Unfriended (10 page)

“Probably true,” Nate said, giving me a smile and taking my hand as I reached him. “But we should get going. Madison has a curfew.”

“Yes,” I piped up. “I do. And I don’t want to miss it.”

Dave glanced down at his watch. “It’s ten fifteen, Mad.”

“Yes, well …” I said, squeezing Nate’s hand once. “There might be, um … traffic.”

Dave adjusted his thick black-framed glasses and rolled his eyes. “Sure,” he said. “And you certainly wouldn’t want to get caught in that. Have fun making out. You know that you two are getting almost as bad as Jimmy and Liz?”

I stared at Dave, feeling my jaw drop. “Hey,” I said, stung. That was a serious accusation to level. And it also
seemed that Dave had entirely forgotten his first few months of dating Lisa, when they would barely stop kissing long enough to carry on a coherent conversation.

Dave seemed to realize the gravity of this, and held up his palms. “I take it back,” he said. “Thanks for coming out.”

“Thanks for throwing this fiesta,” Nate said, dropping my hand so that he and Dave could do their complicated guy-handshake that seemed to get longer and more intricate every time I saw them do it.

As Dave walked back to the house, I realized I hadn’t said goodbye to anyone inside. I paused, wondering if I should just dash in. But I had a feeling it would take twice as long as it should … and I just really, really wanted to be alone with Nate. The Jimmy and Liz comparison had bothered me a little, but truthfully, for the first time, I could see where they were coming from. Making out with Nate was starting to seem preferable to—well, almost anything else. And especially saying goodbye to my friends and having to explain why I was leaving early and probably getting more of the kind of grief Dave had just given us.

“Hey, Dave,” I called, and he turned around in the doorway. “Tell everyone goodbye, okay?”

Dave looked at me for a moment, surprised, but then nodded. “Will do,” he called. “See you, Mad.”

I tried to push down the feelings of guilt that were threatening to rise. But I was sure that my friends would be fine. Then I turned and hurried down the driveway with Nate.

We hadn’t made it to the Bluff.

We actually hadn’t made it very far at all. When we’d reached Nate’s truck, I’d kissed him once, just to tide us over. But that peck had quickly turned into a real kiss, and Nate had pressed me against the driver’s side of the truck. I kissed him back, and when his hands slid underneath my tank top, we had both realized that it might be a good idea to move inside the truck and avoid getting arrested for violating any kind of indecent exposure laws.

And then once we were in the truck, it had just seemed easier to keep making out there, rather than drive twenty minutes to make out somewhere else—and, thankfully, the truck was parked the farthest distance
away from the party, so it wasn’t like anyone was going to be passing by and interrupting us.

Nate had pulled off my top and I had taken off his shirt, and we stretched out together across the bench seat. We’d been making out for a while when Nate paused and pulled away, looking into my eyes.

“My Mad,” he murmured, and I reached up and ran my hands through his still-damp hair. He moved his hands across my bare stomach and over my ribs, stopping as he reached the tie of my bikini. “Is this okay?” he murmured. I nodded—it was
more
than okay. My heart was hammering as Nate pulled the first string—at the very same moment that his phone rang.

Nate groaned. He seemed to be having some sort of internal battle with himself, but finally sat up. “I have to get that,” he said, and I could hear how unhappy he was. “It’s the ringtone for Maxwell’s house.” I propped myself on an elbow, trying to untangle my legs from his so that he could reach his bag on the truck floor. He pulled his phone out and flipped it open. “Hello,” he said, and there was silence while he listened to what was being said on the other end. “Yes, but …” he said as he glanced over at me. “Tomorrow?” He frowned, and I could see that he was not liking what he was hearing. “I know, but the thing is … all right,” he finally said. “I’ll see you then.” He pressed the button to end the call, then turned to me and sighed.

Pretty sure that the mood had been broken, I sat up and retied my bikini top. “What is it?” I asked.

Nate shook his head. “It’s what you get for agreeing
to tutor on call. Maxwell and his parents are going to their house on Martha’s Vineyard for two days, and they want me to come along and tutor him.”

“Really?” I asked, hearing the disappointment in my voice. Two days? Nate was going to be gone for two whole
days?

“Yes,” Nate said. He dropped his phone back in his bag. “Apparently, they want him to learn to study in a distraction-heavy atmosphere, and not just in a library. Even though he hasn’t yet learned to study in a library. But I thought it best I not point that out.”

“Probably a good idea,” I said. Nate ran his hand through his hair, looking preoccupied. “Should we call it a night?” I suggested. I had a feeling that even if we continued making out, Nate would be distracted.

