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“Why didn’t you tell me??”
“Because I can keep my cool. And you clearly can’t.”
“But he called you my—” Jimmy takes a frustrated breath, and his voice goes soft again. “I mean, you are my boyfriend, but he said it in a way that, like … meant somethin’ else.”
“I know. I was there.” I’m still not looking at him. “You could have kept your cool anyway.”
“Look, I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. I feel awful. This is all my fault. Me and my ego, right?” Jimmy scoffs at himself. “Me and my stupid, big, fat ego ruining everything.”
“And I was serious earlier.”
“What?”
I finally turn my eyes onto him. “You should do your dance at the Ball with Camille as your partner. Not me.”
His whole face collapses. “Bobs, no.”
“It just makes better sense.”
“And I told you I’m not gonna do that. We’ve been rehearsin’ so hard, and for weeks! You deserve to be up there with me!”
“Jimmy, you left a sport to pursue dance. I was a soccer player since the start. Hell, small town obsessions with sports is half the reason we need fundraising for the arts. I belong on a soccer field, not a dance floor. It makes total sense that you do the dance with Camille, not with me.”
“This isn’t about the dance anymore, is it?” The wounded look in Jimmy’s eyes is almost too much to bear. “You’re just afraid to be thrown into the spotlight again with me. Just like Prom, back in the day. You remember your very first reaction, right after I asked you in front of the soccer team? You were angry at me. You hated the attention. I had to talk you into actually goin’ with me at all!”
“Jimmy, that isn’t the same.”
“It is! It’s exactly the same! You’re just afraid, Bobby Parker.”
“I just lost my job, Jimmy. I lost my fucking job. I was countin’ on this money to help my parents out and pay for my tuition. Now what do I got?” I spread my hands, empty. “Nothin’ but a bloody fuckin’ nose, that’s what.”
“Bobs …”
My ma’s car pulls up in front of us.
I rise up off the curb. With Jimmy shouting, “Bobby, c’mon,” at my back, I slip right into the passenger seat of my ma’s car and pull shut the door, cutting off Jimmy’s protests.
My ma’s eyes go wide. “Sweetheart, your nose!”
“Just drive,” I beg her.
22
JIMMY
He isn’t answering my calls.
Or my texts.
What the fuck have I done?
“Seriously, Bobby. I’m so sorry. I was a fuckin’ idiot, I made a huge mistake, I lost my temper,” I bleat into the phone, leaving him my tenth or twentieth or thirtieth voicemail of the week.
It’s been a week since that horrible day at the movie theater.
Worst day of my life, which started the worst week of my life.
My voicemails start to feel like I’m shouting fruitlessly down a well hoping for someone to shout back. But the only thing that comes back are my desperate echoes.
“Please, Bobby. Call me back. I’m dyin’ here, man.”
My mama keeps checking up on me. I keep ignoring all her questions, even when she corners me at every meal. After a few days, she finally realizes I’m in no mood for her meddling, and has since mercifully backed off. Now the two of us eat in an awkward silence, punctuated now and then by a totally superfluous story my mama tells about her day, which I barely listen to.
I spend shit loads of time in chairs just staring at shit. The walls of my room. The ripples of water in the swimming pool. The distant trees on the edge of our property, swaying in the summer breeze. Clouds in the sky. Wind chimes on the back patio.
My own stupid face in the mirror, staring back at me stupidly.
“You’re such a fuckin’ idiot, Jimmy Strong,” I tell that stupid reflection in the stupid mirror.
Why can’t he just respond to a simple text, even if he’s totally pissed with me?
He’s never done this before. Even that time when I might’ve been the reason an ex of his dumped him freshman year. (He was no good for him anyway.) Or another time when I made him late to one of his midterms. Actually, that happened twice.
Still, Bobby always comes around, or forgives me, or at the very least answers a goddamned text.
I must’ve really fucked up this time.
Obviously my mama has made a few presumptions about my friendship with Bobby (or has been talking to Mrs. Parker) and then went and told Tanner and Billy, because one morning I find the pair of them joining us for breakfast, and Billy goes, “I don’t mean to be insensitive, but if you and Bobby aren’t talkin’, then does that mean you’re doin’ a solo now for the Spruce Ball, or—?”
I don’t have a proper answer for him.
