What If It's Us
Page 34

Samantha claps first and cheers. “Yay! Go Arthur!”
Dylan is fighting back a laugh.
“I know, I was flat on the key change,” Arthur says in response to Dylan. “I haven’t practiced my falsetto in a while. I’m sorry—”
“Your voice is awesome,” I say. I smack Dylan in the arm. “What’s so funny?”
Dylan’s laugh is stuttering. “That song is . . . about a rat.”
“What?” Arthur and I say at the same time.
“It’s about a pet rat,” Dylan says. “It’s from a horror movie. Same title. Literally about a boy befriending a rat.” Samantha is laughing with him now. “Because rats . . . are . . . so . . . misunderstood.”
“I—I had no idea,” Arthur says.
Dylan laughs and points. “Rat!”
I get up and take Arthur by the arms. “Thank you for the song.” I laugh, and he finally laughs too. “I’m going to choose the next song though.”
“You’re going to sing?” Arthur asks.
“We all are,” I say.
We throw out options. John Legend. Elton John. Aerosmith. Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The Proclaimers. Destiny’s Child. Nicki Minaj. I really want to sing “You’ll Be in My Heart” by Phil Collins, which is from Tarzan, which I was obsessed with as a kid, but maybe a song about being in each other’s hearts forever during a double date isn’t the wisest choice just yet.
We go for Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” which is definitely not about rats, and I work up the nerve halfway through to share a mic with Arthur, and our voices don’t ever really become one, but I like how we sound together.
Like two people trying to make it work.
Chapter Nineteen
Arthur
“It was so nice to meet you,” Samantha says, gazing right into my eyes. She’s got a hand on each of my shoulders, and I’m calling it now: this girl’s going to be a motivational speaker one day or a life coach or like some kind of tiny white Oprah.
And then there’s Dylan, sneaking in from the side to snake an arm around each of our waists. “Man, I love this guy,” says Dylan, and he punctuates it with a squeeze. “Listen, I love this guy. Seussical, you’re a keeper. Do you hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“You’re welcome.” He beams. “Now you two kids have fun. Don’t do anything Rose and Jack wouldn’t do in a steamy vintage car.” He glances slyly at Samantha. “That’s from—”
“Yeah, we know,” says Ben.
“Well, okay then. I guess we’re off.” Dylan releases himself from the Arthur-Sam-wich to wrap Ben in a bear hug. I watch him whisper something in Ben’s ear; Ben mutters shut up and smacks Dylan on the arm. It’s weird, watching Ben with Dylan. They’re just so . . . handsy. Ethan and I aren’t like that at all. I guess a part of me wants to ask Ben about it, but—
Nope. No. Not going down that road again. Jealousy over the Hudson thing got me exactly nowhere with Ben, and something tells me Dylan’s even more off-limits.
Anyway, Dylan and Sam are gone, and it’s just us now. We’re on the corner of Thirty-Fifth Street, and Ben looks as awkward as I feel. It’s funny—I always imagined dating someone would be pretty straightforward, once you established you liked each other, but it’s not. There’s this whole new world of bewildering situations. Like how many days should you go between dates? How do you find out if he wants to be your boyfriend? And, of course, there are those moments like right now—moments where you don’t know if it’s time to say goodnight and get on the subway, or . . .
“So, do you want to walk around or something?” I ask, trying to ignore the nervous flutter in my chest.
“Sure.” He touches my arm—more knuckles than fingertips. And it’s just for a moment, but my organs go wild. We start walking.
“So you like to sing,” Ben says.
“Sort of.”
“I bet you’re in all the school musicals.”
“Not really. I was in choir, though.” I smile. “Ethan and I wrote a musical once, and we roped Jessie into performing it with us. We were twelve.”
“You wrote a musical when you were twelve?”
“I mean, it was the worst musical ever,” I say, and he laughs under his breath. “It was summer. We were bored. I don’t know. It’s stupid.”
“I think it’s cool,” he says. “What was it about?”
“You want to know?”
“Definitely.”
The sidewalk ends, but Ben barely pauses. He steps confidently into the intersection, slipping between cars and taxis. But as soon as I follow, someone honks at me, and I flinch.
I speed-walk to catch up. “So, it was about these two knights named Beauregard and Belvedere.”
He grins. “Were you Beauregard or Belvedere?”
“Beauregard. He was the smart one. Belvedere was the muscle. And Ethan was like two inches taller than me back then.”
“Was Jessie the princess?” Ben asks.
“She was the dragon. Named Cheese. It’s kind of a long story.” I have that antsy, prickly feeling like I’m talking too much. “Want to sit somewhere?”
“Sure.”
Somehow we’re at Macy’s, which is wild—because this isn’t just Macy’s. It’s the Macy’s, straight out of my TV screen. It’s like meeting a celebrity. We snag a little round table outside. I watch Ben peek at his phone, smile, roll his eyes, and shove it back in his pocket without responding.
“Dylan?” I ask.
“Yup.”
“I really liked him. And Samantha. Your friends are great.”
“Yeah, they’re cool. They liked you, too. Like . . . a lot.”
I nod without speaking, because if I speak, I’ll unleash the millions of questions I’m dying to ask. Like, what do they like about me and tell me in detail and was this a test and did I pass? And do you like me a lot, too?
“So tell me more about Ethan and Jessie.” Ben leans forward, onto his elbows. “They sound cool.”
“They’re . . .” I trail off. “Well, we grew up on the same cul-de-sac. We were like a nerd gang.” I pull out my phone. “Here, I’ll show you some exclusive, not-really-new footage of them.”
“Okay.” He scoots his chair beside me, and I’m suddenly aware of everything. My heartbeat and the sound of my breathing and an itch on my elbow. I swipe quickly through my albums. “So, here’s me and Jess, and that’s my car.”
Ben’s quiet for a moment. “Jessie’s cute.”
And she is, though I never really think about that. She’s just Jessie. Short and pudgy, with a Cupid’s bow mouth. Jessie’s mom is Jordanian, kind of pale, and her dad’s black—whereas Jessie’s skin is sort of in between. In the picture, she’s smiling, just barely. I’m wearing sunglasses and my hair’s a little overgrown and unruly. I went through a lazy hair period sophomore year. It wasn’t pretty.
Of course, in the first picture I find of Ethan, he’s shirtless. He’s leaning back on his hands at the edge of a pool, feet underwater, and his hair’s wet, which makes it look jet-black. His eyes are wide open and his mouth is an O. He used to make that face in pictures.