Something Borrowed (19 page)

Teresa!
Suddenly my happy mood came crashing down around me. I shoved Jason away and jumped back, horrified by what I was doing.

“Wait, we can't do this!” I cried.

“Huh?”

“No,” I mumbled, wiping my mouth as if hoping to erase the feel of his lips on mine. “This is all so, so wrong . . .” How could I betray my best friend for a guy—
any
guy? How was I ever going to make this up to her?

He was still staring at me, looking confused. “Ava?” he murmured, reaching for my hand.

I yanked it away before he could grab it. “No,” I said again, near tears as the significance of what I'd just done really hit me. “We can't—I can't do this to Teresa.”

Saying her name out loud put me over the edge. I dissolved into tears as I whirled away and raced off, hardly hearing him calling out my name.

It just wasn't fair. None of it. Suddenly the happiest day of my sister's life had become the most miserable and pathetic day of my own.

“Hey, Ava! Where's the fire?”

Boring Bob's boringly jovial voice broke into my misery. I had stumbled, half blinded by tears, into the building and down some random hall. Somehow, I'd ended up in the little room set aside for the bride and groom to get away for a moment and catch their breath. Seeing that Bob and Camille were sitting very close together on the tasteful beige sofa, I suspected I'd interrupted something, but I wasn't about to worry about that. They had a whole lifetime ahead of them to grope each other.

Besides, at that particular moment my mind was such a complete whirlwind that I didn't have any room to spare for guilt
about the interruption. All of my guilt and anxiety was occupied with one question: How was I going to break this to Teresa?

A few other emotions were tumbling around in there too. For instance, anger—how could Jason do this to me, not to mention Teresa, who had barely left town five seconds ago? There was also some misery—how unfair was it that the perfect guy for me happened to hook up with my best friend first? And finally, a touch of lust—would it really be
so
wrong to make out with him again?

I knew the answer to that last one. Yes. It
would
be wrong. No matter how right it had felt to kiss him, it could never happen again.

Camille got up, smoothed out the rumpled skirt of her dress, and peered at me. “Hey, what's wrong with you? You look weird.”

I tried to smile, to say something casual and walk out with my dignity intact. But it was no use. I couldn't hide what I was feeling. Not this time.

“I just did something really, really stupid,” I blurted out. “I just—I just kissed Jason.”

Camille looked confused. “Jason? You mean as in your date Jason?”

Normally a stupid question like that would have earned a snarky response from me—something along the lines of
No, Jason Alexander. Duh.
But at the moment I didn't have the energy.

“Yeah,” I said, sinking onto the edge of a handy chair. “He was really being annoying, so I was yelling at him, and we went outside, and then
poof!
We were kissing.” I sighed. “I don't know what I was thinking. I
wasn't
thinking. Teresa is never going to forgive me, and I don't blame her!”

Camille and Bob traded a slightly confused glance. “Um, well, maybe she'll understand,” Camille said.

“Right,” Bob added. “You were just caught up in the moment, that's all. No big deal. Teresa seems like a reasonable person—she'll be okay once you explain.”

“Yeah.” Camille smiled at him. “Bob's right. Teresa is really down to earth. Besides, you guys have been friends forever. She won't let this come between you.”

I could tell they were trying to help. They were so giddy in their own happiness right now that to them it probably seemed
that no problem was insurmountable. But everything they said was only making me feel worse.

“Thanks, guys.” I stood up and took a deep breath, trying to compose myself long enough to make my escape. Then maybe I could go find a nice, private corner to cry in for a while. “I guess I'll leave you to—”

“Ava!” It was Jason. He stood in the doorway, looking upset. “We need to talk.”

“There's nothing to talk about,” I said, not meeting his eye. “Nothing either of us can say will make this horrible nightmare go away—not unless you've figured out how to turn back time so it never happened. And if you could do that, you know, you'd probably be, like, off accepting the Nobel Prize or something and not here at some wedding cheating on your girlfriend with her best—”

“Shut up!” he yelled, interrupting my rambling monologue. He grimaced as I stared at him in surprise. “Sorry, I didn't mean to yell. But man, can you get rolling sometimes!”

