Chapters On A Page

We didn't talk about the kiss. We didn't even discuss that it had been a mistake that we should never speak of to each other or our friends. It just seemed to be a silent agreement between the two of us before he left my house. I wasn't sure how long I had spent sobbing into his shoulder, having him hold me like it was no big thing at all. He had rubbed soothing circles into my back and whispered words to make me feel better, none of which I heard or paid attention to. But I had welcomed them, clinging to him a little tighter with each one. Once I finally stopped, I pulled away from him gingerly and pushed my damp hair away from my tear-stained face. I had given a sheepish and apologetic smile in his direction while I told him how sorry I was. But he had shaken his head, firmly insisting that he didn't mind because he understood. He had then asked me if I wanted to talk about it, but I replied with a defiant shake of my head as I wiped my eyes with the hem of my shirt. So instead he had offered to help me clean up the bathroom, which I graciously accepted. It had only taken a few minutes with the help of a towel and a mop, along with a broom to sweep up the glass from the lightbulb. He had left after that, wrapping me in one more hug to reassure me that it was going to be okay.

It wasn't awkward between us after that like anyone would assume it would be. I guessed that it had something to do with how we had proposed not to talk about it without any actual words. There had seemed to be something in there that also said we wouldn't let it make our friendship weird as a result. I was inexplicably happy about this. I knew normally I wouldn't have particularly cared much, but I didn't want to stop talking to him because I had let my emotions get the best of me. I wouldn't let my temporary vulnerability ruin something I actually enjoyed.

I didn't regret the kiss, either. I had been more than adamant when telling my three best friends that I had no feelings for Alex further than the friendship we had established. I still stood by this assertion. I simply wasn't sure how firmly I believed in it anymore or how seriously it could actually be taken now. I didn't exactly think that I was developing stronger feelings for him, but I couldn't deny that maybe I wanted to kiss him again or, at the very least, be close to him. I wasn't acting any differently around him though because I couldn't decipher any of it. I simply tried not to think about it because it was strange to me. Mixed in with all of that, I knew I still did have feelings for Dominic. After not seeing him since the party and the kiss we had shared, we finally talked. He had beat me to my shift at the restaurant, looking as if he had come in to wait for me everyday in hopes that we would cross paths. We finally exchanged numbers, something we should have done a month ago when we had started this little back and forth.

My mind was totally mixed up and filled with jumbled thoughts that I couldn't decipher. It hadn't even been a week since I had plunged into a suddenly complicated love life -love life wasn't even exactly what I wanted to call it- but I wondered how long my mind was going to sit in confusion. And of course I hadn't told anyone. My friends would lose it, I had no doubt. If their heads actually managed to not pop off, they would certainly do nothing but yell at me and probably assure me that I had brought the disgruntled state on myself. They would overlook the progress made with the boy I did like to only focus on the kiss I had shared with the boy I wasn't supposed to like. So I couldn't really bring myself to even think about telling anybody but myself, over and over again.

At least the rain had stopped, the weather clearing up in the early hours of Wednesday. It was like it had decided that enough was enough, and the downpour had stopped abruptly. Even though I knew it would still be wet, I had climbed out onto the roof outside the window seat's windows and stared up at the dark clouds parting and dissipating to reveal the pinprick stars. It had taken the ground a full day to dry out, but the mud and the slick grass disappeared soon enough to make it look like summer again. Because it had cleared up, rejuvenating us all, we were going to celebrate by going to the drive-in and make a huge deal of the night.

Nic and I had gotten a ride from my mom, going with her to the salon to hang out for a little while. After having our fill of our place of employment when we weren't actually working, we had taken a walk to a shop a few blocks away. I had never gotten up the nerve or had had the money to build my own darkroom, and it had turned out to be a good thing since we had moved. I was lucky enough though to have found a community darkroom tucked in between a pizza place that served terrible food and a laundromat that I had never once seen anyone in though it wasn't ever closed. I hadn't developed any of my pictures in entirely too long and the roll of film that contained the ones from the party I didn't even like to remember was full. We were still in there, examining the first of the pictures when my phone began ringing.

Part of me didn't want to extract it from my bag to flip it open and speak to whoever was on the other end. It could be any of my friends, wanting to confirm when we were leaving or what junk food to bring. But it could also be Dominic, calling to see what I was doing tonight or just wanting to talk. More likely, it was Alex to question where he was to pick us up. In the end, it was the weight of the few people standing around glaring at me that decided it. I gestured with a side nod of my head toward the door to tell Nic that we should go and I retrieved my phone from its designated pocket in my purse as we began walking. I shouldered open one of the glass doors while confirming who was calling, and then flipped the phone open to press it to my ear.

