Chapter 12

Veronica

Come to think of it, that latte was hot.

I hadn’t even noticed I’d spilled the latte until I was home and I realized I smelled like a bag of coffee-flavored jellybeans, and I realized my chest down to my waist were tender and sensitive to the touch, the clothes feeling itchy on them. Guess I’d burned myself a little. I’d been too busy looking at a blue-eyed goddess.

What kind of irony was it where I’d have done anything for a chance to see her again, but then when I saw her again, I ran away as fast as I could? It was just… she hadn’t asked to see me. That was the important part. If she didn’t, then I was just being like I had been at the party, overriding her consent. She didn’t want to see me at the party, and she didn’t want to see me in a café.

Just… why was she at that one? I didn’t know how to live my life if I had to worry about accidentally invading her space no matter where I went, even to all my own regular places.

I peeled my clothes off to get in the shower, wincing at the warm water on my skin—it at least didn’t look burned, which meant it would probably go away before long, but it felt kind of symbolic. Go near Kelcey and get burned. Only fair after how many times she’d gotten burned on me.

I wrapped myself in a towel after the shower, stepping out into the apartment still spinning, trying to place where I'd put down my laptop--I fumbled around the apartment muttering to myself, and I didn’t have any patience when there was a knock at the door, probably Mom forgetting everything I’d told her yesterday and coming to tell me to get together with Kelcey. I groaned, marching over to the door, and I flung it open with a, “What—” that turned into a heart attack when I saw Kelcey Huntington there in the doorway, clearly summoning her nerves and gone instantly, wide-eyed and flushed in a blink at the sight of me in a towel.

“Oh… uh… um…”

“I-I am so sorry,” I blurted, shutting the door in a rush, my hands shaking, and I turned around and leaned back against the door, every part of me shaky.

She was here. Kelcey Huntington. Here at my apartment. She’d… told me to wait when I was leaving the café. What? Had she been there to try to find me? Why wouldn’t she have texted? No, forget that—why would she want to find me?

“K-Kelcey?” I said through the door, turning my head to face it, trying to sound cool and cursing inwardly at the stutter. “What… are you doing here?”

“You… you forgot your laptop case. At the café.”

I paused. “You know, that would explain why I couldn’t find it.”

“It’s a pretty plausible explanation.”

I took a while trying to put thoughts together, my heart racing faster than it had when I was forced to do laps in PE. “What a world, where Kelcey Huntington is reminding someone else not to forget their laptop.”

“Oh my god, fine, you don’t want it!” she laughed. “I’ll just throw it down the stairs as hard as I can, jump on it, since that’ll make you happy.”

She could throw me down the stairs and jump on me and it would make me happy. I’d gotten to hear the sound of her laugh again… god, it was beautiful. Had I really gone all that time not realizing I was in love with her? Thinking that I didn’t want to have a girlfriend?

The word girlfriend had changed so quickly from disgusting to something so brilliant it made my heart race, and thoughts of Kelcey’s shining blue eyes were the first, second, and last thing to mind when I thought the word.

“Better not,” I said. “You apparently have the throwing force it’d take out the laptop and the staircase in one go.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s me. Musclewoman Kelcey.”

I laughed. Oh my god, she was talking to me. Through a door, trying to hand me back my laptop, but either way, I’d gotten this conversation. Even if she handed me my laptop and I never saw her again, I could live on this conversation forever.

But I also—well, I guess maybe I just wanted to hope. That maybe this conversation could go on a little longer. I wasn’t ready to let go of a beautiful thing.

“Are you just here to return lost-and-found,” I said, “or… do you want me to put some coffee on?”

“I, uh, I just had coffee.”

“Oh yeah.” I’d forgotten where I’d even been. “Hot chocolate?”

She was quiet for long enough I thought maybe I’d offended her before she said, in her small puppy-dog pleading voice, “Yes please.”

“Okay, great. You can come in. I’ll… actually, I’ll—put my clothes on first.”

She mumbled something from the other side. I wasn’t sad that she liked the sight of me in a towel… this just wasn’t the moment for it. Not unless Kelcey explicitly and enthusiastically consented to see me in a towel.

