"So … you gonna kiss her?"

--Sam Puckett

i'M Sick of Coming Up With Chapter Titles

"So …" I started, almost instantly regretting it.

Amelia looked up from her menu expectantly. We sat there for a few seconds like that, with just the quiet buzz of the restaurant in the background.

I gave a laugh that I didn't have to try too hard to make sound nervous. "I was hoping that you would have something to say."

"Oh," she laughed a little.

My agonizingly well thought out plan for tonight was to play on the whole nervous situation factor, since it was obviously something we both had in common. It was so perfectly simple, but it did require conversation and ironically a little bit of courage. Unfortunately those were two things I seemed to be in short supply of.

But Amelia was a trooper, I had to give her that. "Don't you just hate these kinds of things, when you don't know what to say?" she asked.

"Yeah," I laughed a little along with her, feeling things ease, "The whole awkward silence thing."

"Uh huh," she said, "But you're really good at this. Have you gone on a lot of dates?"

In any other situation it probably would've been a bad question to ask. Probably even worse to try to answer. But it was hard to even recognize that with the way she put it. Crazy.

"Oh, not really," I said, playing it casual and aiming for being vaguely dismissive, not only to impress her but to put some distance between me and the idea of any other girls. For a moment Carly and Sam flashed to mind, interrogating me as they no doubt would on Monday.

Then I remembered no, that wasn't true. They wouldn't.

"I've only dated a couple of girls and … they didn't go very well."

"Really?" She sounded almost surprised, like the thought of me having trouble with girls was almost incomprehensible to her.

Valerie inevitably came to mind, when she had acted like I was an air-conditioned Mayan sun temple or something—all for the roundabout means of using me. I looked at Amelia.

I tried. I really did. But it was hard to imagine her manipulating much of anything when she was smiling like that. But who knows. Maybe she was just that great at acting and was using me after all.

Amelia glanced back at me from where she had been looking off to the side. In the process her eyes did that little down—up—down thing that she seemed to do a lot, the one that made me need to squirm.

Maybe I just like being used.

A memory of Sam threatening me with bodily harm unless I made her a ham sandwich came to mind. It was a frequently reoccurring memory, actually. It being a frequently reoccurring event might have something to do with that.

Well, maybe I like being used most of the time.

"I, uh, actually didn't tell the truth when I asked my parents if I could come," Amelia said, sounding conspiratorially, "They have this rule about group dating until I'm sixteen ... which is only a couple months away," she added in a slightly amending voice.

"I'm just glad you said yes," I smiled, "I was kind of afraid you'd think I asked too quickly."

"No," she said quietly, with a little smile as she looked down at the table and rubbed at a spot with a finger, "I didn't think you asked too quickly."

I couldn't help but grin at that. "So your birthday is in two months? What day is it?"

"November eighteenth," she said, "When is yours?"

"February fourth," I rolled my eyes, "It's the worst time to have a birthday."

"Why?"

"I don't know," I said, wishing I'd seen that coming, it being an obvious follow up question and all. "It's in the middle of winter ... after Christmas and New Year's. I guess I just wish I had one in the summer, so I could have a party outside or something."

I don't know if thinking about not thinking about Sam's spring birthday parties actually counted as successfully avoiding the thought.

"But it's near Valentine's Day, isn't it?" Amelia asked. "That must be kind of neat, isn't it?"

I shrugged because I couldn't think of anything to say to that.

Our waitress came up and asked if we were ready to give our orders.

We were and I ordered a pizza stack. Amelia asked if she could have the spaghetti salad special; the waitress couldn't hear her the first time and she had to repeat it.

I fiddled with my napkin, trying not to wonder who didn't get pizza at a pizza place.

I also spent the next five minutes trying to keep my eyes either on her face or on something polite, that wasn't connected to the rest of her.

Our endeavors at meaningful conversation didn't pan out quite so well either. She talked about her little brothers, I obliged with a few tamer facts about my mom. She described her dog and goldfish, I talked a little about the Shays.

It was only about halfway through this stretch that I realized, not for the first time, how much of my life revolved around the Shays and their apartment. It was like more important to me than school with all of its social and educational obligations, more important than home.

I'm pretty sure that Amelia noticed the lapse in my train of conversation.