"Hello?" I sang pleasantly, not even faking the emotion as Nic and I continued up the sidewalk. It was growing late in the evening but the sun still shown on us brightly from the perfectly blue sky. Only a few clouds accompanied it, and they were paper white and as puffy as cotton candy. Nic's curly red hair bounced and sparkled in the light as she turned to me, an eyebrow raised in question of who I was talking to. "Alex," I mouthed back, facing forward again right after as if it would allow me to hear him more clearly.

"I'm leaving my house now. Where are you guys at?" he asked, his tone the usual almost eternally happy one that always colored his voice.

"Well, we're currently walking down an obscure street after developing some pictures," I answered, tiptoeing around a real answer as I stared down at the pictures in my hand. I couldn't wait to go through the rest of them.

"Obscure street really helps me find you. You could be in Narnia, hanging out with Mr. Tumnus and the White Witch for all I know," he responded, slight exasperation breaking through that was replaced by a light chuckle. "Care to give me an actual address or…?" he trailed off as if the lack of words was going to compel me to give a better answer than continuing on would. In the background, I heard the bang of a screen door and it let me know that he was heading to his car.

"Oh! Don't forget blankets and a couple pillows. We're not taking the pussy route and staying in the cars," I reminded him before he left his house. He made a frustrated noise and mumbled under his breath and I heard the banging again, this time hearing it echo throughout his house as he walked away from the door. "We'll be in Fells Point though. So we'll see you soon," I informed him, fully expecting to hang up in only a second.

But he spoke up, pointing out an obvious problem. "Where exactly in Fells Point?" he questioned, sounding a little breathless. He must have been hauling blankets down from some shelf in his house. "It's not a huge place, but I'll be damned if I drive in circles looking for you two crazies," he assured me with an amusing air underneath the seriousness.

I couldn't help but smile, my lips turning up at the corners ever so slightly but still hiding my teeth. "We'll be sitting on the bench right in front of Thames Street. You should know exactly where that is," I teased, knowing this would strike something in him. He wouldn't get angry, I knew because it wasn't something to get mad about. Plus, he had been the one to tell me the story, not someone else spreading a nasty rumor. "We'll see you soon," I said when he had chuckled and promised he'd be there to get us.

Nic and I still had a ways to travel before we got to where I had told Alex we were going to be. But I knew he still had to pick up Grieco and then get to us from there. So we walked at a leisurely pace and flipped through the pictures I had just developed as we went along. Most of the pictures were from the late winter, a lot of which I had completely forgotten I had taken -pictures of light snowfalls and my friends running around in it, Kaylee grinning up at the camera and my mom in her element at work. Then there were a few after that -Murph catching me off guard before our fight, Gwen studying birds high up in a tree at the treehouse, Alex sitting next to me with the sun as a backlight and making him nearly a silhouette. These, I was all pleased with, having expected that they wouldn't be terrible. But as we flipped through them, I couldn't help but worry how the ones from the party were going to turn out. I feared nothing but blurry shapes that vaguely resembled people and multiple shots of the floor and my bare feet. When we reached them though, I was surprised at the outcome.

It seemed that in my drunken state, I had still been able to hold the camera steady and prevent myself from hitting the shutter button whenever my finger found it. The first photo was of Murph, his hand against the wall of the hallway to prop him up and keep a few inches of space between the girl who's body was curved to match his. I recognized her as his current girlfriend whom we were supposedly going to meet officially tonight. Another depicted Gwen and Nic on the couch together with their fingers intertwined like they would never let go of each other, and laughing hysterically at something that had been said. Dominic sitting against the wall where we had kissed, an almost seductive smile on his face as he held his hand out to me. Lilah and Katie dancing to music that could no longer be heard. Random people I didn't know mingling with the few people I had gotten to know at Dulaney. But most of the party pictures were of Alex. Smiling at me at the top of the stairs though something in his posture said he had been trying to get me to sit down. A closeup of him raising a thick eyebrow at me with his lips puckered and jutting out in exaggerated and mocked confusion. The side of his face as he talked to Rian, his hands gesturing to the drinks on the counter in the background.

