Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between(8)

His face is blank now, his ears pink at the tips, and his wiry frame is folded over the table in a way that makes him look even scrawnier than usual. Scotty’s personality is normally big enough to make people forget about his size, but now it’s like the air has gone right out of him.

Stella looks uncharacteristically earnest as she lays a hand on his shoulder. “Hey,” she says. “I’m sorry. You know I didn’t mean—”

“Forget it,” he says. “It’s fine.”

Clare is struck by a memory of Aidan, sometime just after they’d started dating, suggesting they set up Scotty and Stella. He was still new then, still clueless about the subtle dynamics of the eleventh-grade population, and still unaware of the fact that the two of them had been sparring—more or less uninterrupted—since kindergarten.

“But Scotty’s so much fun,” Aidan had said, which was true. Most of his other new friends were on the lacrosse team, but he’d met Scotty in art class, where they were the only two guys. Their first assignment had been to do a charcoal drawing of an object that was important to them. All the girls had sketched heart-shaped lockets and old clocks and ornate diaries. Aidan had drawn his lacrosse stick. But Scotty, of course, had come up with a Picasso-like rendering of a Mr. Potato Head, and when Aidan leaned over to compliment it without a hint of irony, they became instant friends.

“Yeah, but he’s not right for Stella,” Clare had told him. “Trust me. I’ve known them both a lot longer. They’re oil and water.”

But that wasn’t exactly true. The problem wasn’t that they didn’t match; it was that they matched almost too well. They were both loud and funny, fearless and loyal, completely and utterly magnetic. It’s just that they’d spent the better part of their lives repelling each other.

“Really,” Stella is saying now, her hand still on his shoulder. She looks genuinely sorry. “That wasn’t—”

“It’s okay,” Scotty says again, finally looking over at her. “I mean, it’s what’s happening, right? You guys are leaving and I’m staying here. It’s not like ignoring it’s gonna change anything.”

Clare leans forward. “Yeah, but…”

“Really, I’m fine with it,” Scotty says, and then his face cracks a little. “At least it means I won’t have to share my pizza with you guys anymore.”

“Your pizza?” Aidan asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” Scotty says with a nod, looking more cheerful already. “You guys’ll be off eating your second-rate pizza in your totally untested new pizza places, and I’ll still be here… with all this to myself.”

Stella laughs, though Clare can tell it’s more out of relief than anything else; she’s just happy she didn’t inadvertently tip the whole night off balance. Scotty gives her a quick sideways glance before turning back to Aidan.

“And you know what the best part is?” he asks, his grin widening. “Once you finally hit the road, I’ll be free and clear to ask a certain someone out. Maybe she can even come help me eat all that extra pizza.…”

It takes a second for Scotty’s meaning to register, but when it does, Aidan frowns. “Dude,” he says, shaking his head. “This is the last time I’m gonna say it. You’re not allowed anywhere near my sister.”

This is a joke that only Scotty ever seems to find amusing. For Aidan, it’s still a sore subject, and any reminder of last year’s spring formal—when he and Clare had ducked out early to find his best friend kissing his younger sister in a darkened hallway—is enough to make the vein near his temple start to jump.

Aidan has always been protective of Riley, and even once the full story came out later—how her date had abandoned her, and Scotty had been nice enough to keep her company, and then one thing led to another—he was still furious. They didn’t speak for weeks after that, Aidan and Scotty, in spite of Clare’s attempts to patch things up between them. And though their friendship eventually recovered—helped along by Riley’s admission that she was the one who kissed Scotty, and Scotty’s frantic promises that it would never happen again—the subject is still a sensitive one for Aidan.

Most normal people would tiptoe around something like that, avoiding it like a conversational pothole. But not Scotty, who still insists on dredging it up from time to time, apparently hoping it will eventually get funnier. Which it hasn’t.

“Too soon,” Clare says, tossing a balled-up napkin at him. Across the table, Stella is flashing him a look that very plainly says: “Stop being an idiot.”

Scotty’s smile falters, and he gives them a shrug. “Okay, okay,” he says to Aidan, holding up his hands. “I was only kidding. I promise your sister is off-limits.”

“Not like you’d have a chance anyway,” Aidan says with a grunt, folding his arms across his chest.

“Hey,” Scotty says, glancing up after an attempt to blow the wrapper off his straw fails completely. “I’m a catch.”

This makes Stella laugh until she coughs. She pounds her chest a few times for effect, and Scotty’s face clouds over again.

“What?” he says to Stella, a challenge in his voice. “Because you think I’m an idiot who couldn’t get into any real colleges?”