Solving for Ex (5 page)

There was plenty wrong with having three little triplet siblings underfoot and a mom who was too exhausted from keeping up with them for the past six years to spend much time with me. They were always breaking something of mine and I hardly ever spent any time with Mom. But when we would cuddle up on the couch together for movie night—when I would always pick the movie and she would always fall asleep—something about the particular clutter and chaos and soft side of my mom was home.

No matter how much I loved home, though, nothing could make me stay there after the first semester of sophomore year. Nothing.

No, I couldn’t go back there, which meant that I couldn’t leave here, which meant that if I was going to confess my love for my best friend, next-door neighbor, and popularity lifeline at Mansfield Prep, I’d better have a damn good reason for doing it. And the only reason good enough would be if I knew, for sure and for certain, that he loved me too.

And not in the offhanded, “love ya” way we got off the phone every now and then, or when I did him a favor and he wanted to thank me. Or the “Oh, I love you” as he unwrapped and snarfed down a Snickers bar after not having eaten for six hours. Neither of those things would cut it. Nothing less than him taking my hand, looking me in the eye, and saying, “Ashley, I love you,” and then kissing me would do. And maybe threading his fingers through my hair. And possibly throwing me down on his bed and having his way with me.

In other words, I’d have an unrequited crush on Brendan forever.

I snapped out of my daydream of being tossed onto navy blue sheets that smelled like Brendan’s aftershave to see Brendan staring at me expectantly. “Ash?”

“Hmm?”

“The clothes are okay, right?”

“Oh. Yeah. Um, I’ll wash them when I get home and bring them back by tomorrow.”

He grinned. “Don’t worry about it. So,” he said, plopping down next to me on the floor, “What do you wanna do? Narrate your summer for me?”

I snorted. “Not much to narrate. Same old, same old. Sunblock’s embedded in my skin…”

“Even though you still got quite a tan,” Brendan said, nudging my knee and nodding his head toward my bronzed-up legs.

I nodded. “At least two deadly spiders in the bunk, four bed-wettings, six twelve-year-olds caught making out behind the camp shed.”

Brendan laughed. “Normal summer.”

“Normal summer,” I agreed. “Although I did learn how to really use the camera.”

“That’s what you say, but I still haven’t seen any pictures.”

I motioned for his tablet. “Here, asshole, I’ll show you.”

I navigated to my photo account page and let him sit there swiping through the pictures while I fiddled around on my phone, taking the time to look up and be satisfied when he oohed and ahhed every few seconds.

A couple of people had asked me the problem with me and Brendan. As in, why weren’t we going out yet. I didn’t know, really. Maybe he was too shy, or maybe I was. He had a lot of friends, and I had…well, not that many. I’d never really had close friends even before I was chronically depressed. Because of that, I’d had trouble being interested in casual conversation; after the incident, it had gotten even worse.

But with Brendan, it was different. I didn’t know why, but he just got me.

We spent a lot of time together, but we were in different grades, and he was always at Mathletes practice. That was one completely, beyond-awesome thing about being at this school. I don’t know if it was because of the proximity to Carnegie Mellon, or just a weird quirk, but being a Mathlete here was actually pretty cool. Not like being a lacrosse player, but not like being a theater nerd, either. So this year, I was planning to up my cool factor and my closeness-to-Brendan factor by summarily kicking ass at math and testing onto the team for my junior year and his senior year. The year he’d be captain. The year he’d win State.

“So you made all these with one camera?

“’Made them?’ Well, there are different styles, different post-processing treatments, yeah.”

“Like, in the computer?”

“Yes, in the computer.” I grinned. “This one’s called Lomo. It’s supposed to look a little faded and the colors are supposed to be kind of weird.”

“And it’s also supposed to be blurry?”

“Yeah, I guess. What do you think of it?”

“I think I like the ones where the image is clear and the colors are true much better. Bright and sunshiny, and beautiful. It reminds me of you.” He cleared his throat. “I mean, when I think of your summer. At camp.”

My smile was so wide, I thought my cheeks would break off, crash into the floor and embarrass me in a totally new way. But when I glanced up and saw him still looking through the photos, I breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn’t even noticed.

He shook his head, smiling and setting the tablet on his desk. “Look at you and your incredible brain. How do you keep it all in there?”

“Oh, come on, Mr. Math Genius,” I scoffed, reaching out to push him playfully on the shoulder, then instantly berating myself. Any time I touched him, I worried about three things: one, I’d blush and he’d see it, two, he’d think I was trying to flirt, and three, he’d think I was comfortable with just being friends.

I was definitely not okay with just being friends.

“No, but seriously, Ash,” he said, looking up at me. “I’m good at math, and I have a head for science. I get good grades otherwise, because I’m too damn stubborn not to. But you and that brain of yours…you’re like fast and talented at the math stuff and the art stuff.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, drawing my knees to my chin, “It’s the same brain for both things, you know. It’s all ‘brain stuff.’”

“You amaze me,” he said, still smiling that same stupid smile.

I looked down at my feet, and rested my chin on my knees. “You think I’ll make the team?”

“Ashley, are you kidding me? Yes. Yeah, you’ll make Mathletes.”

He reached behind me and started rubbing my shoulders. “I can’t imagine the team without you.”

I let myself fall to the side and into him, closing my eyes and letting the warm shocks of his touch run through my muscles. “Aren’t you worried about people starting rumors?”

“About what? Me playing favorites?”

I really meant about us being together. At that point, I wouldn’t have minded the rumors at all, actually. Maybe they would have forced Brendan to finally make a freaking move.

“Yeah, I guess,” I said, still staring at my shoes.

“Nah. Everyone knows you’re my favorite. And everyone knows that you’re good at this stuff, Ash. And fast. What would the team do without you?” His voice lowered as he looked at me. “What would I do without you?”

