He pulls a wool blanket from the back of the couch. "You miss her?"
"Yeah. She was spunky before my dad died. I'd like to be spunky. Do you like spunky girls or unspunky girls? I always wondered that. Not about you, but about guys in general. Am I spunky?"
"You're spunky."
"Yeah, right. I feel the opposite of spunky."
"Which would be, what? Spunkless?" He wraps the blanket around me and sits down next to me, right next to me. I move closer to him without thinking about it.
"I hate this," he says, "not being able to figure out what's going on."
"Because it makes you feel helpless?" I ask.
He touches the thread on my finger. "Yeah."
"We'll figure it out." I inhale the pine smell of him, like Christmas trees.
"We better."
"I was scared," I say, remembering the voice.
"You said that." He puts his arm around me. Right over the top of my shoulders the way Blake Willey did on our first date in seventh grade when we went to see one of theShrek movies.
I let him keep his arm there and bite my tongue so I don't start babbling again. And I don't think about what Ian would think. Ian, who wants to go out with me. Ian, who, despite his weird friendship with Megan, is always nice, totally unlike Nick.
Nick.
Nick has thick dark hair.
Nick has big chestnut eyes.
Nick has nice white teeth.
Nick has a big chest with runner's lungs so he could huff and puff and blow my house in. And I do not care. I lean in. He's so cozy warm but I shiver anyway, remembering the woods. My eyelids just don't want to be open and I really want them open, because Nick is so cute when he isn't bossing me around.
"Thank you for getting me," I try to say. My lips are so tired they don't want to move.
"Anytime, Zara. Really. I mean it." He seems to be smelling my hair.
"I know you hate me and everything but we should be friends," I tell him, closing my eyes.
"I don't hate you," he says. "That's not it at all."
"What is it then? Are you a victim of parthenophobia?"
"Parthenophobia?"
"Fear of girls."
"You are so strange." He moves back even closer to me, this wicked glint in his eye like he's trying hard not to snort-laugh at me. His hand presses against the side of my head. Nobody has ever touched me like this before, all gentle and romantic, but strong at the same time. "I'm not afraid of girls."
"Then why haven't you kissed any?"
For a second his eyes Hash. "Maybe the right one hasn't come around yet."
"That is such a line," I say. I watch his lips. For some bizarre reason I say it again. "We should be friends."
"Yeah, we should," he agrees and something warm seeps over me, making me nestle even closer.
"I mean, I'm not going to be like one of those annoying women in movies who falls in love with the guy who rescues her, because I don't think you even rescued me, okay?"
"Rescued you?"
My stomach cramps. "Whatever."
He starts laughing. I tap him on the thigh. "Stop it."
"I can't."
His whole body just bounces up and down and he looks little and younger and cute. Once when my dad and I were watching this silly NASCAR movie my dad transformed like that. It was like he was a little boy all of a sudden and everything he was worried about-like bills, and me, and human rights relief-was all gone, lost in a fart joke.
Nick takes in a deep breath, so deep I move with it too, since I'm leaning on him. When he exhales he says, softly, almost so low that I can't hear it, "I don't want to hurt you, Zara. I don't want anything to hurt you."
I smile.
"Good. But I'm not a damsel and there is no distress."
Then I fall asleep, which was ridiculously bad timing of course, because the conversation is just getting interesting.
I wake up the next morning in my own bed. Not the couch, but my bed. Which means?
I've dreamt everything!
Right?
Wrong.
My hand reaches up to touch the wound on my cheek. It's bandaged with gauze and tape. There are marks on my hand from when I broke my fall. They aren't too deep but they're funny looking. Sitting up is not easy. All my bones creak and pop like I've run a marathon. My abs hurt. I pull myself out of bed and pad over to the mirror. The white bandage almost blends in with my pale face, but not quite. Betty must have bandaged it last night, but I can't really remember that. I can't remember Nick leaving. Color spreads across my face as I think about him Oh God, I asked him to be my friend. You don't ask people to be your friend.
Catagelophobia is the fear of being ridiculed. I think this is a very normal phobia. It is a phobia I should actively cultivate.
"Needy. Needy and pathetic," I say to my ugly mirror reflection.
My ugly mirror reflection mouths the same words.
I yank my fingers through my hair and give up.