The Forever Crush (4 page)

Knock-knock-knock.

I flew out of my room, but I could hear Dad already at the door. I froze and listened. I heard the door open and then voices—mostly my dad's.

“It's just that, Forrest, Jemma is my little girl and I would hate for her to get hurt,” Dad said.

OMG.

“Uh, sure,” Forrest said, “I understand. We're friends, mostly.”

Mostly?

“You're a good kid, I know that,” Dad said.

My choices were stay put and let this torture continue or bound into the living room and become part of it. When I made it to the living room, I saw Forrest standing in our foyer. The autumn sunset was at his back. He looked happy to be rescued.

“You remember what I told you, Forrest,” Dad said, and clapped him on the back.

I shot my dad a look that said, “Enough!”

We went out the door and started walking toward the McCanns' green Jeep.

“We'll be there to pick you up at ten forty-five!” Dad called.

I waved and settled into the backseat. I wished Kate and Brett were there, but they were our next stop.

“Hi there, Jemma,” Mrs. McCann said, eyeing me in her rearview mirror. Her voice was a little more sing-songy than normal. Everyone was acting differently now that Forrest and I were “going out.” I wanted to ask Forrest what my dad had said, but not in front of Mrs. McCann. So I just sat there in the quiet, grateful when Mrs. McCann put on some music.

When we stopped for Kate and Brett, they jumped in the backseat with me, and Forrest moved up front with his mom. That was a relief because with three in the backseat, I was nervous I would be squished next to Forrest.

Clem's house was white painted brick and had a purple door. Inside, it was like a cozy country cottage. This surprised me because Clem is an actual teen model with a portfolio and I always pictured her living in a fancy-pants city apartment. But seeing as though we were in the same school district, it shouldn't have surprised me that her house was just two neighborhoods over and no more cosmopolitan than mine. She hugged all the guests hello at the door, which was really surprising. The girl who hugged me was the same girl who said little more than a cool hello to me at school, even though our lockers were side by side.

Clem and her mom had dinner nearly cooked. The warm spicy scent wafted throughout the house, from the cozy kitchen to the cozier living room, complete with fireplace and sweet brown dog sleeping on the hearth.

“I hope everyone likes pad thai,” Clem said as she breezed through carrying appetizers on a silver tray.

I love pad thai, so I breathed a sigh of relief. I will eat most things, but if Clem was serving something gross, like stew, I would seriously have had to bail on dinner.

“What's pad thai?” Forrest asked me.

“It's sooooo good. Noodles in a sweet-sour-salty kind of sauce. And bean sprouts and peanuts.”

“Oh man. I can't eat that,” Forrest said.

“Are you allergic?” I said.

“No, I just don't eat that kind of food. I thought she'd have pizza or something,” he said. “Last time, she had hamburgers and ribs.”

Note to Forrest:
Please don't mention the time you were here with your old girlfriend.

“Well, you could just try a bite,” I said. “Take a little. Push it around the plate.”

“But I'm starving,” he said.

“I guess you can just get a snack at the movies,” I said.

“Okay, I guess,” he said.

“Dinner bell!” Clem sang out from the dining room.

Forrest grabbed my arm.

“Jem, you have to sit next to me. I have a plan.”

Seated around the dinner table, I really felt like a grown-up. I nodded politely across the table to Taylor, even though I didn't mean it. Before dinner, Clem's little sister, Mimi, had poked her head into the living room. She was wearing a ballerina tutu and I asked if she took ballet.

“Uh-huh,” she said softly.

Mimi Caritas had a sweet face, not much personal style, and always looked nervous standing in the school lobby before the first bell. Mimi was such a sixth-grader. I could tell she was trying to look cool, but she wasn't exactly sure how. Could only two years separate the tall, fabulous Clem from her shorter, baby-faced sister?

Mimi twirled her way down the hall, closer to where I was standing. But her twirl went off kilter and she spun herself into the wall. A heavy picture frame crashed onto the wood floor. When Clem heard the crash, she yelled, “No little kids allowed!” and Mimi raced back to her room.

Clem and her equally gorgeous model boyfriend, Beau, also a ninth-grader, had lit candles around the dining room. They were on the table and also behind us on tables and shelves that held heavy pottery and old glass milk bottles.

At the oval table, Kate was on my left and Forrest was on my right. Kate squeezed my knee under the blue-checked tablecloth and winked at me.

“Stop it!” I said to her in a whisper.

Worse yet, Piper kept playing footsie with me under the table. I gave her a glare as the food started being passed around. Forrest took a little of the soup and a surprisingly large portion of the pad thai.

Good for you, Forrest, trying something new.

Then I realized what Piper was up to: she was not trying to play footsie with me, she was trying to knock my foot into Forrest's foot under the table! Like a chain reaction, Piper shoved my foot and my foot knocked into Forrest's skateboard sneaker.

“Piper!” I blurted across the table.

“What? What?” she said, turning her laughing face toward Dylan.

“Sorry,” I said to Forrest.

“Does everyone love the pad thai?” Clem asked. She was drinking water with lemon from a wide-mouth wine glass. She held the glass as if she was at a glamorous Hollywood party, pinky out.

“It's amazing,” I said, wondering if the two of us would now be friends. But Clem didn't look at me.

“It's great,” Forrest said. “Could I have some more water?”

“Sure,” Clem said, getting up.