I'm not going to think about Carly, or the lack of her, I'm not going to think about Carly—

I did briefly reminisce on Carly's notable lack of jealousy whenever I dated someone else, however.

Suppressing a sigh, I went about picking another topic out of the list I'd brainstormed. Pets and family had already come up and were more or less out of the question now. Birthdays had been a good one because it had been spontaneous and not planned to death beforehand. It was nice that I'd already gotten to say I was glad she had said yes when I'd asked her out. And then there was—a lot of other things I couldn't remember right now.

Great.

Amelia caught me looking at her and kind of smiled before looking away again. I smiled a little too late, then winced—just as she looked back at me.

Ugh.

"So … your family is from Oklahoma then?"

Lame Freddie, lame.

But she apparently didn't pick up on the ridiculous amount of lameness in that, or else she was just that good at hiding it. She began sharing just about everything I could possibly ever want to know about her family and Oklahoma.

This was a great thing, because it gave me an excuse to stare at her for however many minutes passed and listen. It was great. And not just because she was so pretty. Somewhere in the middle of her uncle Ned's ranch and the way she scratched her nose in that ... way, I decided that I wouldn't mind falling in love with a girl like this. Actually, I wouldn't mind all that much falling in love with her.

The food arrived and things became easier, as it was always an easy topic to use and maintain throughout the meal. For whatever reason this date was turning out to be the hardest I'd ever attempted. Maybe it was because it mattered so much more than the others. Not that they hadn't mattered, but this was different.

This was—

Amelia's fork slipped and a sauce soaked bit of noodle fell across her cheek and down her shirt and fortunately back to her plate. She was all aflutter with embarrassed words and motions as she took a napkin and wiped at the tomato sauce on her shirt.

I smiled and leaned across the table with a napkin to dab at her cheek. Almost like a movie.

—about Sam. This was about Sam.

At least a bit. At least a little bit.

And when Amelia was looking at me like that, and smiling, or even when she wasn't it kind of hurt to admit that. I was going on this date and trying so hard in the hopes of hurting someone that wasn't even here. That didn't even really know about this.

"Is that all of it?" she asked, wiping at her cheek a little.

But it didn't have to be. I may have gotten into this for the wrong reasons, but that didn't mean I had to leave it like that.

"That's all of it."

--

There were a few things I knew by the closing bits of our date. One, I needed to get in touch with the Surgeon General and let them know that Amelia Hugdahl's smile was addictive. And way too readily available.

Two, this was the best first date I'd ever been on. It didn't really matter anymore what the reasons for getting into it had been.

And three, it was okay sometimes to kiss on a first date.

Accidental really wouldn't be the best word for it, but it hadn't exactly been planned either—fantasizing about it for nearly two hours didn't count.

All I know is that girls have no clue what sort of effect the sight of bare shoulders can have. I'd had just about enough of that all night, and something had been in the works all the way home.

Neither of us really wanted to meet each others' parents yet, despite how fast I seemed to be needing to rush everything, so we walked it. It wasn't very far to her place.

First date, first kiss … we kind of skipped the whole holding hands thing.

It just sort of happened when we stalled in front of her place. It was this kind of mutual feeling of not wanting to end it.

It was half conscious, half unconscious action. Just a brief touch of lips that made everything change. Her eyes so close and different from anything I'd seen before. So trusting.

It made me feel bouncy all over, and conversely content. Like the warm evening and the smells of the leaves changing and the way she tasted. The way she smiled and said a quick good night.

I was sort of all jumbled up on the way back home. It was like there were too many thoughts for my head to fit and they were piling up on top of each other.

I was happy, so happy that everything looked so perfect. Everything felt so perfect. It was a feeling in my stomach that was beyond nice. I hadn't felt like that for a long time. I didn't think about Carly that much, and I tried not to think about Sam at all.

But I did a little. Comparing these two first kisses. How both of them were so different, and what that meant.

--

Mom was asleep on the couch when I got home. The television was muted and the telephone in her hand, the laminated slip of emergency speed dial numbers beside her.

She'd run herself ragged over me being sick this last week, and it was obviously starting to catch up with her.

I stood there in the living room for a long minute, not really looking at her. Not even really thinking about her particularly, but about when everything had changed so much, or even when it had started to change at all.