“I think so,” Nate said, checking his watch. “They want to leave really early in the morning, and I should get home and pack. But,” he said, arching an eyebrow. He leaned over and kissed me quickly, running his hand down my back. “To be continued?”

“Oh, definitely,” I said immediately. I pulled on my tank top and helped Nate put on his shirt. As I did, I straightened it over his shoulders and felt myself smile.

It was a shirt I’d given him just after we started dating, even though Lisa had been horrified, saying that she hadn’t given Dave any presents until they’d been dating for three months. But when I’d seen it, I’d had to buy it for him. It was a polo that brought out the color in his eyes perfectly. But where there was normally an
alligator, or a horse, on polo shirts, this one had a tiny camera. He’d told me that he liked it, but even better, he wore it a
lot
, which proved it to me. I ran my fingers across the camera, and Nate kissed the top of my head.

The drive home seemed ridiculously short, and we got there all too soon. I couldn’t believe I wouldn’t see Nate for two days. But I tried to spin it in a positive light—spending a few days apart might be good practice for being in an LDR come fall.

When we pulled up my long, winding driveway, I could see that the house was still dark—clearly, this crisis at the paper was taking a long time to resolve—which, at the moment, was completely fine with me.

Nate parked in the turnaround next to Judy, and we both got out of the truck. He met me around on the passenger side and kissed me goodbye. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” he said when we broke apart after a medium-length kiss. “I’m not sure what the reception sitch is going to be like out there, but I’ll definitely give you a call.”

“Oh em gee,” I said, smiling up at him, “did you just use the word
sitch
?”

“Technically, I don’t think it’s a word,” Nate said, giving me one of his half smiles. “And I just wanted to see if you were paying attention.”

“A likely story,” I said, raising my eyebrows at him. “I’m having an effect on you. You can admit it.”

“Well,” he said, his voice more serious now. He tucked that one lock of hair behind my ear. “I know that’s true.” I looked up at him, feeling that something in his tone
had just definitely shifted. I had almost never seen Nate look so serious before.

“You okay?” I asked.

“I am,” he said, but still in the same serious tone. “I’m more than okay. And there’s actually something I’ve been wanting to say for a while now.” Nate took a step closer and touched my cheek, letting his hand linger there as my heart started beating double-time. “Madison MacDonald,” he said, looking right into my eyes, “I love you.”

I closed my eyes and felt a smile take over my face. I didn’t understand why I felt like I might cry, since I was positive I’d never been quite this happy. I opened my eyes and looked at my boyfriend, and realized my heart wasn’t pounding nervously anymore. Rather, it was beating slow and steady, just for him. And suddenly, what I had been so scared to tell him wasn’t frightening at all. It was the simplest thing in the world to say—just naming a truth about how I felt, one of the universe’s understood facts. The earth was round. The sky was blue. I loved Nate Ellis, with all my heart.

I opened my mouth and took a breath, thrilled that I could finally say these words to him. “Nate,” I said, smiling at him so wide that my cheeks were beginning to ache. “I—”

“Don’t say it,” he said quickly. He leaned down and kissed me, then pulled me into a hug.

I hugged back, but then leaned away to look at him, smoothing his hair back from his forehead. “What do
you mean?” I asked. “Just listen to me for a second. I lo—”

Nate leaned in and kissed me again, stopping me from speaking. When we broke the kiss, he was smiling at me. “What’s going on?” I asked.

“I just wanted to tell you how I’ve been feeling,” he said. “But I don’t want you to say it to me just because I said it to you. If you want to say it, I want it to be some other time, and because you want to. Not just because you’re responding to something that I said.”

“But—” I managed to get out before he kissed me again. “Wait,” I started, but he stopped me again with a kiss, this time a
serious
kiss, lifting me off my feet, his arms tight around me. I gave up and just enjoyed kissing my boyfriend—who loved me. Even the thought sent a thrill through me. Nate
loved
me.

We broke apart sometime later—twenty minutes? Three hours? I was entirely unable to judge—and I looked at him, resting my hands on either side of his face. It felt like we had crossed over to some new level. We weren’t just dating. We weren’t just making out. We loved each other—even if Nate hadn’t let me say it back to him.

“So,” Nate said, still smiling at me.

“So,” I echoed, matching his smile with my own.

“I should get going,” he said. “Packing, and all that.”

“Right,” I said. I was grinning at him, probably looking like a total dork, but I didn’t care. I wondered if Nate felt as giddy as I did. “Packing.”

He kissed me again, clearly trying to make it a quick goodbye kiss, but I had other ideas, and kept the kiss going, turning it into a
kiss
. Nate broke away, breathing hard, shaking his head. “Okay, I really have to leave now,” he said. “Or I’m not going to have the willpower to leave at all.”

