“He’s crying,” I say.
“I know that!” she hisses, suddenly angry at me now.
“Do whatever you want, then,” I say. “But whatever you decide, you’re going to have to face him eventually.” God, I sound like Larry.
Britt raps on the door again. “Please,” he says. “I’m sorry! I never meant to hurt you! I love you!”
Stella steps back, away from the door. “I’m scared,” she says quietly.
“I’ll be right here.”
“No,” she whispers. “It’s not that. I’m — I’m scared I’ll change my mind.”
Oh.
He pounds on the door again. “Please,” he cries. “Please, Stella!”
“I don’t think he’s going to give up,” I tell her.
She looks down at her foot.
“You can do this,” I say.
She leans against the wall while Britt continues to pound on the door and cry for her. Finally, she nods. “OK. Let him in. But don’t leave us alone. Promise.”
“All right.” I slowly switch the lock and open the door.
Britt wipes his face with his T-shirt, then looks at the two of us. I know we are giving the worst impression possible, what with Stella wearing what is clearly a man’s T-shirt, and me not wearing one at all.
“You can come in,” Stella says quietly. “But only to talk.”
He nods.
I help Stella to the couch in the living room, and Britt sits on the chair across from us. I watch him look around the apartment like how we live is completely foreign to him. Larry’s apartment is probably the size of Britt’s living room.
For a while, no one says anything.
“Well?” Stella finally asks.
“I wanted to tell you I’m sorry.” He looks so wrecked, I can’t help feeling sorry for him.
Stella crosses her arms at her chest. “OK, well, you said it.”
“And to ask you — to ask you —” He looks at me like I’m a piece of dirt. Or worse. “Does he really have to be here?”
“Yes,” Stella says.
He makes a huffing sound.
“I want another chance,” he says.
“Why?” Stella asks.
“What do you mean, ‘Why’?”
“Why do you want another chance? So you can drive over my other foot?”
“It was an accident!” He leans forward in the chair, like he’s about to get up. It’s weird, but you can almost see the anger building up in him. I lean forward, too, just in case he tries . . . I don’t know. Anything. I realize he hasn’t even asked her if she’s OK, or in pain, or basically anything that matters.
“Then, why?” Stella asks again, calmly.
“Because I love you, Stell,” he says. “And I don’t understand what happened. We had everything planned. And then suddenly you’re telling me you want to go to a different school. A school you never even told me you applied to. And I got upset. Can you blame me? We’ve been talking about going to college together forever. I know I acted a little crazy. But you really took me by surprise, OK? I’m sorry I overreacted. It’s only because I love you and can’t bear the thought of not being with you. You’re my life.”
“But don’t you see that that’s the problem?” Stella asks.
“No! I don’t! What’s wrong with loving someone?”
“Nothing,” she says. “It’s the way you love. If you loved me, you’d want me to go to the school of my choice, not yours. You’d want me to follow my own dreams. You — you’d know what my dreams are.”
“Well, maybe if you told me, I could have applied there. If I knew it meant that much to you.”
“You never asked,” she says quietly.
“That’s because you acted like you were cool with the schools I chose for us! If I’d known how much this other place meant to you, I would have added it to our list!”
“You would really do that?”
“Yes.”
“Even though you have no interest in that school?”
“Yes!”
“And you don’t think there’s anything wrong with that?” she asks.
He stands up and starts pacing. “No! It shows how much I love you!”
“But that’s the problem!” she says. “I can’t do this! I can’t be with you every waking hour. I can’t report in when we’re not together. I can’t breathe! I need to be me. Not Britt’s girlfriend. And I want you to be . . . you. I want you to go to the school that’s right for you. Don’t you get how crazy it is to go somewhere just to be together?”
He shakes his head. “You never thought this before. Not until you started hanging around with him.” He gestures toward me in disgust. “You think this guy really cares about you? He’ll just use you and then dump you.”
I’m about to say something, but Stella holds up her hand to stop me. All I can think of when I hear the word use is Ellie. I feel like I deserve his insult, even though he doesn’t know about my past.
“We’re just friends,” Stella tells him. “He hasn’t used me. And he never will.”
No. I won’t.
“Then, what are you doing here dressed like that? Is that his shirt?”
“Josh was just letting me crash here tonight. That’s what friends do.”
He makes a face like, Yeah, right. I notice he doesn’t ask her why she needs to crash here in the first place.
“You could come to my house,” he says. “You don’t have to stay here.” He says here as if he means “in this pathetic excuse for a house.” “You know my parents won’t care. You can stay in the guest apartment.”
Guest apartment? Figures.
“I don’t need to stay anywhere. I can go home anytime.”
“To what?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“C’mon, Stell. I know your mom’s never home anymore.”
Stella squirms. “So?”
“So you shouldn’t be alone. And you shouldn’t have to live like”— he looks around the apartment again —“this.”
He says it as if he truly can’t believe anyone could live here. Like he just doesn’t get it. Like it’s a choice. He reminds me of the Disney-type hero prince, all blond and muscular, who rescues the poor girl and makes her a princess. I can see it in his eyes. This is really what he believes. I’m sure of it.
