Love and Other Theories (16 page)

Nathan rubs his eyes. “I need a refill.”

Robert returns moments later, with a full cup for Nathan. He promises Nathan it’s stronger. Nathan lets me have a sip, and it’s so potent it’s hard to keep a straight face when I drink it. Nathan puts the cup down by our feet and doesn’t pick it up for the rest of the game. I don’t reach for it either, because the thing I trust about Nathan is that sometimes—most of the time, maybe—he knows better than I do.

At the party that night, Nathan pulls me into the hallway, away from everyone. He tugs on my loose strands of hair. He takes my face in his hands, tilting it toward
him. He smiles like the sight of me makes him feel better, calmer, but his face is still not all the way back to normal. For a second I contemplate telling Nathan the whole story, just so he’ll stop feeling so bad, but the truth is I don’t want him to know. I don’t want him to know how I was before—unevolved—and I really don’t want him to know that I am sometimes awful. He’s not supposed to know—that’s what Shelby would say. Because the reason Chiffon hates us is the same reason Nathan is here, holding my face and looking into my eyes like there’s nothing he’d rather look at.

You’ve earned him
, Shelby would say.

O
n Tuesday, we lock everyone out of our room. We close the curtains and turn off most of the lights, and it’s just the four of us, greasy takeout, gas station snacks, fuzzy pajamas, stacks of pillows, and reality television. It would be pleasant, but we all feel awful. Drained of energy, nauseous, and sleep-deprived. Epic parties breed epic hangovers, go figure.

It’s not until six p.m. that we start to feel better. Shelby’s the first.

“Conrad is an amazing kisser.”

Danica groans, tossing and turning. She looks so uncomfortable, it makes me itchy.

“We’ve seen him in action on your face,” Melissa says, her voice quiet and unenthused.

“I think I’m going to visit him at Duke next year,” Shelby says casually. Her eyes are dancing, though, like she’s picturing something really enchanting.

We’re all someone else. Shelby’s making plans. Melissa’s relaxed, Danica’s not. I don’t know who I am until I stare at my phone, the screen blank from zero missed calls, and realize I am lonely.

“Duke is all the way in North Carolina,” I tell her.

“I know that,” she says. She has a dizzy smile on her face. Maybe it’s the distance that has her making plans to visit a boy she’s known only three days.

I still feel the pangs of loneliness. Loneliness and anger are cut from the same cloth, I decide. I don’t like Shelby smiling like that when I feel like this. “It just seems a little weird that you want to visit him when you barely know him.”

Shelby shakes her head like she can’t fathom the words coming out of my mouth. She’s still smiling. “Barron is on the way to Duke, you know.”

“Is that your way of telling me you’ll come visit us?” It just slips out:
us.

Shelby’s eyes widen, enough that I know she caught what I said. “Of course I’ll come visit you.” She doesn’t say this like she’s correcting me. She says this like it’s a given, and maybe it is. But Barron is far. She’ll have to
spend ten hours driving or buy a plane ticket to visit me. Melissa will just be an hour away at State, and Danica is still waiting to hear if she got into the university. But even the university is only three hours away. I feel even lonelier thinking about the distance.

I squeeze my eyes shut and feel a pair of hands on my head. Shelby. She’s sitting next to my pillow, combing the tangles out of my hair with her fingers.

“I love visiting places,” she tells me, but I can’t remember the last time Shelby went on vacation. “I love being the mysterious stranger.”

I think of her breezing through Barron like a wild bird, flying against the current, but effortlessly—she’ll be so foreign to everyone with her laidback life. For me, it will be a relief to have her there. I picture her at Duke, her hair getting a slight wave from the humidity, the sun making her skin golden. She’ll pop in on Conrad, carefree and fresh, and he’ll think he wants her to stay forever. But she won’t. She’ll come with no strings attached and leave that very same way.

“Conrad just assumed there’d be a victory party tonight for him even before they’d won. He’s cocky like that.” Shelby’s sounding more like herself. She starts to braid my hair, small chunks at a time.

Melissa stares at us and sits up slightly, opening her mouth a little like she’s about to whine for something she wants. Danica’s breathing hard, completely relaxed and
totally knocked out. I’m thinking about next year, and wondering if there’s a way for me to be shiny and new at Barron, where we’ll all be surrounded by only new things.

We’re all back to ourselves again.

AT MIDNIGHT, WE’RE wide-awake. This is what happens when you sleep all day. We missed the basketball tournament games, but if we stay in tonight we’ll be missing the last night of parties. Our team lost, so we are checking out at eleven a.m. tomorrow.

“I’m trying to make Robert give us a ride,” Danica says, frantically texting.

“I’m trying to make Nathan,” I say, though it’s not really true. There’s no way Robert or Nathan can drive right now.

“You can’t make them do or not do anything,” Melissa says, taking a big bite out of a Ben & Jerry’s mini tub she got at the 7-Eleven down the street. “All you can really do is make them wear a condom.”

This is probably the smartest thing I’ve ever heard Melissa say.

Shelby laughs. “Good advice coming from the only virgin in the senior class.”

Melissa throws a pillow at Shelby. I can tell she put the weight of her whole body into the toss because she is now sitting forward on her knees. Before Shelby can
hound Melissa, saying all the typical virgin catchphrases, like “Once it’s gone, it’s on,” her phone beeps. It’s a text from Conrad. The first one she’s received tonight. Shelby giggles and flops onto her stomach.