“All right,” I said. I could feel that I was still smiling. I had a sneaking suspicion that I might never stop.

He gave me a very quick kiss, squeezed my hand, then turned and walked to his truck. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said across the truck bed.

“Have fun,” I said. “If possible.”

“Will do,” he said. He opened the door and climbed behind the wheel, then backed out. I walked over to the driver’s side door and leaned in through the open window.

“I’ll miss you,” I said softly. Nate, lit softly by the dashboard lights, smiled at me and touched my cheek.

“Me too,” he murmured. He leaned in and we kissed quickly. “Good night,” he said.

“Night,” I said. I stood back and Nate headed down the driveway, lifting one hand out of the window to wave at me. I watched the truck’s taillights until they faded from view, and then listened as the rumble of his engine got fainter and fainter and finally, all I could hear were the cicadas chirping, or squawking, or whatever it is cicadas do, all around me.

When I was very sure that I was alone, I spun around once in a circle, feeling like I now understood why people were always breaking into songs and dances in
musicals. Because there were some moments in life that were just too big to be expressed in words alone. Had some invisible orchestra given me a downbeat, I would have burst into song right there.
Nate loved me
. I felt like I was a heartbeat away from floating off the ground.

I took out my phone and was about to text my friends, but stopped. I now got why Lisa and Dave might use a code to exchange “I love you.” There was a piece of me that wanted to hold on to this moment between me and Nate, and keep it private for the time being. Of course, I would tell my friends soon. Probably tomorrow. But I just wanted to keep this knowledge close to my heart for a while, turning it over and replaying the moment in my head.

Still feeling my smile firmly in place, I turned to head inside, quite certain I was the happiest I’d ever been.

At three
A.M.,
my phone beeped with a text. I had been having a really lovely dream—the details were fading as I sat up and looked around, but I seemed to remember that it had something to do with Nate, and he was most definitely not wearing a shirt. I grabbed my phone off the nightstand and squinted against the brightness of the screen in the darkness of my bedroom.

INBOX 1 of 31
From: Kittson
Date: 6/22, 3:01
A.M.

MADISON!!! Are you awake?

I groaned. I was tempted just to put my phone aside and go back to sleep, but there was a piece of me that was
worried. If Kittson was texting me at three o’clock in the morning, there was probably a real reason for it—and not just a wardrobe consult. Willing my brain to wake up a little bit, I texted her back.

OUTBOX 1 of 36
To: Kittson
Date: 6/22, 3:02
A.M.

I am NOW. You okay?

The response came almost immediately.

INBOX 1 of 32
From: Kittson
Date: 6/22, 3:03
A.M.

Go on iChat. Need to talk to you.

I turned on my bedside light and leaned over to the floor, hoisting my laptop onto my bed and booting it up. I hoped that everything was okay with Kittson, but my brain was still in my Nate-loves-me happiness haze, and it seemed like everything that wasn’t concerning Nate was just a little bit fuzzy.

My iChat had loaded—still moving a little more jerkily than usual, thanks to my brother—and I accepted Kittson’s invitation. A moment later, she was looking back at me, wearing an oversize Metallica T-shirt that I recognized as Turtell’s.

“Hi, Madison,” Kittson said in a voice that sounded slightly more hoarse than usual. She was looking down at the keyboard, and not at me. “Sorry if I woke you up.”

“It’s okay,” I said, leaning forward and peering at my screen closely. There was something about her that seemed—off, somehow. “Are you okay?”

Kittson tossed her head, as though she was going to tell me she was fine, but then her shoulders slumped, and she lifted her eyes.

I clapped my hand over my mouth. I had never seen Kittson look so bad before. In fact, I had never seen her look bad at
all
. Kittson was always pulled together to a slightly absurd degree. But now her eyes were red and puffy, and she looked both exhausted and miserable, an unfortunate combination. I was not able to stop myself from gasping audibly.

“Thanks, Madison,” Kittson said, glaring at me. “That’s real nice.”

“Sorry,” I said quickly, trying to get my expression of horror under control. “I just … what happened?”

Kittson’s bottom lip was trembling, and I realized to my shock that she was on the verge of tears. I had never seen Kittson even come close to crying before.

“Is it Glen?” I asked, remembering what he’d said earlier that night about Kittson not being in touch with him. Kittson’s face crumpled, and she choked back a sob.

“I can’t believe I’m telling you this,” she said, looking up at the screen, then maybe seeing her own tiny reflection in the left-hand corner, and looking away quickly.
“But I don’t know who else I can tell.” She narrowed her puffy eyes at me. “I can trust you, Madison, right?” she asked.

