“I was confused too, you know. And I don’t know if I will ever feel right again knowing how much I hurt you when you needed me the most.” He wiped my tears with his thumb. “When we kissed…did I…did you?”
“No,” I reassured him. “I have a lot going on in my head—but kissing you never made it worse. I promise.”
Some of the tension left his body. “I suppose if I start acting nicer to you, it’s going to piss you off.”
I stroked his face, wiping away his tears too. “I want you to treat me normal, please. Except—” I looked so deeply into his eyes it felt like I could see his soul. He wanted to be there for me. He wanted me. “I need a time-out from the kissing. There are some things I need to deal with. I’m not ready for more than friendship right now.”
“Sure. I understand. Do you think it’s too late for us?”
I knew the answer he was hoping for, but I couldn’t give it to him. “I don’t know, Foster. I’m not in a place where I can conceive of life with or without you. I just don’t know.”
“Whatever you need, I’m here.”
I nodded. “If I figure out what that is, you’ll be the first to know.”
Chapter Fourteen
Across the table, Foster rubbed his temples and pointed to my Excedrin bottle. I tossed it to him, and he popped two without water and surveyed the scene in front of him.
We’d lost control again. Everyone was talking at once, Mr. Blake was listening to Jimi Hendrix on his iPod, and Alden and Evie were really arguing with each other. Something I’d noticed them doing more and more of. I gestured to them with my eyes, and Foster smirked.
I stood and cleared my throat. Several times. I shot Foster
the look
, so he whistled. And then winced from his headache.
“The floor is yours, Ms. Logan.”
“Thank you, Mr. Foster.” I held up the calendar. “Hot off the press, gang. Our fundraiser is back from the printer and it looks fabulous.” I passed a couple down each side of the table.
“Is your Dates of Doom story ready for this week’s issue, Logan?”
I gulped. “Yeah.” We were going to send out the paper on Friday and announce the fundraiser sale. “I’ll go over it with you after the staff meeting, okay?”
“Ms. Logan, if you want to get me in a room alone, you don’t have to manufacture reasons. Just ask.”
I rolled my eyes.
And my heart did this little flutter thing that happened every time he made suggestive comments now.
“Mr. Foster, if I ever get you in a room without witnesses, you might think of running.” I made the scissors motion with my fingers. To the rest of the staff, I asked, “How are we doing with the cell phone regulation story?”
“I’ve got a lead on a planned parent protest,” said Maryanne.
Foster perked up. “Spill.”
“Josie Carter’s mom is organizing a parent call-in day. They are staggering the calls, but essentially, a bunch of parents and relatives are going to call the office on the same day and give them messages for their students—things they would have been able to tell the kids if they still had their cell phones. They want to show the administration that the phones have become an integral part of family communication these days.”
“Good work, Maryanne. You plan on covering this one, don’t you?”
She beamed at the praise. “I’d love to.”
Foster stood up. He was wearing his Charlie Brown shirt again. How was it that such a stupid shirt was suddenly so adorable to me? It was like I was becoming a girl or something.
“I’m guessing we need to keep this as quiet as we can, or they won’t be able to pull it off. So nobody discusses the call-in away from this table, got it?” Everyone nodded. I’ll admit I liked watching him be a leader. It didn’t seem like it was a personal attack on me anymore. “Maryanne, if you need help covering this, let Logan or me know. We’ll get you what you need. This is a big story, but I want you to run with it.”
She blushed and stammered something unintelligible. I collected the calendars while Chelsea led a brainstorming session about possible features for the next issue. It seemed, for all intents and purposes, like things were coming together.
It had been two months since the night I said the word “rape.” I wasn’t sure I had done the right thing until the next morning. I rolled over and realized I had slept the whole night through. And while I hadn’t relished the thought of facing Foster again in the light of day, I wasn’t petrified of running into him either. I felt as if I was poking one foot out of the blanket that had been oppressing me lately. I still had some work to do, but one foot was free.
Foster joined me at a table full of calendar boxes and straightened a pile of papers that didn’t need straightening. “So, how are you?”
