The Truth About Fragile Things (40 page)

“I was going to practice before I go to work.” He motioned to the band room behind us, not quite inviting, but hoping. “Are you busy?”

“No. I’d love to hear.” My voice was formal and prim, so far from all the weightless feelings in my chest.

He held the door open and I stepped in where five or six students were playing keep away with somebody’s mouthpiece while two flutists practiced together. They hardly paid attention to us except to yell a few hellos to Braden before going back to their rowdy game. I could tell that the world of band had the same allowances as the drama department. As long as everyone blew the judges away at performances there was a considerable amount of freedom.

Braden led me to the piano on the far side of the room and took a seat behind it. It acted like a screen, blocking off a quiet corner as he opened his guitar case. He plugged it into a massive black speaker, but turned the sound down, plucking a few strings to test the volume.

“Who do you like?” he asked, his fingers coaxing some broken notes into the air.

“I don’t know. Anything.” It seemed far too early to admit something as personal as music preferences.

He grinned and started running his fingers in fast, elastic shapes over the strings, a song from the radio shaping in the air around us. I glanced around to see if anyone else was paying attention, was as impressed as I was. All I saw was one flutist shove a boy who had upset her music stand. “That’s really good,” I told him.

“Honestly, tell me what you want to hear. I might not know it, but I’ll try.”

“I like the one you’re playing,” I told him. I loved it when he slid his fingers, made the strings squeak in protest as if they didn’t want to lose his touch. I knew how they felt.

The music didn’t stop for our words. Sometimes he halted to retrace a note before he moved on, gathering speed, but he spoke around the separate conversation of the melody. “Would you like to go out again sometime?”

He said it like reading lyrics, his eyes pointed down at his guitar, guarded from sight by his thick, black lashes. I sympathized. I understood the need for a script or a score to tell you where to go next.

“Do you really have to ask?”

His hand slid and broke the chord with a sharp squeak. “I was hoping.”

“Me too,” I assured him before he had to say it out loud.

He met my eyes, searched it for clues. “Okay.” He smiled and nodded.

It wasn’t until he finished the song that I realized that he’d already given me his second kiss. It had crept on the back of the notes of his guitar, jumping from the strings and landing on my face while he looked at his fingers and hoped they spoke for him. They did.

Everyone was so concerned with the rumors about Phillip and Charlotte and Phillip and me that no one noticed for three weeks that my usual hideout backstage had transferred to the back corner of the band room or that my new debit card was from Second National Bank where Braden worked as a teller while his dad ran the loan department. Phillip and Charlotte were so absorbed in each other and their frequent dramas that I escaped the first awkward weeks of being someone’s girlfriend without any observation. Which was perfect for me because I was learning I couldn’t do it like other people. Luckily, Braden didn’t expect me to lean against his locker and flirt and he had the instinct not to resort to flattery, which would have embarrassed me more than anything else. He usually handed me one of his secret smiles from across the room, letting me hold onto it and linger over it during the day before I returned it in stolen moments after school. He stepped as slowly as I did, only his tracks seemed to cut firmer and deeper because something about him was more certain than I had ever been.

I enjoyed the safety of secrecy until the day Phillip cornered me after school to tell me I was going to a movie Friday because Charlotte couldn’t be alone with him past ten o’clock. I sighed, girding myself for whatever came next.

“As much as I love babysitting, I’m busy Friday.”

“Doing what?” he asked and tugged a chunk of my hair to keep me from walking away.

“I’m going out with my boyfriend.”

He glared at what he thought was my insolence. “No, really. I need you to come.” He stroked my shoulder, his eyes pleading.

Braden emerged from Schatz’s room across the hallway. I grinned at him around Phillip and he answered my smile like a summons.

“Really. I’m going out with Braden,” I said as he stepped up to us.

“Funny.” Phillip rolled his eyes. “Your brand new boyfriend, Braden? I’ll let you pick the movie. I promise not to kiss her if that still bugs you.”

Braden’s finger brushed against my hand, made its way into my palm where my fingers curled around it. “Sorry, Phillip. I’m busy.”

