Page 26 of Up All Night

“Yeah, maybe,” she said quietly as I opened the passenger door of my Porsche 911 for her.

Once she was inside, I closed the door and rounded the front of my car to join her.

We drove in silence for a minute, but it felt longer than that. The silence felt like a tangible thing between us.

Hoping to make the drive less awkward, I said, “I’m not a mechanic, but it sounds like you’re going to need to take your car into a repair shop.”

“I know.” She breathed out a heavy sigh. “It’s just bad timing.”

“Bad timing, how?” I asked, wanting to know what had caused her usual bright attitude to be diminished.

She let out a humorless laugh. “I guess there is never a good time to have your car break down, but getting my car fixed is going to put a dent in my bank account.”

Ah. Yeah, I probably should have guessed that with how she worked two jobs, and the the car she drove seemed pretty old. Sometimes I forgot people had financial problems, as awful as that sounds. I’d grown up wealthy, had never wanted for anything, and as grateful as I was for the life I’d lived, sometimes I could be naive to how a lot of people made it day to day.

I wasn’t used to seeing her so down. Usually she was happy and bubbly. Well, when she was enjoying annoying me, that is. And since that was most of our interactions, that was what I was used to.

I must have gotten a good night’s sleep or something (thanks to a windless night) because I found myself wanting to continue helping her—my ridiculously loud neighbor, whom I didn’t like.

But did I really not likeher? Or did I just not like how noisy she was? Or how she was better at our neighbor feud than I was? I didn’t really know her at all. I had no idea what kind of person she was or what her life was like.

Heck, I’d just barely found out that she had two jobs. Not that I needed to know all that information, but maybe it was time I started trying to be adecentneighbor. I wasn’t quite ready to be best friends or anything, but I could definitely help her out in her current situation.

“I’d be happy to give you a ride to the gym every morning,” I said, causing her to look at me in both surprise and wariness.

Her confused expression had me wondering if she thought I was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with how I had recently been hot and cold toward her—and I couldn’t blame her for thinking that way. I was having a hard time gauging where things stood between us. One second, we were talking through air vents, then the next we were trying to outdo one another on who could annoy the other person more, and now we were riding to the gym together. That was the definition of a confusing relationship.

So in an attempt to lighten the weird vibe I’d put us in, I said in a teasingly arrogant tone, “I mean, we are going in the same direction at the same time. And I do need a personal trainer.”

A soft smile played on her lips. “So it would be more to help you, not to help me,” she reiterated, playing along with me this time.

“Of course,” I said. “I’m the selfish neighbor who only cares about himself and his schedule, remember?”

“You said it, not me,” she murmured, a full smile now on her face as she turned to look out the windshield.

“Hey,” I cut in, keeping my voice light. “Don’t I get brownie points for helping you get to work?”

She lifted her hand to her chin, exaggerating her contemplation. “Fine,” she relented impishly. “But just one point,” she added, holding up her pointer finger.

The brightness was back in her eyes, and although I shouldn’t care, it made me happy. I liked seeing this playful side of her. A feeling of pride went through me, knowing I’d helped her forget about her worries, even if it was only for a few minutes. I wasn’t going to dwell on how different that was for me. For now, I would simply let myself enjoy it.

I smiled at her. “I’ll take it.”

As I turned into the parking lot of Fitness First, it felt like she and I had also made a turn in our relationship.

10

Halle

I’d been listening to my mom talk about what had happened between her and some guy named Hector for the past half-hour. I hoped my face looked like I was fully invested in her tale, but I couldn’t care less about Hector’s long dark hair, his supposedly hot body, and how much she’d loved spending the last month on his boat.

After she finished telling me what felt like she had started from the minute she met him to how she’d ended up sitting on my couch, her voice took on a distressing tone, like she was, of course, the victim in their breakup.

Yeah, Mom, his wife finding out about her husband having an affair is so awful foryou.

But instead of saying that I only nodded. It was as much sympathy as I could muster for her. Plus, I’d learned it was easier to say as little as possible. She was going to do whatever she wanted no matter what I said. Not that she really ever gave me a chance to talk anyway. It was always all about her and always had been. Most of the time it didn’t bother me. I’d let her talk for a while, giving short responses, and then I wouldn’t hear from her for a month or so. It worked for us.

But today, I was in no mood to deal with her one-sided relationship. I had more important things to worry about than her love life. Like how my car would no longer start and I now had to figure out how I was going to afford to get it fixed. Or how I was going to get to and from both of my jobs. Or how I was going to support my mother over the next however many days she was going to be here. Or how I was ever going to save up enough money to start my own dance studio. Or how I was supposed to handle the new dynamic with West, after he had been so nice to me this morning.

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