“I love you,” he says. “I always have. I know I overreact when I don’t know where you are or who you’re with, but it’s because I care. And I’m the only one who does. You know it.”
Am I not sitting here?
“My mom cares,” Stella says. “She’s just caught up with Calvin right now.”
“Like that’s an excuse? If she cared about you, she would make the time. She’d take care of you. She’d know where you are!”
And now I get how this works. He tries to make her feel small. That without him, she has nothing. He tries to make her feel unloved by everyone but him. He tries to make her feel like he’s all she’s got. Maybe he even believes it.
“You’re not the only one who cares about her,” I say. “Stella has plenty of friends who care.”
“Stay out of this.”
“Whose apartment is this?”
He looks around. “Proud of this dump, are you?”
“It’s not a dump,” I say. “And you can leave anytime.”
“I’m not leaving without her.”
Stella doesn’t move. She slowly looks around the apartment, as if seeing it through his eyes. Then she looks at me. She seems so sad and unsure. Tempted.
“Please come home with me,” Britt says quietly, trying a different tack. “I promise things will be different this time. Just give me another chance. I’ll take care of you.”
I know he’s sincere, but his words are all wrong. He should know Stella can take care of herself. She’s not a helpless puppy. Maybe if he knew that, she’d be more tempted to give him a second chance, but the more he talks, the more she seems to move away from him.
br /> “You need to go home now,” Stella tells him. She stands up. “I’m sorry.”
Britt stands up, too. “Stell —”
“You need to go,” she says. “Please.”
“You can’t stay here.” He clenches his jaw. As it dawns on him she’s not going to leave with him, his body gets more and more rigid.
“I’ll be fine. Josh is a friend, OK? That’s all he’s ever been.”
“Whatever. Fine.” Any sadness that was left in him has clearly turned to anger now, and my sympathy for him is disappearing by the minute. “Live like this,” he says. “Be with this loser. I couldn’t care less.”
“Obviously,” she says.
I can’t help smirking. That’s the Stella I lo — know.
“Fuck you,” he says to me.
He walks to the door and opens it, but stops before he leaves. Like he’s trying to think of one more thing he could say to make Stella change her mind and come with him.
She stays where she is, staring at him. He waits a minute more, then finally walks out the door, leaving it open behind him.
I shut the door and go back to Stella, who has flopped down on the couch.
“You OK?” I ask.
She nods. “Thanks.”
“Want me to help you back to bed?”
She nods again, then gets up and puts one arm around me so I can guide her back to Larry’s room. As soon as she gets in bed, she rolls over and faces the wall.
“You sure you’re all right?” I ask.
She nods again. I stand there, watching her, not knowing what to do.
“I just need to be alone,” she says.
So I leave her.
But I feel like she knows she’s not really alone. Not truly.
Because she has me.
I wake up at around noon the next day. Stella is still asleep, so I decide to start breakfast: Larry’s “famous scrambled eggs” and toast. I’m not sure what makes the eggs so famous, but Larry insists his way is the best. I’m sure it has to do with the massive amounts of cheese he melts into them. Stella hobbles into the kitchen just as I’m finishing up.
“Wow,” she says. “This is nice.”
“You should probably taste before you decide,” I say.
“I just mean that you went to all the trouble.”
I shrug.
I pour us some coffee, and we eat mostly in silence. All through breakfast, I wait for her to bring up what happened last night, but she doesn’t. So I don’t, either.
“I guess I should probably go home,” she says when she eats the last bit of egg.
“You can stay here,” I tell her. “You know Larry wouldn’t mind.”
She nods. “I should just get going.”
I wish she would say something about Britt. About us. About anything. But instead she stands up to go, so I help her gather her stuff, and we take the elevator to her floor.
The apartment is empty and has that stale smell of neglect. It reminds me of back home. How the house smelled stale and gross. And how it made me feel the same way I feel now. And how Stella looks. Alone. Empty. Sad.
“You’re not staying here,” I tell her when we get to her room.
She puts her hands on her hips. “Oh, really?”
“Sorry. That came out wrong. What I mean is —” What do I mean? “It’s just that this place — if you want to escape it for a while, you can hang out with me at Larry’s. I don’t want to tell you what to do. But it’s a lot less depressing down there. Plus, I’ll cook for you.”
She sighs and looks around her room, hesitating. She peers down into her wastebasket where the photo of Britt is.
“What about him?” she asks.
“What about him?”
“What if he comes back?”
“What if he does? We’re just friends, right?”
“Right,” she says.
We pass our days at Larry’s watching movies and eating mostly takeout. Each night, I take Stella back upstairs. Sometimes her mom’s there with Calvin, and sometimes she stays at his place. Those nights, Stella comes back down and crashes in Larry’s room.
I take Stella to her doctor’s appointment, and the doctor tells her she’s all better but to take it easy. She teaches Stella some exercises to do and tells me to make sure Stella does them. So we go back to Larry’s and alternate between doing the exercises, watching movies, and trying to cook our own meals since we ran out of takeout money. Pretty soon, Stella’s walking without a limp and we’ve spent almost the entire week together.
