“You weren’t comfortable with it,” Daisy said
quickly.
“I want to be better,” Jo said. “I’m sorry
I’m not already. You should, like, give me assignments or
something. Tell me stuff I should read. I think about the way I
would talk to you, and…” She swallowed. “I feel bad.”
“Look, I don’t mind hearing this. It’s nice.
But what changed? This is pretty different from what I was getting
from you Thursday night.”
“I hung out with Terrell Hubbard.” Jo had
forgotten that Daisy didn’t know Terrell was gay. She flinched when
Daisy whistled.
“You move fast.”
“No, no. We hung out as friends. Seriously.”
She spoke to Daisy’s raised eyebrows. “That’s all we’re going to
be.”
“Really.”
“I mean it! It was really great to just be
friends.”
“Again, not what you said Thursday night.”
Daisy stiffened. “Wait, you told me you had to work.”
“No, no. I didn’t lie about that. He came in
to the restaurant. I wasn’t expecting it. Apparently, he goes there
every Friday, and I didn’t know because I’m usually with you and
your mom.”
“Every Friday? By himself?”
“He really likes food.”
“Okay, so you and Terrell Hubbard had this
great
friend
connection at the restaurant. How did that make
you suddenly okay with me being a lesbian?”
Jo shrugged. She didn’t want to give away
what Terrell had told her. He’d trusted her with that, and she’d
started to understand that it wasn’t up to her when a person shared
that or who they chose to do it with. “We had a good conversation.
About friendship.”
“So mysterious.”
“I’m not trying to be. He’s having a party
soon. I’m pretty sure you can come if you want to.” She paused,
wondering if she was wandering into dangerous territory. “Riva will
be there.”
“I’m, uh, not sure if it’s a good idea for us
to be in the same room together.”
“Because you’ll make out in front of
everybody? Come on. I saw you Thursday night. You acted like we
were pulling her out of a burning building.”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure if it’s smart to
try to have a relationship with her.”
Jo laughed. “Since when is a relationship
about being smart?”
The withering glance Daisy gave her made even
more amusement spurt from her lips. “I don’t exactly want to have
stupid relationships,” Daisy said.
“I hate to tell you this, honey, but you’re
oh-for-one so far. It was pretty stupid to agree to the jerkface’s
plan.” She was being hard on Daisy, but she hoped her friend knew
it was in a good spirit. She could see Daisy’s dark cheeks turning
darker and reddening. “Hey, I’m not judging. I’m just
noticing.”
“I may have noticed a few things myself.”
Daisy raised one eyebrow significantly.
“Oh, I know. Believe me. Clayton? Stupid
relationship. Trevor? Even stupider.”
“Why do it then? Don’t you just get
hurt?”
“Yeah, sometimes it hurts, but that’s sort of
the price you pay. I’m not saying you should try to be stupid, I
just mean I’m not sure how smart you can be about it. It’s not a
math problem.”
“But can’t you think about qualities you want
the person to have?”
Jo shook her head. “Okay. Then you should
date Emmy.”
“What? Why?”
“She’s a lesbian and she’s not afraid to tell
people about it. She’s adorable. She’s good at art. She has a great
sense of style. What’s not to like?”
Daisy cleared her throat. “I don’t know. I
like Emmy. Just not that way. I want to be friends with her. I
don’t think I want to make out with her.”
“Why not? Wouldn’t it be smart?”
Jo laughed when Daisy glared at her. “I guess
I see what you’re saying.”
“I’m definitely right.”
“But you can’t just put your brain away,
right? What if I liked someone terrible, like Benton? Wouldn’t you
tell me not to go for that?”
“Yeah, I would. There’s a balance, maybe? You
sort of have to go for who you like. Unless it’s someone your
friends hate who seems like they’ll treat you badly. Then you
should try to listen to your friends.”
Daisy turned the radio up even louder. Jo
winced and clicked it off. They were almost to the beach.
Daisy coughed into the sudden silence. “You
hate Riva, don’t you?”
“Not like that. I don’t think she’ll be bad
for you—as long as she doesn’t drag you into more stupid stuff. If
the two of you date each other and leave the jerk out of it, I
don’t think it’ll be a total disaster.”
“Wow, you sound so excited about us
together.”
Jo rubbed a hand across her face. “Sorry.
This is still a little weird for me. I’m just trying to say you
shouldn’t ignore your feelings.”
