The Last Best Kiss (29 page)

“Not right now. But my dad could show up any minute. Want to go up to my room just to be safe?”

He raises his eyebrows. “You move fast.”

I heave an exaggerated sigh. “Finn, I’ve known you for, like, four years. There was a break in the middle, but all things considered, I’d say we’ve moved pretty slowly. Anyway, my room is just the easiest place for us to hang out in. It’s not a brothel.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” he says disappointedly.

“Don’t worry—it’s not a temple of purity either. Follow me.” I lead him up the stairs and into my room. “Oops. I probably should have cleaned it first.” I cringe as I survey it with the eyes of a stranger: dirty clothes overflow my wicker hamper and make cloth puddles on the floor all around it; schoolbooks and my laptop lie in a circle on my unmade bed, since that’s where I was doing homework before Finn arrived; and my desk is covered with its usual mixture of art supplies, CDs, and old dishes. I eat in my room a lot, since I eat alone a lot. “I’ll clear some space for us.”

I start stacking up the books and papers on my bed.

“I’ll help you,” Finn says.

“You don’t have to clean my room.”

“I like organizing.” He starts moving swiftly around the room, making neat piles of CDs and putting books back onto my shelves. He stacks up the dirty dishes and carries them all down to the kitchen for me. By the time he’s back, I’ve picked up my laundry off the floor, made the now uncluttered bed, and even arranged the pillows at the head in the way they’re supposed to be and haven’t been since the day I first bought the matching bedding when we moved into this house ten years ago.

Finn stands in the doorway, surveying our work.

“Much better,” he says.

“You’re weird.”

“What makes you say that?”

“A girl invites you up to her room, and you clean it.”

“Are you questioning my masculinity?” He lunges at me, literally sweeps me up in his arms, then deposits me on top of the bed on my back. He looms over me.

I grin up at him. “Not questioning it anymore. Just enjoying it.”

“Much better.” He looks around. “Now where
did
I put my feather duster?”

“Shut up,” I say, and pull him down on top of me. We have a lot of catching up to do.

Eventually the making out gives way to talking—because we have a lot of catching up there too, and I still want to know what he meant when he said he never stopped liking me. Which seems equally wonderful and impossible.

He’s on his back, and I’m curled up against him, my head pillowed on his shoulder, his arm wrapped around mine. Maybe there are better places in the world to be. Maybe there are people happier than me right now. But I’d need a lot of proof before I’d believe it.

“I thought I’d blown it with you forever,” I tell him, lacing my fingers through his and rubbing my cheek against his T-shirted chest. (When did his hoodie come off? Oh, right. I tore it off him—it was getting in my way.)

“I thought you had too,” he says. “All that time I was away . . . you became like this monster. The Girl Who Humiliated Me. I thought that when I actually saw you again for real, you’d look all twisted and evil and ugly, that my eyes would finally be open to your true appearance. And there you were, just as pretty as ever. Prettier. With your quiet smile and that little mischievous glint in your eye—”

“I have a mischievous glint?”

“It’s your finest quality.”

“So you don’t like anything else about me?”

He gives me a punitive little shake. “You’re not getting any more compliments out of me, so stop trying. Anyway, it was very disturbing to see you again. You weren’t supposed to be cute. You were supposed to have fangs and horns and a unibrow.”

“I’m sorry I disappointed you. Did you really hate me that much?”

“Only when I wasn’t with you.” He brushes his lips against my hair—so softly, I can hardly feel it. “I tried hard to hate you full-time—”

“It felt like you succeeded. You were cold, Westbrook.”

He shakes his head. “Just an act. When I was around you, it was work to remember that I hated you. I tried to hold on to the image of you as this spoiled, self-satisfied crowd-follower, but all I ever saw was this sweet, cute girl who still made me want to slay dragons just to get her attention. Or save her from mad dogs, at least.”

“Yes, you did do that, didn’t you?” I sling my arm across his chest. “You totally rescued me from Mad Dog Fang. Even if you were too busy falling all over Lily afterward to let me thank you.”

“I wasn’t falling over her.”

“You so were. You guys were inseparable that night.”

