Cold Kiss

together, which we haven’t done in ages. She’s all lit up, flushed and bubbling over in ways I’m not sure she even notices—the fire Mom sets in the fireplace flickering higher when Robin sits down in front of it, the dented bell peppers firming up, glossy again, when she takes them out of the grocery bag. She came home with three new shirts and a pair of earrings, and it’s sweet, how happy an afternoon at the mall with Mom makes her.
    We’re just sitting down to eat when my phone buzzes in my jacket pocket. Mom lifts an eyebrow but doesn’t protest, even though cell phones are forbidden at the table when we’re sitting down to a meal all together. We’re having a good evening, and it makes me realize how long it’s been since we’ve done this kind of thing.
    I pull out my phone and glance at the screen: Jess. Great.
    We talked after school on Friday, if you can call it that. It felt like some sort of bizarre peace negotiation, both of us mumbling we were sorry without really looking at each other, and Darcia standing in as referee, prodding us to discuss my plan for a sleepover. But I could tell Jess saw how happy Dar was, and since I’d been careful to steer clear of Gabriel all day, she didn’t have anything to call me on.
    Of course, after the way I’d blown Gabriel off Thursday afternoon, he barely looked at me in class anyway, much less came to find me at lunch. It stung, like the shock of cold water in your lungs.
    “Hey,” I say when I answer my phone now, trying to sound as normal as possible. As far as Mom knows, Jess and I spend as much time together as ever, even if it’s not at our house.
    “Hey,” Jess says back, and there’s silence for a minute, a weird stalemate. She said she’d be busy most of Saturday, but that she’d call today. Now she has, and without Darcia here to mediate, I’m not sure what to say. Clearly, neither is Jess.
    But Mom is looking at me as she bites into a piece of pepper, and I scramble.
    “We’re eating dinner.”
    There’s another brief silence before Jess says slowly, “Okay. Um. So what’s the deal with Friday?”
    I can picture her in her room, on the bed on her back, knees bent as she stares at the ceiling. It’s a big room, bigger than either Dar’s or mine, but it’s a bigger house, too. Jess’s mom works in the art department of an advertising agency, and her dad is a lawyer on Wall Street, and Jess and her older brother, Matt, are the only kids.
    They’re like a TV family, except without the funny next-door neighbor or the weird uncle, and they’re so normal and nice to one another, it’s almost boring. Every once in a while, I wonder if one day we’ll find out her dad is really an ax murderer or her mom snorts coke and has affairs with the pool guy. They actually have a pool, so that part makes a sort of sense.
    It makes me wonder what my life would be like if Dad hadn’t left. If he and Mom would still be as stupid in love as they were when I was a kid, the way Jess’s parents are. If anything would have changed—my power, dating Danny—because he was still around.
    “Um, what about it?” I say, hoping she didn’t hear the demented squeak in my voice.
    Jess sighs. “Like … God, I don’t know, Wren. We haven’t seen you in forever, and now we’re having some shiny happy sleepover like everything’s cool? It’s random.”
    She’s right, it’s bizarre, and it’s all my fault that it is, but it still twists my heart into a hard little knot to hear her say it.
    And what am I supposed to say, here at the dinner table with Robin sitting next to me, chattering to Mom about some werewolf movie she wants to see, and Mom glancing at me every couple of seconds, her chin propped on her fist?
    “Look, if you don’t want to come over,” I say, turning sideways a little bit and lowering my voice, “just say so. I mean, I thought … I don’t know what I thought.”
    Jess sighs again, a gust of weariness.
    “No, I want to. I just hate that we’re … I don’t know. Are we fighting? I don’t even know anymore.”
    “We’re not fighting.” I know Mom can hear me, even though I’m speaking as softly as I can. “We don’t have to, anyway.”
    “Did you ask your mom about Friday yet? Is it okay?”
    It used to be okay all the time. Mom’s always happy for Jess and Dar to come over—she never minds if I’m at one of their houses, but she loves it when I have friends here. To keep an eye on me? Maybe. Sometimes I