Growing Pains

Chapter 11 - Your secret's safe with me

E D W A R D

Most mornings I woke up excited for one thing and one thing only – football practice after school. It happened almost every day and so almost every day I woke up excited. I wanted nothing but to set off running through the field with the ball in my hands, my heartbeat as fast as my feet under me, faster even, much faster.

Jacob said this made me a very one-dimensional person, but Jacob's other dimensions were parties where he ended up bent over the toilet throwing up and girls that he talked into sleeping with him and then never talked to again after that, and none of that seemed appealing to me. At all.

This was to say waking up on Jacob's couch with the worst hangover of my life and then being told I had hooked with a girl the night before had not been, at all, how I had planned to start the year. We had practice today and just the thought of moving hurt me.

Still, I managed to shower, put on clean clothes, and make it all the way to Allora King's house. Had I gotten my way with her the way Jacob usually did with girls? I hoped not. I thought there was something inherently wrong with a lot of our generation's hook-up culture. It seemed to me that what most people called winning someone over was just a glamorized form of manipulation.

I rang the bell. A few minutes went past. I wasn't surprised. The house was something out of an architecture magazine. It probably took Allora half an hour to make it from her bedroom to the kitchen.

The door opened. Allora's long brown hair was up in a bun, and she was trying to put on a necklace. She frowned when she saw me.

"Edward?"

She remembered my name. Nice.

"Hi."

"What are you doing here?" she asked, still struggling with the necklace. At least it seemed like a struggle to me.

"Do you need help?"

She smiled, said sure. Sure and thank you. I waited for her to turn around and then put on the necklace for her. She said thank you again as she turned around, "It was a present from my grandma. I'm trying to wear it more."

"You should. It looks nice," I said. There was a saint on it. I didn't know which one.

"Right, what are you doing here again?" She was still confused, of course. I was too, but I didn't tell her. I had almost no memories from last night, except putting together a playlist and making everyone cocktails. Did I drink them all myself? Maybe.

I scratched the back of my neck, "It's about last night. I –"

She cut me off almost immediately, "Look. I was drunk. You were very drunk. We wanted to have fun. No need to make a big deal out of it, right?"

"Right," I said, and then, "It's just that I don't remember any of it. So if I said or did anything that –"

"You did nothing wrong," she said before I could finish. I suspected she was trying to just get rid of me as soon as she could. "There's nothing to worry about."

"Right," I said again. "Sorry for coming here unannounced by the way."

"You like to say sorry a lot, don't you?" She was smiling. I didn't know what to say. She went on, "It's refreshing."

"Well, I aim to please," was all I could come up with. The hangover made it hard to think, much less speak. I was starting to think coming here had been an extension of last night's bad decisions.

"That's great because I would love a ride to school," she said, looking at my car parked on her driveway. It was a big driveway, so I had assumed that was okay.

I smiled, "Sure. Are you ready to go or –"

She stopped me yet again – she seemed to like that – and asked, "What do you think?"

I looked at her. She was wearing nice jeans, a large grey jumper, and a pair of smart shiny black shoes. I thought she looked great. I said it too.

"Why, thank you." She smiled, reaching for her bag somewhere inside the house, and then walking out into the porch and closing the door behind her. "Let's go then."

Next thing I knew we were in my car, heading towards school while she went through the playlists on my phone. This wasn't exactly what I had planned when I got in my car an hour ago, but it seemed none of my plans for this year were actually going through. I was trying not to think about it.

"I can't believe you actually listen to all of this."

I frowned, "What's wrong with it?"

"It's all instrumentals. Am I in a simulation?" she kept going, her manicured fingers scrolling through my phone, a smile on her face.

"What?"

"This is definitely not what you usually play at parties."

"Well, I know how to read the room, what can I say?"

She was still grinning, "I'm officially impressed, Edward. You're an impressive young man."

"Why, thank you," I said, just like she had before we left her house. "Also how are you not hungover?"

"Oh, I am, I just hide it better than you," she said. "There's something to be said there about gender inequality but it's not even 8 a.m. yet so I'll let it slide."

"Right." I didn't know what else to say. Was the inequality that girls always had to look good and put together and us boys could get away with looking like we had just rolled out of bed? Probably, but I didn't say it. I just kept on driving.

She smelled really nice, and now so did my car, an old thing my parents bought second-hand for my birthday. I had scratched it after only a few weeks, but because there had been so many other scratches on it already, my parents hadn't noticed.

When we parked next to the school's main building, Allora turned to me with a nice smile on her face, "Right, thank you for the ride. Don't worry, your secret's safe with me."

I took off my seatbelt, "What secret?"

"That you're a nice guy," she said, opening the door and getting out. She closed it again but bent over the open window to add, "The few of you who are like to keep that a secret, right?"

She left before I could say anything, which was good because I didn't know what to answer to that. My head was hurting, and I felt nauseous, and my legs felt like they weren't my own, like I had grabbed the wrong ones at the end of the party like some people grab the wrong jacket.

I opened the door and got out. The bell for the first period rang. I was late.

This was going to be a great year. Just great.