Mom laughed, which pissed me off more, especially since she then suppressed her amusement and regarded me in that Mom-way of, She’s a teenager, poor thing. She’s bound to go through heartache.
“Oh, Addie,” she said. “Were you punishing yourself, sweetie?”
“Oh my God,” I said. “That is so not the right thing to say to someone about her new haircut!” And then I’d fled to my room to bawl in private.
Twenty-four hours later, I was still in my room. I’d come out for Cherries Jubilee last night and for the opening of presents this morning, but I hadn’t enjoyed it. I certainly hadn’t been filled with the joy and magic of Christmas. In fact, I wasn’t sure I believed in the joy and magic of Christmas anymore.
I rolled over and grabbed my iPod from my bedside table. I selected my “Gray Day” playlist, which was made up of every single melancholy song that ever existed, and hit play. My iPenguin gloomily flapped her wings as “Fools in Love” hummed from her plastic body.
Then I returned to the main menu and scrolled through until I reached “Photos.” I knew I was entering dangerous territory, but I didn’t care. I highlighted the album I wanted and punched the button to open it.
The first picture to come up was the very first picture I ever took of Jeb, snapped sneakily using my cell phone a little over a year ago. It had been snowing that day, too, and in the picture, there were snowflakes caught in Jeb’s dark hair. He was wearing a denim jacket even though it was freezing, and I remember wondering if maybe he and his mom didn’t have much money. I’d heard that the two of them had moved to Gracetown from the Cherokee Reservation, which was about a hundred miles from here. I thought that was cool. He seemed so exotic.
Anyway, Jeb and I had sophomore English together, and he was heart-stoppingly hot with his jet-black ponytail and smoky eyes. He was also wa-a-a-ay serious, which was a new concept for me, since I had a tendency to be a big ol’ spaz. Every day, he bent over his desk and took notes while I snuck peeks at him, marveling at how shiny his hair was and how his cheekbones were the most beautiful things I’d ever seen. But he was reserved to the point of possible aloofness, even when I was my bubbliest self.
When I discussed this extremely problematic issue with Dorrie and Tegan, Dorrie suggested that maybe Jeb felt uncomfortable in this tiny mountain town where everyone was real Southern, real Christian, and real white.
“There’s nothing wrong with any of those things,” I said defensively, being all three.
“I know,” Dorrie said. “I’m just saying that possibly the guy feels like an outsider. Possibly.” As one of two—count ’em, two—Jewish kids in the entire high school, I suppose she knew what she was talking about.
Well, that got me wondering if maybe Jeb did feel like an outsider. Could that be why he ate lunch with Nathan Krugle, who was definitely an outsider with his all–Star Trek, all-the-time T-shirt collection? Could that be why, in the mornings before the school was unlocked, Jeb leaned against the wall with his hands in his pockets instead of joining the rest of us and dishing about American Idol? Could that be why he didn’t succumb to my charms in English, because he felt too uncomfortable to open up?
The more I thought about it, the more I worried. Nobody should feel like an outsider in their own school—especially not someone as adorable as Jeb, and especially since we, his fellow classmates, were all so nice.
Well, at least me and Dorrie and Tegan and our other friends. We were very nice. The stoners weren’t so nice. They were rude. And not Nathan Krugle, as Nathan was a bitter person who held grudges. I wasn’t all that psyched about what crazy ideas Nathan might be planting in Jeb’s head, to be honest.
And then, one day as I was obsessing over all of this for the thousandth time, I shifted from worried to huffy, because really. Why was Jeb choosing to spend time with Nathan Krugle over me?
So that day in class, I jabbed him with my pen and said, “For heaven’s sake, Jeb. Would you just smile?”
He jumped, knocking his book to the floor, and I felt terrible. I thought, Smooth, Addie, why don’t you blow a bugle in his ear next time?
But then his lips quirked up, and amusement flickered in his eyes. Something else, too—something that made my heart beat faster. A flush reddened his face, and he bent down quickly to pick up his book.
Oh, I realized with a pang. He’s just shy.
Leaning against my pillow, I gazed at the picture of Jeb on my iPod until the sting of it grew too strong.