“My feelings were what got me into trouble
with ‘the jerk,’ right?”
Jo growled, which made Daisy chuckle. “You’re
being difficult, you know? I think you’re just trying to avoid
having an actual relationship. You weren’t afraid to make out with
Riva in front of her boyfriend because you weren’t going to end up
having to actually date her. Now you can, and you’re trying so hard
to get out of it. It would be funny if it wasn’t sad.”
Daisy pulled into the familiar parking lot
beside the beach. She sat still, a stunned expression on her face.
Jo nudged her.
“Come on. We’ve got a lot of sunbathing to
catch up on.”
The mood remained heavy as they unloaded
their towels, water, and sunscreen. Jo took off her slippers and
put on sunglasses to cut the glare from the blinding white sand
before them. Stepping onto the beach seared the bottoms of her
feet, but it was a good sort of pain that she’d been missing.
They staked out a spot and set up their
things. Jo felt a little weird about helping Daisy put on sunscreen
the way she usually did, but she worried that it would be even
weirder if she avoided it. She grabbed the bottle and rubbed lotion
on Daisy’s back even though she felt awkward doing it. She thought
of Terrell and wondered if he’d have said she was doing the right
thing.
When she’d finished, she handed the bottle to
Daisy and turned around. It was just her friend touching her, Jo
thought, the way she always had. Besides, Daisy was so caught up in
Riva Corley, it was hard to imagine she even noticed Jo. By the
time the exchange of sunscreen was over, Jo tentatively
congratulated herself on handling things well. She wanted to be a
normal best friend, and she thought she was mostly pulling it
off.
“You’re right,” Daisy said.
Jo jumped, startled. Daisy couldn’t have read
her mind just then. What had she been talking about?
“Huh?”
“I’m avoiding actually dating Riva now that I
can. She said she wants to give it a try and see what happens, but
I told her that wasn’t good enough. She said she couldn’t promise
more than that, but I didn’t understand what she meant.”
“I get that she didn’t exactly put that
poetically,” Jo said, “but she’s right, I think. If some guy wanted
me to promise we’d still be together next year, I don’t know what
I’d say.”
“I didn’t ask for that.”
“You sort of did.”
“I’m scared of making a mistake,” Daisy said.
“You’re smart. Riva’s smart. You’ve both gotten hurt, though.”
“It’s going to be different for you,
though.”
“Ha! Why?”
“I’ll beat her up if she hurts you. I already
threatened her.”
“You didn’t!”
Jo’s face heated. “Actually, I did.”
“You’re ridiculous,” Daisy said. Her voice
held the old affection, though, and something eased in Jo’s chest.
She adjusted her sunglasses and lay back on her beach towel,
wiggling her head from side to side to make a comfortable hollow
for it in the sand.
“Anyway, this day’s all wrong. We need to get
back on track.”
Daisy got up on one elbow right away, her
forehead wrinkling with concern. “What do you mean?”
Jo threw a handful of sand at Daisy’s legs to
show she wasn’t serious. “You’re supposed to be a prude who doesn’t
want to talk about yourself at all. We’ve been hanging out for over
an hour, and you haven’t asked me about Declan Brady once.”
“Very funny.” Daisy stuck her tongue out at
Jo. “Seriously, though, if you want to talk about that, you
can.”
“Nah, it’s cool. It’s a nice change to talk
about you.”
“Now who’s avoiding stuff?”
Caught by surprise, Jo snorted as she started
to laugh. Daisy imitated the sound and cracked herself up. Jo felt
as if she was waking up from a bad dream. There they were at the
beach together, like always. They weren’t the people she’d thought
they were, but that seemed like it was going to be okay. Laughing
together like this, she was pretty sure they would still be
friends.
* * * *
Right after everyone showed up, Terrell
started thinking this party hadn’t been a good idea after all. His
house was packed with people, new friends and old. Jo Quang and his
cousin were there, and his mom, of course, but also all his friends
from the basketball team, a bunch of popular kids like Iris
Rodriguez and Nico Mathis, and even a couple of his
ex-boyfriends.
He ran to the kitchen to take some deep
breaths and check on all the food he’d made. His mom joined him
there.
“You don’t do things halfway, son.”
Terrell surveyed the food. “Apparently not.”
He’d used every stove burner, and he had three casserole dishes in
the oven. He’d used the slow cooker, too, and every one of his
mom’s mixing bowls contained some type of salad.
