Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between(23)
“What, like Beatrice St. James?” Stella asks, arching an eyebrow.
“Well, yeah,” Clare says. “Maybe. Probably.”
“Clare, come on.”
“No, maybe it’s better this way. Maybe we just have to learn to stop needing each other so much.”
She waits for Stella to disagree, or to tell her she’s being stupid, but she doesn’t. Instead, her shoulders slump, and she stares down at the drinks in her hands for what feels like a very long time. Then, finally, she looks right at Clare.
“Maybe you’re right,” she says, entirely blank-faced, and then, without another word, she brushes right past her, hurrying down the steps to the lanes.
Clare stands there, watching her go, her feet strangely heavy. After a moment, she takes a shaky breath.
Fine, she thinks. One less goodbye.
It’s supposed to make her lighter, this thought, but all she feels is hollow as she starts to walk in the direction of her friends, picking her way around the discarded shoes that litter the sticky floor.
As she approaches the last lane, she can see that the rest of the guys—Noah and Mike and Kip—are messing around with the scoreboard, picking ridiculous names for everyone, and Scotty is staggering around with a hot-pink bowling ball under his arm, doubled over in laughter.
Only Aidan is standing apart, still scowling at nothing in particular, and when Clare tries to catch his eye, he just folds his arms across his chest and looks off toward the six pins still upright at the end of the lane.
“Hey, Stells,” Scotty says, swaying slightly in the way that he does when he’s drunk. Clare raises her eyebrows at the nickname, but Stella only rolls her eyes at him as he attempts to spin the bowling ball on his finger like a basketball. It falls to the floor with a bone-rattling thud. “I’ve got a joke for you.”
“What is it?” Clare asks when nobody else does. With both Aidan and Stella acting like jerks, she feels a sudden surge of affection for Scotty. He looks so eager, standing there in his red-and-blue bowling shoes, which he bought last year, even though he’s a truly terrible bowler. He ended up loving them so much that he started wearing them to school, sliding up and down the linoleum hallway floors between classes.
“Why is a bowling alley the quietest place on earth?” he asks, looking pleased with himself. He doesn’t have the patience to wait for an answer. He just rushes on, eager to tell them. “Because you can hear a pin drop!”
Clare can’t help laughing a little at this, but Stella just shakes her head, walking over to scoop up the bowling ball. Aidan ignores him entirely, glancing up to check the score on the screens overhead, where his name is now listed as A-Dog and Clare’s is C-Money. Nobody else seems to notice except for Scotty, who takes a few lurching steps in Aidan’s direction, scowling at him.
“What?” he says, his face a little too red. “Not funny enough for you?”
Aidan turns around, clearly surprised. “Just not in the mood for jokes, I guess.”
“Why not?” Scotty demands. “Did you guys finally break up or something?”
“Scotty,” Stella says, taking him by the arm before he can reach for his cup again. She shoves the pink bowling ball at him instead, and he lets out a little grunt as it hits him in the stomach. “I think you’re up.”
“No, Kip’s not done,” he says, pointing at the six pins still standing, but Kip—who has been watching this all unfold with benign amusement—waves an arm.
“All you, big guy,” he says with a lazy smile. “You can finish up for me.”
Scotty shrugs, then saunters up to the lane, turning once to wink at them before tossing the ball straight into the gutter. He stands there watching it whizz away, steady as a pinball, and once it disappears at the end of the lane, he turns around with his arms raised in triumph.
Out of the corner of her eye, Clare notices Riley waving at her from somewhere in the middle of all the lanes, and she lifts a hand to wave back. But when she hears a roar of laughter behind her, she realizes Scotty has seen her, too.
“Is that why you’re in such a terrible mood, buddy?” he asks Aidan with an off-kilter grin, once again in good humor. “Because your sister followed me here?”
“Cut it out, Scotty,” Aidan says, giving him a hard look. Clare can see that his face is flushed behind his freckles, and she knows that this is the quickest way to rankle him, not because it’s a real possibility anymore—Scotty and Riley—but because he’s protective and a little bit sensitive and, most of all, because he’s a good older brother, all things she usually admires about him.
But tonight isn’t the night to tease him about it, and she widens her eyes and shakes her head at Scotty, trying to communicate this to him, though she knows it’s probably hopeless. He’s still smiling, a goofy, lopsided smile, and she can tell he’s only just warming up.
“What can I do?” he says, all innocence and charm, his hair sticking up at the back in a way that makes him look like a cartoon character. “You know how the girls all love me. It’s not her fault she can’t stay away.…”
“Grow up,” Aidan says, spinning around to leave. He takes two long strides, then stops and turns back again, and Clare can tell that he’s gone from annoyed to angry, something that usually only happens when he’s arguing with his father. “Actually, forget it. You’re never gonna grow up, are you? There’s a reason you’re getting left behind in this stupid town with all these stupid high schoolers. It’s because you still act like one.”