Ink Is Thicker Than Water (8 page)

I’d found out he was indeed Dexter’s brother, was one year older than Dexter (and therefore two years older than me), and was about to start his freshman year at St. Louis University as a philosophy major. We hadn’t spent the whole day together, just kept finding reasons to run into each other again and again. When Mom and Russell were ready to go, I convinced them I was hanging out with Sara and Dexter and would just catch a ride home with them later.

Luckily in the crowd Sara hadn’t noticed I’d stayed or that Oliver found me yet again and led me inside to his room. We actually talked for a long time—school, music, our siblings’ shared brand of perfection—before he kissed me, this really perfect heart-stopping kiss. And it just kind of continued; one kiss became the next, and—I mean, we were in his room, there was a bed there!—before long we were out of our clothes, and it hit me that it was going to happen: I was going to have sex with this guy I barely knew at a frigging Memorial Day barbecue. I started thinking of all these weird things—like that maybe Sara and Dexter would walk in, or that he had these really crisp, clean sheets and was I going to bleed on them or something? —and I wasn’t exactly old-fashioned but didn’t I want to wait to do this with someone who was my boyfriend or I’d at least met before?

And this is the thing. Oliver isn’t one of those guys you hear about who is pushy—it was as much me as him. So I knew I could have just told him I wanted to cool off, and he would have understood. But I also kept thinking of how I’d never found the thought of sex scary, and I never understood those people who held out because of fear or morals or whatever else, and I felt like a big, stupid hypocrite. I didn’t want to be nervous about this. I didn’t want to want to stop. So I shut my mouth, and I helped Oliver scour the room for a condom, hoping we wouldn’t find one. I mean, rooms weren’t just automatically stocked with condoms, were they? But he did find one, and I wondered: if someone just has condoms on hand, does that mean he does this a lot?

I didn’t say anything, though, and Oliver climbed on top of me and it happened.

No, not sex.

“Um,” I said, my voice this mangled, hysterical, crazy sound.

“Yeah?”

I didn’t just burst into tears. It was a volcano of tears. Sobbing, shaking, more of the crazy, hysterical sound.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

I should have just said
no
. I should have just said the truth, which was something like,
This all went too fast, and I need to back up, and I’m not ready to lose my virginity to a guy I don’t really know, and you’re so nice so can we just kiss some more and also I’ve talked about sex a ton, and I was positive when it happened for me I’d be ready, and I hate that I guess I’m not as brave as I think I am.

But I’d said nothing. For awhile. And then, finally, “I have to—I have to go.”

“Okay…?” He’d gotten up so I could get up, and stood there, totally naked, while I’d scrambled around the room reconstructing my outfit. “Listen, I’m sorry if—”

This was when I should have told him how it wasn’t his fault and how he was such a great kisser and maybe if we ramped up to this, I’d like to have sex with him at some other time. But, again, none of what mattered came out.

“I have to go,” I’d said again. “If Sara finds out I was here—”

“Do you want a ride?”

I’d thought of my other options: finding Sara and making a lame excuse, calling Kaitlyn and making a lame excuse, calling Mom and making a lame excuse. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah, let’s go.”

We were completely quiet in his car, the only sound the album on the stereo, The Beatles’
Revolver
, which had made me want to cry even more because it was my favorite album by my favorite band. I had just run away from sex with a guy who was currently listening to my favorite album.

Since it happened—or, technically, not happened—I’d gone back and forth on whether or not I ever wanted to see him again. On one hand, there was a guy I really liked who actually seemed to like me back. On the other lay disaster and humiliation. Maybe it was best the decision got made for me last week in the diner. Now that I’d seen him again, I didn’t want to go back, and it was funny how already I just knew he didn’t, either.

Sara is walking into the house as I am, and I have this weird panic that she’d been with Dexter and he somehow knew about Oliver. Though, A) how? and B) at this point would that really matter?

“Hey. You’re out late,” I say. “Were you hanging out with Dexter?”

She eyes me strangely, which she should, because I’d blurted out those few sentences in a crazy tone. “Are you okay?”

“I was kissing this guy.” Even if I’m not ready for her to know it’s her boyfriend’s
brother
, I’m ready for her to know something. Guys don’t have to be the one topic we never really cover. I won’t require her to give me Dexter details, but I should probably not be working through this alone.

