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She scoffed. “Oh, you’re no fun. Have a great day atschool.”Her eyes went all bug-eyed to emphasize her point. “Guess I’ll go out and housewife on my own, then,” she complained.
There were far too many smartass remarks on the tip of my tongue I could’ve said to her, but I wasn’t in the mood for any of them.
Sydney slumped into the passenger seat of my car (a two-month-old Jeep Wrangler, for the record—black grille, black rims, tinted windows, fully murdered-out. My mother’s idea of a consolation prize for Jason leaving. Not that I didn’t love it. In fact, I kind of felt like it matched the aesthetic of my soul, so I was obsessed with it. But I wasn’t telling Linda that.) and slammed the door shut behind her, clicking in her seat belt in an overly dramatic fashion before sinking down into the seat with a low growl.
“I see someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” I commented, pulling out of her driveway.
“Don’t even get me started,” she snapped, and I already wanted to slap her. It wasn’t even seven-thirty in the morning yet.
“Do… you want to talk about it?” I asked, stretching out the questionbecause I wasn’t sure I actually wanted to ask, but the words slipped out anyway; I guess that meant I really loved her.
“Andreas broke up with me!” she shouted. “I hate him. He’s such a pig.”
Oh.“Yikes.” I threw her a sympathetic look.
Sydney and Andreas had been together for a few months now, which was practically forever in high school. Marriage and babies, kind of forever—in Sydney’s eyes. Never mind the fact that she complained about him constantly and almost always had her eye on the next best thing. No, those were just technicalities, of course.
“Well, what happened?” I asked.
She threw her arms up in the air. “Hell if I know. Suddenly, seventeen is too young to be with the same person for the rest of our lives. And maybe he wants to apply to colleges out of state, and maybe he wants to be sure about us and not feel like he’s settling, but where the hell did all this come from, you know? He said he loved me.”
She continued on and on, and I was just there to listen. I really did feel bad for her, though, because she did seem sad, but I knew there was nothing I could say that would make her feel better. She just needed to vent. So, I drove us to school and listened. Sometimes we just needed to be listened to, to be heard.
“I’m sorry, that sucks.Hesucks,” is what I settled on at the end of her long rant.
“Damn right he does! His loss,” she scoffed, throwing her hair up into a messy bun. “I’m going to have myself a new boyfriend by the end of this week. That’ll show his ass,” she added, and I laughed in response. “Maybe Neil,” she snickered, and my laughter died a quick and brutal death on my lips. “Joking! God, you should see the look on your face right now. You know, I’ve already suspected you’re capable of murder, but I’m sure of it now. I know who I’m calling when I need help burying a body.”
I managed a chuckle even though I wanted to slap her all over again. Just a little. You know, in a friendly way. “I don’t know about that,” I answered her, thinking it over. “Well… maybe.” I shrugged, and she fell into a fit of laughter.
“I knew I could count on you. So, where are things with choirboy anyway?”
“I don’t know why you keep calling him that. He’s not actuallyin choir, you know.”
“He sure dresses like he could be,” she muttered under her breath.
I guess she had a point. “Anyway,” I said. “I don’t know where things are. I told him about the bet, and thenhetoldme, last night, that he had a similar bet of his own going on.”
She stopped dead in her tracks. “Say what?”
“He said he had a bet going on with himself that he could kiss me, too, or something. That he wanted to, I think. Something like that.” I stopped in front of her, turning around to face her.
“Andthen?!”
“And then I sat there like an idiot while he walked away, because that was the last thing I expected to come out of his mouth.” Now I was the one throwing my arms out into the air like a crazy person.
“Are you insane?!” She tilted her head. “Well, scratch that. Of course you’re insane… but what do you mean,you didn’t say anything?That right there was your opening.”
“No shit,” I quipped.
She tugged me by the arm, and I followed, walking through the parking lot and into school. “Well, it’s not like the door’s closed. Sounds to me like he flung that baby wide open for you, and now I’m going to have to shove you through it.”
“Shut up. I’ll walk through the damn door myself.” How I’d found myself in this ridiculous conversation, talking about metaphorical doors and shit, was lost on me.
“You know, the more I hear about Neil, the more I like him,” she interjected. “We need to dig deeper and come up with a solid plan. I’ve already been thinking about it… but Neil isn’t our typical dude, you know?”
“Yeah. I’m getting that,” I deadpanned. I was learning that sobering truth more and more every time I was around him. I think that’s what made me like him more, though. To be totally honest, Neil was a challenge, and I was always up for a challenge.
This one was just waymore confusing than all the other ones I’d fearlessly faced.