Time Between Us (11 page)

“No.” I use the firmest voice I can muster this early in the morning. “You’re not serious?”

“Afraid I can’t keep up?” Dad’s dressed in his winter gear, stretching into an almost comical runner’s lunge against the refrigerator, like I imagine he did in the olden days.

“No.” I cover my eyes. “Listen, I’ll stick to the streets. I’ll stay off campus.
Seriously
,” I beg, pointing toward the kitchen window, “I don’t need a babysitter. The sun will be up in a few minutes. I’ll be fine.” The last word comes out in a whine, and I feel like the ten-year-old he seems to think I’ve reverted into. This overprotective parent thing had better pass quickly.

“Ignore me.” He takes a long drink of water from his sport bottle and lunges to the side. “You don’t have to talk to me or even look at me, but I’ll be right behind you, kiddo.” Evidently there’s no convincing a father of his daughter’s safety when she’s just been robbed at knifepoint.

“No, it’s okay. We’ll run together.” I set my Discman on the hallway table, already mourning its absence. I need my music to help get my head straight before I see Bennett at school.

Dad follows me out the door and we run side by side toward the lake. In unison, we wave to the man in the green vest with the gray ponytail. We run around the track four times, through campus and past the clock tower as it chimes seven. I race him the last half mile to our lawn, which turns out to be a mistake, because now he can’t catch his breath.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” I keep asking.

He’s red and blotchy, but he nods and forces a smile anyway. “Just. Fine,” he pants. “Why. Do you. Ask?”

“You overdid it.” I scold him—just like I know Mom will when he can’t move tomorrow. I stretch into a lunge next to him. “What, are you going to drive me to school now, too?”

“Nope. I trust Emma with that duty.”

“Clearly you’ve never seen her drive.” I finish my stretch, shake out my legs, and run toward the steps.

“Hey, Annie,” Dad calls, and I stop and turn around. I rest my hands on my hips while he tries to keep from having a heart attack.

“Invite Bennett over to dinner. Your mother and I want to meet him. Properly.”

I glare down at him from the porch. “Dad. We’re not even
close
to that.” The mere fact that he’d ask is mortifying.

He gives me his best stern-parent voice. “Okay, but if this is serious, we want to meet him.”

“’Morning, love.” Emma chirps out her usual greeting and pinches my cheek. “My brave little friend.” I don’t feel brave. I feel nervous about seeing Bennett. I feel guilty about not telling Emma about him yesterday. I feel tired, because I have barely slept.

She slams the gearshift into reverse and backs out of the driveway. Dad’s standing at the kitchen window, staring out at us with a look of mild panic on his face, and I give him a little shrug as we tear away from the house.

“Em,” I begin, “If I tell you something, do you promise not to get mad?”

She shoots me an irritated look. “Now, see—I don’t understand why people ask that question. How can I promise I won’t get mad if I don’t know what you’re going to tell me?” The look on her face makes me think this might fall into her Stupid Americans category. “Just spill it.”

I spit the words out quickly, before I can change my mind. “I didn’t tell you the whole story yesterday, about the robbery.” I take her back through the high points, but I don’t tell her the whole truth. How can I? Even if I hadn’t promised Bennett I’d keep his secret, she’d never believe me. Instead, I include the story Bennett crafted for me, including the part where I take off out the back door and run into him. Then I tell her he skipped school yesterday to spend it with me.

“What?!” She swerves dramatically, nearly hitting a parked car. “Crap! Okay, I’m good. I’m good.” She looks at me again. “You spent the
day
together.”

I smile, picturing the look on Bennett’s face when he drew the line in the sand with his toe and challenged me to race him into the ocean. In my head, I watch the slow-motion video of his body floating on the turquoise water and his arms cutting through white-tipped waves.

Yes, we spent the day together.

And I can’t tell my best friend about the best parts.

“He was worried about me.” The words come out as squeaks, but Emma doesn’t seem to notice.

“Now that I think about it, I didn’t see him in English Lit—”

The little movie in my head comes to a halt.

“Great. I didn’t think about that. Everyone in Spanish knows we were both absent yesterday.” I wonder if Courtney has already started speculating aloud.

“Oh, don’t you go trying to change the subject. Go back to telling me all about how you two
made out
in your empty house all day.” She raises an eyebrow and turns her attention back to the road, waiting me out as only Emma can.

“Hardly. He didn’t even kiss me.” I can hear the disappointment in my own voice. “We talked. We listened to CDs. We ate lunch. He—” I almost say the word
disappeared
, but I catch myself. “He took off just before you got there.”

“And why didn’t you tell me any of this yesterday?”

“My dad came home.”

She grimaces and rolls her eyes. Here it comes. “Oh, of course. Say, do you have a phone? I do. I have a phone. It’s great for telling your best friend the biggest news of your life when you can’t do it in person.” I don’t even have time to squeeze out an apology.

We pull up to a red light and she turns to face me. “What are you doing, Anna?” She sounds like my mom when I’m not washing the dishes the right way, or stuffing way too many clothes in the dryer. “Didn’t he tell you that he’s, you know,
leaving
?” She stresses the last word like it alone is enough to make me know better.

“Yeah.” I can’t say anything else. I don’t need her to tell me that I’m crazy for walking into this thing with Bennett, whatever it is.

“And it’s worth the inevitable heartbreak?” she asks. “For a brief fling you know is going to end?”

Not a brief fling. A daring adventure.

