One
Paisley Horne is keeping a secret from me. They all are.
Not that it would be the first time my friends had done so. In fact, it only took me a year of friendship to start noticing holes in the information the other three would relay to me. Little stuff. Trips to Sephora I’d been left out of. Condolences for losses I didn’t know had even happened. Everyone nodding along to crush information that was a revelation for me. While I went into our brand-new group dynamic freshman year thinking we were all driving through life on the same highway, Paisley, Harlow, and Opal were weaving in and out on the side streets.
But tonight feels different. I’m not going to pretend I don’t see it.
We arrived at Bob’s Big Boy, one of the diners close to our school, twenty minutes ago. Paisley’s been in the bathroom the whole time.
The dinner is the first of our two Friday after-school traditions: a meal out and a sleepover at Opal’s house. It’s barely six p.m., but October’s creeping out of daylight savings time, so the view out of our horseshoe-shaped booth window is a blanket of black. The only lightcomes from the buzzing red neon that lines the nearly-century-old drive-up area. There’s usually a classic car show around this time, full of old men who smile at us too long, but it got canceled tonight with a single handwritten sign hanging on the front doors.
“Is Paisley okay?” I ask. It’s the second time I’ve done so since she left. I don’t expect Harlow or Opal to break down and give me an honest answer, but it’s worth a shot. As soon as the words leave my mouth, I take a long sip of the cherry-flavored Coke I ordered, syrup made in-house like we’re really in the ’50s. Sweetness to cover the bitter taste of my nerves.
“Yeah,” Opal says from the other end of the booth, Harlow between us. She mimics me with her Diet Coke, her sparkly pink nails wrapping around the red plastic cup. Her newly cut bob of black hair swishes against her jaw as she moves. She’s got the menu open, but I know what she’s going to order. “She’s fine.”
“Why do you keep asking?” Harlow asks, closing her own menu. Once her menu is down, she picks up her phone with the vintage Lisa Frank case and starts scrolling. “She’s just fixing her makeup. It’s nothing unusual for her.”
But itisunusual for her. She hates public restrooms, especially Bob’s, which she’s deemed “too old,” as if the restaurant hasn’t updated them many times since they opened in 1949. She’d rather—and has made us—drive home than go into them.
I know Harlow and Opal know this. They should be concerned too.
“Is something wrong withyou?” Opal asks. She leans a little across the vinyl tabletop, a furrow between her brows she’s told us on many occasions she plans to remove with Botox once she’s legal. Maybe it’s just me having come from a public school system, but I swear I didn’t even realize half the applications for Botox before attending Hastings School.
“No,” I say. “I just…” …have gotten weird vibes from Paisley since we met at Bob’s. She didn’t say a word when we came in, despite her having auditioned for some new indie movie last night. Paisley always talks. And Paisleyalwaystalks about her auditions, even if they didn’t go well. “Y’know, if it’s a bathroom issue or something, we don’t have to stay.”
Harlow scrunches up her face as Opal barks out a laugh.
“Jeez, Emma, don’t make things gross,” Harlow groans.
The only other explanation I can think of is that Paisley got into some kind of trouble she doesn’t feel comfortable telling me about. But what could that be?
“I don’t think that’s possible, Har,” Paisley says as she suddenly materializes and slides into the booth next to me. She shoots me a smile with that playful little sparkle in her eyes.
Paisley has the kind of face you can’t help but look at: big doe eyes, sharp cheekbones, creamy skin so smooth she looks like she’s bypassed adolescence altogether and reached the ideal beauty people in their early twenties possess. Between her perfect teeth, shiny blond hair, and bright blue eyes, she looks like a genuine fairy-tale princess.
But she doesn’t just draw you in with her face; she leads every smile with a touch. Right now, she brushes her thigh against mine as she adjusts in her seat, a burst of heat between us before she scoots a few inches away to make the distance more friendly. It’s usually a comfort when she touches me with such ease. After I came out as bi earlier this year, she never made it weird. And when Paisley accepted me, Harlow and Opal followed in lockstep. Paisley didn’t give them a chance to have a problem with it and nails the point in every chance she gets.
“The grass is green and Emma has something to say about bodily fluids,” Paisley jokes. “Usually it’s blood, though.”
Harlow and Opal laugh, but I don’t. I’m too focused on trying to get a good look at Paisley’s face to confirm the makeup theory. But before I get the chance to confirm, Paisley leans in toward me and whispers, “Wouldn’t want it any other way, though.”
When she pulls away, I finally get a good look at her. My chest tightens. Her makeup looks exactly same as when she came in, down to the flecks of mascara stuck to her upper lid from rubbing her eye. She wasn’t fixing it after all.
So what was she doing in there?
“Just…concerned,” I say, realizing I need to respond to Paisley’s teasing before Harlow and Opal thinkI’macting too weird here.
Paisley chuckles. “I’m fine. It’s sweet you miss me, though.”
Paisley pulls her ice water to her lips and gazes out our window. I try to catch Opal’s eye, one last attempt to get someone to feel as weirded out by Paisley’s behavior as I am. But Opal shuts her menu and says, “Ready to order now, Pais?”
Paisley nods, dropping the menu closest to her on top of my opened one, her manicure a fresh neon orange for the season. I flinch at the sound of plastic slapping the table and dismiss the twinge of annoyance that I haven’t had the proper time to look. But it’s Bob’s; we come here all the time. It’s fine.
Opal flags down the waitress, a pretty woman with hair just as red as her lipstick, who’s definitely too old for me. Everyone orders exactly as they have for the other several hundred dinners we’ve shared—Opal gets her usual salad, Harlow opts for some item she’s never had before, I pick the burger combo they’re famous for, and Paisley orders the smallest burger and a side salad. She calls it “real” balance—eyeing Opal pointedly—but will be stealing my fries within a few minutes.
I manage to look at the waitress’s face as she listens to us, but whenshe smiles and makes eye contact with me, my gaze falls back to the table. Heat runs up my neck as the waitress says, “Coming right up, sweeties.”
Opal smirks at me as the waitress’s heels click away. “You’re blushing.”