Jesus, she’d really done a number on me.

I got changed, having a brief panic at the wardrobe about what to wear— casual implied that Kelcey being here was no big deal, but formal made it feel like I was trying to turn this into a date, and something more creative made it feel like I wasn’t taking this seriously—and I settled in the end for a button-down and red chinos that managed to sit at the intersection of the three before I stopped in the mirror on my way to the front door, sucking in a sharp breath.

“Okay, Vern,” I said. “You can do this. Don’t say anything weird trying to convince her to stay. You can’t have anything more from her than what she offers. Be cool, be… respectful.”

“Do you always hype yourself up in the mirror?”

I jumped, whirling on where Kelcey stood at the door, her hands folded at her waist, leaning back against it, and I almost passed out.

“Did—did you hear all of that?” I said, and she smiled wider, ducking her head a little.

“It was cute.”

“Oh, god. Um—hi. Thanks for the laptop. Why don’t you have a seat and I’ll get started on that hot chocolate. Do you just want regular?”

She lit up, eyes sparkling. God, she was so beautiful it ached. I’d missed that look she would give me. She bounced on the balls of her feet a little, that gesture that was so Kelcey, and I was a sap, because I was going to start crying. She was dressed so prettily today, with a cable-knit sweater I knew she loved pulling out for the winter, a bow pinned into her cool blonde hair, just so perfectly Kelcey in all the ways I remembered. I frantically took in every detail of her like it was the last look I’d ever get at her—the deep arch of her Cupid’s bow, the dots of freckles at the back of her jawline, the mole under her ear that was almost heart-shaped. The way her long eyelashes always sat just the littlest bit more curled on her left eye than on her right, but how when she smiled, it was her right cheek that dimpled a little bit while her left cheek barely did. Maybe I wasn’t allowed to keep any of the pictures, but I could paint her by memory.

“Um…” She giggled a little. “What other kinds are you offering?”

“The other day I made a spiced one and it was next-level. I could do peppermint hot chocolate. I had one with eggnog the other day and it was actually not bad.”

“Let’s do the spiced one.” She ducked her head. “Um… Veronica?”

Oh, god. My name in her voice. I saw stars for a second. “Yeah?”

“I’m mad at you, you know.”

I winced. “I know. You, er… you have every right to be. And then some.”

“Stop it,” she said, but she didn’t… sound mad. “You’re supposed to be unreasonable and make me madder at you.”

I looked away. “Well… I’m trying to turn a new leaf. Maybe be a little bit less unreasonable… at times. At least enough to acknowledge when I was in the wrong.”

She gave me a meaningful look, eyes brimming with a hundred emotions, and I was going to die if I looked at Kelcey Huntington like that, so I met her gaze for as long as I could before I went into the kitchen and started on the hot chocolate, focusing on it above all else—distracting myself with heating the milk, adding a cinnamon stick and cardamom cloves, star anise, a few pieces of ginger, infusing it for a while. It was a calming ritual that I needed when the inside of my head was aimless screaming, and it kept me busy for long enough to survive the next ten minutes until I sat down at the table with Kelcey, setting a mug down in front of her and one in my spot. Still the same seats we’d use at this table a million times back when we were…

“Me too,” she said, and I blinked.

“About the seats?”

She laughed. “I don’t know what conversation you were having in your head just now.”

God, I was nervous. “You too what?”

She looked down. “I’m also trying to, uh… turn a new leaf. I want to be… better. I’m tired of feeling like I’m useless all the time and that people only keep me around because of pity or because someone else does something for me.”

“Kelcey—”

“And apparently once you thought I’d been fired, you went storming off to find Anna and Lucy and demand they give me my job back.”

Oh, Jesus. I paled. “They told you? Which one—”

“Lucy.”

“ Lucy. Oh my god, I told her not to—” I raked my hands back through my hair, and she gave me a soft look.

“Veronica… why?” She shifted in her seat, cupping the hot chocolate in her hands. “I wanted to meet you… I was actually at the café trying to work up the nerve to text you and ask you to meet me there because I wanted to ask you a… question.”