“It’s sort of complicated,” I add, even though it’s a sentence I probably picked up from frigging Facebook and not from my own feelings at all.

“Is it someone you don’t want to be kissing?” Sara flips through the mail on the front table. There are always at least four pieces of correspondence from various universities awaiting her. “Or
shouldn’t
be kissing?”

“What do you mean, ‘shouldn’t be’?”

“Someone who’s otherwise attached? I don’t know, Kell, you’re the one who said it was complicated.”

“I mean, when you started going out with Dexter, was it just like some normal thing?” As far as I knew, Sara and Dexter were suddenly
together
with no apparent stressing or awkwardness beforehand.

“I don’t really know what you mean.” She walks into the kitchen, and I follow her while she gets a glass of water. “Seriously, Kell, you look a little freaked out.”

I hate that I can’t find the right words, and for once she doesn’t exactly seem anxious to help me. “Never mind.”

“If you’re not completely falling apart, I have to go to my room,” she says. “I have so much homework to finish, and I should have been asleep ten minutes ago. I’m sorry.”

“Since when do you stay out so late with Dexter on school nights?” I try to affect some goofy, grown-up tone. Why knowing something isn’t funny is never enough to keep me from saying it is quite the mystery.

“I wasn’t out with Dexter,” she says. “I met with Camille again.”

“Oh.” I wonder if that’s weird or not. I guess not. “Cool. Did you have fun?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I did. See you tomorrow.”

“Sara?”

She stops but doesn’t turn. “What is it?
Are
you completely falling apart? It’s all right if you are, you know. You can tell me.”

I try really hard to shove all of this stuff I’m feeling into words that make sense and don’t implicate Oliver in any way, but I can barely manage to come up with topics for a school newspaper humor column. My brain can’t handle this.

Sara starts back toward her room. “I have to get this homework finished. We can talk tomorrow if you want.”

I let her go, though not just because I’m not sure I could stop her. Of course I don’t really know what I’m doing with Oliver, but there are way worse things to obsess over alone than thoughts of tonight’s kisses, over and over and over.

Chapter Seven

Kaitlyn’s car is still in the shop the next morning, so I pick her up again. The oldies station is really on a roll today, and I’ve got a Hollies song blasting as she gets into the car.

“Hey.” She points to the radio. “Is this a protest because I made you listen to music from this century yesterday?”

“‘Bus Stop’ is one of the greatest pop songs ever recorded,” I tell her. “Also,
yes
.”

“You’re such a nerd.”

Kaitlyn has been calling me a nerd for ages, particularly about my devotion to music from before even my parents were born, but today it feels different. Today Kaitlyn’s someone who talks to a whole new class of people and thinks sneaking into underage clubs would be cool.

“Thanks for the ride,” she says. “I don’t know what’s up with my car.”

“That’s what you get for trusting German engineering,” I say in what is a pretty great impression of Kaitlyn’s dad. “We’re running early, should we get coffee?” Of course by coffee I mean
hot chocolate,
but it doesn’t roll off the tongue as well.

“Definitely, I could use the caffeine.”

The only coffee shop on the way to school from Kaitlyn’s is a Starbucks, but unlike Mom, I don’t think Starbucks is going to bring on the end of local businesses forever, so I pull right up and park.

“I can’t believe you still get those,” Kaitlyn says inside when I order my hot cocoa. “You’re not a five-year-old.”

“Five-year-olds can’t drive themselves to school,” I say. “Or their friends who have shoddy German cars.”

“Ha, ha,” Kaitlyn says. It’s just like a flash, this thing where she’s maybe judgmental of me, just like the other day with my slightly holey shirt, and then she just looks like herself again.

My phone beeps, and I check it to see that, like I hoped, it’s a text from Oliver.
POP QUIZ: We should hang out this weekend: TRUE or FALSE
. I’m texting back my response when Kaitlyn cranes her neck down. “Who is that from?”

“This guy.” I hit send and throw the phone into my purse. “The college guy. The thing I told you about.”

“I thought you said that was just a one-time thing,” she says with her eyebrows way raised like she painted them on wrong.

“I thought it was, but maybe it’s not.”

“Why are you talking so fast?”

