“Yeah, you were.”
That made him laugh.
“You were a jerk to say those things—even if you were right.” She rolled toward him, her shoulder pressed against the tree trunk. Her eyes found his lower lip and could not move. She couldn’t believe she’d kissed him. Not just once, but several times. Thinking about it made her body buzz.
She wanted to kiss him now, but that was where they’d gotten into trouble before. So she dropped her gaze to her feet, stared at the pecan shells scattered across the patchy grass.
“What I said the other night wasn’t fair,” Brooks said. “It was about me, not you. My anger was a cover.”
Eureka knew you were supposed to roll your eyes when boys said that it was them, not you. But she also knew that the statement was true, even if boys didn’t know it. So she let Brooks go on.
“I’ve had feelings for you for a long time.” He didn’t falter when he said it; he didn’t say “uh” or “um” or “like.” Once the words were out of his mouth, he didn’t look like he wanted to suck them back in. He held her gaze, waited for her response.
A breeze swept across the courtyard, and Eureka thought she might fall. She thought of the Himalayas, which Diana said were so windy she couldn’t believe the mountains themselves hadn’t blown over. Eureka wanted to be that sturdy.
She was surprised how easily Brooks’s words had come. They were usually candid with each other, but they had never talked about this stuff. Attraction. Feelings. For each other. How could he be so calm when he was saying the most intense thing anyone could say?
Eureka imagined saying these words herself, how nervous she would be. Only, when she pictured saying them, something funny happened: the boy standing across from her wasn’t Brooks. It was Ander. He was the one she thought about lying in bed at night, the one whose turquoise eyes gave her the sense that she was tumbling through the most serene and breathtaking waterfall.
She and Brooks weren’t like that. They’d messed up the other day by trying to pretend they were. Maybe Brooks thought that after kissing her he had to say he liked her, that she’d be upset if he pretended it meant nothing.
Eureka pictured the Himalayas, told herself she wouldn’t fall. “You don’t have to say that to make up with me. We can go back to being friends.”
“You don’t believe me.” He exhaled and looked down, muttering something Eureka couldn’t understand. “You’re right. Maybe it’s best to wait. I’ve been waiting so long already, what’s another eternity?”
“Waiting for what?” She shook her head. “Brooks, that kiss—”
“It was a blue note,” he said, and she almost knew exactly what he meant.
Technically, a certain sound could be all wrong, out of key. But when you find the blue note—Eureka knew this from the YouTube blues videos she’d watched trying to teach herself guitar—everything felt right in a surprising way.
“You’re really going to try to get away with that bad jazz metaphor?” Eureka teased, because—honestly?— the kiss itself hadn’t been wrong. One might even use the word “miraculous” to describe that kiss. It was the people doing the kissing that were wrong. It was the line they’d crossed.
“I’m used to you not feeling for me the way I feel for you,” Brooks said. “On Saturday, I couldn’t believe that you might …”
“Then you made that joke about what took me so long, when I had been wanting to kiss you forever. I snapped.”
“I screwed it up.”
“I shouldn’t have lashed out like that,” Brooks said. Notes from a saxophone in the Band Room floated into the courtyard. “Did I hurt you?”
“I’ll recover. We both will, right?”
“I hope I didn’t make you cry.”
Eureka squinted at him. The truth was, she’d been close to tears watching him drive away, imagining him heading straight to Maya Cayce’s house for comfort.
“Did you?” he asked again. “Cry?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” She tried to say it lightly.
“I was worried that I went too far.” He paused. “No tears. I’m glad.”
She shrugged.
“Eureka.” Brooks wrapped her in an unexpected hug. His body was warm against the wind, but she couldn’t breathe. “It’d be okay if you broke down. You know that, right?”
“Yes.”
“Every member of my family cries at patriotic commercials. You didn’t even cry when your mother died.”
She pushed him back, palms on his chest. “What does that have to do with us?”
“Vulnerability isn’t the worst thing in the world. You have a support system. You can trust me. I’m here if you need a shoulder to lean on, someone to pass the tissues.”
“I’m not made out of stone.” She grew defensive again. “I cry.”
“No you don’t.”
“I cried last week.”
Brooks looked shocked. “Why?”
“Do you
Brooks’s eyes had a coldness in them. “Was it when your car got hit? I should have known you wouldn’t cry for me.”
His gaze pinned her, made her claustrophobic. The urge to kiss him faded. She looked at her watch. “The bell’s about to ring.”
“Not for ten minutes.” He paused. “Are we … friends?”
She laughed. “Of course we’re friends.”
“I mean, are we
Eureka rubbed her bad ear. She found it difficult to look at him. “I don’t know. Look, I’ve got a presentation on Sonnet Sixty-Four next period. I should look over my notes. ‘Time will come and take my love away,’ ” she said in a British accent intended to make him laugh. It didn’t. “We’re cool again,” she said. “That’s all that matters.”
“Yeah,” he said stiffly.
She didn’t know what he wanted her to say. They couldn’t lurch from kissing to arguing back to kissing just like that. They were great at being friends. Eureka intended to keep it that way.
“So, I’ll see you later?” She walked backward, facing him, as she headed toward the door.
“Wait, Eureka—” Brooks called her name just as the doors swung open and someone plowed into her back.
“Can’t you walk?” Maya Cayce asked. She squealed when she saw Brooks. She was the only person Eureka knew who could skip intimidatingly. She was also the only person whose Evangeline slacks fit her body like an obscene glove.
“There you are, baby,” Maya cooed at Brooks, but she looked at Eureka, laughing with her eyes.
Eureka tried to ignore her. “Were you going to say something else, Brooks?”
She already knew the answer.
He caught Maya when she flung her body at his in an X-rated hug. His eyes were barely visible over the crown of her black hair. “Never mind.”
16
HECKLER