“Oh.” I cleared my throat. “So I didn’t need to go give you space?”

“Even if it had been a coincidence, it’s a public space… you don’t need to immolate yourself and flee the scene if you see me.”

I looked down. “I just didn’t want to make you deal with me if you didn’t want to. You said you didn’t want to see me around and I wanted to… respect that.”

“You kept telling me all the time as Nic that Veronica was wrong, that I was intelligent and worthwhile and good at what I did, and that I wasn’t just good for my body and my money… so, why? Why disagree with yourself?”

I grimaced. “Well… I wanted you to hear it. I mean, if I could have had anything I wanted, I actually wanted you to believe it. I said a lot of really unfair things just to try to make you hate me and drive you away, but they weren’t true. I just… guess I wanted to clean up my own mess, even just a little.”

She pursed her lips, eyes quivering, and I wanted to break down just seeing that, overwhelmed with this feeling that she could not cry, I wanted her to be happy no matter what. “Why didn’t you just tell me as yourself, then? Say you were wrong and that you take them back?”

“Well… because of two things.”

“Okay…”

“One, is because I’m too… scared. I was too scared. Scared to own my feelings and… I don’t know… put them in a place where people could see them and know they’re me. I’m not good at that… I’ve never been good at that. I hide away from it, at all costs.”

She stared at me for a long time before she said, “You’re doing it now, though… aren’t you?”

I closed my eyes. “You’ll probably throw me again for saying this, but… our conversations… helped me out a lot. As Nic. Getting a safe space to put my feelings out there… um… helped. I’ve gotten to a point where—well.” I flushed, hunching my shoulders. “That’s not important. I won’t harp on about it.”

She leaned over the table towards me, and I thought that if Heaven existed, then the radiance of the pearly gates must have been inspired by the glow of Kelcey’s eyes in the low light of my apartment. “Harp on about it,” she said, and I blinked.

“I beg your pardon?”

“That’s an order. I’m very bossy.”

“First ordering hot chocolate and then ordering harping.”

She smiled wider. “I just said, I’m very bossy! Keep up.”

I’d keep up with her going anywhere… I swallowed. “Um. Well.” I looked away. “I’ve gotten to a point where I can say I’m, uh, bisexual. Openly and everything. I told Anna. It’s nothing important…”

“Oh my god, Veronica, that is important. Stop lying,” she said, her voice fond. Fond? Of what? It wasn’t me. “It’s a really big deal that you were able to do that… and I won’t lie, it honestly makes me feel good to know that I was able to help you. Even in the whole stupid situation of you being Nic, outreach coordinator. ”

I looked away. “You give me credit I don’t deserve…”

“I know it’s been, um. Complicated, for you. I mean…” She looked away, drumming her fingers on the outside of her mug, her soft pink manicure sweetly sophisticated. I really fell for a girl who put bows in her hair and got cute manicures, huh? The younger version of me who said I don’t want to date, I just want to get ravaged by big strong men would be appalled. “You meant what you said, didn’t you? As Nic… everything about how hard it was to come to terms with dating a woman.”

“Uh… yeah. I’ve been told by quite a few sources now that the things I do are actually pretty gay.”

“A little bit, yeah, but… either way, you’re here now. And I’m really glad you’ve made it here.”

I distracted myself with my hot chocolate, sipping it slowly. I was pretty upset with it, actually. It was delicious, but I couldn’t focus on it with Kelcey here saying soft, sweet things like that to me. “Thank you…” I mumbled, sitting up taller and clearing my throat. “And the second thing…”

“What second thing?”

“The second reason I didn’t tell you as me.”

“Oh yeah. I’d forgotten what conversation we’d even been on.” She stifled a laugh. “Um… what’s the second thing?”

“The second thing is that you probably didn’t actually want to hear anything from me as Veronica. You’d have thrown me.”

She laughed, flushing as she looked down, fidgeting awkwardly. “No… um… okay, maybe. Yeah, that’s a good point.”

