Page 30 of Dire Straights

“Can you be more specific?”

He was being difficult on purpose. But if he wanted to be like that, then fine. I wasn’t embarrassed about what had happened.

“When you kissed me.”

“I…” He plopped down on his bed and stared at a corner. “What about it?”

“What about it?” I repeated. “Uh, it was kind of awesome? And I was hoping maybe you wanted to do it again? And also I don’t want to fail creative writing because that class is really boring and it’d be such a huge waste of my time to re-take it or just not get the credits for what we’ve already done in it.”

He finally turned to face me. “Did you just call our kissawesome?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re so lame.”

I grinned, chuckling a bit. “Okay, if awesome isn’t the right word, then how would you describe it?”

“I…” He stopped, shaking his head. “Are you trying to embarrass me?”

“No!” I said honestly. “I’m just tired of dancing around everything and… I don’twantto pretend like nothing happened. I like you, Maddy.”

“Are you going to call me that all the time?”

“If you don’t hate it. I think it’s cute.”

He groaned a little, burying his face in his hands. “I don’t hate it. But even in front of other people?”

“Um…” I hadn’t thought that far ahead. “I guess I won’t,” I said. “I’ll only do it when we’re alone. If that’s what you want.”

“If people find out about me, the guys on the swim team are going to make my life more of a living hell than they already do. I can’t deal with that right now.”

“I understand. Seriously, I do,” I said at his look of disbelief, dropping down beside him on the mattress. “I wouldn’t pressure you to come out or anything like that. Ever.”

“It’s not… Because of you.”

“I know that. It’s… Yeah, I know. It’s just a lot. And you have way more stuff going on than me. And you’re totally stressed out, and I get that. I don’t want to add any more stress to your life.”

“You don’t,” he answered quietly. “All of this other shit does, but you don’t.”

“I’m glad,” I murmured, slipping my arm around his waist and letting my head drop onto his shoulder in a weird kind of side hug. “So we’re okay? You don’t hate my guts and want me to die a thousand fiery deaths or anything?”

“I was never mad at you, dweeb.” When he turned to face me, our foreheads touched. “This is all just really different for me and I’m not used to it.”

“Well, you could just treat me like you’d treat a girl you liked,” I suggested, and he scoffed, rolling his eyes.

“You think I’ve had a lot of girlfriends or something?”

“You haven’t?” I asked, shocked. I was even more shocked that he was still letting me cling onto him. But if he was going to let me be touchy-feely with him, then I was definitely taking advantage.

“No,” he said. “I’ve hooked up with, like, a couple of girls at parties and I’ve had a few girlfriends but only for a few months each, so…”

“How come?” I asked.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but I’m not very good at processing my emotions. Girls seem to think that’s a red flag.”

I chuckled. “Um, yeah. About that… Would it maybe be possible for you tonotfreak out over something and storm out and not talk to me for days at a time, again? I can accept your flaws but going without talking really sucked.”

His hand curled into a fist on his thigh, but he nodded. “I’m sorry. It was stupid. I feel like I’ve already said all this before.”

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