That was it. I couldn’t take any more. I had to make a decision about what signal to send to him, and I absolutely couldn’t make it now, even if it meant staying locked out of the house. I was chickening out, just like every other time I hung out with Brendan and I thought I saw something in his eyes that may have meant he felt the same way.

May have.

I stood up, too fast probably. “I’ve gotta be back. Kristin wanted to take me to lunch.” Kristin did not, in fact, want to take me to lunch, but it was the only excuse I could think of.

“Okay,” he said, wearing that stupid smile that confirmed exactly how oblivious he was. Dude was crazy smart when it came to school, but when it came to people? He was dumber than a ton of bricks. “See you in the morning.”

Riding to school with him was awesome, even though it made my stomach flip. “Bright and early,” I said.

apt to expect too much

It was only the second week of Junior Honors English, which was basically the next lowest form of hell before we would descend into Senior AP English the following year. I’d seen the reading list for AP, with such delights as Moby Dick, Notes from the Underground, and Middlemarch. So you’d think that our Junior English professor would let us read some lighter stuff.

No chance. She plunked down a shiny new copy of Mansfield Park on each of our desks on the first day.

“I’m not trying to be cute,” she said, her sentences punctuated with the thunk of each book on a desk. “Okay, well, maybe I am. I do love that our school shares a name with my very favorite Austen novel. But that’s not why it’s my favorite. Compared to Pride and Prejudice, which you’ll read in AP next year, Mansfield Park is mature and nuanced, studded with deeper social issues than all the rest of Austen’s works put together. We’ll be having a quiz next Wednesday about the major themes and character arcs, so I’d suggest reading it more closely than you would, for example, the newspaper. Or your fashion magazines.”

Britt raised her hand. She had been the rare freshman Mathlete, was freakishly good at every other subject, stunningly gorgeous, and incredibly popular. Yes, she was one of those girls. “We don’t get the newspaper.”

Mrs. Crawford rolled her eyes and, without looking back, said, “My point exactly, Miss Harding.”

Some of the guys in the back of the class snickered at that last name, just like they did every single other time anyone said it. Including themselves. This was going to be a long year.

I’d heard enough about Mrs. Crawford to know to take her seriously, so I’d spent Saturday afternoon after breakfast with Brendan marking up my copy with theme, major plot points, and some interesting character stuff.

On quiz day, most of the kids had buried their noses in their books in the five minutes between arriving to class and the bell ringing, as though the text could be absorbed through their eyeballs in that span of time and then magically translated by their brain into quiz answers when the time came. Britt was one of them, and Vincent leaned across the aisle and rested his elbows on her desk, pretending to look at her notes with her, his gaze flicking down her shirt. I rolled my eyes, and then leaned back in my desk and closed my eyes for a moment of peace and quiet before bell rang.

Just as I was imagining the next shot of the river walk I’d like to attempt from the fire escape of one of the old restaurants in downtown Pittsburgh, my ponytail flipped up and around in a circle. I sat straight up and turned slowly to see Vincent, who slouched back and smirked just enough to let a dimple show in the expanse of his ridiculously flawless skin.

I caught my breath against the annoyance of some guy I didn’t know, gorgeous or not, flicking my hair around like we were best friends. I cocked my head and raised my eyebrow.

He leaned down in his bag and pulled out his copy of Mansfield Park. It was one hundred percent flawless—unmarked and free of dog-ears—like it was pure luck he’d remembered to bring it to class today. “Ready for this quiz?” he asked. “I hear Crawford’s a hard-ass.”

I quirked an eyebrow. “Are you ready? Looks like you didn’t prep.”

“Looks can be deceiving.” He tapped the cover of the book. “We read this at my old school. I’ll get a perfect score, mark my words.”

He’d read Mansfield Park when he was a sophomore? And I thought this school was nuts. I smiled. “We’ll see.”

Mrs. Crawford handed the papers back and we got to work. Twenty-five minutes later, I’d thrown down three different main thematic threads in the work and bitched for four paragraphs about why Edmund Bertram really had to be such a clueless dickheaded milquetoast when all the rest of the characters were really deep and interesting. I of course had already completed the first page, which had been regular multiple choice.

“I’ll take your long answers,” Mrs. Crawford said, pacing the front of the room. “You’ll do me a favor by grading one another’s multiple choice right now. Please pass your tests one seat forward and mark off any answers that don’t match what I read here.”

True to his word, Vincent got a perfect score. We handed the tests forward just before the bell rang. I didn’t know why, but I let myself hang back to walk out into the hallway with him.

“I’m very impressed,” I said.

He laughed. “By what? I told you I’d get a perfect score.”

“So you just really love Mansfield Park, then?”

“Obviously.” He smiled, but I couldn’t tell what kind of smile it was. It looked completely genuine, yet vague. Like there was no real anchor between his expression and the meaning of smiling. Like it was his default when he didn’t want people to know what he really thought of something.

At least it was a damn beautiful smile, though. I had to avert my eyes to keep myself from enjoying it too much, or I’d probably crash into the wall or something.

“So, you and Sofia,” I said as we walked. “Are you, like, Fanny and William close, or more like Henry and Mary close?”

“Huh?” he said, looking at me with a furrowed brow.

I knew he had heard me. I got suspicious about that uncracked book all over again. “Mansfield Park?”

There went that smile again. Totally chill, totally relaxed, totally in control. Totally disconnected.

He laughed again. “Well, let’s just say we’re close enough. We grew up moving around a lot. Most of the time, we were the only people we knew at a new school. So we’ve hung out more than most siblings, probably. And I know her well enough to know that if I ever called her Franny she’d kill me.”

“Fanny.”