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He nods back his agreement and once again disappears with his friends. I have never been so relieved to see mine. Mara waves, and Kirby, a little more tentative, offers a smile.
“Hi,” I say, unsteady on my feet. If I’m going to cry, at least my friends are here. “I think I need to talk.”
* * *
In a darkened corner of an indoor miniature-golf course, after I apologize a hundred more times for being sour about the Chelan trip, I confess to my friends what they’ve suspected for all these years: that my feelings for Neil McNair go deeper than rivalry.
I tell them everything else, too, about the books I read and the book I’m writing and Delilah Park.
“Go ahead,” I say, pressing my back against the wall, bracing myself. “Make fun of me.”
“You’re writing a romance novel,” Kirby says slowly. “You showed it to Neil.”
Miserably, I nod, waiting for them to insist I could have shown them. But I feel better now, knowing I’m not hiding anymore.
“You didn’t think we’d be supportive?” she asks. There’s no amusement on her face. I think she might be hurt.
“It’s a romance novel. You’ve made it pretty clear what you think about them.”
“Yeah, but…” Kirby shakes her head. “I didn’t realize you loved them, loved them. I was always joking. It wasn’t meant to be mean. You never gave the impression that you were that into them, just that you had them lying around.”
“Because I was afraid,” I say in a small voice. “And I don’t want to be. Maybe I’m not the most amazing writer yet, but I think I’m okay. And I have plenty of time to get better. I don’t want to be ashamed of what I like.”
Mara’s been quiet the whole conversation, which isn’t entirely unusual for her. “I like Harry Styles,” she finally says, which surprises both of us.
Kirby turns to her. “Really? You’ve never told me that. I mean, I can admit he’s a good-looking guy.”
A blush creeps onto her cheeks. “No. I like his music.”
“Oh,” Kirby says. “I’ve never heard it.”
“It’s good,” Mara insists. “I’ll send you some songs.”
Then Mara and I both stare at Kirby, as though waiting for her confession.
“Okay, okay,” she says. “I love reality TV. But not even the shows that require talent, like singing or fashion design. The really bad stuff that’s just hot rich people yelling at each other. I started watching it ironically with my sister a few years ago before she went to college, but then I sort of started liking it for real.”
“I love Harry Styles!” Mara shouts, in a move that’s completely out of character for her, and then giggles as a few classmates glance our way with raised eyebrows. “And I don’t care who knows about it!”
I adore her.
“Maybe you could recommend a couple books to us,” Kirby says, and my heart tugs.
“I can definitely do that.”
Recovered from her outburst, Mara places a hand on my knee. “So… Neil.”
Even his name brings heat to my face.
“For a while, I thought you guys just needed to hook up and get it out of your system,” Kirby says. “You really like him, though.”
“God. I really do. But it was like what happened on the bench flipped some kind of switch with him, and now he’s acting even weirder than usual.”
“It sounds like maybe he got scared,” Mara says. “I felt like that with Kirby at the beginning. That if we were going to do this, we couldn’t go back to how things were before. That it would change our friendship forever, for better or for worse.”
“Fortunately, for better,” Kirby interjects.
Mara threads her fingers with Kirby’s. “And school might be over, but you’d have to figure out what happens this summer, and in college, assuming you haven’t murdered each other by then. That’s terrifying. We’re going to the same place, and I’m still terrified.”
