Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute(43)
After a pause so long it almost murders me, a laugh bursts from her lips. “You’re funny,” she says, like I was joking.
“Oh, are we listing qualities? Here’s one: you’re avoidant.”
She throws up her hands and sweeps away like a queen. “Piss off, Brad.”
I follow. “You’re avoiding a conversation about our friendship because you avoid your feelings.”
She examines a nearby bush with apparent fascination.
“Way to prove me wrong.”
Her focus transfers to a brick wall.
I put on my best clipped-and-impatient voice. “Look at me, I’m Celine. I want to be friends with Brad, but I would rather choke to death on a crab stick—”
Her braids whip my shoulder as she spins around to face me. “Why would I be eating a crab stick? I hate crab sticks!”
“I know,” I explain patiently, “that’s the point. Now shut up and let me finish.” I clear my throat and start again. “I’m Celine and I would rather choke to death on a crab stick than admit I like Brad because I think I can replace all emotional conversations with power moves and epic stink eye.”
“Oh my God.” Her voice lowers to a hiss, like air rushing out of a hot-air balloon. “Fine! Okay! You’re not so bad and I…I might understand why you did what you did when we were kids, and I…forgive you. Okay? So will you shut up?”
Did I just annoy Celine into saying we’re cool? I think I might have. Funny how it’s not as satisfying as I imagined. “Maybe.” I shrug.
“Maybe?”
“Hey. You’re not the only one who can hedge.”
“Ugh. Can we just…talk for five minutes without you making me think about myself?” she asks, which is a sentence I never thought I’d hear come out of her mouth. She wrinkles her nose. “I’m not like you. I really don’t have the whole emotional intelligence thing down.”
I blink, and the tension in me pops like a cork. My smile is slow but this time I’m satisfied because she’s talking to me. Actually talking, like we know each other again. I didn’t realize how badly I wanted that until it happened.
We walk down the path side by side. “You know,” I say casually, “I have a theory that everyone needs therapy. Like going to the dentist.”
“Yeah? Tell that to the NHS.” She snorts.
My parents paid for my therapist Dr. Okoro privately because, between Dad’s job and Mum’s dental practice, we’re not exactly struggling. I scratch the back of my head.
Celine’s grin is razor sharp. “Nothing to say, rich boy?”
“I could say that we’re not rich,” I mutter, “but I’m sure you’d have a field day with that.”
She laughs. My heart thuds. “Thanks, by the way,” she murmurs after a moment. “For. You know. Saying that. In there.”
I have been on such a roller coaster since I left the Beech Hut, I’d almost forgotten Max Donovan even existed. Now it comes thundering back, and I wince. “Does he talk to you like that all the time?”
“Why?” she asks. “What are you going to do, fight him?”
Would it be bad to say yes? I think it would be bad. Violence is not the answer. Although, history suggests it is occasionally the answer—
She laughs. “What is going on with your face right now? I’m joking.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re the bane of my existence. Did you know that?”
She grins. “I hoped.”
I really can’t stand this girl. I wonder how long I get to walk with her.
“And no, Max doesn’t always talk to me like that. He’s usually less brazen. It’s more of a he-whispers-snide-comments-which-I-pretend-not-to-hear vibe,” she says.
I stare at her. “You mean he’s been bothering you this whole—”
“I don’t care.” She meets my eyes. “I don’t care at all. Trust me, okay?”
And by the way my anger slowly dissipates, I think maybe I…do? A second passes. “Fine,” I say. “Okay. Fine.”
“Good.”
I study the path beneath our feet. “Where are we going, by the way?”
“Me and Minnie are meeting Sonam for frappes.” If I didn’t know any better, I’d think she’s nervous as she asks, “Do you want to come?”
Yes, I really really really really do. But…“I have History next lesson, and I haven’t done the reading.” I could read at Starbucks, except no I couldn’t, not if Celine is gonna be there. Saying things. With her mouth. She dropped History in year ten. Then again, maybe I could teach her—
“Walk me to the gate, then?” she suggests.
I know I say yes too quickly, but I can’t make myself regret it.
As we wander down, she says, “I have a theory about you, Brad Graeme.”
A theory. She has a theory about me. I am so fucking in.
Wait. What?
I clear my throat and ask, “Yeah?”
She hesitates, then says, “That you’re exactly who you claim to be.”
“And who’s that?”
We reach the green gate and she fiddles with the lanyard around her neck, lifting up her student ID to open the lock. “A decent person,” she says after a pause. “The person I thought I knew.” She holds the gate ajar with her shoulder and finally looks at me. “I’m sorry, by the way.” The words are so stilted, it takes me a moment to figure out what she’s talking about.