I opened up a calendar to pretend that I was looking at it. “I’m doing okay. Really.”
“I wanted to tell you…I went to a support meeting two weeks ago. For friends and family of people who have been…you know.”
He knocked the wind out of me. “What?”
“I probably won’t go back…but I went. Just to see if it would help me be normal again. I’m never sure how to act anymore. I don’t want to freak you out by being too nice, but I’m afraid that bra-stuffing jokes are crossing the line.”
It happened to him too. I didn’t really believe that when my therapist—and, yes I have one now—told me that. Steve told me that Foster’s life changed that awful night too.
It didn’t sink in—even after he hit the concrete with his fist. But standing with him in a noisy newsroom while he talked about going to a partner-support group made it hit home. He lost his best friend, he carried a lot of guilt, and by the way I caught him looking at me from time to time, he was still in love with me.
Maybe.
“I have a therapist now. I see him once a week.” I pivoted away from him slightly to lessen the intimacy, a small protection I still allowed myself. “Maybe sometime you could come with me. If you want. You don’t have to or anything. It’s probably a dumb idea, right?”
“What would I have to do?” he asked. He was now facing the rest of the room while I still faced the wall. It seemed to be one of those conversations that went better with no eye contact.
“Um. Talk. If you felt like it. Sometimes he just asks me questions.”
“Do you talk about me?”
“Sometimes.”
“Are you going to tell me what you say?”
“Maybe someday.”
“Would you feel weird if I came?”
“Yes. But I would still want you to. If you want, I mean.”
He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Are you glad you’re talking to him? Does it make everything…better?”
For the most part, I really liked Steve the Therapist. Every once in a while, he got on my nerves with all his let’s-hug-it-outness. If I got paid a dime every time he said the word “communication,” my sixty minutes in the chair would be free. But he was helping me open up.
“I wasn’t sold on the idea at first. But I went with my mom twice, and the rest I’ve been to solo. It’s nice to know that, relatively speaking, I’m normal. There’s no right way or wrong way to be…afterward. Some girls get overly emo, but some are like me and close off. Steve, my therapist, doesn’t talk much about the night it happened. We’ve been sticking to forward motion progress.” I stole a sidelong glance. “Learning to trust, that kind of thing.”
I tentatively placed my hand on his shoulder. I’d been told it was up to me when I was ready to pursue more than platonic relationships. Steve said if everyone waited until they were completely healed, nobody would ever date again—even people who had never been sexually assaulted—and that there were degrees of intimacy that I could allow into my life when I felt I was ready for them. It wasn’t like I was raped last month—I’d had a lot of time to move forward. But I should expect that sometimes I would regress, and sometimes I would progress.
“Foster, I need to go work on my story some more. Can you handle the rest of the meeting alone?”
“I thought you said it was done.”
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you women were fickle creatures? It’ll be done before deadline. Don’t worry.”
He rubbed his temples, and I knew the minute I was out the door he would cut the meeting short. But that was okay too. We had so much more leeway with the paper now that we were digital. I still wanted the new software and hoped the calendar would pay for it, but if we kept it the way it was, we’d be fine too.
* * *
Once again, I was reminded why I wrote words and didn’t play sports. I had a terrible arm and every rock I threw missed the window. Some of them didn’t even hit the house.
Frustrated, I kicked a rock hard enough to stub my toe. I started hopping and chanting, “Shit, shit, shit.” Why was my life such a farce?
“Is there a particular reason you are doing the bunny hop in my front yard, Logan? Is this a complicated hex ritual or something?”
I turned around slowly, on one foot, and faced a very wry Foster. “Yes, it was a spell to turn you into more of a toad then you already are. Alas, you ruined the whole thing by coming upon me unannounced. Now I’ll have to wait until the next new moon.”
“It’s a good thing you can’t aim.”
“Why?”
“Because that isn’t my window anymore. My little brother and I switched rooms two years ago.”
“Oh.”
“Now would be a great time to tell me why you are here.”
“Oh. Oh yeah. I wanted to see you.”
He held out his arms and turned in a circle. “I gathered that much, Ms. Logan. The question remains—why?”
