If It Makes You Happy Page 16

  Someone like Dallas probably wouldn’t understand. People loved him. He was a boy. He was good looking. He was popular. He could call a town meeting solely to read the Haven Herald from cover to cover and people would line up to see him.

  I knew I shouldn’t have judged him like that, but there wasn’t exactly any evidence pointing to an alternative. It wasn’t his fault that his voice and face and gender would always be valued more than mine, but a good-sized chunk of me resented him for it anyway.

  “Refuses as in you’re a kid and she’s an adult, or refuses as in she doesn’t want to hear you?”

  “Both. I might get frustrated or angry, but I’m pretty good at getting my point across. And yet when I start talking, it’s like people suddenly lose all of their comprehension skills. Then they start talking, repeating their point that I’d already refuted, like saying it again is going to make me change my mind. It drives me up a wall when people do that. We go in circles for no reason. I wish there was a way I could just make them listen and understand before they push me too far and I snap.”

  “They hear us.” Dallas stressed the last word. “But they don’t want to acknowledge it, because they’re right and we’re wrong. They’re older and they know better. Do it their way, wait and see, everything will be perfect because they know what’s best for us.”

  I nodded, eagerly turning toward him now, speaking too fast. “She was being completely unfair, refused to admit it, and still kept trying to push what she wanted onto me. I was literally shaking, I was so mad.”

  “I don’t even get mad anymore when my dad gets like that. I shut down. I don’t feel anything.” He tapped his chest. “Completely dead in there.”

  “For real? That’s harsh.”

  “No.” But his sardonic smile said otherwise.

  “I definitely don’t feel dead inside, but I did get really sad for a while. I didn’t have anybody to talk to about what happened because then I’d have to explain, and I just feel it in my bones that they would agree with her and I super could not deal with hearing it. The anger swooped right back on in after that.”

  “I get it. We handle the same problem differently, but I definitely get it. We react the way we do because otherwise we would feel helpless. Being angry, feeling nothing has to be better than that, right? Because if they see us give up or be too vulnerable, then they’ll think they’ve won and keep doing it until they break us down.”

  “Yes. Yes. We’re fighting for them to hear and see us, but they don’t think it’s a fight. It’s us being disobedient or hardheaded.”

  “And we deserved to be punished for it. Yeah.”

  I hadn’t been able to relate to someone this quickly since—since Kara, if I’m being honest. I felt so seen, wow. He understood as if we shared a brain. My ego had limits. I knew when to admit I was wrong.

  “Thank you. I honestly never would’ve thought that you’d gone through something like this, too.” I smiled at him. “Oh, and I’m sorry I called you a showboating jackhole. I didn’t mean it.”

  “Apology accepted.” He smiled back. “I’d ask why you thought that, but I don’t want to know. Wanna keep you perfect for as long as I can.”

  “That’s not alarming or anything.”

  “It’ll pass. I’m sure the real you is better than the idea I’ve been holding on to for three years.”

  Three years!? He’d wanted to be friends for three years?

  He raised his gelato cup. “I know you have Kara but you can have me to, if you want. You can call me whenever.”

  “Call. Ehhhh.”

  “I mean it. I’m a dial tone away. If you use a landline, which you probably wouldn’t, so never mind.”

  I laughed, feeling good for the first time that day, and clinked my cup against his.

  Twenty-Three

  Having a bonfire on a bookstore rooftop didn’t seem like the brightest idea. But the Alviar family had done it for years, and according to Kara, they had an amazing insurance policy.

  The trick to an epic rooftop barbecue was in the ratio of lighter fluid and wood to summer sunset. Hopefully the sun, bathing the cloudless sky in bright oranges with hints of deep purples, would take the unbearably hot weather along for the ride as it set, because it was still too hot to get close to the fire.

  Cookouts required marshmallow roasting. It was the law and I didn’t make the rules. I selectively chose which ones I followed. Like that one.