“Of course,” I said quickly. Admittedly, before the hacking debacle of the spring, I’d had a little bit of a problem with gossiping. But I had more than learned my lesson as far as that was concerned, and now really didn’t gossip at all—something that Kittson herself had complained about only last week.

“You can’t tell anyone this,” Kittson said, her eyes still fixed on mine.

“I promise,” I said, and I crossed my heart for good measure.

“Okay,” she said. She took a big breath, like she was steeling herself. “It is about Glen,” she said. “He called me out of the blue earlier tonight and wanted to talk about our relationship, and how he thinks that I haven’t been in touch enough this summer.”

“Okay,” I said slowly, hoping that being surrounded by couples at Dave’s tonight hadn’t somehow caused this.

“And it turned into this big fight,” Kittson said in a small voice. “About how he thinks that he’s making all these sacrifices for me, planning on going to college when what he really wants to do is weld …”

“Weld?” I asked, baffled.

Kittson waved a hand dismissively. “Like a welder,” she said impatiently. “With metal. Don’t get me started. Anyway, it ended on this really bad note, and I was really pissed off. I needed to get out of the house, and I ended up going to this party.”

“Uh-oh,” I murmured. I suddenly had a feeling that I knew where this was going—nowhere good.

“Yeah,” she muttered. “It was just this stupid guy,” she said, her words spilling out in a torrent. “Just this lame preppy guy my parents have been trying to set me up with all summer. They’re not exactly Glen’s biggest fans, as you can probably imagine.” She brushed some tears away quickly. “All we did was kiss,” she said in a small voice. “And as soon as it happened, I knew it was a mistake, and I left.” She let out a long, shuddery breath.

“Oh my God,” I murmured.

“Yeah,” she said, giving a short, humorless laugh. “And I just don’t know what to do now. It was a total, idiotic mistake. But I don’t know if I should tell Glen or not.”

I looked at Kittson’s unhappy face and thought back to all the times I’d seen Turtell looking at her when he didn’t know anyone was watching—with an expression of utter trust and love and devotion. And then I thought about how, around prom time, he had threatened to beat up anyone who was going to win prom king because they were going to so much as
dance
with Kittson. I feared for every lame preppy guy on the Eastern Seaboard if he found out that she had made out with one of them. “I don’t think you should tell him,” I said after a moment.

Kittson looked up at me sharply, blinking in surprise. “Really?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said slowly, “really.” I had given the same advice to Jimmy and Liz when they had both (unbeknownst to the other) found themselves in this
situation. And since they’d both realized the error of their mistakes, things had worked out fine. Well, until the hacking had revealed these secrets to both of them, and they’d broken up acrimoniously for a week. But now they were fine again, and that’s what mattered.

It wasn’t that I thought secrets were a good idea or the way to go. But it just seemed easier to keep them sometimes, rather than telling the truth and hurting people who didn’t need to be hurt.

Kittson frowned. “I thought your whole thing these days was all about
communication
,” she said. “Or is that over now?”

I was glad to hear that she was being sarcastic again; it seemed like an indication that she was beginning to feel a little better. “No, that’s not over,” I said. I tried to suppress a yawn I felt threatening. The lateness of the hour was beginning to hit me. “I just think that telling him would do more damage than good. I mean, would you want to know if Glen had made a total mistake and hooked up with Shauna?” I asked, pulling out the name of one of Turtell’s exes.

“Shauna?” Kittson asked, sitting up straight, her voice totally clear now. And dangerous. “Who’s
Shauna?”

“No, that was just an example,” I said quickly, not at all liking Kittson’s expression. “I guess sometimes, you need to keep secrets for the sake of the relationship. I mean, do you think Glen would be able to get past this?” Kittson met my eyes for a long moment, then shook her head. “Me neither,” I said.

Kittson let out a long sigh. “Okay,” she said. “I think
you’re right.” I noticed a more familiar expression—that is, one of slightly distracted impatience—coming back on her face. “Anyway. Is everything good with you?”

“Yes,” I said. I felt a huge smile overtake my face. “Everything’s
great
.”

Kittson sighed, a little wistfully, and her image froze for a moment before coming back to life. I yawned again, and a second later, she yawned as well. “Sorry for keeping you up, Mad,” she said. “Thanks for this.” Then she signed off.

I looked at my screen, wondering if I’d done the right thing by telling Kittson not to tell Turtell. But a moment later, I pushed the thought away. I was still far too happy about what had happened with Nate to let it bother me. I shut down my computer, switched off my bedside light, and pulled the covers over me, resolving not to worry about it—and hoping very much to return to my shirtless Nate dream.