Starry Eyes

He covers his eyes with one hand and groans.

Which totally cranks up my anxiety several notches. If Lennon thinks it’s bad, it must be far worse than I ever imagined.

“Just tell me,” I plead.

He slaps both hands on his knees, elbows bent, as if he’s about to stand, but instead inhales sharply and blows out a hard breath. “Last fall, things had been, well, changing between us. The Great Experiment was undertaken.”

“I was there,” I remind him.

“I thought it was going well. Well enough that we agreed to tell our parents and go public,” he says, leaning back against the bench and slouching lower, arms crossed over his chest. “And I guess I . . . was overenthusiastic about the importance of homecoming. I thought, well, you know. That we had the friend thing down. We were expert friends. And when we . . . I mean, my God. The things we did on that park bench.”

“Not everything,” I say, feeling my ears grow warm.

“No, but it was good. I mean, really, really good. Right?”

It was amazing. Awkward at times, especially at first. It’s odd to kiss your best friend. But also not odd. Also very nice. So nice that I can’t think about it right now, because it makes me flustered. This entire conversation is making me flustered. I think I’m sweating again.

He relaxes when I hesitantly nod to confirm. “So, yeah. Things were going well. We agreed to go public. It felt right. But then homecoming was approaching, and you were getting a little stressed out about telling your dad—”

My fingers are starting to go a little numb.

“—and I don’t blame you. He’s not friendly or approachable. And, you know, he’s never liked me.”

I don’t correct him, because it’s true. When we were kids, Dad didn’t seem to have an opinion about Lennon—until he found out that Lennon had two mothers and a Muslim father. That’s when he began to say snarky things about the Mackenzies.

Lennon continues. “I’m just saying that at the time, I understood you not wanting to tell him, but I especially understood after what happened the day of homecoming.”

“Which was what, exactly?”

He sighs heavily. “I knew some seniors who were getting hotel rooms for homecoming night.”

That happens every year, both at homecoming and prom. Sometimes the rooms are reserved by groups of kids who want to party, and sometimes it’s just couples.

“I thought I’d get a hotel room for the two of us. Alone,” Lennon says.

I make a strangled noise. This is . . . not what I expected to hear. At all.

“In retrospect,” he says, “I’m aware that this sounds as if I was making some pretty big presumptions about where our relationship was headed. And I guess I was. But to be fair, I thought we were on the same page. Or at least, that’s what I told myself.”

I have no idea what I’m feeling right now. My skin feels like it’s on fire and numb at the same time. “You couldn’t have asked me about this?” Honestly, at the time, I probably would have been thrilled out of my mind, but it’s weird to hear about it now. “Like, consulted me beforehand?”

“I thought I was being romantic by surprising you.”

“By renting a room where we could have sex?”

He squints one eye shut. “Well, when you say it like that, yeah, it sounds pretty skanky. But I never would have pressured you. You know that. Right?”

“But that wasn’t your intention?”

“Like I said, I thought we were simpatico on this subject. At the time.”

Okay, maybe we were, that’s true. There are only so many extreme, heavy-metal, where did my bra go? make-out sessions you can have before you start to lose your mind a little.

“Please do go on and tell me what happened next in your romantic hotel scheme,” I say drily.

He sighs again. That’s not good. When he sighs a lot, it’s because he’s about to say something he doesn’t want to say. “So anyway, you may not remember this, but the day of homecoming, I wasn’t at lunch.”

I nod.

“I had sneaked off school grounds to reserve the hotel room. Only, I was worried the hotel wouldn’t let me, because I was sixteen, and I knew that other kids getting rooms there were using their parents’ credit cards, so . . . I sort of borrowed Mac’s credit card.”

“You . . .”

“Okay,” he admits. “I guess I stole it.”

“Oh, God.”

“I know. It was stupid. I wasn’t thinking straight. I thought I could charge the room, sneak the card back into Mac’s purse, snag the bill when it came in, and pay for it before Mac noticed. And Ina Kipling’s cousin was working the desk at the Edgemont Hotel—”

“Whoa. That’s—”

“Fancy. I know. Ina told a few of us about it in drama class. She claimed her cousin would bend the hotel’s minimum age policy, so I sneaked out of school and went to the Edgemont Hotel the day of homecoming. I was at the desk, and it was Ina’s cousin, and she asked me what name to put on the reservation, and I didn’t want to use our real names. So I panicked and used my dad’s name. And as I’m spelling out ‘Ahmed’ for Ina’s cousin, she’s asking me if I’m Arabic—which sort of pisses me off, because first, I’m not a language, and second, she’s acting like I’m a terrorist or something.”

I roll my hand to move Lennon along. Get on with it, man!

“And as we’re having this conversation, and I admit that Ahmed is actually my father’s name, she tells me that I have to give real names or she’ll get in trouble. So I give her my name and your name, and then, out of nowhere, your dad shoves me.”

Hold on. What?

“My dad?”

“Your dad,” he repeats in a voice that’s heavy with resentment.

“What in the world was he doing there?”

“He was apparently behind me in line and overheard the whole thing. Because he made a huge scene. We’re in the middle of this luxury hotel, with bellhops and gold luggage carts, and he’s screaming at me that if I so much as look at his daughter again, he will beat the shit out of me.”

I cringe, covering my eyes in horror as Lennon continues.

“Then he threatens Ina, saying that she should be fired for giving a hotel room to a minor, and . . .” Lennon sighs loudly. “It was horrible. I wanted to die. And then your dad snatched Mac’s credit card off the counter and demanded to know if my moms had sanctioned this. He called them ‘dyke heathens.’ ”

“Oh, Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah,” he says. “That’s when I lost it.”

“What happened?”

“I slugged him.”

WHAT? I stare at Lennon in disbelief.

“Yep,” Lennon says, tapping his thigh repeatedly with his knuckles. “Punched him the jaw. Hurt like hell. My knuckles were bruised for days.”

My mind flashes back to memories from last year. Dad had a swollen cheek and his jaw was bruised. He told us he’d been hit by falling scaffolding when he was walking past a construction site.

“After I landed the punch,” Lennon continues, “he started to go after me, but one of the hotel employees stepped in. And then Ina ran to get the manager. And . . . to make a long story short, your dad hauled me outside the hotel and said he wouldn’t call the cops and have me arrested for assault and battery if I stayed away from you. No homecoming dance. No visits at home. No talking at school. No phone calls or texts. He said he’d be monitoring your phone.”