"He didn't kiss you!" Lucy gasps as Annette tosses a pillow at her from my bed. Lucy successfully dodges, but her mouth is still agape in surprise.
"Would you be quiet!" Annette says, "Two-Bit's downstairs being nosey!"
This was true. Somehow, Two-Bit had caught wind of my date on Friday – some blabber mouth from the drive-ins I'm sure, but I was lucky because they didn't tell him who. He had already tried to sit in on our girl talk twice before Donna chased him out. I didn't always like her. Sometimes she had the tendency to be real bossy and unkind to Two-Bit, but Aunt Louise says that's what he needs to grow-up. Regardless, Donna always seemed to be on my side, from what I understood, she was somebody's little sister too.
"Sorry," Lucy says immediately dropping her voice, "but what do you mean he didn't kiss you?"
"That's exactly what I mean," I mutter, rolling over onto my back to stare at the ceiling. "I thought he was going to kiss me when he drove me home, but he just walked me up to the door and hugged me and then he left."
The silence of my two friends is deafening and I sit up quickly to glare at them. They're making a face at each other and then look at me with a sad, shared grimace. I knew what they were thinking, because it was the same thing I had been thinking since Friday night – Ponyboy must not have liked me, like I thought.
"Maybe he decided he did like Angel better," I finally say unable to take their silence anymore.
"That's insane," Lucy says.
"Nobody can like Angel more than you," Annette agrees. "She is on a rampage though, telling anyone that she sees how much a slut you are."
"And why haven't you stopped her?" Lucy asks and Annette throws her a dirty look.
"You don't tell Angela Shepard what she can and cannot do," Annette snaps. "She'll beat the tar out of me when she finds out I picked Pen over her."
"Nellie," Lucy emphasizes, "is a much better friend anyways."
"Which is why I'm here," Annette says with an eyeroll.
I sigh, flopping back on my bed to let them argue it out. If they were focusing on each other, at least they would leave me alone. I picture Ponyboy on my porch, the sweet smile on his face as he hugs me goodnight. The anticipation and then disappointment when I realized there would be nothing more. I feel my cheeks heat up out of embarrassment now. Had I done something wrong? Said something weird? Did he really believe the rumors that Angel was spreading about me? Or maybe – he was embarrassed. I wouldn't want to be caught in the middle of that drama if I was him.
"Has he called?" Lucy finally asks, bringing me back into the conversation. I shake my head and the silence between my friends is once again deafening.
"It's Wednesday," Annette says, and I hear the pillow go flying back, hitting Annette with a slight thud. "Maybe he's busy at work or had to do something with his brothers," she adds as an afterthought, but I wave my hand to dismiss the idea. Already feeling the hot embarrassed tears beginning to prick my eyes. I cover my face with my arm to keep them from noticing.
"Or maybe you should just call him?" Lucy suggests, but I shake my head. I will eventually get over our apparently terrible date, but I would never get over him ignoring my phone call or worse, telling me he was uninterested while his brothers listened in. I thought about Sodapop briefly and wondered if Ponyboy sought him out for advice.
"My mama," Annette adds in with a reassuring squeeze of my arm, "always says that boys aren't supposed to call right away anyways. There supposed to leave you thinkin' about them – to try to real you in."
"Yeah, I'm thinkin' about him alright," I say bitterly. "How long is he supposed to wait?" I ask, trying to not sound even the tiniest bit hopeful by the idea.
Annette is suddenly very silent, and I lift my arm to look at her. "How long does your mama say they should wait?" I ask again and she sighs.
"Two days," she says with a slight grimace, glancing over to Lucy for help.
"Well, today is only Wednesday. Maybe he's not very good at math?" Lucy says and I drop my arm back onto my face with a groan.
They sit in the silence of my pity party for a few minutes before trying to bring me back into the conversation with different bait. Mark and Bryon are having another party. The fair will be in town in a few weeks. The ice cream shop restocked the double chocolate crunch. When none of this works, they resort to just talking to each other, trying to make plans for the rest of the day. A nice change of pace between them for once. For as long as I've known them, Lucy and Annette have butted heads.
"Nellie," Lucy finally says, "we can't sit here mopin' around all day."
"Watch. Me." I say before grabbing one of my pillows and using it to cover my face entirely. Maybe if I angled it right, I could suffocate myself, "You guys should go – I hear the ice cream shop restocked the double chocolate crunch."
"Fine," Annette says with a sigh. That was the one thing I always liked about Annette, she never hovered where she wasn't wanted, "I guess we'll have to go Lucy."
"Yeah," Lucy says, and I can hear my vanity chair scrape across my floor as she stands., but I don't hear her footsteps towards the door.