“Well, you weren’t an option. I had decided that. And Lily was easy to like. She was cute and funny and smart, and I could tell she would never let anyone tell her who to date. Or who not to.”

Even though I’m lying safely inside the circle of his arm, I feel a sick thud when he says that. He may have forgiven me for it, but I still did something hateful to him. And I’d give anything not to have.

“I am so sorry for what I did that night,” I say, hiding my face against his chest so my words are muffled. “I wanted so badly to be able to take it back, to get you to forgive me, but you wouldn’t let me. And then you were just so totally gone . . .”

He nuzzles my temple. “It’s okay, Anna. You were fifteen—so was I—and we both acted pretty stupidly. You shouldn’t have blown me off, but I should have given you a chance to apologize.”

“What I did was worse than anything you did. And you know it wasn’t just that night.” I swallow hard. I want everything out in the open. So I can be completely forgiven. I just can’t look at him while I put it out there. “I should have told the whole world how much I liked you right from the beginning. And instead I kept it a secret. I don’t even know why. I guess I was scared that if my friends knew and didn’t approve, I’d have to choose between them and you. But afterward I realized that not being with you was a thousand times worse than having to stand up to them would have ever been.”

“When did you figure that out?”

“The second I didn’t get to be with you anymore.” I push my face even harder against his shoulder. “I mean it, Finn. I missed you so much, and I only had myself to blame, which didn’t exactly make it better.”

“You know, my family would have moved away even if we’d kept going out.”

“I know. But we would have stayed close. We would have texted and talked and seen each other whenever we could.” I lift my head to look at him. “Like when we go to college next year. We may end up far away, but—” I stop, worried I’m being presumptuous. Maybe he doesn’t think this is something that will last until next fall.

But all he says is, “You’re right. Being geographically separated isn’t the same as being
apart
.”

“And you admit that I was way more stupid and at fault than you were?”

“Okay,” he says with a grin that I can only see from the side but is all the cuter for being lopsided from this angle. “I’ll admit that. And I’ll admit something else too, while you’ve got me pinned down and unable to escape—”

I raise my arm off his chest. “Hardly!”

He pulls it back down across his body. “I like it there. Anyway, do you want to hear my confession?”

“Of course.”

“That night at the music festival . . . I was incredibly jealous of that guy who was kissing you. I mean, there I was with Lily, who is by all objective counts a total babe—”

“Prettier than me.”

He shakes his head and says vehemently, “No! I don’t agree with that at all. But anyone who saw me with her would definitely say I was the lucky one of the two. Anyway, my point is that instead of appreciating my luck and enjoying myself, I kept looking around to see what was happening with you and that Wade guy and thinking about how he was kissing you and how I used to get to do that and how much I wished I still could. I kept wondering if you still had that little gap next to your front incisor. . . .”

“Do I?” I try to feel if it’s there with my tongue, but it just feels like the inside of my mouth.

He hits his forehead with the palm of his free hand. “Can you believe it? I forgot to check.”

“Too late now,” I say regretfully.

“I think you’re wrong about that,” he says, and rears up over me, pulling my upper body up to meet his as his mouth descends on mine.

“The gap is gone,” he murmurs in my ear a few minutes later. “I used to be able to stick the tip of my tongue in there.”

“Are you disappointed?”

“Not sure yet. Let me see.”

I’m working on convincing him it’s not a major loss—that kissing me can still be moderately pleasurable—and I feel I’m making some real progress in that direction when I hear voices coming from downstairs.

“My dad’s home.” I sit up so I can listen more intently. “And I’m pretty sure he’s got Ginny with him.”

“Ginny? Who’s that?”

“The volleyball coach—the one who came into the art room today.”

“Oh, her. What’s her connection to your father? Are they going out?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Sort of? But it’s weird. She’s my sister’s friend. She’s like a quarter of a century younger than he is. Also? She’s incredibly annoying.”

“Yeah,” Finn says. “I got that in the thirty seconds I spent with her today.”

“It’s her superpower.”

“Do we have to go down and say hi to them?”

I flop back down next to him. “I don’t want to. Do you?”

“Why would I want to?”

“Wade would have.” I explain to him how Wade was using me to get to my father’s Stanford connections.

“I knew I didn’t like him,” Finn says.

