Kissing Ted Callahan (and Other Guys)(53)

Also I’m going to make my hair look better before I meet Sydney Jacobs.

I get into my car, and it’s like the world is reborn and flowers have sprouted up everywhere, and I can breathe again because I start thinking about it, and maybe Milo will be even easier to tell. He doesn’t go to my school, he doesn’t know any of my friends, and I said lots of things about him being the perfect guy.

I know technically I could definitely get away with not even telling him. It must be someone at school who has the notebook, and I never used Milo’s last name, so they’d never be able to track him down. But this weird part of me doesn’t even dread telling him the truth about Ted. That part thinks it’ll be good to finally say what’s what and move on.

*

Milo is free, so I drive over to his house for the first time. It’s two stories and huge and there’s a basketball court in the driveway and a beautiful seasonal wreath on the front door. When I ring the doorbell, it plays soothing chimes.

“Hey.” Milo opens the door. “Come on in.”

“Something kind of bad happened,” I blurt out.

“What do you mean?” Milo asks. “Are you okay?”

“Okay, so, me and my friend Reid—well, let me back up, a while back, we found out my other two bandmates were doing it, and—basically, I didn’t have much experience with guys and Reid had zero experience with girls, and we were like, if Lucy and Nathan are always off doing it, maybe we should be off living, too.”

“So you did it with Reid?” Milo shrugs. “That’s not a big deal.”

“No, ew, I did not do it with Reid. We, um, we teamed up to help each other find love or sex or whatever. And we kept track of everything in a notebook. IS THAT THE WEIRDEST?”

“Well, yeah, a little?” Milo kind of laughs. “So you wrote about me in it? Is this what you’re telling me?”

“Yes,” I say. “The notebook’s missing, and I’m sure it’s someone at my school, and there’s really no way it could get back to you, but I wanted to be honest. I wrote about you, and also I was seeing other guys at the same time.”

“Well, we weren’t exclusive,” he says, which is so right and true, I want to high-five him. “But I wish you would have said something. I guess I think you should have said something.”

“Yeah, I know,” I say. I want to end it there, but I know I have to keep going. “AlsoIthinkI’mfallinginlovewithsomeone, so…”

“Oh.” Milo stares down at the ground. “And it’s not me, I’m guessing.”


“We can still hang out,” I say. I should have realized this a while ago, and I definitely should have said all of this way sooner than now. “If you even want to. I like going to shows with you, and—and you’re awesome! I just… don’t want to go out with you anymore. Is that okay?”

He shrugs. “I guess it has to be.”

“The part about us hanging out, not about not going out anymore.”

Milo sighs really loudly. “I should have probably known something was up. You were always avoiding doing stuff.”

“I’m sorry you noticed,” I say, even though even Reid figured that out just from the Passenger Manifest. “I should have been more honest. Well, honest, period.”

I give him a hug, which he semi-accepts, but then he says he’ll hopefully see me at the Diarrhea Planet show in three weeks, so I think we’ll be okay as friends or at least as fellow show-goers. And Garrick and I will be fine, too! He is in love with Sydney Jacobs! And I am in love with Ted, and if things are going so easily, I can totally stay in love with Ted.

I call Reid once I’m in my car. “Hey. Your idea was good.”

“What idea?” he asks.

“The whole honesty thing,” I say. “It was hard, but… eventually Milo and Garrick were both supercool about it, and now I just have to talk to Ted.”

“I’m working up the nerve to call everyone,” he says. “But it went fine?”

“Yeah, they weren’t that mad, and I’m staying friends with both of them.”

“Cool.” He sounds like the Reid I know and platonically love. “I’ll give you an update later. Tell me how it goes with Ted. Or if you hear anything from anyone about the book.”

“Will do.” I end the call so I can call Ted. “Hey, is this an okay time? Are you busy at your mom’s work?”

“It’s an okay time,” Ted says.

“Can we meet up? I need to talk to you about something.”

“Can you come over here? I can meet you outside my mom’s office.”

I get nervous when I text him to come down, but I tell myself to calm the heck down. Talking to Ted is going to be fine. Especially because when he walks up, he’s smiling like I have brought all the sunshine back into his world.

“Hi, Riley,” he says.

“Hey.” I forget why we’re here, and I hug him, and even though we’re kind of in public—well, totally in public—I kiss him. He laughs nervously, but he kisses me back.

“What’s up?” Ted takes a bag of M&M’s out of his pocket and passes it to me.

“Um, so this is stupid, and it’s really not a big deal, but it could come up, so I want you to know,” I say. “So, like, Reid and I, we kept this book, it’s just this idea we had back when we found out Lucy and Nathan were together. We figured it didn’t make any sense for us not to have any experience, and since we weren’t interested in each other, we were helping each other, like, succeed with people they were interested in—”