“Aaahhh, I don’t know, sorry.” Of
course
I know why. Of course I know I’m simultaneously terrified and also thinking of little but more opportunities to kiss Oliver. And also I’m terrified of admitting I’m terrified. I frigging hate being terrified! I never planned on being terrified of anything. It’s a drag. Why can’t I be brave like I feel like I am?

My phone beeps again, from the cavern of my bag, and even though I am trying to play this whole thing cool in front of Kaitlyn, that part of my brain that
likes
him won’t let me wait until I get to school to check the response.
Cool, instructions and directions will be forthcoming.

“Is he, like, your boyfriend now?” Kaitlyn asks.

“It’s way more casual than that.” I pray Kaitlyn doesn’t ask me to get more specific, because even though Oliver is basically the only image flashing in my brain right now, revealing any more wouldn’t exactly make this seem
casual
.

But the barista calls out our drinks, and it’s time to get to school. And my brain can get right back to thinking only about Oliver and his lips. These are great, great subjects.

Adelaide intercepts me in the hallway the moment I separate from Kaitlyn. I feel like a jerk for my relief at the timing. Kaitlyn’s befriending our school’s royalty, or at least talking to them casually, while I’m banding with the people who treat stories about new seats in the auditorium like serious journalism. Probably best Kaitlyn doesn’t really know this yet.

“Are you busy on Friday night? Kellie.” Adelaide says my name in the same tone Mom does when I’m in semi-serious trouble. “With so many locally owned coffee shops around here, you actually go to Starbucks?”

“Their beans are free trade.” I don’t know what that means, but they have tons of booklets and signs up about it, and it sounds good. “And at least they’re providing local employment for the people who work there.” I pull that completely out of my ass as I’m saying it, but it sounds pretty good.

“Well.” She eyes me for a moment. “That’s true. So a bunch of us are going out on Friday night, seeing
The Apple
at the Tivoli at midnight. You should come with us.”

“I’ve never even heard of that. Is it new this week?”

“Oh. My. God.” She shakes her head slowly, sadly. “
The Apple
is only one of the worst films of all time. It’s so bad it comes back around to being awesome. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen it, and I can’t allow myself to let you go on with life if you don’t.”

“I might have plans on Friday,” I say, which isn’t a lie.

“You can invite Oliver. In fact, please
do
invite Oliver. He’ll have a blast, I’m sure.”

“I’m not inviting Oliver to some weird bad movie,” I say.

“Your loss,” she says. “And his. See you in Jennifer’s.”

I stop off at my locker to get my stuff, but of course also check my phone. There’s nothing new from Oliver, but I reread all his previous texts anyway. He got up this morning and thought about me—you have to think about a person to text her, after all—and I was thinking about him, and that whole thing seems kind of magical.

Okay,
magical
, self? I can’t believe a guy is turning my brain so cheesy. Previously, it was normal, and now it’s made of cheddar and Gorgonzola.

When I walk into Jennifer’s classroom, I drop into the desk next to Adelaide without really thinking about it. She holds up this weird picture of a guy with one devil horn, and I burst out laughing.

“See?” Adelaide’s tone is triumphant. “
That
’s from the movie. Don’t you want to go now?”

“I don’t know when I’m going out with Oliver,” I say. “But if it’s a different night, okay.”

I immediately feel bad because I know Kaitlyn wants us to do something cool this weekend—and I’m 100 percent positive
something cool
wouldn’t include seeing a bad movie on purpose with the newspaper staff—but I’ll figure that out later.

Kaitlyn’s late getting to lunch, so I quietly eat my sad cafeteria burrito while vaguely listening to the table’s conversation about potential Halloween plans later this month. This is basically the same group we’ve sat with since freshman year, and we all get along, but honestly, when I think about friends at school I think about Kait. It’s not that I never hang out with anyone else, but she’s the one I share everything with. (The stuff I want to share, at least.)

“Hey.” Kaitlyn plunks down beside me with a huge salad. “Sorry, I got caught in the longest conversation ever. Also, Jessie Weinberg told me you’re on the newspaper now.”

Unfortunately, I’m midbite, so I just shrug. Shrugging with a burrito in your mouth is not attractive, but there are no other available options.

“You joined the paper and didn’t tell me?” She wrinkles her nose a little, since I am eating the way a velociraptor would approach a bean burrito. “You barely even like being in school when you have to, and now you’re doing extracurriculars?”

“One extracurricular,” I say, “not extracurriculars, plural.”

