Page 6 of This Can't Be Goodbye

He chuckles as he looks up at the fading sky. “Whatever, man. Keep your head in the sand if you want.”

“Says the guy who makes fuck-me eyes at Aaron every morning and doesn’t speak to him.”

He flattens his lips. My neck itches.

I donothave it bad for Naomi James. I’m not an enamored teen any longer. My body may react to her proximity, but that’s a chemical response.

And so what if it annoys me when I see her dating other guys? It’s all just surface attraction. “Having it bad” implies I like the woman she’s become, venomous tongue and all. It suggests I hunger to take her out, talk for hours, kiss her deeply, learn everything I can about her likes and hopes and dreams.

I’d rather sleep in a bed of fleas.

“Before you left Sugar and Sips,” I go on, “you said Naomi doesn’t hate me because I derailed her school campaign.”

Ricky runs his tongue over his teeth. “She totally hated you for the campaign thing, but that’s obviously not the main reason.”

“Nothing’s obvious to me.”

“Dude, the rude stuff you said about her in the hall that day—of course it pissed her off.”

Rude stuff?

I rub my temples, focusing on the wooden slats under my shoes as I sift through my teen years. Not an easy exercise.

Except for my worst and best memories—E disappearing, Naomi’s soft eyes when she offered me comfort, my numbskullMission Impossiblemoves tearing up those posters—the rest is a soupy mess of vague interactions and school tests, family laughs and squabbles.

“I realize I’ve said some colorful things about Naomi in recent years, but aside from the poster stunt, I was nothing but nice to her in high school.”

I even apologized to her after that mess.

A year later, I saw her outside Duke’s Market and got walloped by a flood of guilt. Instead of ignoring her out of shame, I marched up to Naomi and said, “I’m sorry about the campaign.” She took one look at me, hardened her jaw, and marched away.

“I know you were nice to herbeforethat shit,” Ricky says, eyeing me oddly. “But we’ve talked about this—not recently, but over the years. You’vesaidyou regretted how awful you were to her.”

“Yeah…awful, meaning I felt badly for ruining her campaign.”

He stares at me a beat, then drags his hand down his face. “Holy shit. You have no clue.”

“No clue about what?”

I’ve morphed from pathetically obsessed to decidedly concerned. These vague hints that I was mean to Naomi and blacked it out have those onion rings fermenting in my stomach.

Ricky sighs. “The morning after your little stunt, we were all in the hallway talking shit.”

That part is as painfully clear as always. How ill I felt, my suffocating shame immortalized with the kind of clarity only guilt can shine. “Shawn was going on about some Cameron Diaz movie and how hot she was.”

Ricky points at me, grinning. “Right, yeah. I forgot that part. Anyway, we were talking about girls afterward, while I played the role of on-the-prowl heterosexual, pretending I had it bad for Ella May Saunders. Then Shawn was razzing you about Naomi, saying he couldn’t believe you ruined her campaign because he thought you had a thing for her.”

I squint so hard my head pinches. “I don’t remember talking about Naomi.”

But I do remember how out of sorts I was, unable to follow the hallway conversation, barely listening while my pulse pounded in my ears.

“Yeah, well, that’s when you said Naomi was gross and the only way you’d touch her was if she was wearing a paper bag over her head.”

“I saidwhat?” Every muscle in my body seizes.

“I’d rather not repeat it, and she heard every word.”

A car door slams down the street. A dog barks from a neighboring yard.

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