You Win

Maggie complained to me the entire time she was taking a shower. I sat on the countertop in the bathroom while she went on and on about what an ass my brother was, like I didn’t know that already. Oh, and apparently the rain made her skin even more itchy. She was really living the hard life, using my salon shampoo and scented soaps.

By the time we made it downstairs again, Carter and Luke had cleaned up and made two pizzas. One of them was already almost gone.

“Put that down!” Maggie demanded, running over to Carter and snatching the Mountain Dew from his hands.

“What the hell?” he asked, his mouth full of pizza.

“This is mine!”

“Maggie, you can’t just take his half-gone Mountain Dew,” I said calmly. “What are you even going to do with that?”

She was obviously still pretty worked up, and would take any possible opportunity to bitch at Carter. It wasn’t very annoying yet, but I knew that it would drive us all crazy after just an hour of it.

She kept her spine straight and her chin up as she slowly set the can on the counter. I laughed and shook my head. She was in Maggie-world and there was nothing any of us could do to bring her back. She was completely absorbed in her own mind, probably firing off insults at Carter every two seconds. She was consumed by it and therefore, nothing else mattered.

“Let’s watch a movie,” I suggested. I grabbed Maggie’s arm and pulled her toward me. “We’ll pick it out and put it in.”

Carter shrugged, determined to stay indifferent to Maggie’s craziness. “’Kay. We’ll be there in a minute.”

I led Maggie into the living room and knelt down to examine our collection of DVDs underneath the TV set.

“Can you please be nice?” I asked, running a finger over the spines of the movies.

“No.”

“Maggie.”

“Why should I be nice? He’s not nice to me.”

I sighed. “Stop being immature. I hate it when you get like this.”

Instead of flipping out on me and causing even more unnecessary drama, she relented. “Fine. I’ll be the bigger person.” She took a deep breath, inhaling the fun, exhaling the immature. “Let’s watch a horror movie!”

“No way,” I said quickly. “You know I hate scary movies.”

“You know I love them.”

“How can you love being scared? It’s like self-torture. I don’t think there’s anything more masochistic in this world than watching a horror movie.”

After much debate, we decided upon School of Rock, the reason being it was just plain awesome and no one could disregard that fact. Carter and Luke joined us just as I popped it in and turned the volume up.

Now, here’s the thing. Our living room only had two couches. One was just a regular kind of couch, the other was more like a loveseat. Maggie looked at the two couches, then at me, then at Luke, and a smile grazed her face.

She grabbed Carter and flung him onto the closer of the two—the loveseat—and plopped down beside him. I gave her a questioning look. She looked pointedly from me to Luke to the other couch. Me, Luke, couch. I glared at her, but sat down on the vacant couch anyway. Luke sat down next to me, making sure to stay just the right distance away, so he wasn’t quite touching me, but he also wasn’t invading my personal space.

I looked over at Maggie, who was giving Carter a disgusted look. I realized what she had done for me, what she had sacrificed. She hated Carter, for whatever reason, yet she had been willing to sit by him all through the movie just to force me and Luke together. I realized how much I really did love that hunk of beautiful best friend. I took a moment of silent appreciation for Maggie, as the movie started.

She looked away from Carter long enough to smile at me knowingly. I loved communicating with her nonverbally. I knew she understood that I was thankful for her sacrifice even though the prospect sitting so close to Luke through a whole movie was terrifying for me.

“Move over, ass face,” Maggie mumbled to Carter, using a pillow to separate them. “Be useful and make some popcorn?”

Carter gave her a look but she pretended not to notice as she focused on the TV screen. I was surprised when Carter got up and went into the kitchen, and even more surprised when I heard the unmistakable sound of popcorn popping.

“In the kitchen, where he belongs,” Maggie grumbled.

I glanced at Luke and resisted the urge to burst out laughing. I tried to hold it in but the more I looked at Luke, the funnier it became. He coughed to cover up his laugh, and I hid my face in a pillow.

Carter came in just as the introductory credits faded away, and practically threw a bowl of popcorn into Maggie’s lap. Instead of sitting next to her on the loveseat, he sat on the floor and leaned his back against it.

I settled into the couch cushions around me, taking extra care to make sure I didn’t accidentally bump Luke. I wasn’t sure if he was feeling the weirdness between us, but I definitely was. I watched him out of the corner of my eye. I was getting the weirdest vibes from him, and I had no clue what to make of any of it.

There was this thing between us that was never there before. This distance. It was strange. I didn’t look at him, he didn’t look at me, we didn’t talk, and I could feel him slipping away with each passing second. Usually when we watched a movie together, we would both make stupid remarks corresponding with the character’s lines. This time, however, we were both oddly silent.

I floundered for a way to get us back to how we used to be—carefree, easy—but it was seemingly impossible. The gap between us was getting bigger and there was nothing I could do but curl myself deeper into the cushions of the couch, shrinking back in the darkness of the room. He was so close in proximity—but everything else about him was out of reach.

He didn’t want me. I had to come to terms with that eventually. I still didn’t like thinking about it. All I could do was curl into a tighter ball and make sure not to touch him. He looked like he didn’t want to be touched.

Friends.

Nothing more.

I tried to pay attention to the movie, but my mind kept wandering. Carter kept cracking his knuckles. The sound brought me back to earth long enough to glare at him. I was tempted to throw a pillow at him to make him stop, but I eventually ended up falling asleep not even halfway through the movie.

When I woke up, the room was dark, the TV off. I looked around to see that Maggie and Carter weren’t there anymore—but Luke was. He was sleeping not even three feet away from me, his head tilted to the side and his neck bent in an uncomfortable-looking position.

I debated whether I should wake him up, but decided against it. I wondered if I should leave and go to my own room, my own bed, but I didn’t want to do that either. I wanted to stay there, snuggled up on the couch with Luke. Okay, maybe not with him, but it was close enough for me. I had woken up to such an intimate situation. There was just something about sleeping next to the person that makes butterflies erupt in your stomach at the littlest things. When he was sleeping, Luke looked almost vulnerable. He wasn’t closed off to me. He was there, and I liked it.

So I stayed there, letting myself fall back to sleep at the slow and steady breathing of Luke beside me.