“It was a hell of a throw.”

“I was inspired with sheer righteous fury. To be fair, I was only mostly mad at you! I was also reasonably mad at your mother.”

“Oh, true. Me too.”

She looked down, staring into her mug, cupping it in both hands. “So… please tell me seriously. Do you mean it?” she said, her voice so soft and small it was almost snatched away. “That you think I’m… good for something. Other than my money, my family…”

“Kelcey Huntington, you could get a stone wall to like you. You’re always keyed into what a person wants and feels, and you have this radiant energy about you that makes people want to cooperate with you. You’re impossible to be mad at, impossible ever to find fault in, because you’re just… good. And you see the good in other people, too. You’re not only good for something because of your family, you’re… your family’s only special because it has you. There’s a hundred people with rich families in the medical field around Anna, and if that was all I cared about, I’d have gone to talk to any of them instead over this last year. It’s not a family with money that got me to realize I can—and do—love a woman. It’s the way you smile like you know the world needs light and you’re going to be the source of it.”

She looked up at me through wide eyes, tears wavering in the corners, staring at me for a long time, before she laughed, thin and wispy. “Veronica… shut up,” she said, but it didn’t sound like her heart was really in it. “You cannot possibly go… saying things like that to me…”

“I told you I want you to hear them. And that if fortune favors me, I’d even like you to believe them. Might even go so far as to say you’re a lot smarter and capable than you give yourself credit for, but then you might push back. Even though I know you well enough to know you push back on a compliment when you want more of them.”

“Stop that,” she laughed, covering up a blush with one hand. “I’m pushing back because you’re lying!” she said, but not without a smile that was so sweet I think I was actually about two seconds from crying. “I just got put on a project scrubbing some already-scrubbed data to keep me out of the office! Pushed out by the company president himself!”

I smiled wider. “Meaning the only person who really went to send you away is the one who never saw your work for himself.”

She buried her face in her hands. “God, that’s the sweetest thing I’ve heard in my life. Framing it like that… you’re just trying to sweet-talk me.”

“I’m actually massively holding back because I don’t think you want me talking about how I want to break down the doors into the office and battle royale my way through the place until I get you reinstated.”

She laughed, big and bright and unrestrained, even with the wobble of tears somewhere underneath it. I really liked hearing her laugh. Maybe a little obsessed with it, actually. “Okay, so maybe don’t do that. It might be a little excessive.”

“I think you’re perfect the way you are, and I don’t know how to say that myself because I’m emotionally stunted, so instead, I’m going to go feral against anyone who makes you think otherwise.”

She smiled sadly, looking down at where she ran a finger around the edge of her mug. Watching her move a finger along the rim like that… I could not think terrible things like that about her. That would be horrible and objectifying and disrespectful. I dug a fingernail into my palm to distract myself. “You’d have to go feral against me… I know I’m not, um—perfect. And I want to do better. I want to be better… and I have plenty of time to figure it out, taken off the project and everything. I guess… maybe that’s what inspired me to go and actually talk to you directly and figure out my feelings.”

I swallowed. “I… I think everyone in this world has room for improvement and ways they’d like to be better. Just because you know how you want to do better doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you.”

She laughed. “I don’t even recognize you, Vee. All philosophical all of a sudden.”

“Ah.” Normally I hated when people called me Vee. But it had been cute from Kelcey, so I’d let her have it, and now it was something only Kelcey called me, so hearing her say it… “I guess I’ve just also been having a lot of the same thoughts. I’ve been a real philosopher lately.”

“I hear you went philosophizing about that nutcracker at the café.”

I laughed awkwardly, scratching the back of my neck. “Ah… um… and how would you know that?”

“I hear you went on a date there,” she said with a playful smile my way, and I withered, looking away.

“I, uh… tried to. It didn’t go super well. Guess I’m not rocking the charm front lately.”

She tented her hands under her chin, smiling wickedly. “Mostly because you just spent the whole time talking about me and then went a bought a nutcracker off them because I wanted it…”

“Ah… so… so they really, uh, told you everything,” I mumbled, my face prickling. Maybe I could have done a diving trick from the window. If I was lucky, there would be some nice hard rocks to break my fall. And my neck.