Behind me I heard Camille giggle. Then she cleared her throat and went silent again.

Jason was staring at me intensely. “I
didn't cheat on anybody,” he said. “Teresa and I broke up the night before she left.”

“What?” I was barely aware of Camille and Bob tiptoeing past us out of the room. I was totally focused on Jason, trying to figure out the punch line here. “What do you mean, you broke up? No, you didn't—she would have told me.”

“She didn't tell you?” He shrugged. “Well, it's true. In fact, when it happened, both of us admitted that we should've done it months ago. We were never really anything more than friends with benefits anyway.”

“Really?” In a way what he was saying made sense. It would certainly explain that weird vibe I'd gotten from Teresa the morning she left.

But I couldn't help feeling wary. Could I really trust Jason on something like this?

“Really,” he said. “The spark just wasn't there between me and Teresa. Not like, um . . .”

His voice trailed off as he reached out and took my hand. I shivered as I felt it—the spark.

I bit my lip, gazing into his eyes and seeing the same spark reflected there.
Maybe
that
was what I needed to trust—that feeling. The spark. The thumpity-thump.

I just hoped I wasn't making a huge mistake.

Camille and Bob had left the door ajar, and through it came the faint sound of the vocalist announcing the final song. The Wedding of the Century was almost over.

A second later I heard the band striking up the opening bars. It was “Last Dance,” the old Donna Summer tune. Leave it to cheesy Camille to choose that as the final song at her wedding!

Jason cleared his throat. “So,” he said, sounding uncharacteristically uncertain, “should we—that is, do you want to dance? You know—with me?”

I hesitated. This still felt strange. What would Teresa say if she could see us right now? Would it hurt her the way seeing Lance and his new girlfriend together had hurt me?

No way,
I thought.
Teresa isn't me. Jason isn't Lance. And I'm certainly no Charlene!

The last thought made me smile a little. Jason was watching my face carefully.

“Well?” he asked. “Don't leave me hanging, Ava.”

I squeezed his hand. I wished I could talk to Teresa about this right now. It felt totally weird, and I knew it would keep feeling that way until we spoke. But in the meantime it was the middle of the night in Germany, and I could almost hear her voice in my head laughing and telling me to go for it.

“Yes,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I'd love to dance.”

It felt weirdly right as he took me in his arms out on the dance floor. By the time we got out there the slow part of the song was almost over. But even when the band swung into the up-tempo disco part, Jason and I kept right on slow-dancing in the middle of the floor. I was still a little nervous about what Teresa would say. But I tried to put it out of my mind for now.

Jason hugged me a little closer, bending down to sing into my ear along with the song. “Last dance,” he sang softly. “SquarePants. Last dance . . .”

I laughed, wondering why I'd ever found his jokes so irritating. I wasn't sure.

But I was pretty sure about one thing. This wouldn't be our last dance together—not by a long shot.

I was still smiling when he stopped singing and kissed me, right there on the dance floor in front of everybody I knew.

“I still can't believe you didn't tell me.” I speared a piece of banana pancake with my fork.

“I know,” Teresa said. “Everything just seemed so rushed, you know? I wasn't thinking it would happen right then—he kind of sprang it on me that Thursday night, and it was too late to call you when I got home, and then in the morning I was so rushed . . . I mean, we'd both been kind of leaning that way for a while, but I was just assuming we'd deal with it when I got back.” She took a sip of her coffee and smiled across the table at me, looking ridiculously tanned and relaxed for someone who'd been on a transatlantic flight less than twelve hours earlier. “But I guess he was in more of a hurry. For obvious reasons.”

I blushed and smiled down at my plate. Even though my one-month anniversary with Jason was coming up soon, our relationship still felt new. That was a weird feeling for me. Usually by the time I'd been
with a guy for a whole month, I was starting to get restless. But not this time.