It’s really not funny to joke about Melissa’s virginity. She probably would have lost it before any of us, if it hadn’t been for what we now refer to as the Incident. When we were sophomores, a particularly promiscuous and not very bright senior chose to talk to her friends about the itching, burning, inflammatory redness that was taking place—ahem—down
there
during an assembly, and everyone heard. So when the boy Melissa had been consistently making out with and was planning on giving her virginity to that weekend came up with the phrase “If she’s clean, we’re all clean!” and Melissa was faced with the enormous sexual Lincoln High spiderweb that he was tangled in, she abruptly lost interest. Knowing that she could have potentially caught what turned out to be chlamydia had terrified Melissa to the point of abstinence.

Shelby keeps texting and laughing, smiling at her phone as if Conrad can see her through it. Danica snatches Shelby’s phone and reads the next text from Conrad in a deep, breathy voice, “Send me a photo. I miss your face.”

Shelby laughs as I help her part her nearly dry hair. Melissa brings her lip gloss. Danica holds up the phone and takes two pictures of Shelby sitting with her arms behind her back in a pink tank top, half smirking, half
pouting. Shelby sends him the second picture and within seconds Conrad writes back:
WOW
.

The texts keep coming.

You’re so fucking hot.

You sure you’re not a model?

“You’re too gorgeous for words.” Danica reads this one out loud and rolls her eyes. This is a typical Shelby-is-too-beautiful-to-describe compliment. Danica’s still holding the phone when it beeps again. She covers her mouth with her hand and says slowly, “Oh my God. . . .”

“What? What does it say?” we demand.

Shelby finally takes the phone out of Danica’s hand. She shrieks when she reads it. Melissa and I have no choice but to peer over her shoulder.

NOW SEND ME SOME REAL PICTURES. CLOTHING OPTIONAL.

And we shriek too. Yes, Conrad and Shelby have had sex, but
this
somehow feels sexier. More dangerous. More scandalous. More mysterious.

Shelby grabs her lipstick and winks at us before she disappears into the bathroom holding her phone. We laugh harder, shriek louder, and bunch together so we’re elbow to elbow because sometimes when we’re this excited we just need to be close.

Conrad wants Shelby so badly, he’s desperate to see as much of her as he possibly can without her being right there with him. He’s surrounded by people at a party, but all he wants is her.

All of me wishes Nathan would message me with the same request.

I start brainstorming sexy poses to send to Nathan. The thought of Nathan opening a text and seeing me, barely dressed, is exhilarating. And if I surprised him with one, how would he keep himself from calling me that very second? How would he even be able to function for the rest of the party after that? The answer, of course, is that he wouldn’t. I know exactly how to make his night.

When Shelby comes out of the bathroom, she’s blushing.

“Oh my God, what did he say?” Whatever he said must have been good, because I’ve never seen Shelby so red-faced in my life.

“Nothing yet,” she says, sitting next to me on the bed.

“What did you do for the pictures?” Melissa asks.

“Sorry, M,” Shelby says, using Melissa’s new nickname—something we’ve started teasing her about since she spent the weekend making out with a guy who went by L and never would tell us what the L stood for. “These photos are R-rated. FCEO.”
For Conrad’s eyes only.

“I didn’t ask to see them!” Melissa is mortified. “I asked what you did for them.”

“They’re just of me. Of all of me.”

It’s too much. I hit her with the closest pillow. Danica and Melissa are laughing, and Melissa is squealing so loud
she covers her own ears.
Any second now Conrad’s going to call
, I think.
If he doesn’t try to knock down our door first.

We scramble to get ready, spraying and drying and curling the final strands of our hair, searching for our shoes, and sliding on jeans. We have the address for the party Patrick, Robert, and Nathan are at. We don’t know if they’re at the same party as Conrad, but soon he’s going to text Shelby back.

“Maybe they aren’t sending right away,” Melissa says.

There have been three commercial breaks on the television blaring in the background. Shelby’s phone has stayed silent, and Shelby has been quiet too. Shelby shrugs. I stare at her phone. It’s resting in her back pocket. It’s right there,
on her,
and I don’t know how she resists checking it for messages that might’ve slipped through without her knowing, or to see if the battery is dead or the photos aren’t sending right away, like Melissa suggested.

“When did they break up?” Shelby asks about a celebrity couple being featured on TV. She sits down on the bed and leans slightly against the headboard but keeps her feet on the floor. I notice she’s no longer wearing her boots.

“Last week,” Melissa says at the same time I say, “Didn’t you hear?” We sound too anxious, and we are. I debate making a joke about how Conrad must’ve needed some time alone with Shelby’s photo. I debate calling him a horny bastard. But for some reason our usual behavior seems inappropriate. It feels like since Shelby
hasn’t acknowledged what’s going on, we’re not allowed to, either.

Danica’s phone beeps and it makes me jump.

“Robert says they’re going to a different party and he’ll text us the address when he gets there,” she says.

There’s nowhere for us to go for now, so we all join Shelby on the bed. She slides her legs under the covers.

By the time we have the address thirty minutes later, we’ve all nestled back into bed.

“I feel like shit,” Shelby says. She reaches for the Advil on the nightstand and takes two.

“Me too,” says Melissa. Shelby tosses her the bottle.

I text Nathan to tell him we’re not coming. This has somehow been decided even though none of us admit it. We stare at the television, the only noise in the room.

We all drift off to sleep eventually, but before I do, lying in the dark with the lights of the TV flashing and low-volume celebrity gossip still filling the room, something occurs to me. Really, when you think about it, sending a photo like that goes against the theories. They forbid us from doing things that require something in return. It’s the first time Shelby’s ever broken one of the rules.