Page 20 of Our Final Encore

I don’t like this. Does he feel like I have to approve of who he dates or something? It makes me feel weird that we’re even having this conversation. I know that he values my opinion as his friend, but sometimes I worry that he sees me more as a sister. The idea of that absolutely guts me, because I could never see Alex as a brother.

Surprisingly, Alex has never had a real relationship. Neither have I. And before now, I never thought about how our dynamic might change if either of us started dating people.

The thought makes my throat prickly. I don’t want things to change, but we’re getting older. We’ll both be fifteen in a couple of months. We’re not quite the awkward preteens we were when we first met.

He’s staring at me with wide eyes, and I realize it’s been way too long since I last spoke.

“Um, yeah. I mean, you should if you want to,” I shrug.

He blinks a couple times before his eyes settle on the space in between us. Our hands are only an inch or so apart. “You’re my best friend, Opal. You know that right?”

My stomach stirs, and a nagging voice in the back of my head tells me to take it back.You’re not okay with it, just tell him that.But I can’t do it, it’s like the words are caught in my throat.

“I know,” is all I manage to choke out instead.

His eyes meet mine again, they’re an unusually dark shade of green right now, like a deep forest in the middle of the night. “I can’t mess that up, I can’t lose you.” A thousand incoherent thoughts float through my brain simultaneously as I try to come up with a response.

“Why would you lose me?” I laugh, attempting to appear humored by the idea, even though I’m anything but.

“I don’t know.” He ashes his cigarette again, and a few of the embers float away into the night. “I guess, I just didn’t want to say yes without asking you first. Because I care about your opinion on stuff.”

I search his face for answers to a question that I’m not even sure how to ask.

I can’t do it. I can’t stop this guy,my best friend, from doing something that might actually make him happy. Even though I’ve seen him look happy plenty of times, it was fleeting happiness, and I’ve always taken note of the obvious emptiness in his heart that he tries so hard to conceal. He hasn’t had an easy life, why should I make it harder?

“You should say yes then,” I force a smile and hope that it looks genuine.

His mouth begins to open again, but before anything can come out, the headlights of Mamaw’s car round the corner. I quickly stand up and brush myself off, halfway thankful that the conversation is over.

ELEVEN

Alex

Isit down at the large lunch table in the middle of the cafeteria. It’s the biggest one in here, and it seems to be unofficially reserved for the entire football team, as well as the cheerleaders. Brooke’s a cheerleader, so of course she sits here, and after a week or two of dating me she decided I would also sit here.

“Baby!” She sits down next to me, pressing a kiss to my cheek. “I missed you this weekend. Can you please come over on Friday? I can’t stand being away from you for two whole days.”

I force a smile and place my hand on her tan thigh. “Yeah, sure. I’d love to.”

I don’t tell her that I spent Saturday with Opal. Ever since Brooke and I got together, she’s kind of monopolized most of my free time. Well, all of it, really. She’s a good girlfriend, she’s sweet, and attentive. But she can be a tad bit clingy.

Not that I think she’d be mad that I was with Opal specifically, but I know she’d be upset if she knew I wasn’t stuck at home doing homework like I said I was. Mainly I just don’t want Opal and I’s friendship to suffer because of myrelationship. I meant what I said to her, I can’t lose her, it would crush me.

“Alex!” One of the guys from the football team, Derrick, sits down across from us and holds his hand out to dap me up. He’s a nice guy, a year older than us so he’s a sophomore. We've become lukewarm friends since I started sitting here.

“‘Sup man?” I return the gesture.

The three of us briefly discuss what our weekends were like, and then Derrick starts telling us a story about the ‘craziest party ever’ that took place after the game on Friday.

I feel guilty, I haven’t attended any football games yet, even though Brooke has been asking me to. It’s hard. Ezra played football every year since he was twelve, and he was great at it, he made the varsity team in Ridgewood his sophomore year.

Watching a game here would dredge up some unwanted memories, and so far I haven’t even told Brooke about my brother. Or anything else about my family, for that matter.

I flick my eyes across the cafeteria for a brief moment, and they land on a small circular table in the corner of the room. Opal, her friend Maisie, and two other girls I don’t recognize are sitting there, talking and laughing. Unlike the other three, I notice that Opal’s face isn’t as enthusiastic. She has this faraway look in her eyes, she always looks like that when she’s worried about something, I’ve noticed.

Shaking my head subtly, I return my attention to the people I’m supposed to be having a conversation with. But now it seems that they’re talking to another group of people about football. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate sports, but I don’t really enjoy talking about them.

Some days I can’t deny that I feel completely out of place here. All of Brooke’s friends are nice enough, surprisingly, but I don’t feel like I have much in common with them. I’m not evensure that I have much in common with her. We both like music, and we both like to drink, but that’s pretty much the extent of it.

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