Chapter 11

11

I wake up too early, like 7:00 A.M. early. The blue-white light is peeking through the curtains, and the room is quiet and calm. Irene is sleeping on her stomach, her mom’s old shirt clutched against her side. Her wavy hair fans across the pillow. Of course she looks attractive even when she’s asleep.

I slip out of bed and sneak down to the kitchen, hoping to find some bread I can toast, but I’m not alone like I’d hoped.

Honey-Belle is there, sitting cross-legged at the table, scrolling through her phone with her hair sticking up at odd angles.

“Scottie!” She beams. “How’d you sleep? Did you like my air purifier?”

“We didn’t use it,” I say apologetically. In the back of my brain, I notice how weird it is to say we. I help myself to the bread box and find cranberry jelly in the refrigerator.

“I’m so glad Irene has you now,” Honey-Belle tells me when I sit down. “She needed a win after everything that happened last year.”

My ears perk up. “You mean with Charlotte?”

Honey-Belle winces. “I know she might seem hung up on her, but I promise she likes you. I can tell. She talks about you all the time. ‘Oh, Scottie has two sisters. Scottie killed it at practice yesterday. Scottie loves this song.’”

I almost choke on my toast. “Really?”

“Don’t be a goof,” Honey-Belle says with a little laugh. “It’s nice to see her with someone who takes care of her. Irene is super loyal. If you’re one of her people, she’ll do anything for you. And I’m sure you’ve figured out that she’s a total romantic, even if she denies it. I mean, her favorite movie is Dirty Dancing. She plays that song from the end over and over again. So cheesy.”

The irony of Honey-Belle calling something cheesy is not lost on me. “Right.”

“Oh my gosh,” Honey-Belle says suddenly. “You know what we have to do? A double date! You can set me up with Gunther!”

“Oh … yeah?”

“It’ll be perfect! How about next weekend?”

---

We leave as soon as Danielle and Irene wake up. The rival college football games are on today and we want to watch them with our families. Irene rushes us out so she can catch the Georgia/Georgia Tech game with her dad, but first, she pours a thermos of coffee. For each of us.

The moment we drop Danielle off, I turn to Irene and word vomit.

“Honey-Belle cornered me into a double date. You, me, her, and Gunther. I was so shocked I couldn’t say no.”

Irene’s head rolls slowly in my direction. “So?”

“So … that’s … you’re fine with that?”

She sighs wearily. “We’ve already dug ourselves this deep. Might as well go a little deeper.”

I tap my fingers on the coffee thermos she poured for me. She knew to add cream, but not sugar. She takes a relaxed sip of her own thermos and stretches back in my passenger seat like she’s done it a million times.

And I realize, with a tightness in my chest, that she has.

“You snored like a monster last night,” I sputter. “Like a dragon. Or a T. rex. Or maybe a mastodon.”

She shrugs. “I was tired.”

“Yeah, well … it was annoying.”

“Sorry,” she says like she couldn’t care less.

“And you kept stealing the covers. Like, every half an hour. I even shoved you at one point, but you were oblivious.”

Irene side-eyes me. “Okay, are you done now?”

There’s no venom in her tone; she merely sounds tired. The way I only let myself get with my sisters or Danielle. The way I never let myself get with Tally.

“Well, it’s … it was annoying,” I repeat feebly.

Irene draws a deep breath. “Can we press pause on the I-hate-your-guts game? The banter is juicy and all, but it’d be nice to let my guard down. Especially after last night.”

My chest constricts again. “Fine.”

“So what else did you and Honey-Belle talk about? Did she show you her vintage Furby collection?”

I hate the way we’re talking like casual friends. I hate knowing what she looks like when she first wakes up. I hate that she’s still wearing her glasses in front of me.

I want to tell her that Honey-Belle said she talks about me all the time. I want to ask her what it means. What any of this means.

But I can’t go there. I can’t. Tally made out with another girl in front of me last night, and then Irene and I shared a bed, and I don’t know how to process any of it.

“We made plans for the double date,” I say with a shrug. “It sounds ridiculous, but whatever.”

