Kissing Ted Callahan (and Other Guys)(57)

“… adventures! You told him everything.”

I accidentally laugh. “Not everything, trust me.”

“More than you told me. I missed you so much,” she says. “I needed you to talk to all the time.”

“I was SO STUPID. I thought because you and Nathan were doing it, you’d think I was lame and immature and my boy problems were pathetic. I mean, my boy problems were pathetic, but still.”

“God,” she says, “doing it is not exactly the person-changing event you think it is. It’s just one thing that happens.”

“No, totally, I know what you mean,” I say. “Now I do. Then I was stupid and unfair. And I’m sorry. I missed you so much, too.”

Lucy grins. “Do you know what I mean because something happened? Or did you just become wise and mature?”

“Ugh, yes. Something happened, but I don’t want to talk about it. I’m all heartbroken now, and I’ll just sound emo and start applying eyeliner or something.”

“Anything but that.” She sips her cider. “You can talk about it, though, really. The heartbroken emo part if you want, or just the good parts.”

Ted still hates me, and I am probably doomed to a guy-free, kiss-free, doing-it-free life, but I already Just Know that the Gold Diggers are back together and opening for Murphy-Gomez at the Smell next week. I’d gotten used to feeling like some evil hand was clenching my heart and lungs and pushing down on my shoulders all the time, but right now I am sitting up straight and tall and feeling completely like myself.

“I’ll tell you all the parts,” I say. “But I should warn you that a lot of it is insanely stupid.”

“Yay! I love insanely stupid!”

“So there was this guy—” I stop myself. “Well, you know there were guys. But, specifically, there was Ted Callahan.”

“I knew it,” she says. “Even before I read your book. Especially once he showed up at the Andrew Mothereffing Jackson show.”

“Don’t get excited! He hates me now.”

I tell her the whole story. It takes forever because I include all the details I didn’t see fit for the Passenger Manifest. I finally break down and demand my own mug of cider. We play a Beach Fossils album while Foley the cat purrs on the bed next to us, and it’s like old days. I’m crying by the time I’m finished talking. It’s not that I screwed up and made Ted rightfully hate me—well, it’s that, but it’s more that I had, like, a perfect life. I had amazing friends and a kick-ass band, and then I fell for a guy who fell for me. And I’d been dwelling a lot on the sad parts, but right now I’m flooded with memories of getting candy from Ted and going to shows with Ted and being all tangled together in bed with Ted.

And I miss all of it.

“Well,” Lucy says once the talking is over and most of the crying is, too, “there’s only one way I know how to deal when I’m sad or I messed up.”

“Read about cults?”

“Okay, two things! No, I write songs.”

“Ugh, you know I can’t write songs! It’s one of my failings in life.”

“No, I have an idea,” she says, her eyes getting anime-round, the way they do when she’s excited about something. It hits me that I haven’t seen her look this way in a long time. “I’ll write a song for you for him. And we can play it at our show, and you can tell him to be there.”

“There’s no way he’ll come,” I say.

“Let’s worry about that later.” She grabs her notepad off her desk. “Okay, tell me what you’d say to him if you could.”

“It’s weird,” I say. “Like, it’s a song from you to him.”

“It won’t seem like it. I’ll make it sound like you’re the one writing it.”

“You can do that?”

“Riley, yes!” She flings her pen at me and gets another off her desk. “I’m a writer! Not every song I write is about me!”

I had no idea. This might make me an idiot. But I trust Lucy. So I tell her everything.

*

I’m still mad at Reid, and I know he’s still mad at me, but he deserves to know. I text him once I’m home from Lucy’s.

fyi lucy had the book. it must have fallen out at practice. i got it back.

He responds immediately. Thanks. And, crap.

Okay, he doesn’t sound superfriendly, but we’re talking again. Well, we’re “talking” again. And that’s much better than I expected today.

*

Reid marches right up to me at school on Monday morning. “Where is it?”

“At home in my nightstand drawer,” I say. “What should we do with it?”

“Burn it? My therapist says it should be symbolic.” He shrugs. “My mom made me start therapy after I told her everything.”

“YOU TOLD YOUR MOM EVERYTHING?”

“Yeah, my therapist says that’s weird, too.”

It feels sort of normal, I realize.

“Everything got really stupid,” I say.

“I know. Sorry I blamed you.”

“Sorry I lied to you.”

Since we’re not huggers, we nod at each other. It feels like a hug!