And that’s when things start to get weird.
Every time I look up, I can tell she’s been watching me. And I start to feel self-conscious. And then I start to avoid her. And then she starts acting cranky. And then finally, one night when a TV show we’ve been watching ends and I jump up to bring a glass into the kitchen, she grabs my arm before I can get away.
“Stop avoiding me,” she says. “If you want me to go home, I will.”
“What? No. Why would you say that?”
She stares at me.
“Sorry. I just . . .” I hesitate.
“. . . don’t like me in that way. And you’re afraid that’s how I like you.”
“No!”
She raises her right eyebrow like, Oh, really?
“It’s not that,” I tell her. Suddenly it feels really, really hot in here. I wipe my forehead with the back of my hand.
She fiddles with her new class ring, as if it’s more of a nuisance than something she’s glad to have. “Then why are we acting so weird around each other?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Why are you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, maybe we should stop?”
She smirks. “Maybe we should.”
“OK, so that settles that.”
I feel her watching me as I get up for real this time. She follows me into the kitchen and stands behind me while I do the dishes.
“I could, you know,” she says.
I turn off the water and make myself look busy wiping my hands on a dish towel, even though inside my heart is racing. “Could what?”
She blushes. “Like you.”
I stare at her.
“What?” she asks.
“Why?” I ask.
“Seriously?”
I set the towel on the counter. “Yeah.”
“Because you’re nice, for one thing. And we have fun together. And we both kick ass at karate, and we like the same movies. And we both appear to have a history of dysfunctional home lives, and we’re both trying to escape or move on or whatever.” She takes a deep breath. “And we’ve been together for almost a whole week and you’ve been a perfect gentlemen. And — you’re cute.”
Now I’m the one blushing. “Really?” I ask.
“Shut up. I’m not saying I do like you. I’m just saying I could.”
“Well, you know, I could like you, too. Could.”
She smiles. “Really?”
“Are we already that old couple that repeats everything the other one says?”
“Maybe.”
Wait. Did I just call us a couple? “Only . . .” I start, but I don’t know what to say.
“You’re scared,” she tells me. “Because of whatever happened last year.”
“Well . . . yeah.” I walk over to the kitchen table and sit down.
“I’m not her,” she says, sitting across from me.
“I know.”
“No, I mean, you had one bad experience, but that doesn’t mean every experience will be bad now, or that you can’t have a new one.”
“I know.”
“Then what?”
“It all feels so unfinished.”
“You still love her?”
“No! I never did. I know that makes me an asshole. It was just this one-time thing, though. It was stupid. And then — well, you know what happened.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Right. Larry didn’t tell you??
??
“Nope.”
I sigh. The one time Larry can keep his mouth shut.
“Maybe you should tell me,” she says.
Yeah. Maybe I should.
“Are you sure you want to know?” I ask. “Because what can be heard cannot be unheard.”
She smiles and pretends to glance around. “Is that you, Larry?”
“Seriously, though,” I say.
“Seriously.” She smiles again, and I wonder if she’ll still look like this — like she cares about me — after I tell her the truth.
“She got pregnant,” I say quickly, before I can chicken out.
“Oh.”
She reaches over and puts her hand on my arm.
“That’s hard,” she says. “No wonder you had all those issues with Benny. Oh, Josh. I’m so sorry.”
My eyes start to sting. I close them and shake my head. She’s the first person to say what I truly feel. Yeah. It’s hard. It’s really, really hard.
“Last year, I spent the whole time wondering what was going to happen to the baby. But I never talked to her — Ellie — because I felt so bad about it. About how it happened. Because —” I don’t want to tell her, but I know I have to. It’s the bigger truth that’s haunted me all year. I know that now.
“Because what?”
I look away from her, but then realize I have to say it to her face. Slowly, I raise my eyes to meet hers. “Because I used her, Stell. I used her. And I feel so bad.” My throat starts to close up again and I force myself to swallow. To not cry.
“What do you mean, you used her?”
I take a deep breath. “I heard she was an easy lay — sorry — but, yeah. That. And I was a pathetic virgin. And all these assholes on my soccer team wouldn’t get off my back about it. And I just wanted to get it over with. So one night at a party, she was flirting with me, and I thought, ‘This is my chance.’ So I took her out to my van, and we did it.”
I pause, because it’s all coming out so fast. But I don’t want to stop. I don’t want to stop, because I know I have to tell Stella the whole truth. Even if it means she’ll never talk to me again.
She waits.
“It was a mistake,” I say. “I knew even when it was happening that I should stop. But I didn’t. She just let me take advantage of her. And when it was over, I left her out there. She looked at me like I had just ruined her life, but like she wasn’t surprised, you know? Almost as if she expected it. Like she knew I would be an asshole just like all the other guys she hooked up with. But the disappointment on her face — I can’t forget it. I went back to the party and tried to pretend it never happened. I didn’t talk to her again.”