“It won’t be that bad. Hopefully we’ll get a good movie out of it.” She drops her head back and watches the scenery fly by like she doesn’t have a care in the world. “But you’re driving.”

---

I’d thought Irene’s reputation might take a hit after Charlotte’s antics, but if anything, people at school seem even more obsessed with her. Some of them—mostly the cheerleaders and their followers—insist that Irene is a victim in this situation. “It’s nobody’s truth but her own!” I hear one girl ranting to her friend. “How dare anyone judge her journey?!” Other people, led by the soccer girls, are convinced that Irene is manipulating the whole school for the purpose of securing a SAOY nomination. “Like, does she think we’re some kind of convenient identity she can just shrug on and off again?” the queer soccer goalie says to anyone who will listen. “There’s no way in hell people will buy into this bullshit.”

The only people who know the truth—which is somewhere in the middle of these opposing sides—are Irene, Danielle, and myself. Irene doesn’t seem particularly bothered by the constant gossip, and Danielle is too antsy about the upcoming Christmas Classic to pay any attention. As for me, I’m preoccupied with checking my phone every other second. I’d thought Tally might text me after the party, but she’s been silent.

On the first weekend of December, Irene and I go forward with our double date with Gunther and Honey-Belle. It doesn’t seem like a bad idea now that we need to cement ourselves as a “real” couple, especially because I know Honey-Belle will talk about it at school the following week. That should get the haters off our backs.

So that’s how I find myself swinging into Irene’s driveway on a Friday night, dressed in my best date clothes with my hair straightened to perfection. I’m right on time to pick her up. By which I mean, I’m only four minutes late. She doesn’t even bother complaining about it.

We drive to the Chuck Munny in near silence until Irene takes the liberty of plugging her own phone into the aux cable.

“Um?” I say.

“Um?” she mocks, batting her eyelashes.

“Play something good, at least.”

“Sorry, but I don’t have your eighties-dad playlist on Spotify.”

“Oh, aren’t you just hilarious.”

When we get to the theater, Honey-Belle and Gunther are already there, chatting inside the concessions area. Irene takes my arm as we swoop up to them.

“Such a great night for a date, right?” she says. “I had to force Scottie off the couch. She was enjoying our snuggling a little too much.” She pinches my cheek and I try not to swat her off. “You know how she is. Such a cornball.”

Gunther smiles uncertainly. “Yeah, I guess.” He puts an arm on the small of Honey-Belle’s back. “Can I treat you to an Icee?”

After they turn around, Irene drops my arm like a heavy weight.

“That hurt,” I whisper, rubbing my cheek.

“Bitch-baby,” she mumbles, scanning the menu board. “Are we getting anything? I could go for a soda.”

“We can split one,” I say without thinking.

There’s a twinkle in her eyes. “Fine,” she says, shoving me along. “But two straws, horndog. I don’t want your germs.”

Once the four of us have our snacks, we make our way to the only theater in the building. Tonight they’re showing Say Anything…, the eighties classic with John Cusack and Ione Skye. It’s my absolute favorite, but I don’t dare tell any of them that.

The seats are packed when we walk in, so we split up between two rows. Gunther and Honey-Belle snag a couple of seats in the middle and Irene and I grab a pair of seats diagonally behind them. We settle back and kick our feet up at the same time.

It’s kind of weird, sitting next to her in a dark theater, especially once we start trading Sour Patch Kids back and forth. My fingers keep accidentally brushing hers when I reach into the box. I ignore the warm tingle across my scalp.

“I have to pee,” Irene says toward the end of the movie. She moves to stand up, but I grab her arm.

“You can’t go right now! He’s about to do the boom box thing!”

“I’ve seen that clip a million times.” She rolls her eyes in the blue light of the screen. “It’s so cheesy.”

“Cheesy? Are you insane?”

“Zajac, I will piss in your lap if you don’t let me go.”

Sure enough, she misses the iconic moment when John Cusack holds the boom box outside Ione Skye’s window, serenading her with “In Your Eyes” at dawn. I get goose bumps up and down my entire body. Without meaning to, I imagine Tally holding a stereo outside my window, determined to win me back. I wonder if I’d run out to her.