“Shh,” I say, because there are voices on the stairs and whispers going past my room. Fortunately my door is closed. Fortunately for all of us, I guess, because the only place Dad and Ginny can be heading right now is toward the master bedroom.

A door shuts.

“Um,” Finn says. “I think your father just brought a girl up to his room.”

“He could just be showing her his art collection.” I put up my hand. “Don’t dignify that with a response.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not touching it.” He points up at the ceiling. “You ever think of putting solar panels on your roof? Your house is made for it.”

“I’ll mention it to my dad,” I say. “But maybe not right this second.”

“Does it bother you?” he asks, sitting up and leaning back against the headboard. “That your dad’s in there with her?”

“I don’t want to
think
about it, but otherwise it doesn’t bother me. They’re both grown-ups. I just wish he had better taste in women.”

“She did seem kind of awful.”

“You have no idea. You don’t think there’s any possible future where I might have to call her ‘Mommy,’ do you?”

“I’m pretty sure this is how ‘Cinderella’ started.”

“Yeah, or Snow White. It’s more—” I stop. “Who’s that?” A car has stopped in front of our house. I get on my knees and push back the shade over the window so I can peer out. Someone gets out of the car. “Oh my god, it’s
Lizzie
. What’s she doing home?”

“Lizzie? The one who used to drive me?”

I look over my shoulder at him. “Excited to see her again?”

“Excited’s not the right word. Are you sure you’re from the same family? You’re like two different species.”

“Maybe I was adopted?” I sigh. “Nah, I look too much like my mother.”

“Come on,” he says, scuttling off the bed. “I want to see your sister.”

“Really? Why?”

“I want to see if she’s changed. Also, if she can help me get into Berkeley.”

“You’d better be joking,” I say, and he just grins at me and holds out his hand to help me off the bed.

Lizzie’s already inside the house by the time we make it to the bottom of the stairs.

“Oh, hi,” she says, dropping an enormous suitcase down onto the floor. “I didn’t think anyone was home. It was so quiet.” She narrows her eyes at Finn. “Who are you?”

“I’m Finn. I rode in the back of your car for an entire year.”

“Oh, right! You were that little guy. Wow, you’ve changed.”

“So have you. You cut your hair.”

She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, like a hundred times since then.”

“And I’m sure you looked lovelier with each trim,” he says soberly.

Lizzie stares at him with the suspicious uncertainty of someone who’s not sure if she’s being teased or not.

“Why are you home?” I ask, and she turns to me.

“My Monday class was canceled and I had a ton of laundry.” She gestures to the ginormous bag. “And my roommate invited some friend of hers to stay all weekend long, and they’re both into musicals, and they wouldn’t stop playing
Cats
and
A Chorus Line
, and I thought I’d probably kill them both if I didn’t get out of there. And then this girl I know said she was driving to LA and back this weekend, so I had a free ride. Except just now she asked me to chip in for gas, which doesn’t seem fair, given the fact she was going to make the trip whether I went with her or not.” She glances around. “Is Dad home?”

I glance at Finn and hesitate just a moment before saying, “Yeah. I think he’s up in his room.”

She pushes the suitcase to the side with her foot. “I’d better go say hi. He sounded kind of sad the last time we talked. He doesn’t do well when I’m not here.”

“He sobs into his pillow every night. I can hear him from my room.”

“Don’t be obnoxious,” she says, and heads up the stairs. Finn and I follow close behind.

“You should stop her,” he whispers. “Or at least warn her.”

I’m tempted to stay quiet and see what happens, but I know he’s right (and I want him to think I’m as nice a person as he is), so I call after her, and she turns around at the top of the stairs. “What?” she says.

“I think someone might be in there with Dad. We heard a woman’s voice.”

“You mean like a date?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. We didn’t actually see them.”

“Weird,” she says. “He usually tells me if he’s dating someone. Are you sure you didn’t just hear the TV?” She knocks on his door. “Dad?” she calls. “It’s me! Surprise! Can I come in?” Then she opens the door and steps inside. We can only see her from the back, but we can still hear her. First she says, “Oh god—I’m sorry.” Then she says, “Wait—Ginny?
Ginny?
What are you doing here?”