Crap.

For me to get people in places and start.

Yeah. Maybe if I could concentrate while he was in the same room.

I make it through rehearsals without sounding like an idiot and even remembering to correct staging as we walk through Act II. One day down, too many to go …

“What's with you today?” Elias asks as he walks me to his truck. “And Mr. Kennedy? He was like … staring at you.”

“Dad invited him and Ms. Bellings over last night, so I'm probably the only person here he knows. Also, maybe he was staring at my face. I'm sure that's all.” But is that all? The butterflies in my stomach are seriously messing with my head.

I kick the small rocks that were slowly dumped on our parking lot during the winter to help with the ice. There are so many that the paved surface is practically a dirt road right now.

“And you can't get out of family dinner tonight?” Elias asks as his fingers tighten around mine.

“What?” I poke him in the side. “We just talked about this. You
never
try to get me out of family dinner.”

He jumps away smiling. That easy smile is what drew me in so fully to begin with. Elias really is gorgeous. He doesn't look like a guy who would be in a small town—he's more cologne ad than hick town, but he'd never think that about himself. He loves it here too much. I love it here too, just not in a forever way. We'll work out that part of being together … when we get to the point that I'm leaving.

“You just seem distracted today.” He stops by the passenger's side door of his truck, and I lean my back against it instead of standing aside for him to open it. I scatter some of the small rocks with my foot.

And I
am
distracted. I got into
the
school and have no idea what to do about it. My stupid heart is doing backflips over our new teacher. I want to find a way to get some time alone with Elias. That's a lot to keep track of.

I tug on his letter jacket with a grin, bringing our bodies together. “Do I seem distracted now?”

He smiles, but his gaze pauses over the right side of my face. That twisty, sharp pang in my stomach is more familiar every day, so I shove it down, needing to be in the moment. Needing to feel loved. Needing to feel the safety and relaxed heat of Elias against me.

“In a good way.” His kiss is soft and sweet, but when I pull on his coat harder, his kiss gets deeper. I will myself to fall into feeling him, but instead I wonder again if it feels weird to kiss a girl who's missing part of her lip.

How can I be wondering that when I'm getting exactly what I want? He's finally pressing against me and kissing me, and I'm … My brain isn't here. This kind of touching is supposed to shut off the noise in my head, not turn it on.

An idea for another poem taps into my brain, and I slip my hand from Elias's waist to touch my back pocket. Still there.

“Okay.” Elias chuckles before pecking my cheek. “Your mind is somewhere else. You go do your thing. I'll maybe go pick up a few hours of work in hope of taking some time off when you can.”

I blink, my fingers sliding over the notebook in my pocket. When was the last time I was the one who broke our kiss? Have I ever?

“Yeah,” I whisper before clearing my throat. “Yeah. Okay.”

5

My phone screaming
Welcome to New York
by Taylor Swift signals Cecily, and my smile is complete before I answer.

“Tell me you've downloaded the pictures,” Cecily demands.

“Oh. Crap. Just a sec.” I snatch the laptop off my desk, knocking down a collection of Salinger. I can't seem to stop obsessing about the list of famous Columbia grads, which is probably not great for the pressure that comes from the envelope in my desk. I flip the laptop open on my bed, tapping into email.

She scoffs in mock indignation, and I picture her thin brows on her dark skin and smirky smile at my ineptness. “How do you not remember to download? You know I send you pictures every time we talk so we can discuss.
And
we always talk on Wednesdays.”

I don't answer. Cecily is bound to be a famous photographer at some point. For now, she sells her photos on stock photo sites and does wicked things with Photoshop and some other photo-editing software she probably pirated. Cecily is the perfect best friend—aside from the fact she only lives close to me for half the year.

“So?” she urges. “There yet?”

“Almost … almost …
here!”

Wow.

She's done four pictures of a guy's face, but there's a colored pattern on all of them that I know is going to turn into some sort of image …

“See it yet?” She sucks in a breath, and I know she'll hold it until I figure it out.

The guy's face is in dark blues and it looks like she took like five other pictures and put them over each other. Sort of Andy Warhol looking. Oh! “It's the Chuck Taylor star! Well done.”