“Yeah, Em. To me it is.”

She bites her lower lip hard. “This isn’t going to end well.”

I study the all-weather floor mats. She’s right, and I know it. But the truth is, I couldn’t stop now, even if I wanted to. I’ve spent the whole night thinking about how it will end, but right now, there’s only one thing I want to think about: there will be a middle.

“I like him, okay? There. I said it. I really like him.” I look right into her eyes. “I know it’s probably a mistake, but please, just…let me enjoy this?”

We stare at each other.

“Green light.” I gesture with my thumb toward the windshield.

She keeps staring at me. She doesn’t press on the accelerator, but she nods, and I know that means she’ll be on her best behavior. At least for today. When the driver behind us lays on the horn, Emma finally pulls into the intersection. We’re silent for the next two blocks, but I know what she’s thinking.

“So, while we’re coming clean and all, there’s something I wanted to tell you yesterday, too.” Okay, maybe I don’t know what she was thinking. I stare at her and wait for her to continue. “Your friend from the record store, Justin, sort of asked me out.”

“Justin?
My
Justin?” As soon as the possessive leaves my mouth, I wish I could pull it back in. Bennett’s little do-over trick would come in handy in moments like these, when my foot is stuck firmly in my mouth and all I want to do is go back in time for
one
minute so I can say the right thing instead. “I’m sorry, I just meant—” I don’t even know what I meant. “It’s just…I’m usually with you when he’s around, and I’ve never picked up on…” I really should just shut up now, before I say what I’m thinking:
But I always thought he liked
me
?

“Well, not always. You know, I stop in the record store sometimes after I drop you off at work.” No. I didn’t know that. “A few weeks ago, we started talking about music. He knows a lot about music.” Yes. This I do know. I’ve known Justin since I was five. “And then he asked me out for coffee, and we went out to dinner the night before last.”

“You went out to dinner?” I ask. “You and Justin had coffee and then went out to
dinner
? Why didn’t you tell me any of this, like—I don’t know—last week? Yesterday?” But I feel a little guilty when I remember that I never told her about the night I hung out in the coffeehouse with Bennett. It was just too weird, especially when nothing ever came of it.

She gives me an apologetic look and a guilty shrug. “He said he tried to talk to you about me once, when he was first thinking about asking me out, but…” Emma trails off, and I flash back to that day in the record store last month. He’d wanted to ask me about something, and I’d avoided him because I’d thought he was trying to ask me out. Now I feel like an idiot on two fronts: first, because I read him wrong, and second, because he and my best friend have been talking about me, bonding over my lameness. “I know he’s your friend,” Emma continues. “And you know, I always thought he liked you, but—” She likes Justin? Emma and Justin? It doesn’t even sound right. “Anyway. I really didn’t think anything would ever come of it. I mean, I thought he was nice, but I didn’t think we’d hit it off or anything.”

“But you did.”

“Yeah, I guess we did.”

And now it’s quiet. I can’t remember a time when Emma’s car was this silent for this long. A few blocks later, she finally talks again. “We’re going to spend the day in the city together on Saturday.” She keeps her eyes on the road and tries to play it cool, but she breaks into a huge grin.

“That’s great, Em.”

“You sure?” She turns to me. “You
are
okay with all of this, right? I mean, especially now.”

It’s weird, but yeah, I’m okay with it. I have no right not be. “Of course I am,” I say, but I feel a little pang of sadness, too because it’s Justin. It’s Emma. And Justin.
My
friends. Before I can stop myself, I wonder how this will change my friendship with them, if they’ll wind up liking each other more than they like me, and which one I’ll have to stop talking to if this whole thing doesn’t work out. And most selfishly, if Justin will still make me running mixes.

Emma lets out a dramatic sigh. “Good. As long as you’re cool with it.” She brightens again as she changes the subject back to me. “So—you and Bennett,” she begins with a little teasing tone in her voice. “What happens at school today?”

I let a nervous laugh escape. “I have absolutely no idea.”

She turns in to the student lot and makes a beeline for her usual spot. “Well, you’re about to find out,” she sings, and I follow her gaze to find Bennett, standing there on the lawn, waiting for me. I feel sick.

“Oh. My. God.” Emma snorts as she throws the gearshift into park. “What did you
do
to that boy? Just look at him.” Bennett has gotten a haircut. It’s still a bit long for my taste, but he looks crisp and clean in his uniform and nothing short of gorgeous—although after yesterday, it’s hard not to picture him in his thin T-shirt and those jeans that rested so perfectly on his hips. And that’s when I remember that his clothes are still in my dryer, and I panic for a moment until I realize it’s not laundry day. “He’s adorable!” Emma gives him a flirty little wave and I slap her hand down.

“Oh, please; you’re just saying that to be nice.” I’m grateful for the change of heart, even though I know it’s fake.

Emma turns and looks at me. “I don’t say anything just to be nice, love. Even to you.”

“Fine. Then please continue to act like a loyal friend and don’t embarrass me.” I’m still struggling with the butterflies in my stomach and the latch on the door when Emma gets out of the car and pokes her head back in to say, “Ahhh, it’s going to be a
good
day.”

She slams the door behind her and struts up the small incline toward Bennett, abandoning all concern about my future heartbreak. “Well, hello!” I hear her say as I scramble to join them before Emma has the chance to talk too much.

“I know!” I can hear her say in a voice as exaggerated as her smile. “I don’t think we’ve talked since your first day here, have we?”