“Thank you… for the nutcracker. He’s very cute.”

“I-I swear I wasn’t trying to buy you off with gifts—”

“I know. You sent it before I found out.”

I hung my head with a sigh of relief before I gave her a small smile. “Trying to tell me you’re clueless and can’t handle serious matters of communications when you’re clearly picking up on details like that.”

She tipped back the rest of her hot chocolate, setting it down gently before she stood up, giving me a smile with laughter bubbling up behind it. “I cannot believe you just said that,” she laughed. “That was such a perfect thing to say. I officially hate you for it.”

“Oh. Just for that?”

“And for how good that hot chocolate was. I’ll never be able to have regular hot chocolate again. Thanks for ruining me, jerk.”

Oh my god, I was in love with her. I wanted to lie down on the floor and die. That would probably freak her out. “Should I just, like… make a whole big batch of it and send it to your apartment in a big thermos?”

“I mean, I wouldn’t say no. But I think next time, maybe we should meet at a… neutral ground. Like I was planning to this time, mind you! Just without you baptizing yourself in hot milk.”

Next time? Next time? There was a next time? Oh, Jesus. “Nowhere with a big Christmas tree or anything, I hope.”

“A big one. Right next to where we sit. Huge, with a heavy tree topper. Just to make sure you’re on your best behavior.”

Well, to be fair, if I died, I wanted it to be from Kelcey throwing me. “Sure. But somewhere with an elf on a shelf. That way you’ll be on your best behavior, too, with eyes on you. Can’t go acting up on Santa’s watch.”

She laughed, putting her chin up. “I’m always on the nice list. I mean, look at my sweet, innocent face.”

She had the most perfect face in the history of the world. But I wasn’t saying that, or it’d be creepy and pushy. But I was thinking it. “You… have a place in mind, or should I pick something with the most dangerous Christmas tree possible?”

“Lunch… tomorrow. At Zayn’s.” She paused. “I’m not asking you on a date! To be clear! Just… to talk.”

“Talking is more than I thought I’d ever have a chance at, so…” I cleared my throat. “I meant for that thought to actually stay inside my head.”

She laughed, a twinkle in her eyes, and—she glanced down at my lips. I almost had a heart attack, even though it was the tiniest, quickest glance. Didn’t feel like it to me. “You’re at your best just saying what comes to mind, unhinged thoughts and all. So? Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow… works for me. I can clear my calendar.”

She snorted. “Listen to you, sounding like your sister.”

“Ew.”

Her expression turned serious. “Veronica… please don’t do this whole thing. With working extra… overtime… trying to make a case for me to come back to the project. I don’t want pity.”

I pursed my lips. She softened.

“What?”

“You really want me to say the unhinged thoughts on my mind?”

A smile danced over her lips. “I mean, when you pique my curiosity like that…”

“I’m going to do it anyway. I’ve never once felt pity for anything in my life. I’m a selfish brat who wants to work with you instead.”

“Veronica—”

“And I’m very strong-willed, so everyone else is gonna have to deal. That even includes you! Just because I like you doesn’t mean I’m not stubborn.”

She hung her head, laughing. “Oh, god. What am I gonna do with you?”

“Not throw me into a Christmas tree, I hope.”

“Mm. Well, we’ll see tomorrow. Thanks for… thanks for hearing me out, Veronica.”

“Thank you for… things I’m too self-conscious and awkward to say out loud. Thanks, Kelcey. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She smiled sweetly at me, a thousand unspoken words in her perfect blue eyes, before she turned around, pulled on her coat, and picked up her bundle of things, including my laptop case.

“Kelcey—uh—you’re actually bringing too many laptops with you this time.”

She spun on her heel, put my laptop case down, and headed back to the door, laughing. I found myself laughing with her, and even after she was gone, I flopped back onto the couch, staring up at the ceiling, laughing breathlessly to myself.

She really was out there growing. Maybe I could do the same. Maybe I could do the same.