Her dad’s head bobbed along to this, as did many others’. He was going on about it a lot at the dinner table: “Governments should protect their people, not try to balance everyone’s wealth so that it’s perfectly equal.” Tina remembered this well because all the talk at work then had been about how they’d have to lay people off or cut their hours if this healthcare thing went through.
Cole sat beside her, hands in his lap, staring straight forward. His nervousness radiated off him like heat. She and her parents went for brunch at Bob Evans afterward. Her mom invited Cole, but he had to work. “Thank you for having me,” he said. “I had really a good time.” He gave Tina a hug, the sweat on his hands dampening her bare arms.
She passed the turnoff for Lima and worried about what time it was. The clock in the car hadn’t worked for years, but she knew all the new phones tracked their own locations, so she had to leave it behind. She calmed herself. As long as she got to New Canaan before the bars closed she would be on time to catch him.
She hadn’t known how to go about it back then. Just seeing him in the hallways was nerve tingling, flustering, crazy making. His eyes took a beat in her direction, as if he’d been aware of her the entire time and decided at the last moment to turn them to her. She quickly adjusted her gaze down, and it was all she thought about the rest of the day. Her biology, English, and health classes might as well have been taught in the Spanish she didn’t pay attention to either. She never would have approached him. That’s not how high school worked. Fifty-six was at the top of the hierarchy in a universally recognized way. He was being recruited by Division I colleges. He had a way of speaking—a baritone ripe with earned authority—that made everyone understand he was to be paid attention to. He carried his books in this particular nonchalant way, palmed from above rather than with his hand curled beneath them like everyone else.
At the first dance of her high school life, she waited at the fringes of the floor along with the other freshmen, all but the bravest too uncertain to wander into the forest of upperclassmen that crowded the dark cafeteria, the light swimming and flickering like in an aquarium. Stacey’s parents had only just begun allowing her to buy makeup, and Tina helped her out in the bathroom.
“This is the best cheap mascara,” she said, stroking Stacey’s lashes with jet-black Maybelline Great Lash Waterproof, hoping that her awkward tomboy friend wouldn’t hover beside her all night (heck, maybe she’d even get asked to dance, God forbid). Tina followed up with Almay liquid liner. “And this’ll keep it in place if you start sweating.”
The Jaguars won 29–7, and it seemed as if 56 had done well (at least he’d clobbered the other team’s quarterback three times, leaping to his feet and screaming in triumph loud enough that the sound washed all the way to the back of the bleachers where the freshmen found space). The football players came streaming into the cafeteria after the first hour, showered and wearing street clothes. A different boy asked her to dance each slow song, many of them upperclassmen, and she accepted while watching the door. She was dancing with Conner Jarecki, a boy in her grade, when 56 came in wearing khakis and a white wifebeater. His shoulders, chest, and arms were on full display and looked like armor clicked into place beneath his skin. Each time a slow song came on she watched him and waited until he’d made his choice before allowing another boy to take a turn with her. He danced with a few girls she recognized, the popular upperclassmen, including the bubbly, curvy Jess Bealey, who didn’t own a top she wasn’t spilling out of. Tina grew increasingly frantic as the night wore on. Of course he wouldn’t ask her. He didn’t know who she was. The franticness turned to fear, the fear to hurt, the hurt to disappointment as one of the chaperones announced the last song. And then, like she had psychically willed it, he pushed through the crowd to her.
Dan Eaton had approached to ask for the last dance (she was wary of Dan, who’d fixated on Hailey Kowalczyk in such a way that most of their class tittered about him behind his back), when a sturdy branch of an arm caught the slight, skinny boy in the chest. “I got this one, bud.”
Then 56 had his hands on her hips, and she placed hers around his neck, though she could barely reach because of the height difference. The song was Seal’s “Kiss from a Rose.”
“You’re Tina. Little Moore’s pal.”
“I am.”
She felt the heaviness of her lashes. For the first time in her life, she felt the word sexy about herself. Her eyes were at his chest where two dog tags skittered on a chain around his neck. He was never without them. Now she saw that each tag was blank on both sides.
“Aren’t these supposed to have your name or something?”
He looked amused, as if it was a silly question. “Why? My fate hasn’t been written yet.”
He had his hands low, his pinkies creeping down just far enough to rest on the rise of her bottom. He held her very close, and she could feel it against her abdomen, pressed just beneath her belly button. It wasn’t hard, but it was undeniably there.
When the lights came on signaling the end of the dance, they parted.
“Strow’s having some of the guys out to his place for a bonfire. You wanna come?”
She did. So badly she did. Her mom was outside waiting to take her and Stacey home, and there was literally no way on Jesus’s good grand earth she’d be allowed to do this.
“I can’t. But do you want my number?” This was 2000, before everyone carried cell phones. Her stomach ached for a pen—maybe someone had a locker in the cafeteria.
He waved her away. “I’ll see you at school. We’ll figure it out.”
For the entire weekend, she was sick with worry that he hadn’t meant this. She had numerous phone conversations with Stacey until they could get together for a sleepover Saturday night. They pored over the results of the first dance. Hailey Kowalczyk of course had gotten approached endlessly by Dan Eaton, though she wanted to dance with the quarterback, Curtis Moretti. Stacey claimed to have gotten attention from Jonah Hansen, Ron Kruger, and a cute sophomore, Ben Harrington. Tina assured Stacey that she’d grown pretty decent boobs over the summer, and Ben surely noticed. Stacey had also noted that Lisa Han, who Tina didn’t much care for on account of her hyper-foul mouth, had danced several times with Bill Ashcraft, whom Tina had once liked. And in all the spinning and tumbling of high school courtship, Tina attempted to segue back to her dance with 56, which seemed to her the much more interesting development. She told Stacey about 56 pressing it against her. Stacey said, “That’s like the worst-kept secret in school. My brother says they see each other’s dongs in the locker room, and all they do is compare.”
Tina barked a laugh. “Boys are messed up.”
“We should go back to throwing mud at them.” Then Stacey gave her a side-eyed glance. “You should be careful, though. I know him some through Matt. He only wants one thing from you.”
She hated Stacey intensely for that comment, the way you can hate only a close friend so acutely. Shortly thereafter, she turned her back and pretended to sleep.