Rules for Being a Girl - Candace Bushnell Page 0,55
just some other little kid I keep pictures of in my bedroom.”
“Shut up,” I tell him, completely unable to keep the grin off my face. “You were cute.”
“I was . . . desperately in need of a haircut and twelve thousand dollars’ worth of orthodontia,” Gray counters, sitting down on the edge of the bed and leaning back on his palms. “That picture keeps me humble.”
“Oh, right,” I say seriously, crossing the carpet to stand between his knees, his shoulders warm and broad and solid underneath my hands. “Because otherwise your ego would just explode all over the place, huh?”
“Oh, totally out of control,” Gray confirms with a smile. “I mean, what with my athletic achievements, my outstanding academic record—”
“Your legendary prowess with the ladies,” I put in.
“I’m also tall,” he says, curling his fingers around my waist and pulling me closer. “Don’t forget about that.”
“I would never,” I murmur, wrapping my arms around his neck and angling my face down until he gets the message and kisses me. I breathe a tiny sigh against his mouth. We’ve done this enough over the last few weeks that it’s starting to feel normal, which isn’t to say the thrill of it has worn off—the opposite, actually. Kissing Gray isn’t like anything else I’ve ever done. It’s not that I never enjoyed myself, fooling around with Jacob, but the truth is I never totally got what the big deal was. Half the time in my head I’d be somewhere else entirely—worrying over a missed problem on that morning’s calc test, replaying an argument with my mom—and I don’t think he ever actually noticed.
With Gray I feel achingly, deliciously alert.
Eventually he eases us back onto the mattress, the smell of detergent and sleep and boy all around me. The door is still open, but his room is far enough from the top of the stairs that the effect is the same as if we were the only ones in the house. Gray’s fingertips creep up under the hem of my T-shirt, touching the sensitive skin of my waist and tracing the very bottom of my rib cage. I shiver, and Gray’s eyes fly open.
“This okay?” he asks, gaze searching.
I pull back and look at him for a moment, hit by that sudden zing of recognition I never felt before.
I see you, I want to tell him. I think you see me too. “Yeah,” I tell him. “This is good.”
Twenty-Eight
Gray’s got a lacrosse game the following Thursday, so I head off to book club without him—we read “Age, Race, Class and Sex,” this week, and I was thinking about suggesting we watch the PBS documentary about Audre Lorde, but when I walk into Ms. Klein’s classroom after eighth period Dave looks surprised to see me at all.
“You’re here?” he asks, pulling a bag of pretzels and a tub of onion dip out of his backpack. It was his turn to bring snacks today. “Doesn’t Gray have that big game against Hartley?”
“I mean, yeah,” I say, ignoring the twinge of guilt I feel at missing it—the same twinge I’ve been feeling all day, truth be told. “But he gets it.”
“Really?” Elisa puts in, dropping her shoulder bag on the floor and plunking down in an empty seat next to Ms. Klein. “That’s the school he got kicked out of, isn’t it? Feels like kind of a big deal.”
“Thanks a lot,” I say, snagging a couple of pretzels out of the bag and crunching thoughtfully. “I don’t know. I guess I didn’t want to be that girl, you know? The one who drops her commitments to go cheer on some dude.”
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with supporting somebody you care about,” Elisa says, holding her hand out for the pretzel bag and waggling her long fingers until I pass it over. “I mean, you guys all came to my game, didn’t you?”
“I mean, sure,” I say, “but that’s different.”
“Why, because she’s a girl?” Dave asks. “Isn’t that reverse sexism?”
“Reverse sexism is one hundred percent not a thing,” Lydia says immediately.
“Well, let’s dig into that,” Ms. Klein says, setting her book of essays down on the desk like she suddenly suspects we won’t be getting to it anytime soon. “Can anyone explain to me why it’s not a thing?”
“Because men unequivocally have more power than women in our society,” Maddie says easily, and I look at her in surprise—she’s been pretty quiet at meetings up until now, but her voice is confident and clear. “It’s like