She Drives Me Crazy(50)

Her tone is heavy, like she’s been waiting to drop this all afternoon. The air between us changes immediately. I lower the Hanukkah sweater and struggle to meet her eyes.

“Are you really gonna make me talk about this?” I ask. “Here?”

“Yes.” She takes the sweater from me and places it back on the shelf. “What’s going on? I thought you liked her. And she obviously likes you, too.”

I swallow. “I do like her.”

“But?”

I know she’s not going to like this part. “But I’m still trying to get over Tally.”

Danielle scrunches her face. “Really? Still?”

“Can you not shame me for this, please? I’m trying to be honest with you.” My voice shakes. “I know you hate her. I know everyone does. I’m trying to hate her, too. But I can’t.”

I slide to the floor, pulling my new denim jacket cuffs over my hands. The linoleum tile is cool beneath my pants.

Danielle slides down next to me. We stare ahead to the snow globes display in front of us. “You’re right. That was insensitive. I’m sorry.” She pauses. “I don’t hate Tally. I just hate the way she’s made you feel. I hate that everything you’ve done for the last few months has been a response to her. It’s like you’re not even your full self anymore. You’re just this … reaction.”

She sounds like Thora. You’ve been a walking insecurity … I keep my gaze on the snow globes and try to unclench my jaw. “Wow, D, great pep talk. Thanks so much.”

Her eyes bore into the side of my head. “I’m not trying to give you a pep talk. I’m trying to give you the truth.”

“You wanna talk about truth?” I round on her. “Fine. Let’s go there. Let’s talk about Kevin.”

Her eyes bug out the slightest bit. “That’s not a thing.”

“It’s absolutely a thing.”

“Kevin’s our friend. I can’t just have feelings for him out of nowhere.”

“You absolutely can, you’re just not letting yourself. You have literally everything going for you. You’re the captain of our team, you have amazing grades, and you’re getting accepted to a million colleges, but you’re holding back when it comes to Kevin even though he obviously likes you, too.”

“You don’t know that he likes me,” she shoots back.

“None of us are gonna know until you ask him out. Stop being so afraid.”

“Don’t lecture me, dude.”

“You’ve been lecturing me!”

Our voices have gotten heated. We pull away from each other, huffing. Danielle’s breathing is loud and angry. I can’t stop grinding my teeth.

“Look,” Danielle says finally, her tone even again. She crosses her skinny ankles. “You’re right. I’m chickenshit when it comes to Kev. I don’t know how to do this. I’m not good at things that don’t come naturally to me.”

That makes me laugh, which breaks some of the tension. “What?”

“Dating!” she says. “I’m not good at dating! School is easy. Basketball is easy. College applications are actually fun. But how the hell am I supposed to figure out romance when it feels like a foreign fucking language?”

“Oh my god.” I can’t help myself; I’m still laughing. “You’re totally that overachieving nerd who doesn’t know how to be bad at something.”

She drags a hand down her face. “Shut up.”

“How can someone be bad at dating, Danielle?”

“It’s been hard for you, hasn’t it? I don’t wanna get hurt like that.”

That shuts me up. We go back to staring at the snow globes. An older woman in a purple beaded necklace skirts by us with her shopping cart, smiling like it’s completely normal that we’re sitting on our asses in the middle of the Emporium aisle.

“I’m sorry,” Danielle says again. “It’s just … sometimes it seems like dating Tally turned you into someone you’re not. You were always so sure of everything, and then suddenly you weren’t.”

“Yeah,” I agree, dropping my head into my hands. I’m not mad anymore. I know she’s right. “That tracks.”

“You do understand that she’s bad for you, right? I mean, like, you can objectively see that?”

My chest is suddenly heavy. “I don’t know how to let go of her.”

“That’s because she’s made it impossible for you to move on,” Danielle says gently. She pauses. “But you’ve made it impossible, too.”

I look at her. We both have brown eyes, but Danielle’s have always been a deeper shade, more solid than my watered-down color. Seeing them now makes me feel safe.

“What do I do?”

“You cut the cord,” she says simply. “Whatever that means to you. If you have to block her number, do it. If you have to write an angry letter and burn it, do it. But you have to let go, dude.”

My throat thickens the way it’s been doing these last few days. “I don’t know if I can. It’s like … I’m holding on to this shred of her, and even though it’s a bad shred, it’s still something. The moment I let that shred go, I’ll have nothing left.”