Meet Me at Midnight - Jessica Pennington Page 0,73
this late. Except for yesterday. The morning after the kiss. The day she decided that kissing me made her want to stay in her room the entire day, and then go out with another guy. Cue the ominous foreboding. Will that kiss forever be a before and after for me and Sidney? At the table, over my mom’s scrambled eggs and her dad’s coffee—which I know for a fact is not nearly as good as what I usually make her—we are silent. With each other, at least.
Sidney tells my mom she’s excited when she asks her about college starting in a month. She tells my dad she already got her dorm assignment. McLandry House, right across from one of the dining spots. Of course she already looked up her dorm on the map. My assignment still says PENDING and I’m starting to wonder if I’m going to be sleeping on a sidewalk somewhere.
Everyone eats, and I shove bacon and eggs into my mouth, not because I’m hungry, but because I don’t want to leave the table. I’m glad we don’t have to swim this morning, because watching her cross the lake not knowing where we stand would be pure torture. But deep in my gut I know it: I’ve royally screwed this all up. The kiss, the necklace, the second kiss in my bed—obviously it’s all too much. Not to mention that first kiss, the night of the party. There’s a good chance I’ll go to my grave without admitting that—drunk or not—I remember every second of that kiss in the grass.
* * *
I spend most of the morning in my room, trying to convince myself I’m not panicking. Or hiding from Sidney. But I’m totally hiding from Sidney. Or maybe I’m waiting for her. Right. Maybe she’ll just show up in my bedroom again. Yes, I’m a delusional idiot. I text my best friend Todd and tell him the whole gruesome story of the last few days.
Sidney’s lying in the water, stretched out on her inner tube, her neck arched back, hair billowing in the water behind her. There’s a rope tethering her raft to the dock, like she’s our very own buoy. If she had a warning painted across her, I suspect it would say STAY AWAY rather than the usual SWIM ZONE.
Seeing her out there reminds me of the first summer we met, and there’s nothing perilous in those memories. Except for that summer being its own kind of ending. Though I’ll never be able to explain how something that never started could be snuffed out so abruptly. I could walk to the end of the dock, but I don’t. Because she’s probably fallen asleep out there, and if I scare the crap out of her that won’t help my case. Or maybe because I’m a coward. And if this is another ending instead of a beginning, I’m not really in a rush to get there.
At dinner Sidney is quiet. Not when my mother comments about all of her running, or when hers asks about her future roommate—a girl from the other side of the state named Ellie. But when I finally will myself to say something—to bring up the fact that our meet schedule has gone up and two of our first three meets are at home—I get a two-word answer as she jabs a chicken breast with her fork: that’s exciting. I wonder if our parents notice the quiet between us, or if it’s just me.
It’s probably just me.
Sidney
I haven’t been actively avoiding Asher all day, but I wasn’t going out of my way to be near him, either. Which made me realize that for a while now, I was. I was putting myself in his way, making excuses to be where he was. I hadn’t realized how much of our time was spent together until today, when we spent almost none of it together. It felt … wrong. And that realization feels wrong in my head. It’s like a misshapen puzzle piece that doesn’t fit with everything I’ve always thought about Asher. About what the two of us have always added up to. But I can’t avoid him forever, and if we’re going to talk, I’d rather it be alone. So when I see him sitting on the couch, watching TV after everyone else has gone to bed (even though he has a TV in his room) I wonder if he feels the same.
He’s sitting on the small sofa, leaning to one side, his