Lucy on the other hand loved to hover, especially when she thought she knew better than you. I lift the pillow carefully off my face to peek at her and find that she is staring at me with her older sister face. The same one she gave her younger siblings whenever they were doing something wrong. "I think," she says, and I roll my eyes before she can finish, "you should get up."
"I don't really care what you think, Luce." I tell her as I sit up to meet her glare. We stare at each other for a moment, daring the other one to look away. Lucy wins of course she's an older sister – her glare is piercing and expressive in telling you how disappointed she is, but also how dumb she thinks you are.
"Sure, you do," Annette chimes in, trying to break the tension with a friendly smile. "You wouldn't have called us here if you didn't."
"Whose side are you on?" I ask, but this only makes Annette smile grow. They won and they know they won. She picks up my shoes and tosses them at me. They land gently in my lap, and I have half a mind to throw them back at her.
"Put'em on," Lucy says, more of a command than a suggestion, "or we'll do it for you."
"Yeah," Annette says, "we're gettin' ice cream."
"Our treat," Lucy adds and before I know it, they're dragging me down the stairs.
The ice cream parlor isn't as busy as I thought it would be and for a moment, I accuse Lucy and Annette of lying about them restocking the double chocolate crunch. It isn't until I have a cone with two scoops in my hand when I finally relax a bit. We pick a seat by the window and enjoy our ice cream in the cool parlor – happy to be out of the Tulsa heat.
I am a little relieved to find how empty it is when we are comfortably sitting underneath the air conditioner. Usually at this time of day, the ice cream shop would be filled with people from both sides of town – a small slice of heaven for when the day was just too hot to bear. Right now, though, it was a ghost town, but I consider myself lucky, who knows what hurtful words Angela Shepard could throw my way in the middle of a busy ice cream shop. She might even get the idea to pour a milkshake over my head. I cringe at the thought and try to push her venom out of my mind.
For a moment, I finally feel a little bit more at ease. I stare out the window, watching the people try to rush out of the sun, watching the cars drive-by with their windows down, watching some younger kids speed down the sidewalks on their bicycles enjoying the calmness of a normal summer day. Annette and Lucy talk aimlessly about the rest of the plans they have for summer. Lucy is supposed to go with her boyfriend Henry to his family's lake house in late July. Annette will be starting to babysit her neighbor's kids for a little cash on the side. Everything seems and feels almost normal, until I catch eye of Mark Jennings, Bryon Douglas, and Ponyboy Curtis walking down the street. They're laughing about something, shuffling around the kids on their bikes, and then say something loudly at them, before continuing their walk down the street. I am so sure that Ponyboy is going to miss me that I don't look away, but I should have known better, because the minute our eyes meet through the window he waves.
Immediately, I drop my eyes, suddenly so interested in my ice cream cone. I count the chocolate chips, watch as it melts down the waffle cone, and do just about everything I can think of to not look out the window again. Ponyboy notices me because when they get to the window, he pauses, and taps on the glass. I ignore him, well-practiced in the art of being seeming unbothered with Two-Bit as my older brother. Ponyboy knocks on the glass once more and I notice that Lucy and Annette both look up with a sneer, before shifting their chairs to face away from the window. I could be unfriendly, when necessary, but Annette and Lucy were straight-up mean, both in their own, snarky little ways.
They begin to talk a little louder, about nothing particularly interesting and this almost makes me crack with a grin and I go back to counting my chocolate chips as a distraction. Every couple of seconds I nod my head enthusiastically so that Ponyboy knows that I am doing my best to ignore him. This seems to work because I can tell by the way he shifts in the corner of my eye that he's considering walking into the ice cream parlor, but I can make out Mark Jennings' muffled voice from a little bit further down the street. Ponyboy taps on the glass one last time before he moves on. I could play games too, but I realize that this doesn't make me feel any better and it takes everything in me not to look back.
"The nerve of these boys," Annette says, and Lucy and I chuckle in response. Once I am sure he is a safe distance down the street, I catch myself looking outside again – wondering what he might have said if I greeted him. "You are so lucky to be dating Henry," Annette continues with a shake of her head.
Lucy sighs and dreamily looks out the window like she was picturing him now, "It's just cause he's a little dumb." This catches Annette and I off guard and we break into a fit of giggles. "I mean it," Lucy continues, "dumb boys just trust that you know what's best for them. That's why I love him – he's sweet as pie and does what I say."
"That's a terrible thing to say, Luce!" I say, still giggling.
"Yeah, but where can I find one?" Annette asks and we break into giggles once more.
I am thankful when the girls say nothing else about the subject of Ponyboy Curtis and move back to focusing their attention on the rest of summer and what qualities can make the perfect boy.
A/N: A little bit of a filler for you. I felt like sweet Nell needed some girl time. Checkback this weekend for a follow-up with Ponyboy. Reviews are always appreciated. (And THANK YOU to those who have taken the time to review already. You are so appreciated.) :)