“So you're really okay with this?” I asked for about the fifth time in five minutes. Of course I'd e-mailed Teresa as soon as I was home from the wedding to let her know what had happened. And we'd talked a couple of times on the phone, though the time difference and the international charges had kept those conversations short. But this was our first chance to hash it out face-to-face. We were in a quiet booth at a local diner having breakfast.

“Of course,” she answered. “I mean, sure, it's a little weird. But what's life without weirdness? Especially life around you two?”

I grinned. “Oh, come on. Sure, Jason's a little weird. But me?”

“You two are a perfect match.” She chuckled. “Much better than he and I were, that's for sure.”

“But that's the part I don't get.” I reached for the syrup. “You two always got along so well. I don't think I ever saw you fight.”

She shrugged. “We were friends,” she said. “We really get along that way. That's probably why neither of us worked up the energy to break up for so long. But I knew
for a long time that he was never going to be the guy to make my ears tingle, you know what I mean?”

“Sure,” I replied. “He wasn't your thumpity-thump guy.” At her confused look, I explained, “That's Camille's term for it.”

“Oh. Well, anyway, it turns out he was feeling the same way all along. So when he realized he'd found someone else who
did
make him feel that way . . .” She gave me a meaningful look.

“I still feel kind of guilty about that,” I admitted, stirring my food around with my fork. “Like I, you know, stole him from you or something.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” she said briskly. “This is me you're talking to, remember? Besides, it's like I said. You two are so perfect together it's disgusting.”

I grinned. But her comment reminded me of something that had been bugging me. “You know, a lot of people have been saying that,” I said. “But I don't get it. How did I miss it for so long? Most of the time you two were dating, I just thought he was Mr. Annoying.”

“Maybe that was because he was off-limits,” Teresa suggested, leaning her elbows
on the table. “Your subconscious translated your attraction to him into disgust.”

“Who let you take that psych class last semester?” I joked. But I was still a bit perplexed. How had I missed the obvious for so long? Wasn't I the one who was always sizing up every guy I met and picturing myself with him?

Well, maybe not so much anymore . . . Jason and I had seen each other almost every day for the past month, starting with the blissfully quiet and peaceful two weeks when Camille and Bob had been away on their honeymoon. I hardly even noticed other guys anymore, and when Zoom had called once he got out of the hospital to see if I wanted to get together, I'd let him down easy—and with no regrets or second thoughts. I was like a whole new Ava. A one-guy Ava. It was kind of a nice feeling.

“So what do you two have planned for your one-month anniversary?” Teresa asked, leaning back in the squeaky vinyl booth.

“He won't tell me,” I said. “Says it's a surprise.”

Just then Teresa's phone buzzed. She dug it out of her purse, and her face lit up when she saw the number. “Oh, it's Helmut!” she
said, sounding almost giddy. “Do you mind?”

“Go for it.” I smiled as she jumped out of the booth and hurried across to a private spot near the restrooms. We'd been so busy talking about my love life that I'd only heard a little about hers so far. But her eyes had danced and her voice had gone all soft when she'd told me about Helmut, a cute German guy she'd met during her internship. It was nice to see her that way for a change. I tended to go all goofy with
any
new guy—from Lance to Zoom to Oliver to Kwan to whoever. But Teresa wasn't that way. If Helmut was making her light up like that, he had to be pretty special.

“Hey, there you are. Are you trying to hide from me back here?”

It was Jason. I felt myself light up too as he slid into the booth beside me. “Nope,” I said, giving him a kiss. “Just aiming for some privacy.”

He glanced around, looking adorably anxious. His hair looked perfect as always, and he was wearing a green T-shirt I'd given him that brought out the color of his eyes.

“Where's, uh, you know, Teresa?” he asked.

“Over there.” I nodded toward the corner where she was huddled over the phone
with her back to us, totally oblivious to his arrival. “She'll be back in a minute.”