Sometimes I wish it could be easier than this. Having two parents to come home to that I could calmly and maybe even casually talk about tonight would've been … nice. Maybe a little too idealistic, but I would've settled for even one normal parent.

Mom was of course trying her best, but her best had been all but driving me crazy lately. And it was getting worse. Always worse.

That I could take. I had been taking it for a long time now. But this place where I was, this feeling that even a great date couldn't cover for long, this was new and wasn't something that just felt bad—didn't just feel horrible. It felt inescapable, like it was crazy to think that I could ever get out of it.

A year ago, or maybe even less I would've woken her up. Instead I settled for leaving my jacket on the chair so she wouldn't call the police if she woke up after I went to bed.

--

Everything changed.

And when I mean everything, I don't just mean some vague word that people use all the time to indicate a little more than usual. I mean everything.

I still spent time at Carly's, sometimes even with Sam, but that dwindled significantly even beyond what it had been since the school year had started.

Amelia suddenly occupied this massive fraction of my life, and everything in my schedule had to squeeze and groan to make it fit. But fit it did. I made sure of it.

School routines changed. Where I would go before and after class, even what I did during class wasn't the same. Going home for any notable period of time that I would spend with my mom became what school had been like before. They kind of switched places, I guess. In more ways than one.

"So how was the Music Fest?" I had innocently asked Sam at Carly's. Not immediately after the weekend, of course, but I wasn't able to wait as long as I had planned on to make it sound offhand either.

"Didn't go." She had shrugged her shoulders like it was no big deal.

"What do you mean you didn't go?" Carly had asked, semi horrified.

Her voice had gone low and she had lied about giving them away for some reason. I can't even remember. I actually remember the way she'd said it as she slowly sucked on her Popsicle more than what she had actually said.

That memory seemed like it had happened a long time ago well before the week was up. I was just beginning to appreciate that fact by the time the week was completely gone, and then another.

It was this blur of motion and feelings and little glances and fake words when I had to, and honesty when I wanted to. "Wanted to" being Amelia, "had to" being Sam.

And then there was Carly. Or rather there wasn't. Or there was and there wasn't. I haven't made up my mind yet. It was weird how intrusive and ... present she could be for brief spurts of time. And then gone for the rest. She sorta played along with me and Sam that nothing was wrong. That we were all chummy, or maybe Carly had indeed given up on making things right again. But she was Carly, so that wasn't entirely possible.

I think it was somewhere around two more times that she "confronted" me when we were alone, about me and that other girl that hung around her place a lot. But she didn't press too hard. Maybe she actually began to swallow my completely ludicrous assurances that everything was fine. And hey, I've got to hand it to Sam, she's great at acting when she tries. Maybe we were actually making it look real. But then again, it could've just been the battery of tests that conveniently hit Carly soon afterwards.

At least we were genuinely getting along. Me and Carly that is. I think a sustained period of hostility with her would be enough to do me in.

Then there was Sam herself. We talked but didn't say anything. Which is a lot harder than it sounds, believe me. Especially when you get angry every time you see this person. Like seriously angry. It makes level headed conversation of any sort difficult, even the stuff we did in our sleep. And the scary thing was I was doing it in my sleep.

Sam had touched this thing inside me that wasn't happy about a lot of things, and just wasn't happy in general. And it wasn't going away.

--

I looked around the gym as me and Jared walked out in our Physical Exertion clothes, but there weren't many people out yet. Jared was going on about a problem, or at least the thing that was a problem to him, from computer class. I was only half listening.

I gave him an understanding sound as I stretched my arms and resisted the urge to watch where the girls came out from the locker room. It was actually commendable that I was able to keep myself limited to only the most occasional of peeks. Considering how well—or rather, not well—I had been doing on average for the past couple of weeks, that was quite an accomplishment.

"So ... yeah," Jared said, having apparently come to the conclusion of his dilemma. "Should I do just ... do what you said before for this too?"

"Yeah, they're pretty much the same," I said, forcefully pulling my attention back to him. "Don't worry, I'll be able to show you this afternoon. We can go over both of them."

"Seriously?" He sounded surprised. "You're still able to help me after school?"

"Yeah," I shrugged, "Why wouldn't I be?"