“What are you doing out here anyway?”
“This is my house.”
“Why aren’t you in it?”
“I went for a walk. I saw your car on the corner and figured you broke down, so I came back. Why are you here?”
This really wasn’t going the way I planned it in my head. “Well, I thought we could go for a walk. To the swings.”
“She wants to go to the swings,” he said to no one in particular. “You’re a very unusual girl.”
“Thank you.” I sent him a cheery smile. “That is the best compliment I’ve had in years.”
We meandered through the deserted streets to the park a couple of blocks from his house. We took our spots on the swings where we used talk for hours. I don’t remember ever actually swinging on them, but we would twist them toward each other sometimes for a stolen kiss now and then.
“I finished my piece about what the teenage girl wants.”
“Well, I’m so glad you didn’t just email it to me or wait until morning like a sensible person.”
I pulled the story out of the side pocket of my jacket. “I wanted you to read it on paper.”
“How very old-school of you.” He raised his chin to look at the sky. “It’s kind of dark here. If you hadn’t noticed.”
I pulled a flashlight out of a different pocket.
“You never told me you were a Boy Scout,” he quipped. “Why am I suddenly nervous to read this?”
I shrugged.
“‘What a Girl Wants’ by Layney Logan,” he read aloud and proceeded to read the rest that way too:
'When the question is first asked, it seems like a no-brainer. They want a great boyfriend. What girls are looking for when it comes to the perfect boyfriend, though, that is much tougher. And is there such a thing?
Being sent on an assignment is always a rush. I’ve dived from cliffs with Olympiads, spent a day at boot camp with the Navy recruiters, and eaten some pretty interesting dishes from the High School Skill Center kitchens. None of these, not even the calamari prepared by the freshman culinary class, struck terror into my heart like the prospect of going on twelve blind dates.
I wasn’t much of a dater, which is why I got the story pitched to me. Who better to solve the puzzle than someone looking at it from the outside?
So I set upon the task of finding that elusive
something
that some guys have and other guys wish they had. What I found was impressive. Some high school boys define themselves by their peers, some by their dreams, and some by their wallets. They are characterized by their family ties, their sense of humor, their cultivated skills, and their natural talent. Some want a girl for a week. Some hope it lasts a lifetime. Some don’t even want a girl at all.
After each date, I made copious notes about what made that boy more attractive. Was it his confidence? His compassion? Did he have great hair, piercing eyes, a sense of style all his own? Maybe he was willing to be a friend first.
Maybe he had some not so shining characteristics.
Some guys think it’s all about them—what they want. Some guys have a scary way of idealizing the girls they consider to be the epitome of the female form. Some wish to skip their adolescence altogether.
I realized quickly that the more notes I made, the more confused the issue became. Maybe that is where chemistry comes in. Maybe you can’t put that on paper.
Maybe what a girl wants couldn’t be defined by twelve blind dates and a jaded reporter.
An apology to all the hopeful young men who opened this article and thought they’d finally be handed the answer to their quest for the Holy Grail. I’m no closer to knowing what girls want then when I started—and believe me, I’ve been thinking of little else for a several months.
My best advice is to be yourself. Unless you’re psychotic, then you might want to try a different tactic.
Some girls will love you for your intelligence, your spirit, or your smile. Some girls will fall all over themselves if you even make the smallest effort to understand them. Some girls don’t care how you act as long as you drive a nice car. (And some boys deserve those kinds of girls. I’m just sayin’.)
Some girls will require a lot more from you than most guys are willing to give. This is the girl you’ll need a lot of patience for, because she will lead you down blind paths and up steep hills. The challenge will be staying true to who you are while pursuing this person.
She’ll wring you out, simultaneously repel and attract you, and question your every intention. She’ll be the biggest pain in the asphalt you’ve ever had.
She’ll need you to understand what she won’t tell you, believe in her when she extends no faith in you, and not give in to her when she wants to roll over you. She’ll expect that you’ll always be there, even when she avoids you. She’ll want lots of independence but want you to need her desperately. She’ll expect you to be smart but treat her like she’s smarter than you.