A rush of air means she was, in fact, holding her breath. “You like?”

“I love. As always. I do not get how you can put this stuff together. You need to start selling posters on one of those arty sites.”

“I totally
should
.”

I flip my laptop closed and roll onto my back to stare at the slanted wooden walls that come to a peak just above my bed.

“How long before you're back in town?” I whine.

“You know the deal. One semester with Mom, one with Dad. I'll be back just in time to watch y'all graduate, because my school ends earlier than yours.” Her Southern accent comes back a week after she leaves Alaska for Louisiana and never totally disappears while she's here.

“That's forever away. There's too much going on for you not to be here.” I cross my legs as I lie on my back in the tiny room.

“Liiiike …?” She draws out the word, needing details.

“Like we got this new substitute …”

And I tell Cecily everything. I tell her about how Elias got weird over him and how Mr. Kennedy came over and touched my face in the barn, and how he's crazy attractive to the point that my brain stops functioning when he's around. And how she really needs to be here because someone's going to have to start pinching me when I act moronic, which I do every. Time. I'm. Around him.

And then I tell her he goes to Columbia.

She's laughing by the time I finish. “So, is this the end of Elias?”

My heart does a weird
ka-thump, leap,
making me cough. “What?
No!”
I can't imagine not being with Elias. He's been part of me for way too long.

“But aren't you the girl who keeps telling me you're not going to marry him, even though I keep telling you that's exactly what he'll want from you?”

She does say this a lot. Elias's parents got married when his mom was seventeen and his dad was nineteen. His older brother got married at nineteen. Elias is exactly the kind of super-faithful guy who would jump into being married as part of his life plan of stability. Even though I know this about him, I still argue against it because my brain just can't go there right now.

“Nah. He's going to be working to take over so his dad can retire, and he already knows I'm going to school.”

“Does he think you'll still be in Alaska?” Cecily lowers her voice.

Crap.
Having her understand everything about me doesn't work in my favor when I don't want her to say things I don't want to hear. “He might. We don't really talk about it. Nothing's set in stone yet anyway.”

“No. You just change the subject when he brings it up. Like you think that when you graduate, something's going to magically change and make your life decisions easier.” I'm sure her forehead is wrinkled and the corners of her mouth are turned down.

“No. That's ridiculous.” But as I think about her words, I'm wondering if part of me does feel that way. “I have a plan.”

Cecily snorts. “Your plan can barely be considered a plan, Clara.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your plan is to bum around Alaska while you get your scars removed and to not talk to Elias about what you really want in your life until the last possible moment. Did I leave anything out?”

I don't answer. She'll jump into something different like she does when I don't have words for her.

“So …” Cecily starts slowly, and I know we're jumping into the subject change I hoped for. But she doesn't say anything, so maybe
she's
hesitant about something.

“Oh, man.” I cringe. “Did you have news this whole time and we've been talking about me?”

“Yeah, but I've been avoiding.”

My stomach twists.

“I heard from Tisch. When I said I was putting off for a year to go to an in-state school, they upped my scholarship.”

New York.
This year?
My legs fall flat on my mattress, and the phone slips before I grasp it tighter.

“Clara?”

My heart pounds so loudly that I'm not sure I'll be able to hear. “But … but we were going to be freshman together … in Alaska.”

Cecily pulls in a long breath. “I haven't given them my final word, but …”

“But you're going.” As weak as I felt a moment ago, now every part of me feels weighted and tight. “Of course you're going.” This sucks. So hard. I kick my foot against the slanted roof-wall as if the kicking will somehow make this all different.

“Have you heard back from Columbia yet?” Cecily asks. “It's weird that you haven't heard. I think you're supposed to get that stuff the end of March or beginning of April or something, right?”

I hold my breath. Close my eyes. Switch my phone from one hand to another. Picture the letter in my drawer.

“Holy crap, you got in, didn't you?” she squeals.

“I did.”

Cecily's screech vibrates my phone, and I jerk it from my ear.

“I'm not going, Cee. I can't. I'm going to defer until next year, just like I planned. And even then … who knows.” Like
we
planned.