Lipstick Apology (29 page)

“I swear. I—I'm fine,” I stammered.

“Exactly what happened last night that made you stressed enough to grind your teeth again?” Jolie leaned forward on the table, inching closer to me.

“Nothing.”

“Spill!” Jolie commanded.

So I spilled literally and figuratively. “It's just the kids here are awful,” I started, tears already rolling down my cheeks as I told her all the details of the joke and how Lindsey and I abandoned the party to save Carly from humiliation. Jolie listened without interruption. I purposefully left out any details about Owen, particularly finding him in an embrace with the ponytail girl.

Apparently, Jolie noted his absence. “So, where was Owen while all this was going on?” she inquired.

I reached over and picked up the top bun from the muffin sandwich. I started tearing it into small pieces, avoiding the question.

“He was in on it. The joke,” Jolie surmised.

I picked my eyes up off the muffin and looked into her pale eyes.

“Look,” Jolie said. “God knows I'm not one to preach, but I've spent my last day waiting for a sexy Mexican actor to call. I just hate to see you make the same mistakes I've made.” She paused, threw her hands up in the air. “I know, you're sixteen! All I'm going to say is when you lie down with dogs, you get fleas. You know what I mean?”

“What I'm saying is, before you go spending all your time with this guy and his friends, think about the type of person he is. You can tell a lot about someone by the company they keep. And if he wouldn't flinch about hurting sweet Carly, what makes you think he wouldn't hurt you?”

I sighed. This I understood.

As if on cue, my cell phone rang. I picked it up from the kitchen counter and glanced at the caller ID. It was Owen. I laid it down on the table, unanswered. Jolie saw his name flash on my screen. She reached over and patted my hand, then gave me a half smile.

After three unanswered phone calls from Owen, when I heard a knock at the door, I assumed it was him. I imagined him distraught, begging for forgiveness.

I would let him grovel. Perhaps I'd invite Jolie to witness his newfound maturity and humility. Of course he had made mistakes. A mistake to hurt Carly, but a bigger mistake to risk losing me. I fluffed my hair and opened the door.

“Hi,” Carly said from behind a fuzzy black scarf. She unwound the wrap and entered. She took off her gloves, unzipped her coat, and placed them on the couch before I could formulate a thought.

“When I got home, I realized I left my shoe bag,” Carly said, then pointed to her black duffel bag tucked into the corner of the living room.

“Oh, right. Of course, sit down.” I went over to the corner and retrieved the bag.

Jolie walked into the living room holding a plate with the uneaten egg sandwich. “Hungry?” she asked Carly. “I made it myself.”

Carly eyed the plate for a moment, then shook her head. “Nah, I'm meeting Trent at the gym in an hour. But it looks really good.”

Jolie beamed, returned to the kitchen, and started washing dishes.

Carly and I sat on the couch in silence for a minute, both of us staring at the sparkling lights on the Christmas tree.

“Wow, I'm pretty sure that wasn't here last night,” Carly said, gesturing toward the tree.

“Yeah, Trent and Jolie decorated last night.”

Last night.
The words hung in the air.

Carly leaned forward, looking toward the kitchen to see if Jolie could see us, then relaxed back into the white leather couch. She cleared her throat. “I know what you did for me.” Her voice cracked. “Last night. I know.”

How could she know? Carly didn't exactly have many friends. Who did she know well enough to converse with between ten p.m. Friday night and eleven a.m. this morning that could fill her in on all the gory details of the unexecuted joke? I suddenly realized that Carly was crying, her head downcast and hands at her eyes.
Should I put my arm around her? What should I say?

“I'm sorry,” I said.
No, I hated it when people kept apologizing to me after my parents died. After all my grief counseling, shouldn't I know how to comfort someone?

“It's not a big deal,” I said.
Lovely, downplay her feelings. I really suck at this.

I handed Carly a tissue and she dabbed at her eyes.