She leaned over one of the pots on the stove
and made an appreciative sound as she inhaled the aroma of the
food. “This is quite a coming out party.”
Terrell stood up straight. He hadn’t told her
yet. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t look at me like that. You know, that
Southern thing where a girl would have a party to introduce herself
to society. I’m not trying to compare you to a girl. It just
reminded me because everyone’s here.”
“Everyone’s here all right.” Terrell couldn’t
keep the dark tone from his voice. His mother gave him a sharp
glance.
“You’ve always made a big secret about
cooking. I’m surprised about all this.”
“I guess I decided to stop keeping
secrets.”
His mother squeezed his hand. “I’m glad.”
“Yeah?”
“The last few years, you’ve seemed lonelier
than you had to be.” She let go of him and gave him a significant
nudge. “Besides, there are a lot of pretty girls here about to
taste your cooking.”
Terrell gave a disbelieving laugh. She always
had to bring that up. “Hey, will you ask Jo Quang to come in here?
I need her to help me with something.”
He tried to ignore the way his mom’s smile
broadened at his friend’s name. Terrell leaned against the counter,
worried he’d chosen the wrong way to do this. He hadn’t known Jo
that long, but he needed the reassurance he’d felt during their
conversation at the Vietnamese restaurant.
Jo appeared a minute later, and his mom
cleared out of the kitchen as soon as she’d delivered her. It was
for the wrong reason, but he appreciated the gesture anyway.
“What’s up?” Jo asked.
“There are a lot of people here.”
“I’m pretty sure you invited them,” she said.
Her smile softened the sarcasm in her words. He knew his reputation
at school was like hers—cool and popular—but looking at her
perfectly plucked eyebrows and flawless makeup, he couldn’t help
feeling she pulled that whole thing off so much
better
than
he did. “Thanks for inviting Declan Brady, by the way,” Jo added.
“It’s nice to see him again.”
“Yeah,” Terrell allowed. “That was for
you.”
“So all these other people who aren’t here
for me. You invited them because you want them to taste your
cooking, right?”
“That’s part of the plan.”
“Just part of it?” Her eyebrows climbed, and
he knew she’d guessed the rest.
“Like I said at the restaurant, I want to
stop pretending.”
She touched his arm, frowning. “Maybe this is
drastic, Terrell. You don’t have to do the whole thing, you know.
You could show everyone your cooking and stop there. It’ll be
impressive enough. No one will wonder why you didn’t do more.” She
paused and did a slow turn in the kitchen, forcing him to notice
all over again how many things he’d cooked. “You’ve done
plenty.”
“I need to tell them, Jo. I just don’t know
if I can.”
“You need to tell all these people? Now?
Tonight?”
“I don’t want to wake up tomorrow knowing I’m
hiding from people. I don’t want to be hiding from anyone.”
She didn’t question him. She bit her lip,
then nodded slowly. “Something about Riva and Daisy pushed you to
this?”
“I preached to my cousin about how she should
be honest. There’s been this voice in the back of my head for a
long time, saying the same thing to me. It made me feel like a
hypocrite.”
Jo shrugged theatrically. “Then I guess you
have to tell them. I don’t think there’s any way but to just tell
them. What can I do?”
“Stand next to me. If everybody else runs out
of here, I need to know I’ve got at least one friend.”
She laughed. “With all this food around, I’m
pretty sure nobody’s going to run out of here.”
“You know what I mean.”
“This is weird,” she said. “I wasn’t this
good to Daisy.”
Terrell bit the inside of his cheek. “I hate
to say it, but right now, I don’t care about Daisy Mejia. I’m
asking for me.”
He held her gaze until she looked down and
nodded. “Yeah, okay. I’ll do it. I think it’s going to confuse your
mom, but I’ll stand there with you. You can even hold my hand if
you need to.”
He exhaled so powerfully that he thought he
might collapse. “Great,” he said. “Thank you.”
Terrell knew from Jo that Daisy had been
talking about her sexual orientation with people one on one. Riva
seemed to have been doing the same. She’d come to his place after
the first day back to school and told him she’d decided to call
herself bisexual. That was great for the two of them if that was
how they wanted to do that, but Terrell didn’t want to have this
conversation dozens of times. If he was going to do this, he wanted
to do it once and get it over with. He didn’t think he could handle
the suspense of wondering who’d heard what and when. He wanted to
get it off his chest one time, then rest relatively easy, knowing
everybody knew about him.