“Tristan,” she gasps.
“I saw it.”
“Let’s toast.”
I raise the bottle in the air. “To meteors.” I uncork it with a soft, practiced pop that I muffle with my hand.
We swallow our first cold mouthfuls and grin at each other. Hers is wobbly and happy, and when she gestures for the bottle, I shake my head.
“You don’t need more of this.”
She rolls her eyes. “I never get to do this. I feel great.”
Something throbs in my chest. She never gets to do this, and whose fault is that? Should I have recognized that she needed more fun, more beauty, sooner?
I pass her the bottle. She takes another big mouthful and grins, her cheeks puffed with champagne.
“To getting out of my shell,” she says after she swallows.
I don’t really think of her as having a shell, but she does. Another throb. “You did great.”
“I did, didn’t I?” She flops back in the grass. I stay, arms looped around my knees, watching over her. “I can’t believe it, Tristan. I made small talk for forty-five minutes. I got his number.” She laughs wildly. “I asked for a guy’s number. You know I’ve never done that before?”
“Never?” I shoot her a surprised glance.
“Never,” she exclaims. “I just sort offell intomy prior relationships. I never did the choosing. I was so grateful that someone wanted to be with me, andgod,it’s so embarrassing. It’s like there’s this little girl inside me who can’t forget that once, she wasn’t picked, so she wants to do everything in her power to make sure it never happens again.”
My heart is a wild thing in my chest. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to let myself feel the depth of emotion that Katie is feeling, and I don’t think I can be a balm to this wound.
“You deserve to do the choosing,” I say thickly.You deserve the world.
She snorts. “I mean, yeah, but have you met me? I’m pretty fucking weird.”
“I like you weird.”
She flicks me in the leg. “I know, and I channeled that tonight. I told myself to just be how I am around you.” Her smile is hazy. It stuns me that she’s smiling after all this. These pieces of her past are painful revelations for me, but for her they’re mere facts of life and it makes me want to scream.
“I’m glad,” I say. It comes out strangled.I am glad,dammit.I want everything for this girl. I want her to be brave enough to wish on every shooting star we see tonight, and I want to will every single wish into existence.
The universe grants us another meteor, with a flaming tail, and she sighs happily.
“I didn’t realize dating was so hard for you,” I say finally.
“You can’t even imagine struggling with this, can you?”
I shake my head. Being the fun one has always come naturally to me.
“It’s always been hard. I always figured girls learned boy skills at sleepovers. Or sororities. That they would endlessly dissect men in group texts. Like they do on TV.”
The breath catches in my chest.
“And you didn’t…do those things?”
She snorts. “Hell no, I didn’t do those things. I was so odd as a kid, Tristan. I mean, I was homeschooled when I couldn’t join partway through the school year. I was always the new kid, always this quiet tomboy who had weird skills and didn’t really know how to fit in. David bought me like, theworstclothes. Forget hair and makeup. I always figured girls learned those from their moms or something.”
The unspoken words hang in the air.And I didn’t have one of those.
Even my shitty mom was better than the empty hole in Katie’s life.