I punched the center button, and the next picture popped up. It was of the Great Hollyhock Blitzkrieg, which took place last Christmas Eve, only a couple of weeks after I told Jeb to smile, for heaven’s sake. Since Christmas Eve was one of those days that lasted forever, with all the waiting and finger drumming for Christmas itself, a group of us had tromped to Hollyhock Park in order to get out of our houses for a while. I made one of the guys call Jeb, and miraculously, he agreed to come with us.
We ended up having a snowball fight, boys against girls, and it was awesome. Dorrie, Tegan, and I made a snow fort and set up a snowball-distribution system that involved Tegan packing, me stacking, and Dorrie pummeling our enemies with dead-on accuracy. We dominated the guys until Jeb cut around behind us and tackled me, using his body to drive me into our snowball pile. Snow went up my nose, and it hurt like heck, but I was too exhilarated to care. I rolled over, laughing, and his face was right there, inches from mine.
That was the image captured in the photo, this time taken by Tegan on her cell phone. Jeb was wearing his denim jacket again—the faded blue so sexy against his dark skin—and he was laughing, too. What I remembered, as I looked at our happy faces, was how he didn’t get off me right away. He braced himself on his forearms so that he wasn’t squishing me, and his laugh softened into a question that made my stomach quivery.
After the snowball fight, Jeb and I went out for mocha lattes, just the two of us. I was the one who suggested it, but Jeb said yes without a moment’s hesitation. We went to Starbucks, and we sat in the matching purple armchairs at the entrance of the store. I was giddy; he was bashful. And then he grew less bashful, or perhaps just more determined, and he reached over and took my hand. I was so surprised I spilled my coffee.
“For heaven’s sake, Addie,” he said. His Adam’s apple jerked. “Can I just kiss you?”
My heart went crazy, and suddenly I was the shy one, which was nuts. Jeb took my cup from my hand and put it on the table, then leaned in and brushed his lips over mine. His eyes, when at last he drew back, were as warm as melted chocolate. He smiled, and I melted into a swirl of chocolate, too.
It was the most perfect Christmas Eve ever.
“Hey, Addie!” my little brother called from downstairs, where he and Mom and Dad were playing with the Wii that Santa brought him. “Want to box with me?”
“No, thanks,” I called.
“How about tennis?”
“No.”
“Bowling?”
I groaned. Wii did not make me say “Wee!” But Chris was eight. He was only trying to cheer me up.
“Maybe later,” I called.
“Okay,” he said, and his footsteps retreated.
I heard him tell our parents, “She said no,” and my melancholy deepened. Mom and Dad and Chris were downstairs together, merrily strapping on nunchucks and punching each other in the face, while here I was, gloomy and alone.
And whose fault is that? I asked myself.
Oh, shut up, I replied.
I scrolled through more pictures:
Jeb posing cheesily with a Reese’s Big Cup, because he knew it was my favorite and he’d brought it for me as a surprise.
Jeb in the summer, shirt off, at Megan Montgomery’s pool party. God, he was beautiful.
Jeb looking sudsy-adorable at a car wash Starbucks held as a fund-raiser. I gazed at the picture of him, and my insides went soft. That had been such a fun day—and not just fun, but cool, too, because it was for a good cause. Christina, my shift manager at Starbucks, had gone into labor early, and our store wanted to help with the hospital bills not covered by insurance.
Jeb volunteered to pitch in, and he was a total stud. He arrived at nine and stayed through three, scrubbing and slaving away and looking pretty much like he should be in one of those beefcake Hottest Guys in the Universe calendar. He went way beyond what boyfriend duty required, and it made my heart happy. After the last car pulled out of the parking lot, I wrapped my arms around Jeb and tilted my face toward his.
“You didn’t have to work so hard,” I said. I breathed in his soapy smell. “You had me at the very first car.”
I was going for flirtatious, along the lines of the scene in Jerry Maguire when Renée Zellweger told Tom Cruise, “You had me at ‘hello.’” But Jeb furrowed his brow and said, “Oh, yeah? Uh, good. But I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Ha-ha,” I said, assuming he was fishing for more praise. “I just think it’s sweet that you stayed the whole time. And if you were doing it to impress me . . . well, you didn’t have to. That’s all.”
His eyebrows went up. “You thought I washed those cars to impress you?”
