Page 34 of Your Kiss Is On My List

“Baby,” she says. She stands just inside the door as if she’s uncertain about her welcome and guilt crashes down on me. Fuck.

“Doll,” I say automatically, scraping my chair back and going to her.

“Guess I’ll eat my cake in my room,” Nate says, but I don’t bother responding to him.

Dani doesn’t say anything, watching Nate as he pushes past us to go upstairs, carrying the whole cake—or whatever I’ve left of it—with him. A reprimand on behalf of my housemates—because I’m the fucking house president—is on the tip of my tongue, but it stays there and I swallow it back down because I don’t give a shit about anything but resolving whatever shit there is between me and Dani right now.

“Want a seat? I’d offer you cake but fucking Nate took it all—” She smiles and shakes her head, her eyes on me like if she blinks I’ll disappear. Kind of like I feel.

“I’m desperate to talk. It was all a misunderstanding.” She whispers the words as I guide her to the table and pull out a chair for her like we’re on a date at a restaurant, but I don’t know how else to act. This is how I feel and I’m going on instinct because trying to be smart or strategic doesn’t work worth shit when it comes to Dani.

“A misunderstanding?” I sit and lean forward to make sure I hear every word she whispers. She leans in too, nodding. I’m not sure what it means—whether she wants to be lovers or friends but I don’t ask. I wait because I’m too fucking afraid of messing up—yet again.

“Yes. We have to be friends, Trey.” Her words are like a shot to my heart with a golden bullet. They kill me and fill me with relief at the same time. She goes on, “We can’t go through life not being friends. We—you mean too much for me for that. Let’s go back to—” She waves a hand between us. “How it used to be, how it should always be, uncomplicated.”

“No more pretend boyfriend-girlfriend?” I hold my breath, not sure if I want her to say yes or no. She laughs. Of course she does. And my ego takes another hit, my heart too, but it’s already down and out and numb. All but a small part reserved for the consolation prize of having Dani as a friend, in my life as someone I have, someone who is special, who I can count on to be there for me. Just not in all the ways I’d like. And not necessarily her number one, not her best friend forever because when she finds her special guy—because she will someday—he’ll be her number-one best friend and I’ll be relegated to whatever once close growing-up friends are relegated to.

“No more pretend anything. Everything I say to you and about you is going to be one hundred percent real. I promise.” She raises her right hand and I resist the urge to take it, to kiss it, to pull her into my arms. Fuck. “Okay?” She’s reading my mood, so I nod and look away.

“I just remembered there’s another cake in the fridge. Let’s celebrate.” Her face lights up and I push back on the ache.

“Perfect. Because I have some good news to share that’s worth a big fat slice of cake.”

She tells me all about a big competition Dooley has her class entering while I slice two slabs of cake for us, though I’m regretting it now because all the reasons I let her go the other night are coming back to me now and in spite of my need to keep our bond intact, I know it’s going to be a fucking tough battle.

As she talks in a way that compels me to listen whether I want to or not, sucking me in with her special brand of charming enthusiasm, I chew on a mouthful of cake, forcing myself to swallow it.

“Sounds like quite a challenge—perfect for you. Who are you choosing for your profile piece?”

“You, baby. I’ll always choose you.”

Chapter 13

DANI

“Why?” His one word vibrates with so much unsaid, all his guilt, the obvious way he’s always measuring himself against some impossible target, the years of him trying to forget about the bloody death of that poor boy, Corey, whose white face I’ll never forget as they carried him off the ice.

Even though I only took my eyes off Trey for a mere glance, because no matter how bloody Corey was, no matter how desperate his fight to live was, I only had eyes for Trey, only cared about Trey, about his head injury. The way the coach and his parents were watching him, and the way Louie hung on my arm that day a pathetic mess of tears, none of that broke my concentration on Trey, my connection to him when our eyes locked and didn’t unlock as I walked beside his gurney, holding his hand, ignoring the shouts and annoyed orders to move aside, until the ambulance door shut.

No matter how much I begged, neither his parents nor the ambulance attendant would let me go with him. My assignment was to stay with Louie and wait for her Uncle Rob to come get us, to stay with Coach until he got there.

Even when a helicopter landed in the parking lot and reporters arrived, I didn’t suffer more empathy for Corey than I did for Trey. Because I knew, somehow without any reason, that Corey would die and that his death would undo Trey. And without prompting or a second thought, before Corey was lifted away in the helicopter already losing his battle to hang on to life, I made it my mission to save Trey, to keep him from falling apart or to put him back together, to be there for him, to be whatever he needed, sister, best friend, confidant, crutch, comic relief or whipping post. And I did it all in the next year, everything I could think of or invent.

We started our walks under the stars then, and our Brady Bunch reruns every afternoon. Everyone thought I was attached to Louie at the hip, but it was always Trey who held an invisible line attached to my heart, one I never intend to let go of, even if he goes away forever at the end of the semester and I never see him again.

If that happens, it won’t be my decision. I vow I’ll never be that weak again to turn him away, to not take whatever it is he has for me--or whatever he doesn’t. I vow I’ll never close my heart to him because there was no feeling worse in the world than the feeling of trying to turn away from him.

I didn’t know that until I tried it, but it’s like touching a hot iron—you only need to do it once, to experience that sudden excruciating, all-encompassing pain once, to know it’s wrong, to know never to do it again.

“Why me, Dani? I’m not that interesting or accomplished. I haven’t done anything special or heroic. Playing hockey doesn’t count—”

“Yes it does,” I say. “You playing hockey is a spectacular act of courage and I want to tell that story about why.” I don’t have to spell out what I mean, that I want to tell the story of the horrible bloody incident which is, on the rare occasions he’s ever mentioned it since he was twelve and I was nine years old, the only way he’s referred to it. He never called it an accident and that was so wrong and so sad. I wonder if he thinks of it as an accident now.

“No. You can’t.” His word is quick and final and shocking to me, but I quickly absorb his words and more importantly what he’s not saying, his body language, the emotions showing in his bright blue eyes.

Without a spit of panic and schooling my expression to absolute neutral with no sympathy and only quiet caring and understanding, I ask, “Why not, baby?”

Chapter 14