“I feel so much better,” Irene whispers when she returns.

“I can’t believe you missed that.”

“I sure as hell wasn’t going to miss the scene where her dad gets caught embezzling. That’s the best part.”

I shake my head in the darkness, but Irene merely shrugs and steals the soda cup from my hand.

---

Gunther and Honey-Belle are holding hands when we exit the theater. Irene catches my eye and pretends to gag when they’re not looking. It almost makes me laugh.

“What a night for romance,” she says as we’re driving home. “Honey-Belle and Gunther, Ione Skye’s dad and prison…”

“You’re such a cynic.”

“Am not.” She chews on another Sour Patch Kid. She insisted we buy a second box before we left the Munny. “I just always hated that stupid boom box moment. It’s melodramatic for no reason.”

I whip around to scoff at her. “It’s one of the most iconic images in American cinema. It’s fucking perfect.”

“It’s empty and self-indulgent.”

“It’s romantic. It’s tender and poignant and star- crossed—”

“It’s a waste of time. Grand gestures don’t mean anything in the place of actual effort. He should have just talked to her. You know, actually communicated instead of performing some fantasy version of love. He just wanted to be all up in his feels.”

I glare at her. “Says the girl whose favorite movie is Dirty Dancing.”

Irene falls silent. Even in the darkness, I can see her embarrassment. “How do you know that?”

“I have my ways.”

“Seriously.” She reaches over to pinch my arm, and I yelp. “How do you know that?”

“God, relax, I’m trying to drive! Honey-Belle told me, okay?”

Irene blows out an irritated breath, but I can hear the self-consciousness beneath it. “What else did she tell you?”

“That’s between us.”

“Scottie.”

“Fine, you really wanna know? She said you talk about me all the time.”

Irene snorts. “Oh did she now…”

“Are you talking about me?”

She narrows her eyes. “What, you think I’m, like, gossiping? I spend half my time with you now. You’re obviously going to come up in conversation.”

“She said you talk about my favorite songs.”

Irene laughs in the back of her throat. “More like I complain that you play the same five songs over and over.”

I look over at her as we turn back onto the main road. “So you’re not … like…”

“Obsessed with you?” She snorts and strains against the seat. “No. Were you worried I was catching feelings?”

“No,” I say hastily.

“Okay, good. Because I’m not.”

“Good. Neither am I.”

We fall silent. I turn the music up. She turns it back down.

“You don’t have to act like the idea is so horrible, though,” she says. “You sound like you’ve contracted bird flu.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I say quickly. “It’s just … this is purely a business arrangement.”

“I am well aware, Zajac.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “I wouldn’t want to date you, anyway. You love drama too much.”

“What? I don’t love drama.”

“You totally do.”

“In what way?!”

“Um—” She gestures meaningfully between us. “This way? Paying someone to be your girlfriend so you can emotionally manipulate the ex who doesn’t care about you? Talk about a performative gesture. It’s exactly the kind of thing I hate.”

I feel my heart rate rising, my cheeks flushing. “You’re really pushing my buttons, you know that? What was it you said after Charlotte’s party—something about how I was arrogant to think I understood your enemies?”

She pops her lips. “Point taken. I’ll stay in my lane.”

“Thank you.”

When we pull into her driveway, she takes her time getting out of my car. She even hands me the last few Sour Patch Kids.

“Okay look, you know something?” She hovers outside my car door, her hands in her jumpsuit pockets. “I don’t understand your motivation with this whole thing, but I do think it’s … endearing … that you still believe in love. Even if it’s of the melodramatic-gestures kind.”

I narrow my eyes, pretending to be suspicious of her. “This candy really got to you, huh?”

“What?”

“‘First they’re sour, then they’re sweet,’” I recite.

She drops her head back, disgusted with me. “Wow. That was actually the worst.”

“Good thing you’re making a pretty penny off it.”

“Honestly, I need a pay increase.”

I smirk. “’Night, Abraham.”

“’Night, Zajac.”

She rolls her eyes and snaps my door closed.