First & Then(72)

The remaining space between us disappeared. Ezra and I kissed.

A vague thought skirted through my mind of so this is what kissing feels like, but then all I could really focus on was Ezra, his mouth, his hair, those arms circling around me and holding tight.

A thousand electric cars could run on how you feel when you know that the person you like likes you back. It feels incredible. Like it shouldn’t be possible. Of all the happy coincidences to ever exist, it’s one of the happiest.

And yet, when Ezra and I kissed, there weren’t fireworks igniting the night sky, or an orchestra swelling, or any of the other hackneyed clichés that feature prominently in tweenhood imaginings of first kisses. We didn’t proceed to ride off on horseback to his sprawling estate and ten thousand pounds a year. We just kissed, and it was … thoroughly awesome … and then I leaned against him and we stood that way for a while, arms around each other. Ezra didn’t count to three hundred this time. His breathing was even and steady, and there was just this pure, unadulterated, highly concentrated happy. Baking chocolate for the soul.

After a while, we kissed again and said good night, and then kissed some more, and then, finally—just another long kiss, three short kisses, and a scattering of little ones—Ezra got into his truck and drove away. I watched his taillights disappear in the distance, and then I retreated back in, my insides feeling like warm honey, my lips red with a fun new feeling.

“You look weird,” Foster said when I finally entered his room again. My parents glanced up, but if they noticed anything amiss, they were kind enough not to say.

“Your face looks weird,” I replied.

“Devon,” my mom said, but she was smiling.





39


They released Foster early in the morning. He was ordered rest and a hiatus from games for the rest of the season. Foster balked at this, but my dad pointed out that going back in too soon might preempt the three more years of games that Foster had to look forward to. After that, Foster seemed pacified.

My parents drove us to the field so I could pick up my car. To my surprise, Foster wanted to ride the rest of the way home with me. And to my even greater surprise, my parents actually agreed. I didn’t think they’d let Foster out of their sight so soon, but as we left the parking lot I could see in my rearview mirror that they were tailing us closely.

It was quiet in the car, but there certainly was a lot to reflect on. The evening at the hospital had been eventful, to say the least, and I don’t think I had ever felt more fortunate. I had friends who came, and waited, and brought sandwiches, and cared. I had Ezra, and Ezra’s smile, and I had kissed that smile, and it was freaking awesome. I had Foster, and he was okay.

There was so much to appreciate, but at the same time, it pained me to know that in some ways, Foster wasn’t okay, that he hurt, that he mourned the life he knew before.

I glanced over at him when we reached a stop sign.

“How’s your head?”

“A little sore.”

“You need some rest.” I paused. “You’re all right, though?”

He shrugged. And then,

“Marabelle broke up with me.”

Foster didn’t look upset. At least not by what I could see out of the corner of my eye.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “When?” It seemed pretty cold to dump someone when they were actively in the hospital. But Marabelle hadn’t even been there last night.

“The other day. After practice.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It’s not like we were even together, really. But she just said … well, she can’t be my girlfriend or anything.”

“She’s got a lot of stuff to focus on right now.”

He nodded, and after a pause, “I wish…” He shook his head. “Sometimes I wish that things were different. Is that terrible?”

“No,” I said. “No, I don’t think so.”

It was quiet.

“Did you and Ezra talk?”

“We did.”

And he had texted me, early: Good morning.

It is, I replied. Did you sleep well?

He had answered with three messages, in short succession: No.

But in a good way.

I was too happy.

I had stared at the words on the screen, straight from Ezra’s fingertips to the palm of my hand. It didn’t seem like there was such a thing as too happy, but I knew what he meant, and I felt it, too—that kind of happy that radiates from your core, feels too big to possibly contain.

“So you guys are together now?” Foster asked.

“We’re something,” I said.

“Well, you were always something.”

I smiled. That was Foster. Zip Lip Foster. Early-morning smoothies and the like, the great big giant pain in my ass, the brother I never knew I wanted. A page in the story of my life that I never could’ve anticipated.

I started thinking about those pages. Reeding, and Cas, and car rides with Foster, and loving Ezra were all their own pages. And suddenly I was filled with this feeling—like the resolve that filled me when we visited Reeding, that insane desire to try harder, to be better—I was filled with this feeling that there was nothing we couldn’t get through three hundred seconds at a time, three hundred words a page.