The Six Rules of Maybe

that it was not Buddy at all, but Hayden himself.
    “I didn’t know you smoked,” I said.
    Hayden exhaled up toward the sky. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, just his cargo shorts hanging at his hips. His skin glowed from the streetlight. I felt a little shy, seeing that much of him, and a strange feeling filled me, a feeling I did not want to call desire or anything close to desire. He didn’t seem surprised to see me crossing the street. Or maybe his thoughts were so much somewhere else that anyone could have appeared then and he wouldn’t have blinked. The president of the United States, even, and he’d have only exhaled into the night same as he just had.
    “I don’t really smoke. At least I haven’t in a long while.”
    “You shouldn’t,” I said. He looked strange smoking. He wasn’t the type. You pictured him making his own juice with carrots and ginger and raw honey, not smoking some stupid cigarette.
    “Juliet likes it,” he said.
    “She likes it?”
    “She likes the way it tastes.”
    “That’s idiotic,” I said. “I’m sorry, but, God.”
    He didn’t say anything. He leaned against the side of his truck. He took another drag on the cigarette and exhaled again. It sounded like a sigh. He seemed to have the capacity for moody introspection. Juliet liked moody. I was wondering right then if maybe I liked moody too. Rational thoughts and irrational feelings were dancing badly together inside of me, out of step and offbeat, something that would have to be fixed, and fast. “You’re not close,” he said finally. “Some sisters are close.”
    “We used to be close. Closer. I did her math homework for her. She’d let me hang out with her and her friends. Complain about how unfair Mom was being. I always wished we were twins so we could do everything together. But, you know, she left. I’m still here. Do you have a sister?” I asked.
    “Only child.”
    “Maybe we’re just too different,” I said. I waited for him to acknowledge this, but he said nothing. “Maybe she’s … more like our father.”
    The thought had made a sudden, stunning appearance. It shocked me. This had never crossed my mind before. Our father never crossed my mind. We hadn’t ever even seen his picture, so he, his, him —they were empty, single-dimensioned words unconnected to an actual person. He was that wisp of smoke now disappearing by the streetlight. I might remember what he smelled like. A cologne that smelled like oiled wood, thick as incense. At least, I had smelled incense burning once, and it had triggered a memory that couldn’t quite become a memory.
    Hayden just took this in. It wasn’t as shocking to him as it was to me. I still felt as if I’d been slapped, and it was me who had doneit. “Your mother’s boyfriend is a dick,” he said.
    I laughed loudly. “You noticed.” The corners of his mouth turned up in a smile. I wanted to open that smile up wider, to see the Hayden of the afternoon back again. But I suddenly couldn’t think of anything else to say, and the smile was retreating. He was retreating. I could feel the moment of connectedness passing, my chance being lost. I wanted to play and volley and be back in that place we had been together before, that great place. I needed something, something quick—I grasped and caught something silly and lighthearted. Silly and lighthearted would do.
    “So, Hayden Renfrew. What was your most embarrassing moment?”
    It sounded workable until I said it. As soon as the words slipped out I knew I had done something horribly and terribly wrong. A humiliating misstep. I felt it all in one second of pause. The night, the cigarette smoke lingering in air, the heaviness of his thoughts—my words were inappropriate and idiotic. Oh God, why had I said that? Why, why, why? And why couldn’t you take back a moment sometimes? One little moment? Is that asking so much? God, I suddenly sounded thirteen. My red shorts and my white tank top felt young and shameful, my feet in my flip-flops did too. I felt so ashamed of my painted toenails in the streetlight.
    “Why did I say that,” I said.
    He finished his cigarette, threw it to the ground, and stubbed it out with the toe of his sandal. He picked it up and tucked it into his shirt pocket. I was filled with the disgrace of my own age and immaturity. I had widened some gap between us, and there was no way to close it again. Juliet had been right. I knew nothing about this. I was seventeen and he was