"I don't know, it just sounded like you had something going on tonight," he started, looking over his shoulder as the group he usually hung with came laughing into the gym.

"Oh, don't worry about that," I said, realizing what he meant, "It's just the whole girlfriend thing. We might do something later on tonight."

"Are you sure?" he asked. "Because I don't want to be holding up your—"

"Nah, it's okay," I assured him, "So I'll meet you in the library quarter after three?"

"Yeah, see you there," Jared smiled as he started walking towards his group, "I really appreciate this, man."

"Sure, no problem," I said distractedly. Distracted because Sam had just come in. Not that I cared—

I jerked my head back. Was that Jason Nitts she was walking with? Nitts? And talking with while smiling—

Nope. I started walking towards where Jeremy was standing. I didn't care. She could talk and smile with all the delinquents she wanted to. "Delinquents" being a generous term.

I remember what that was like. Being able to talk to her before and after gym.

But this was so much better now. In fact I preferred this so much more that—

I reached Jeremy and made desperate idle chatter with him. Not that he minded, but I felt kind of stupid about the desperate part. Still, it was necessary.

Our gym teacher, Ms. Oslay, entered and we all made herd motions towards producing a line. She began to prattle on about general gymnasium etiquette and protocol, like she always did. Jeremy and I ended up roughly in the middle of the line against the wall, and our conversation sort of drifted in and out of focus as Ms. Oslay stalked up and down the line.

Our conversation sort of died altogether when Sam abruptly appeared in front of me on one of Ms. Oslay's trips to the opposite end. I was only given a moment's surprise before she was shoving into me.

"Get away," I muttered at her, remarkably sounding much less confused than I was.

"Move it," Sam said in a bossy voice as she wedged herself between me and the girl that had been to my left in line.

Ms. Oslay came back in front of us and paused with a questioning expression at where Sam was just finishing inserting herself. I crossed my arms and tried to scoot to the right, despite have the relative equivalent of negative space and despite having to contend with mucus showers as my attempt set Jeremy off sneezing. But it was worth it.

"... And there will be no line budging—" Ms. Oslay continued from the pause in her monologue of how class would proceed.

I don't know how that bland smile Sam was giving Ms. Oslay didn't immediately associate in her mind with criminal. Actually, all jokes aside, odds were that there had to be some sort of criminal photo of Sam out there with that sort of smile ...

"You smell like freak," she muttered when Ms. Oslay proceeded down the line.

"You smell like you," I shot back.

"Aw, look who can put together words that make sense," she answered.

I cut off what I was going to say about what smelling like her directly entailed because yes, it did make sense in the form of an insult when the punch line was included, but then I remembered that I didn't care. And it didn't really make for the best conversation in public anyway. So I cut to the chase.

"What're you doing?"

"What do you think I'm doing?" Sam asked, like I was all perfectly cute and idiotic for not knowing.

"I don't know," I answered, resisting more urges involving her than I could almost handle, "Why don't you tell me?"

"It's like this whiz pants," she started, "I get the impression that you don't want to be on my team today—again—"

"Oh, really?" I asked, probably overdoing the sarcasm a bit. But it was necessary.

"And I sure don't want to be on your team," Sam continued like I hadn't spoken, "Because the only thing you fail at more than life is gym class. And since we're playing dodgeball today—"

"You don't know that—" I started, before really thinking if it was possible that she did know. But when I did I knew that she couldn't.

"And today we're going to play dodge-ball—" A piece of Ms. Oslay's monologue wafted down to us like so much cruel and uncooperating reality.

"And since we're playing dodgeball today," Sam repeated, not quite mockingly, "That means we're not going to count off for teams by groups of three like we normally would. We'll be counting off every other person. So that means having to stand—" she adjusted herself uncomfortably, "—Against you for a few minutes will let me be able to throw things at you for the rest of the period. Do you want me to repeat it or should I draw some pictures?"

She was suddenly looking up at me, all in the mistaken pursuit of appearing challenging. And in order to be observing this I had to be looking back down at her. At the same time.

Maybe a month or more ago I would've went after that line of derogatory reasoning, tried to reassert my intelligence, which always seemed to be in short esteem, among other things, when she was talking to me. But it wasn't a month ago, and I didn't care enough. I really didn't want to be talking to her, and I really didn't want to be looking at her. I already had enough classes with her where even relocating to the opposite side of the classroom couldn't prevent all visual contact, accidental or otherwise.