Phillip’s eyes went down to our joined hands, scraped over our conspiratorial faces in panic before his features smoothed into an arrogant smirk. “Is this some new thing on your list? Trick the untrickable Phillip? You didn’t even come close.”

“Untrickable?” I repeated, turning to Braden. “He’s right. Nothing gets past him.”

“Nothing.” Braden’s face shone with amusement. There are some secrets that only get better for the telling. He gave my hand a small tug and we started walking toward the front doors. Phillip’s face flickered just before I turned, doubt creasing his forehead.

“You don’t have to hold his hand, Megan. The joke’s over. You lose,” Phillip called after me. “Am I supposed to believe you started dating someone at lunch today? You need to wake up earlier.”

I halted in the empty hallway, jerking Braden to a stop. “This is going to feel so good,” I told him in a low voice as he stared at me in confusion. I locked my hands behind his neck and closed my lips over his, quick and hard and smiling.

I may as well have kissed Phillip for how fast it cut off his words. My fast laugh almost covered his strangled gasp. Almost.

Braden was too shy to say anything. He spared himself a glance at Phillip’s stricken expression and then made his escape, not letting his face crack into a stunned smile until we stepped outside and the bright winter wind hit our triumphant faces. “I wasn’t expecting that,” he said as we made our way through the sparse parking lot.

“I’m just so unexpectable. That’s even better than untrickable.”

He leaned against the hood of a blue Hyundai that wasn’t even his and squinted his eyes against the glaring sky while he laughed. “I guess we’re a thing now.”

I shivered in the cold. “I guess we already were.”

“Maybe we always should have been,” he corrected. My teeth found the soft edge of my bottom lip and held onto it while I blinked against the last crush of light glowing over the horizon.

Maybe is a beautiful word.

“You have a boyfriend?!” Charlotte screeched as soon as I opened my front door. “When exactly were you going to mention that?”

“Hi, Charlotte. Nice to see you too. Would you like to come in?”

She shoved past me, looking to Lauren who had come bounding downstairs when the doorbell rang for the third time. “Is she tricking Phillip or is it true?”

“Totally true,” Lauren sighed. “Braden.” She said his name like you’d describe soggy pizza. “He’s not as fun as Phillip.”

“Phillip’s an idiot,” Charlotte muttered affectionately.

“It’s so good to have consensus,” I spoke to the ceiling while they ignored me. “I wasn’t hiding it. You and Phillip are just sort of…obtuse right now.”

“Don’t turn this into geometry. Are you in love?” Charlotte demanded.

“Yes,” Lauren sighed again.

“I’m getting a snack,” I announced and left for the kitchen, where I grabbed some fruit from the refrigerator.

“Braden’s not really your type,” Charlotte informed me as I washed a peach in the sink.

“What’s her type?” Lauren asked the question like she had unfaltering faith in Charlotte’s answer.

“Like…more outgoing. Someone with more…”

I shook my head and bit down, feeling the press of velvet and pulp and coldness on my tongue.

“Just someone a little
more
than Braden,” Charlotte concluded and Lauren nodded in fervent agreement.

“I told you,” Lauren said to me.

“Thank you for your input, both of you. I’ll take it from here.” When I blinked I could see Braden’s shy smile, like a picture my mind saved in the dark for my eyes only.

Charlotte perched herself on a counter stool and leveled her eyes at me. “Did you tell him?”

I swallowed the bite, large and sweet and sore in my throat. “I did,” I admitted.

There was quiet in the kitchen, the way there always was when death sneaked into the middle of life. “He would never tell,” I promised her.

“It’s not a secret for my sake. That’s your thing,” Charlotte reminded me. “You can tell whoever you want. But that does complicate things.” She exchanged a look with Lauren I couldn’t interpret.

I set down the lopsided peach on the counter, watched a bead of juice run down from the wound I’d made in its side. “Complicates what things?”

When she wouldn’t answer I told them, “He taught me how to skip rocks.” I wished I could convey how patient and gentle his hands were when they took mine.

“That’s great and all, but he also didn’t come to the door until 2:30,” Lauren mumbled. I took another bite and ignored the laughter as Lauren shared her new, favorite story.