The Pretty One(56)

“Okay,” he says, walking toward me.

“What are we making?”

“Let’s do a star again.”

“Well, you’re going to need a board. Not too thick. Maybe…oh, an eighth of…”

He takes my hand.

Whoa. I’m staring at our hands locked together.

“How thick?” he asks.

His other hand is on my cheek. HIS OTHER HAND IS ON MY CHEEK.

“Like an inch, two inches?” he asks.

I close my eyes. Think miter saw. “Since you’ve never done this before, I wouldn’t go more than an eighth of an inch.”

“Why?” His face is about two inches from mine.

I can feel his breath on my face. Oh God. Oh God. Houston, we have a problem.

“Why?” he repeats.

Miter Saw, miter saw, miter saw…

“If it’s too thick…,” I begin. Houston? Are you there?

He’s getting closer. Five, four, three…

“Too thick and you won’t be able to rotate the…” Houston, if you can hear me, abort! Abort, abort…

But it’s too late. The Eagle has landed.

His lips are soft and warm and taste a little like peppermint. The kiss is nice and dry, gentle and sweet. Not nearly as passionate as my make-out sessions with my pillow, but not at all platonic, either. Either way, my toes are literally curling.

Drew steps back and looks at me, giving me a sly grin. “See? Nothing to it.”

I smile and then I lean against the table saw so I don’t collapse and die of happiness.



I’m at the top of Federal Hill Park, skipping toward home gleefully, when I see Simon. He’s sitting on the front steps of our row house, reading Moby-Dick. Once again he’s retired his shorts and sneakers and is wearing jeans and loafers with a crisp-looking button-down shirt under his corduroy jacket.

I blink twice, convinced that I’m experiencing some sort of apparition, because it can’t possibly be Simon sitting there in front of my house since he has gone out of his way to avoid me since the whole Catherine incident.

“Hi,” Simon says, standing and giving me a little wave as I walk down the hill toward him. We meet halfway, across the street from my house.

“Can we talk for a minute?” he asks.

Even though he sounds pretty serious and I’d really like to enjoy my kissing high a few more minutes, I nod and follow him back toward the park and up the hill. I’m pretty sure I don’t have a choice. Listening to your best friend even if you don’t want to hear what he/she has to say is like the number one BFF rule.

We sit side by side on a bench overlooking Key Highway, the Inner Harbor, and his apartment building. “I just wanted to tell you that, well, I’m sorry,” Simon says. “I have been acting like a jerk lately. I just—I’ve been going through kind of a tough time. I’m…I’m trying to deal with a couple of things.”

I know I could really go off on a tangent with all this stuff that just came out of his mouth, like what kind of tough time and what things are you dealing with, but even though I kind of have to listen to Simon, I don’t think the best friend manual requires that you totally trash your good mood by getting into a serious tête-à-tête. I’ll have to check, but I’m willing to swear that I just have to listen.

And so I say cheerfully, “I’m sorry, too. I didn’t mean to lose my temper like that.”

“Catherine deserved it. She was being a bitch. She can be like that. I’ve talked to her about the ways she was treating you and she agreed it wasn’t anything you’d actually done to her. She’s just jealous. Ignore her.”

The news that Simon spoke to Catherine on my behalf, that he actually stood up for me, is actually a little surprising since he’s been such a jerk lately. But why bring up that unpleasantness now. What’s past is past, right?

“It’s not all Catherine’s fault,” I say, doing my best to be gracious. “I’m still trying to feel my way, you know? Everything is different this year.”

“It’s hard to be beautiful? Harder than it looks, at least?”

I hate it when Simon uses his sarcastic voice. (Well, that’s not exactly true. I hate it when he uses it on me.)

I’m just about ready to start swinging the nasty retorts when he says, “So how was practice today?”

All right. I was willing to forget about the nasty retorts (they weren’t that good anyway), but there is no way in hell I’m going to regal him with the truth, specifically the truth about Drew. “Good, I guess.”

“You…you haven’t talked too much about Drew lately.”

“I haven’t talked to you too much lately.”

“I know,” Simon mumbles. “I miss you.”

Poof. Just like that all my anger fades away. Unfortunately, so does any remnant of Drew-inspired happiness. I stare back at the water and we’re both quiet for a minute.

A fly lands on his jacket and I attempt to change the direction of our conversation by playfully brushing it off. “Hey, by the way, I saw the set you’re working on for Drew’s play. It’s looking great.”

Even though the scenery for the senior productions was usually pretty simplistic, Simon’s was head and shoulders above the rest. He had designed a night backdrop that was covered in wildflowers. He was even making a battery-operated lamppost.