“Remember when I was going to join French club and you said that seemed dumb?”

“That doesn’t sound like me,” I say even though of course it does, and also, French club does sound dumb! I don’t need to join a group of Ticknor students to eat croissants and talk about
Les Miserables
or whatever they do. “If you really wanted to join, you could have, you know.”

“I
know
. I’m just saying, Kell.”

I feel like such a dork even
thinking
about how I used to be a really big believer in just sitting back and letting life happen. In tiny waves it started washing over me that there were things I wanted and maybe going after them wouldn’t be awful. But no way I’m saying aloud what sounds like a motivational poster.

“The French club is actually really fun,” Chelsea says. “Last week we learned to make crepes.”

“It seems like it’s just cooking club,” I say, and she shrugs.

“All the food’s really good.”

“It’s true,” Mitchell says. “She gave me some of the leftover crepes.”

“Okay, maybe you
should
join the French club,” I tell Kaitlyn, but her attention’s on her phone. Hopefully, this at least means the topic of the newspaper and me are behind us. Oh, except— “So I can’t take you home tonight. I’m sorry. I have a thing.”

“What thing?” she asks while still texting. “Newspaper?”

“Yeah, sorry. Can you get another ride?”

“I’m good, don’t worry about it,” Kaitlyn says, still all eyes on the phone. “Also, Kell, sorry for bugging you about the weekend. I’m good there, too.”

“You weren’t bugging me,” I say, even though maybe the whole sneaking into a club thing was bugging me, a little. God, it suddenly feels like everything I say to Kait has some unspoken second half.

I’m positive it didn’t used to be like that.

At today’s newspaper meeting, I realize that people are turning in the articles they just talked about on Tuesday. What the heck! It feels like one of those nightmares where you find yourself in a class you didn’t know you signed up for and the final’s that very moment. Except this is all real.

“I don’t think I understood the deadline,” I tell Adelaide as she stacks printouts of articles on her desktop. “I haven’t even started any of those ideas yet.”

“I know, Brooks, we just talked about them last night. Look at the whiteboard.” She barely gestures to the board hanging at the back of the room. I see that all the assignments chosen two days ago have been transferred there, and also that I’m still listed as
Kelly B
. The good, non-nightmarish news is that my assignment is just listed as “something funny” and the due date is next week. “And if you’re still nervous, we can run your cafeteria piece. Calm down. See if anyone needs your help.”

I don’t really know how to help anyone, but Jessie asks me to check her article for typos (and I find one, so I feel like a superhero), and then Mitchell lets me cast my vote for the best photo to pair with a story about autumn. (I’m not sure how that’s an actual story topic, but whatever, at least I don’t have to write it.)

Editors all have to stay late to make sure the paper’s ready to go to press, but the rest of us get to go once everything’s copyedited and all photos have captions. Scott Garcia suggests hanging out at the Java Joint, and since tonight I have no responsibilities, I agree to go.

“Is it true your parents own a tattoo parlor?” Jessie asks me as our whole group is crowded around a tiny table meant for two or three. I guess technically she’s in a much cooler group than the rest of us, but she doesn’t seem out of place in this crowd, either. People can be so many more things than you expect.

“My mom and stepdad, yeah,” I say. “Also, just to be helpful, no one really calls it
a parlor
. It’s just a shop.”

“Do you have any tattoos?” Paul Bowen, one of the photographers, asks, and I swear he’s staring at my butt even though I’m sitting down and clearly wearing multiple layers of clothing. Guys can be
really obvious
.

“Nope.”

“Not even somewhere people can’t see?” he asks, and now he is clearly staring at my butt.

“
No
. My mom’s really hung up on the whole
not-until-you’re-eighteen
thing. I’m convinced I’ll wear her down, though.”

“What’s the weirdest tattoo you saw anyone get?” Chelsea asks.

“Someone got a corndog on their bicep,” I say. “With a halo, like it was saintly. And someone got a portrait of Dr. Phil.”

My phone buzzes as everyone starts chiming in with what they want to get tattooed on themselves someday, and I grin when I see the text is from Oliver.
Saturday night?
So I tune out instead of contributing my future tattoo ideas and respond an affirmative to him. I’ve heard that you shouldn’t always be so available when guys contact you, but I don’t feel like pretending I’m not into Oliver.
Meet up at Moke’s at 7 and go from there?