When she was out of the room, Forrest grabbed my nearly finished plate and switched it with his full plate. I laughed but before I could protest, Clem was leaning in to fill his wine glass with water.

“Thanks,” Forrest said.

Clem saw Forrest's plate, which appeared to be my plate.

“Jemma, don't you like it? Eat up!” she said.

Twelve

Standing against the glass concession stand at the movie theater, my stomach felt stuffed tight with pad thai noodles. I had not imagined indigestion playing such a role on my first date with Forrest. I had plenty of appetizers plus my huge plate of pad thai. Then I had eaten most of Forrest's dinner, too.

“Water, I just need a water,” I told Forrest.

“No popcorn?” he said before ordering a mega-bucket with melted butter.

“Nothing for me, thanks,” Kate told Brett before joining me in the ladies' room.

I started to feel a little less sick following our bathroom stop. We couldn't find enough seats together for everyone, but we found a section of the theater where we could be close, if not side by side. The couples naturally paired off and found seats together. Forrest tugged on the sleeve of my sweater and motioned toward two seats a few rows back, on the end.

“It's better back here,” he said.

We were close enough to wave at our friends, but not so close that they could hear Forrest and me talking.

“Have you been on a movie date before?”

“I've been to the movies,” I said.

“On a date?” Forrest asked.

“Yeah, I think that last time I went to a movie it was October fourteenth. That's a date,” I said.

“You know what I mean.”

“But this isn't a date-date, right?”

“Right, but people think it is. I'm just saying that it's normal to, like, look like boyfriend and girlfriend here,” he said.

“What are you saying?”

“People hold hands and stuff.”

“But it's dark. No one will see us,” I said.

“They'll turn around and check.”

And at that moment, Piper turned around and gave me a little wave. Not three seconds later, Kate did the same thing. Even Clem seemed to be checking on Forrest and me. Clem, until tonight, had seemed unaware that I existed.

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Nothing. I'm just saying if we don't seem like we're, you know, together, they'll think it's weird. Or that we're breaking up.”

“How can we break up when we're not even together?”

He laughed and reached his arm across my back and rested his fingertips on my shoulder. The next time Piper and Kate turned around to check on us, Forrest's arm was in this strange new place. They smiled and turned back around, satisfied.

The movie roared with action and a story that kept everyone guessing until the end. But I was more interested in the drama unfolding between Forrest and me. At first, he held his arm ever-so-gently across my back, like he was trying not to bother me. But as the movie wore on, he relaxed, I guess, and his arm felt heavier. Centimeter by centimeter, I relaxed in his direction, making the arm-around-me thing feel more natural. I savored the feeling, knowing I would be rewinding this moment in my head over and over again.

Since my friends checked up on me, I took a moment to see what the other couples were doing in the movie darkness. From what I could see, Kate and Brett were holding hands. Beau had his arm around Clem and they were sharing a soda. Piper and Dylan were a couple rows ahead on the left, sitting as close as they could, despite the cup holder between them. They were just black silhouettes, shadow puppets almost, against the movie screen. I kept one eye on them, I'm embarrassed to say, because I wondered if they would kiss. I felt even more embarrassed when they did. I tried to make myself look away, but I couldn't.

It was so romantic. Dylan was so into Piper. You could just tell. At dinner, he laughed at all her jokes and helped her put on her coat. At the concession stand, he bought her gummy bears, unprompted, because he knew she liked them.

“You're the sweetest thing,” Piper had said to him.

Even as I enjoyed the sweet touch of Forrest's arm across my back, I knew we were different from every other couple in that theater. After the movie ended and the lights went up, Forrest extricated himself from me. He smiled at me sleepily and set the empty popcorn bucket on the sticky floor. The window for anything more to happen between us had closed for the night. Next, we were in the lobby and then outside in the cold night air waiting for my dad to pick us up.

Thirteen

KATE
: Did he kiss you?

PIPER
: Smooch
or no smooch
?

Those were the texts waiting for me as soon as I flopped down on my bed and tried to make sense of the whirlwind night I'd just had. I almost texted no, but that would have led to follow-up questions.
What happened? Why not? Are you guys fighting?

I lacked the strength to respond so I plugged my phone in its charger and turned on the shower. I did my best thinking in two places: the shower and while I was running. In the shower, I'd get so lost in thought that my parents often had to bang on the door to snap me awake. The soothing drum of the water always helped me to think things through.

Tonight, between the shampoo and body wash, I tallied up the evening's pluses and minuses.

Pluses

Forrest and I talked and laughed.

I helped him with his pad thai issue.

He put his arm around me.

Minuses

He didn't kiss me.

He doesn't look at me in that “Wow, I'm so into you” way.

This relationship is still faker than Clem's blond highlights.

I already knew the moment that I would dwell on, examine, and re-examine over the coming days. It was fifteen or so minutes into the movie. Forrest's arm was already positioned around me, but then there was a moment when it morphed from a stiff awkwardness to relaxed coziness. He let the weight of his arm rest on me. And millimeter by millimeter, I stopped being so tense and fit myself naturally into the shelter of his arm. It was a moment I had definitely been waiting for. But it was not hard evidence. Maybe he just needed to relax his arm after holding it there for so long. And then I thought, why wouldn't he just move his arm if he was uncomfortable? And then there was that whole issue of him telling my dad that we were “friends
mostly
.”