  I lounged on a deck chair under the divine shade of a beach umbrella angled just right. I didn’t really care about looking at sunsets. Seen one, seen them all, really. Junie sat next to me, a huge bag of all-pink Starbursts on her stomach for easier access, while her boyfriend sat near her feet reading a book. Sam had claimed my other side, wearing my crown again. She kept taking selfies of herself, asking me to help pick the best ones, which I did because that was the way of things.

  Winston stood at the grill with Kara’s parents. “Supervising,” he said. Wanting to take over was more like it. My Young Chef had been getting bolder by the day, making me so proud it almost covered up my embarrassment at missing his passion for cooking in the first place. Pretty soon he’d start asking for shifts without Aaron.

  Only Kara sat alone, sitting on a bench off in the corner. I’d been trying to work up enough nerve to go talk to her. I’d never had to do that before. Not even when we’d first met.

  Five years ago, I wished on a star.

  Not for anything special—just a total kid move of wasting the universe’s time by asking for a boyfriend because Sam had one. The day after I made that wish, Kara had walked into Goldeen’s. I liked remembering that moment because I felt like the universe took it upon itself to look deep inside me, yell, “SURPRISE! YOU’RE QUEER!” and granted my wish in an unexpected way.

  Side note: my parents really did not like the word queer. My dad had said, “Don’t say that.” My mom had said, “What does that mean? I don’t like that word.”

  I didn’t fit in one perfect little box. Boys? Check. Girls? Check. Did gender really matter to me? Eh, probably not. Calling myself queer felt like standing under a kind stranger’s umbrella in an unexpected rainstorm. I might not use it forever, but at the moment, it was exactly what I needed.

  I swung my legs to the side, standing up.

  “Be brave, Chicken Little.” Junie’s way of being supportive. She must have known why Kara had chosen to mope in the corner instead of hanging out with us. But if Kara had told Junie, she must have been desperate for someone to talk to.

  This was bad. Catastrophic and soul-destroying bad. She never told Junie anything.

  I sat down next to Kara on the wooden bench with the peeling and faded hot-pink paint. She didn’t say anything, didn’t even look at me. The corner we were in provided one of the best views in Misty Haven. Everything perfectly circular and laid out.

  “Not to be that person, but silent treatments are against our rules.”

  We had three unbreakable rules: no secrets, no hiding, and no overwrought miscommunication plotlines.

  “I’m not giving you a silent treatment. I’m just sad. I’m allowed to be sad.” Her voice sounded raw and tender like she’d been crying. But her eyes and face weren’t as red as they normally got when she was upset.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No.” She chewed on her lip, face contorted into a frown so full of sorrow, I began to panic. “I feel like I have to, though.”

  “You don’t. Not right now or ever—I would hope one day you would trust me enough to tell me, but I’d understand. I get sad like that, too, sometimes, where I feel like I should tell someone but I can’t.”

  I needed to know. I wanted to know so badly, I’d probably sell my soul. I had to fix it. I had to make whatever was hurting her stop. We sat so close, thighs and arms and shoulders touching, whispering around the hurt that had driven itself between us. But the most important thing? Be there for Kara in the ways that she wanted and needed.

/>   Deciding to be with Kara had been the most adult thing I’d ever done so far. It wasn’t some fragile commitment built on hopes and dreams and rainbows. Or false high school promises that would break once we graduated. No, when we decided to do this, I made a commitment to her and to myself. I decided I was emotionally mature enough to be in a committed relationship with my friend. When my heart said one thing and my brain said another, both sentences ended with the same name: Kara.

  That was enough for me to say yes.

  We would talk, be honest about our feelings, plan our future, and not let it be weird. We wouldn’t tolerate outsiders judging us and trying to mold us into what they wanted to see, what they thought we should be.