So I looked away as relatively soon as possible, and she didn't say anything else as Ms. Oslay began to wind down.

Did I mention that I was jammed in a cramped line right next to her?

I was definitely getting more than my fill of just what her smelling like her meant.

I found myself staring at the hair that happened to be resting on her shoulder, mostly because I could. It wasn't all that hard either when it was literally within inches of my chin. She was staring at the ground, being more than moderately successful at putting out an annoyed and impatient vibe.

Did I mention that there was this unhappy thing inside me that didn't care all that much for her? I think it also was all relative to proximity, because it really wasn't happy at the moment.

"All right, number off, groups of three." Ms. Oslay waved at one end of the line to begin.

I almost fell out of the line as I leaned out to confirm that it was indeed occurring. Geez, after that perfectly orderly speech of Sam's, I had actually believed her.

Sam swore as the count did in fact proceed contrary to everything that was beautiful and pure in the universe.

"Yeah, great theory," I growled as the count began making its way towards us, "You should get it published."

She briefly glared at me, but didn't say anything.

The count reached us and we sang out cruel fate in monotone voices. Jeremy gave us what might have been a concerned, or maybe a fearful look before he ran off with the other group.

Sam immediately shot off for the opposite side of our end of the court. That shouldn't have made me angry. It shouldn't have.

So the rest of the period proceeded, with much displacement of rubber, of victory and defeat. And her doing everything within her considerable power to make it absolutely miserable for me.

She actually only hit me once with a dodgeball. But it was done so convincingly and with such perfect timing that Ms. Oslay caught it from one of her glances up from her fashion magazine to call me out. I managed to cut off my impassioned protests that Sam was on my team early enough to avoid too much humiliation. As in not quite the maximum of the considerable amount possible.

There were of course an incomprehensible array of other, smaller, darting things that she did. Manipulate situations unfavorably, grab up any loose balls before I could, exist ...

It really didn't help either that I would probably never be anything approaching good when it came to physical activities like this.

The fact that I had to claim to be attracted to her in any degree at any point in time was getting on my nerves. Everything felt like it was burning. I guess it might've showed a little.

"What's wrong?" Amelia asked in the hall afterwards. She jumped a little when I half slammed my locker door shut.

"Nothing," was my curt and required response.

She didn't exactly look like she wanted to pursue the matter, at least directly.

"So I was thinking of maybe stopping at Groovy Smoothies after school, you want to come?" she asked as though that was something rare enough to require asking me beforehand.

"No, I think I'll just head home tonight," I said distractedly as I ran a hand through my hair, really only hearing the meager gist of what she was saying, "I've got some homework to do and I'll be helping someone for a little bit right after school."

"What's wrong?" she asked again, this time in a way that quietly asserted that she wasn't going to drop this.

"I had a rough gym class," I forced out the reply. The act of understatement is an art.

"Was it those boys?" she asked carefully.

"No, it was Sam," I said, bumping my back against the lockers, "But it's no big deal."

She didn't voice what exactly her unconvinced look thought of that. And I guess I was sort of too wired to pass it off as no big deal. It was all that angry adrenaline that I hadn't gotten rid of yet.

"Well, what happened?" she pressed.

"Nothing, she's just purposely driving me crazy," I took her arm and pulled her along, hoping that motion might help change the subject, "That's all. I don't really want to talk about it."

"How come you don't seem to spend that much time with her?" Amelia persisted, obviously presently not of the mind to be deterred. "I know you've said that Carly is really busy, but what about her? Does she have a lot of school work, too?"

I kind of laughed at that. She, of course not being all that acquainted with Sam, didn't quite know what to make of that and she dragged us to a halt and put her cool hand on my cheek, her eyes all full of questions.

Everything that didn't really matter slipped away. Sam, angry adrenaline, worry of any kind, and the motion around us slowed until it wasn't an angry mess anymore.

"So, you won't be able to get a smoothie tonight?" she asked after I took her hands in mine and dropped them to our sides.

I squeezed them a little and managed a smile. "No, I think I should be able to make it. I could really go for one about now."