My cheeks grew warm as it dawned on me that he wasn’t kidding. “Uh . . . not anymore.”
Embarrassed, I tried to pull away. He didn’t let me. He kissed the top of my head and said, “Addie, my mom raised me on her own.”
“I know.”
“So I know how hard it can be. That’s all.”
For a moment, I felt pouty. Which was totally lame. But while I knew that Jeb’s wanting to help Christina was a good thing, I wouldn’t have minded if at least part of his motivation had to do with me.
Jeb pulled me close. “I’m glad I impressed you, though,” he said, and I could feel his lips on my skin. I could also feel the warmth of his chest through his wet shirt. “There’s nothing I want more than to impress my girl.”
I wasn’t quite ready to be teased out of my sulk. “So you’re saying I’m your girl?”
He laughed, as if I’d asked out loud if the sky was still blue. I didn’t let him off the hook but instead stepped backward out of his embrace. I looked at him, like, Well?
His dark eyes grew serious, and he took both of my hands in his. “Yes, Addie, you’re my girl. You’ll be my girl forever.”
In my bedroom, I squeezed shut my eyes, because it was too hard, that memory. Too hard, too painful, too much like losing a slice of myself, which, in fact, I had. I pressed the off button on my iPod, and the screen went black. The music stopped, and my iPenguin stopped dancing. She made her sad you’re-turning-me-off? sound, and I said, “You and me both, Pengy.”
I sank into my pillow and stared at the ceiling, rehashing just how things had gone wrong between Jeb and me. How I’d stopped being his girl. I knew the obvious answer (bad, yuck, didn’t want to go there), but I couldn’t help obsessively analyzing what got us to that point, because even before Charlie’s party, things were less than great between us. It wasn’t that he didn’t love me, because I knew he did. As for me, I loved him so much it hurt.
What tripped us up, I think, was the way we showed our love. Or, in Jeb’s case, the way he didn’t show it—at least, that was how it felt to me. According to Tegan, who watched a lot of Dr. Phil, Jeb and I spoke different love languages.
I wanted Jeb to be sweet and romantic and affectionate, like he had been at Starbucks when he kissed me that first time last Christmas Eve. I ended up getting a job at that same Starbucks the month after that, and I remember thinking, Sweet, we’ll get to relive our kiss again and again and again.
But we didn’t, not one single time. Even though he stopped by all the time, and even though I always broadcasted with my body language that I wanted him to kiss me, the most he would do was reach across the counter and tug the strings of my green apron.
“Hey, coffee girl,” he’d say. Which was cute, but not . . . enough.
That was just one thing. There were others, too, like how I wanted him to call and say good night every night, and how he felt awkward because his apartment was so small. “I don’t want my mom hearing me be all mushy,” he’d said. Or how other guys were totally fine holding their girlfriends’ hands in the school halls, but whenever I grabbed Jeb’s hand, he gave me a fast squeeze and then let go.
“Do you not like touching me?” I’d said.
“Of course I do,” he said. His eyes got that look in them that I guess I’d been trying to stir up, and when he spoke, his voice was raw. “You know I do, Addie. I love being alone with you. I just want us to actually be alone when we’re alone.”
For a long time, even though I noticed all that stuff, I mostly kept it to myself. I didn’t want to be a whiner-baby girlfriend.
But around our six-month anniversary (I gave Jeb a play-list of the most romantic songs ever; he gave me nothing), something turned sour inside me. It sucked, because here I was with this guy I loved, and I wanted things to be perfect between us, but I couldn’t do it all on my own. And if that made me a whiner-baby girlfriend, well, tough.
Like, with the sixth-month-anniversary thing. Jeb could tell I wasn’t happy, and he kept asking and asking why, and finally I said, “Why do you think?”
“Is it because I didn’t get you anything?” he said. “I didn’t know we were doing that.”
“Well, you should have,” I muttered. The next day he gave me a quarter-machine necklace with a heart on it, only he took it out of the plastic egg and put it in an actual jewelry box. I was underwhelmed. The next day, Tegan pulled me aside and told me that Jeb was worried I didn’t like the present, because I wasn’t wearing it.
“It came from the Duke and Duchess,” I said. “The exact same necklace is in the quarter machine by the exit. It’s, like, one of win-this! display necklaces.”