  Kara inhaled, a deep, shuddering breath, and lifted her face toward the sky. She closed her eyes. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

  “What wasn’t?” I whispered, looking over our shoulders. No one paid attention to us, and if they were, they hid it well. “Whatever it is, I swear you can tell me, Kara.” I took her hand. “We come first.”

  “Do we?” She turned her burning gaze on me.

  “Yes. That’s the rule.”

  Whatever the truth was, no matter how angry or sad it made me, I would give her a chance. We would work through it because that was the promise we made to each other.

  “What did he tell you?”

  Dallas. “Did you really ask him to stay away from me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? When?” His personality fit mine well. Kara and I tended to like the same people. From everything I’d learned about him so far, he would fit right in with us. It didn’t make any sense.

  “He owed me a future favor. Lacey likes to take things that don’t belong to her. I recorded her shoplifting in Nina’s, and instead of turning her in, we made a deal.”

  “You made a deal with Lacey?”

  “And Dallas. He was there.” She wiped at her face, at tears that hadn’t fallen.

  “What did you do with the video?”

  Surprisingly, she laughed. “You would care about that.”

  I smiled back. “Hey, a deal’s a deal.”

  “I didn’t do anything with it. I never planned to. I was just messing with them.” Her somber mood returned. “I think it must have started last year when his mom had those weekly parties leading up to her fortieth birthday and kept ordering food from Goldeen’s.”

  “I did most of those deliveries,” I said, understanding what she meant.

  “After you left, that school year he started asking me about you. How you were. Things you liked. The exact date you were coming back. If he could have your phone number. So I used my future favor and he dropped it.”

  What. The. Fuck.

  I had to stay calm. I had to breathe. Calm. Breathe. COUNT.

  I promised. I promised that no matter what it was I wouldn’t react …

  … but I never thought it would be that! Dallas wasn’t lying! She really did try to blackmail him into staying away from me. That’s like Abuser 101.

  Breathe. Count. Breathe. Count.

  I nodded as I processed my next words, because I would keep my goddamn promise even if what I said next wasn’t the whole uncensored truth. “So, just for the sake of saying it, because I’m sure you’ve realized this by now, but blackmailing people to keep them away from me is wrong and extremely fucked up. If you ever do some shit like that again, we’re going to have a serious problem.”

  “I know.” She bowed her head.

  “Like we will break up serious problem. We don’t treat each other like that. Ever.”

  “I don’t know what I was thinking. I just—but then, this year, right before you got here, out of nowhere, he asked me if I’d been serious that day. And I told him I was, but then he volunteered anyway, and then I knew you would find out what I did and you would hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you. I’m not happy and that is the mildest way I can put that right now.”

  “I know.”

  “But I know you and I don’t think you would’ve done that without a good reason. So, in the spirit of moving forward because I’m choosing that that’s where we’re at right now, is there something wrong with him? Some reason why you don’t want him around me?”

  She looked at me, eyes full of remorse—and something else. “You didn’t even look for me, did you?”

  “What?”

  “At the wine tasting. I was there like I said I would be.”

  I sucked in a horrified breath. “Oh my God I am so sorry.”

  “Thought so.”

  “I didn’t—I mean, I wasn’t thinking at all. I got into another fight with Granny and I was so mad, I just wanted to get through it, and then Dallas—”

  “Yes, please tell me more about him, that’s exactly what I want to hear right now.”

  Holy God, how had I messed up so badly? I hadn’t just forgotten about her—I spent time with the one person she tried to keep away from me while forgetting that she promised to show up somewhere to support me. I’d never done anything like this to her. I’d always been so careful and aware of her and us. And how could I have let that happen?

  What Kara had done was borderline unforgivable, but if this wasn’t the greatest example of two wrongs not making anything close to right, I didn’t know what else could possibly top it.

  “I’m sorry. I am so deeply and intensely sorry, Kara. I don’t have any excuses for what I did. You told me you would be there, I forgot, and I am sorry.”

  “I hate your apologies. They’re always too good.”