“Wh-what was I thinking?” she stammered. “That he could actually like me?” She gestured at herself. “Like
this
?”

I wanted to tell her that I felt the same way about Owen. I wanted to tell her that thirty seconds after I left the party, my boyfriend was on the verge of a hookup with another girl. But I didn't want to be a topper—one of those people who competes for the worst life.

I took a breath and tried again. “Ethan's a jackass.”

Carly sniffled.

The water in the kitchen turned off.

Jolie rounded the corner, a look of concern on her face. She came over and sat on the coffee table facing us. “Hey, girl,” she said to Carly. “You're crying all your mascara off.”

Carly reflexively touched her eyes.

“But I'm pretty sure I've got a tube of brown-black lengthening mascara with your name on it.” Jolie pulled her petite legs up onto the glass coffee table and sat cross-legged across from us. She touched Carly's hand. “I know, honey, it's so hard when someone crushes you. I've spent half my life trying to figure out why someone doesn't like me or what I could do to
make
someone like me.” She looked toward me. “Your mom—she was amazing. She never let other people's opinions faze her. She just strove to be herself—be her best. I remember one day I cried to her about a guy who was particularly critical. She asked me, was I looking for happiness with myself or acceptance from others? Because if I spent a lifetime looking for acceptance, I'd never be happy
.
”

Carly nodded, then turned toward me. “Your mom sounds like she was pretty amazing.”

A lump formed in the back of my throat. “She was.” I sniffed, the anger I'd been carrying around about the apology melting just a little. “She was.”

I SPENT THE NEXT WEEK
avoiding Owen at all costs. Andi and Lindsey helped, even getting passes to take me out to lunch off-campus on Thursday. I just couldn't deal with talking to him. I wasn't sure if we'd ever really been a couple at all, if I was right to expect anything better. All I knew was that it hurt to even look at him. So most of the week went by in a blur of tiles as I stared at the hall floors hurrying from class to class, trying to focus for once on schoolwork. The semester was almost over and people were starting to cram for finals anyway.

Anthony arrived at Jolie's apartment at noon the next Sunday to work on our final lab report, which was supposed to be an analysis of everything we'd done the last two months. He was all windblown with rosy cheeks and a red nose.

“You look like you're freezing,” I said.

“Nah,” he said, taking off a black wool cap with an NY Giants emblem stitched across the top. “I love this weather. They say it might snow this week!”

“I can't believe it's only eleven more days until Christmas,” I said as we took our normal seats at the kitchen table, spreading our notebooks and papers out between us.

“And only a week of actual school left before break starts,” he reminded me.

It was strange to think that this would be the last time Anthony and I would hover over our calculations and crunch numbers. Chemistry Sundays had become a habit, something familiar and comfortable, like slipping into an old pair of pajamas at night. Even though I totally hated the actual work, I liked knowing every Sunday was devoted to this particular project.

My cell phone beeped. I glanced down at the text: 12 HOURS ON A PLANE WITH MY PARENTS! DAD ALREADY SPILLED PEANUTS ON THE STEWARDESS! It was all caps like Georgia was screaming. I laughed.

“Georgia's on her way to a Hawaiian cruise,” I told Anthony. “Her family's Jewish and they always take vacations the week
before
Christmas.”

“Hey,” Anthony said. “Is your jaw hurting again?”

I realized I was unconsciously massaging my lower jawbone. “Oh, not really,” I said, taking my hand down.

Jolie appeared, hair up in a ponytail with a bandanna headband and workout clothes on. She smiled at Anthony. “Don't you know that you're not allowed in this house if you don't bring goods from the bakery?”

Anthony reached down into his bag and pulled out a familiar white cardboard box tied with a string. He handed it to Jolie. “For you: a thousand calories.”

“Score,” she said, taking the box into the kitchen.

Anthony laughed. “Hey, how was the big party at Ethan's last weekend?” he asked me.

Jolie breezed through, her mouth full. “I'm off to the gym. Work hard. See you later.”

