Toby sat on the edge of my bed, and I played with the bedspread.
"Craig, huh?" he said, the last vestiges of the Hannibal Lecture voice gone.
"Yeah," I said, and felt myself almost blush. I could close my eyes and see him, the gelled curls kind of flattened into spiky bangs, his large eyes, full lips. If nothing else he was a beautiful boy. I looked at Toby, his thick dark eyebrows, his thick dark framed glasses, the funny shape of his lips. I had to admit I loved Toby like a brother.
"Do you want to hook up with him again?" Toby said, and I shrugged. I did, some part of me did. But that wasn't my aim. I just really wanted to be friends with him again.
"No, I don't think so…I mean, it didn't work out too well the last time,"
Toby knew better than almost everyone else how not well it worked out. I'd wanted to have sex with him, with Craig. I'd dreamed about it, the candles, the music, his caresses getting stronger, his kisses. The feeling of being pinned beneath him, of being penetrated by him. Of us kind of becoming one, some blissful magic moment. But he wrecked it. He had it with Manny and then he lied to me, lead me on, got her pregnant. No. It was too much hurt, too much betrayal. I didn't think I could trust him to be my boyfriend again. But I thought he could be my friend.
"What do you think?" I said to him, and he looked up at me from under his caterpillar eyebrows, his expression thoughtful.
"I don't know, Ash. I think you should be careful,"
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"Hi," Craig. He stood at my locker. I put my books on the shelves and smiled at him. He made my heart beat faster.
"Hi," I said. Were we becoming friends? It was so hard to tell. I saw lust in his eyes. I knew I felt the lust coursing through my body, pulling me toward him. It felt like it had last year, before he destroyed everything. It felt just the same, like one of us had been away for a vacation and we were picking up where we left off. But I didn't want to pick up where we left off. I wanted to go back further to how it was in ninth grade when I was dating Jimmy and I was seeing that Craig was getting things, getting my concepts, my wavelength.
We weren't in many of the same classes since he took the easier ones. It was okay, I mean, I knew he had a lot to deal with and that school wasn't quite the breeze for him he wanted people to think it was. I'd seen him in the classes we had shared, seen the constantly tapping foot, the inability to focus. At times I'd practically diagnosed him with ADD. I'd seen the missing homework assignments and the bombed test grades and science was just beyond him. The easier classes were better for him because he was smart, I knew he was. He just sometimes had trouble with school. Me, on the other hand, I'd always excelled at it. I could concentrate, I could remember everything I read and studied. But my life was less messy than his.
The bell rang, interrupting our gazing at each other. And that's what we were doing. I could get lost in his eyes. And I could feel how I was the complete center of his attention. He licked his lips and looked around when the bell rang, the slight dismay on his face that we had been interrupted.
"Hey, I'll see you at lunch, okay?" he said. We had the same lunch, which was cool. I nodded, already looking forward to it. I wouldn't hardly see him until then.
"Okay," I said, my voice soft, my head tilted in that flirty way. I didn't want to act that way but I couldn't seem to help it.