Nic and I had made it to where we were to get picked up and I dropped my bag down on the seat next to me before sitting myself. While Nic went to get a pretzel from the stand across the square, I flipped through the photographs again. I extracted all of the ones of Alex and put them into their own small pile. I shuffled through them one more time, for some reason convinced they were the best ones of the batch. I wanted terribly to walk back the way we had come to go to the framing store to get nice frames for my favorites. But I stuffed them all back into the envelope as Nic rejoined me. I plucked off a piece of her pretzel to appear nonchalant as she tucked her feet under her as she sunk down next to me. We joked around as we waited on the stone bench, enjoying the sun and warm weather.

Alex pulled up to the curb before too long though, blasting his horn as if it were necessary. We popped up automatically, skipping straight to the car. My feet carried me to the passenger side and I opened the door to slide in almost without any thought. I had just gotten so used to riding shotgun with him. "Hello, gentlemen," I greeted as I shut the door once I was settled. I pointed a grin at Alex before turning briefly to shed it on Grieco and Jack in the back. Nic, slipping in next to the former in the middle, nodded her assent.

"Ladies," Jack dragged out, sitting forward in his seat to let us see that his eyebrows were raised creepily and suggestively.

I giggled as I turned back around, just in time for Alex to pull back onto the road. To be polite, he had turned the music down as he had parked to let us in. But hearing the faint notes and lyrics and noticing something that justified a higher volume, I reached out to turn the knob enough so that we could all hear it. "Oh yeah!" I exclaimed out of nowhere when I was settled back again with my head against the headrest. "Grieco, I have something for you." I only glanced back at him for a second, but I saw him raise both of his eyebrows in question as to what I would have to give him. I leaned forward again, only slightly so that I could crack open the envelope containing the photos I had just developed. I thumbed through them, parting them from one another an inch inside the envelope to see the subject of each until I found the one I was looking for. I took a moment to look at it after pulling it free, but then I twisted back around to hand it to him. "I figured you might want this as a keepsake," I said as seriously as I could manage as he took it from my grip.

The picture was of a sleeping Grieco, passed out on my dining room floor. I wasn't sure where he had started out since I had been asleep myself, but on the glossy paper, he was pressed up against the front of the bar with his body weirdly curved into the angles of the wood. His mouth was as wide open as it would be in a yawn and one hand was pressed to his forehead, palm up and fingers bent in a natural position. The side of his short hair that covered the right side of his head was pressed completely flat, indicating he hadn't been lying on his back the entire time. "Ah, I didn't know you guys took pictures of me!" he moaned, incredulous and he pressed the photo to his face like that could possibly make it disappear. I had another from a different angle, so even if he did destroy the one I had given him, the rest of us would always have proof it existed in the first place.

Nic and Jack were laughing at him and trying to coerce him into lowering the picture so they could both see it again. Alex was silent though, staring straight forward without so much as a smirk on his face. He had been the one with the idea to take pictures of his sleeping friend. I had expected chortling and him dying to see it, going as far as to check the rearview mirror just to see if the reflection of the photo was there. I wasn't rewarded with any of that though, and it brought me to the realization that he hadn't even said hello to Nic or I when we got in the car. As I mouthed the lyrics to the song pouring from the speakers, I dared a glance at him from the corner of my eye. He didn't even appear slightly amused as he focused on nothing but the stretch of road before us, presumably not paying the least bit of attention to us or the music. He seemed to feel my eyes on him though, and he turned his head infinitesimally and I caught his hurried smile in my direction. I automatically felt the tension leave my shoulders and I smiled back even though he was no longer looking.

It took nearly a half hour to reach the drive-in, the drive longer than we'd take for a theater but comfortable when we knew we wouldn't be cramped in the car all night. Before we turned onto the lane that led to the large field, we pulled off on the side of the road like all of us had discussed. There were going to be three cars full of us and to ensure that we'd all be together, we would have to enter together. Murph's car was already waiting there and he promptly spun around in the driver's seat to spastically wave at us out the dirty rear windshield. A chuckle escaped all five of us and I waved back to him so he would calm down. While we waited for Rian to arrive with the rest of our extensive group, we prepared to get in by gathering our money. Alex turned around to take Nic's, Grieco's, and Jack's, but didn't notice mine setting on the center console for him. He shuffled the bills in his hand together, making sure they all faced the same way and went in descending order. I figured he would get my share as Rian's car drove slowly passed us, Kara giving us a thumbs up out the passenger window.

I waited patiently as he pushed the car forward again, out onto the road to follow Murph. Alex held the money between his thumb and forefinger, the other three fingers wrapped around the steering wheel with the five of his right hand. He rolled down the window as we got closer to the booth and instantly extended his arm out it once we were next to ticket window. "Alex," I piped up to catch his attention. He turned to me, his hand coming back inside reflexively just as the girl working the booth got her own fingers on the money. I picked up my share from where I'd left it and held it out to him.