“You're going to need an extra hour on the treadmill,” Anthony called after her.

“It's so worth it,” Jolie said, closing the door behind her.

Anthony looked back toward me. “So, did true love conquer all? Did Ethan and Carly hook up? Did fireworks blast, soft music play, and pink rain fall from the sky?”

He was being sarcastic, but I realized that he had no idea what happened. How was it possible that Carly, a student at Darlington for a mere two months, had the connections to obtain a full report down to every horrific detail in a matter of hours but Anthony, who had attended school with these people for his entire academic career, had no outlet for gossip even after an entire
week
of school had passed since the party? I remembered seeing him with his neighborhood friends and thinking how he had his own private world outside of the small, cliquish Darlington universe.

“Well, I guess you can gloat,” I said. “You were right.”

He looked intrigued.

I told him the whole story.

He didn't say anything, but I worried that he was judging me. That he was thinking:
These are your friends, your boyfriend
. I wanted to defend myself, to say something, but I couldn't find the right words. So we both just sat there in silence for an eternity staring across the living room at the twinkling colored Christmas lights.

Anthony was the first to speak. “Well, that sucks. For Carly, I mean.” Then he pushed his paper over toward me. “So I figured out that part three of the compound mixture must contain mercury.”

I let him show me his calculations and conclusions, but as usual, my mind was miles away.

 

LATER THAT NIGHT
I called Owen. I told him that I wanted to break up. I couldn't face another week of avoiding him and saying nothing. As much as I was worried what would happen at school once we were no longer a couple, I just couldn't see myself dating someone who could be so mean to a girl simply because she was overweight.

“What's up?” Owen asked when he picked up the phone, as though nothing had happened.

“Hey, Owen,” I said, pausing slightly and wandering around my bedroom. Finally I sat down on the edge of the bed and took a breath. “So I've been thinking. About how we've been sort of hanging out and stuff. And I think that it's time for me to, um, move on.”

I heard him sigh. “Is this like a breakup call or something?”

“I guess so. I mean, yeah. It is.” I felt awful and relieved at the same time.

I waited for him to say he was foolish, or sorry, or
something
, but all he said was, “Are you sure? Because I thought we had something good going.”

“I'm pretty sure. I've done some thinking, and—”

“Hold up, Emily? I have a call waiting, can you give me a sec?”

“It's okay, just go ahead and take it. See you in school!”

And then I hung up, after the shortest breakup conversation in history.

I put in an immediate call to Lindsey.

“I THOUGHT WE HAD SOMETHING GOOD GOING? Are you kidding me? What a moron,” Lindsey said.

“I know, right?”

“Are you okay with it?” she asked.

I thought about what it would be like to not have him waiting at my locker. What it would be like if I wasn't invited to all the best parties or how I would feel if I saw Owen walking hand in hand with the ponytail girl. “I don't know,” I said honestly. “I just don't know.”

TO MY SURPRISE,
Owen was standing at my locker first thing Monday morning. There also was a circle of strategically placed gossipy girls, including Sammy Greensboro and Vera Stewart, at surrounding lockers, ears perked and waiting.

“Hey,” Owen said.

“Hi,” I said, going right for the combination dial, trying to avoid his ocean green eyes.

He leaned his head against the locker next to mine, finding my eyes. “What's this all about, Em? We barely even had a chance, ya know?”

His eyes were so soft. I felt myself wavering. I didn't answer, just searched for my history book.

“Look, if this is about Tara . . .”

I whipped my head around. “Who's Tara?”

Owen's cheeks flushed. He swept his hand through his hair, massaging his scalp.

“Oh,” I said curtly. “I guess that's the girl with the ponytail from the party?”

“It wasn't a big deal,” Owen said.

Heat rose in my cheeks. “Was I just a challenge? The new girl—someone totally different than the norm?” I slammed my locker shut. “It doesn't even matter. All I know is I wasn't worth being faithful to.”