  “Because I mean them. I did a stupid, terrible thing and I shouldn’t have.”

  Tears filled her eyes. “I don’t deserve you” was all she said.

  Twenty-Four

  I loved clocking in at Goldeen’s. Granny still used an old-fashioned punch card system. My name had been printed in purple ink on the long edge of the beige card. You pushed the entire card into the top slot, then waited for it to make a whirring noise and a beep before removing it. The time stamps used blue ink.

  Winston zipped past me, carrying two heads of cabbage. “Three trips today. Car is loaded up for the first one. Kara is out front.”

  My afternoon deliveries wouldn’t take longer than an hour, maybe two. Kara joined me every now and then, wearing what she dubbed her unofficial Goldeen’s uniform. We weren’t okay. I still couldn’t believe that she’d done something so extreme over something so trivial. It honestly scared the hell out of me. I didn’t want to be afraid of Kara, nervous of making and having friends besides her, terrified to hell her I’d found someone in addition to.

  Would she be able to handle it?

  I’d thought about it after I’d gone home. Everyone made mistakes in relationships—marriage counseling was a billion-dollar industry according to Google. Even my parents went to counseling regularly. On my end, I had to decide if what she’d done had been unforgivable because I realized she never actually apologized to me. Was she sorry?

  Would she do it again?

  My heart said no, of course not, it’s Kara.

  My brain said … maybe, but it’s Kara.

  Kara.

  We needed to spend more time together. We needed to heal. For us that meant close proximity. It meant talking about things out loud, as soon as we felt them.

  She had broken our unbreakable rules. I was willing to try to reforge them together.

  “Thanks.” I triple-knot tied my apron while walking to the main floor.

  Kara stood near the front door with Sam, Granny, and Mr. Livingston. Her dress with horizontal rainbow stripes shimmered in the light even as she stood still. Miss Jepson had offered to make a knock-off Goldeen’s dress for her, but she preferred to always wear that one and an apron.

  I wanted to yell for her to meet me out back. Anything over walking toward that group.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Winnie.” Mr. Livingston said everything at a rumble. It was like the bass dropped inside of hi
m and kept on falling. He looked handsome, in an old-guy grandpa sort of way, with his navy suit, shiny brown shoes, and hair slicked into waves. I had bought him the plaid tie he wore, greenish-blue with hints of brown, as a peace offering for possibly maybe reacting like a brat when he started dating Granny.

  “Hey.”

  They all stared at us—me looking at nothing and everything. Granny fiddling with her bracelet. She’d stopped talking to me again. And while my anger decided to take a catnap, my mouth refused to even form the word “apologize” because I had nothing to apologize for. I was tired of being the one who always had to compromise and try to make it “right” so she’d be happy. If she never talked to me again, then that was her problem.

  “So.” Sam’s optimistic tone refused to read the room. “Are you guys going to the boat thingy today?”

  Mr. Livingston laughed. “Yes, we’re going to watch the Sailors’ Promenade.”

  “Don’t keep her out too late, and if she doesn’t come back with salt-smelling, windswept hair and a giant smile on her face, you answer to me.”

  “Sam.” Granny playfully swatted her arm. “Behave, young lady.”

  “I am. I’m doing my granddaughterly duty.” She winked at me quickly, proud to fill the role I’d left vacant, because that was 100 percent something I would’ve said. But it was cute when she did it, earning a smile and a surprise laugh from Granny.

  Funny how my jokes and my snarky punchlines were suddenly okay when they came out of Sam’s mouth. Granny would have told me, “Mind your business.”

  “Geraldine, we should get on the road or we won’t get good seats.”

  “All right. Don’t rush me, now.” She swatted at him, too. “I’ll be back after dinner. I told Aaron to make you something—”

  “We can fend for ourselves, you know.” Sam smiled.

  “All right, all right. Call me if you need anything.”

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, because I knew if I had said that, she would have never let it slide.