He shook his head once, another light smile adorning his lips. "I've got you covered," he responded, and then faced the window once more so he could pay for the five of us. I looked down when I felt the blush coloring my cheeks, trying to play it off as if I was carefully putting the money away in my wallet. He didn't say anything else as we bumped down the rest of the lane, not even joining in the excited banter coming from our friends in the back. Once we were once again next to Murph's car, a grin broke on Alex's face that he didn't attempt to keep from everyone else. "Prime real estate!" he exclaimed, throwing the car into park in the first line in front of the screen.

The others shouted their agreement and then the back doors flew open so they could pile out, Alex following. I was slower, digging my wallet out of my purse since I had shoved it back in for some reason, climbing out a couple minutes after everyone else had. Someone had grabbed the blankets from the back and Nic and Jack were laying them out to line up with the ones Gwen had stuffed in Murph's trunk and that were already on the ground. By the time they were done, there was going to be a decent section of grass dominated by a square of blankets with ones left over to actually use. We still had a half hour or so until the first movie started, and everyone seemed to be taking advantage of the extra time. Rian and Kara were sitting on the edge of one blanket, holding hands. Zack, Murph, Matt, and Grieco were throwing a foam football around in the space between us and the screen. There were two girls I didn't know standing with Gwen laughing, and I guessed that one was Zack's girlfriend while I identified the other as Murph's. Alex had disappeared from the group and I took a quick look around the field filling up with cars only to be distracted by the concession stand.

I weaved my way through cars and dodged ones that were owned by someone clearly blind if they were going to miss me in their path. I skipped through the door of the concession stand -which was a building with a snack bar and bathrooms inside instead of just a stand- and headed straight for the counter. I knew my friends had brought enough candy and soda to last us all a month and somebody probably brought popcorn of some kind. But no one ever remembered to get me a bag of my favorite candy, even if I paid them for it as well as bribed them. I told the kid behind the counter what I wanted, already slipping money from my wallet as he bent to grab two boxes from the display case. It was a short exchange, and I turned to leave only a moment after I had entered. The only thing stopping me was the body I collided with.

"Sorry," I mumbled bashfully, thinking it was some stranger. After lifting my head to stare into the familiar brown eyes though, I knew the apology wasn't needed. "What're you doing up here?" I asked Alex, peering out the glass doors behind him. I could make out our cars and friends from here.

"I came up to pee," he announced in reply, giving me a small shrug.

"You always like to tell me when you're peeing," I pointed out thoughtfully to which he nodded, unashamed. "Walk me back?" I questioned, somehow making it a suggestion as I became demure once more. He nodded though, this one confident and paired with a smile. We didn't talk as we made our way back to the space our group had claimed as our own. It wasn't an uncomfortable silence. It was the kind of silence I had gotten used to with Alex. We sat down next to each other, near the top of the collection of blankets, as everyone else continued doing what they had been doing.

The sun wasn't completely set on the horizon when the previews before the first movie began to roll. But the dark came fast and with it a chill to the air. I pulled up a blanket to cover my legs and was welcomed by a short-lived relief from the cold. I had left a sweater in Alex's car and I contemplated on whether or not I should go to retrieve it. On my other side though Gwen was tucked up close to me so we could share the blanket and Zack sat in front of me so he could turn around to mess with me when he felt like it. There was only a little space between Alex and I. Aside from not really being able to move, the movie was an hour in and I was sure the other occupants of the drive-in wouldn't be too pleased over me slamming a car door. While I was just getting ready to say screw it and jump up, I felt something being draped around my shoulders. I looked over at Alex just as he let go of his hoodie now on me. Shocked, I mouthed a thank you and then acted as if I was engrossed in the movie while I slipped my arms into the sleeves.

In reality, I couldn't even get my mind to focus on the movie again. My eyes saw Johnny Depp in ridiculous goggles but my brain made nothing of it because it was too preoccupied with other thoughts. Alex was leaning back on his hands, his body angled as he stared at the screen showing the movie we had all come to see. His right hand was close to me though, halfway across the space between the two of us. So slowly that it felt like it would take years to reach him, I slid my own hand across the blanket beneath me. The tips of my fingers came in contact with his knuckles first and when he didn't jerk away, I let my palm lightly cover the rest of his hand. We sat like that for a few minutes, my hand over his. But then he straightened up so he no longer had to lean on his hands, and he flipped the one over and laced his fingers with mine, not moving them all through the first movie.