his lips against mine, softly at first, nudging me, and then with more force. It’s the kind of kiss that makes me want to yank him even closer until our bodies meld into one heap of limbs and sweat, but—“Stop,” I say, my voice too soft at first. “Stop.” This time my voice is more firm. It takes every ounce of self-control I have to pull back from him.
“I’m sorry,” he says instinctively.
“For what?” I ask him. “Dumping me the first time or toying with me just now and making me your second choice?”
He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.
“My life is a lot of things right now, and not much of it is good, Lucas, but one thing I know for sure is that I can’t be anyone’s second string. Honestly, I’d rather be alone. At least then I know I’ll have chosen myself.”
“I’m—I’m sorry,” he finally stutters. Tears well in his eyes, and he lets out a grunting sigh.
I stand up and start heading to the back door. “I know you’ve got a lot of shit to sort through right now too, but maybe you should think about just being with yourself and putting yourself first before you can do that for anyone else.” I almost hate myself for even saying it, because it’s the kind of bullshit advice people give that they can never actually act on for themselves, but there’s still truth to it. There’s still something to be gleaned.
I do something that surprises even myself. I reach out to Lucas and I pull him to me in a fierce and tight hug.
He grips onto me and hiccups, holding back tears. It’s enough to make my eyes water, and before I know it, I’m blinking back tears too.
I didn’t know how much I needed this. To just be held. To be held without expectations or exceptions. And so we stand there for a moment in the back of a grimy little gas station, two lost boys.
“Come on,” I finally say. “This booze isn’t going to load itself.”
“Friends?” he asks.
I nod. “Messy former-friends-with-benefits friends.”
Nineteen
“Come out already!” I say, banging on the bathroom stall.
“Do I have to wear the bow tie?” Tucker asks.
“It’s a look,” I explain. “Besides, I paid money for it, and I wouldn’t call my current financial situation thriving.”
“To be clear, when you said matching outfits, I thought you meant like T-shirts from Walmart.”
“I’m going to pretend that you didn’t just insult me,” I say. I’m not insulted by the implication that I would shop at Walmart. I’ll shop at whatever store has clothing that will fit my body. What I am insulted by, however, is the notion that I would ever believe a T-shirt constitutes an outfit.
“I can’t promise the bow tie will last.” Tucker kicks the door open.
I gasp. “My vision! Yes!”
I turn around to see both of our reflections in the mirror. The first thing my brain wants to notice is how I’m fat and he is not, which is extremely apparent in our matching outfits, but I force myself to look past that. We both wear white coveralls and red bow ties with red-and-white-striped page boy hats. My idea was candy striper/milkman turned mechanic chic. Mrs. Leonard got us out of classes for Wednesday, so we both separately spent Tuesday scrambling around for important supplies. Matching uniforms, I decided, were very important supplies. We also had to get an announcement out to the teachers, but I pulled some strings with Kyle, who used his office aide hour to print and copy flyers for the faculty mailboxes. To be fair, I had just discreetly delivered a whole ton of booze to his house the night before. He owed me.
Tucker runs his hands over his name embroidered on his chest. “This is pretty cool,” he admits.
“My grammy embroidered them with her machine.” A fashion sense like hers is not direct from the rack.
He nods. “Grammy gets five out of five stars. But you know this white is totally impractical, right?”
I flip my invisible hair. “I never said my vision was practical.”
The two of us head back out to the parking lot, where our trucks are parked side by side. I brought a few boxes of doughnuts and Mom put together a few thermoses of coffee, while Tucker brought every supply for changing oil we could possibly need.