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"JESUS CHRIST!" SHARICE shouts. She flops onto her bed and throws one arm over her forehead in mock distress. "Stop. This is too much for me. I can't listen to this anymore."
I've just finished telling Sharice and Evan what happened on the balcony last night, and Sharice, needless to say, is beside herself.
"For someone who spent half of the night glued to Jude at the lips, you're awfully worked up about a kiss," Evan comments. He's sitting at the foot of the bed, still in his pajamas despite the fact that it's almost noon.
"Shush," she says. "This isn't about me. This is about Casey!" She turns to me expectantly. "So then what happened?"
"Thought you couldn't listen anymore?" Evan jeers.
"I recover fast." Sharice nods for me to continue.
"Oh. Well, that's ... pretty much it. I was halfway through an extremely witty imitation of her to which she cut me off and kissed me."
I feel my mouth stretching into a smile thinking about it. Izzie. Izzie. Izzie.
"It was very ... overwhelming," I continue. "Like, I know that it was just a kiss, and people kiss other people all the time and have totally forgotten about it by the next day. But there have been so many times when this could have happened but didn't, or when I wanted it to happen but couldn't make myself do anything, or when she obviously wanted it to happen but I told her I would rather get with a mathlete. And then, last night, it just felt like it was all happening at once, like there was so much waiting and angst and excitement all leading up to that one moment, right there, and then it was so ... natural. It was so easy. And it was so easy to get lost in. It was so ... woah."
Silence. Evan is impassive but clearly attentive. Sharice has this expression on her face that almost looks sad, which is both confusing and slightly concerning.
"Did that sound stupid?" I cringe. "See, this is why I didn't want to get into it. Because I knew I would start talking and sound ridiculous and now I'm-"
"No!" Sharice assures. "That wasn't ridiculous at all! I just didn't know what to say because-well, because I don't know if I've ever actually felt that way before. When I'm with Jude, I'm happy, obviously, and I think he's a cool guy, and I'm very attracted to him, but it's nowhere near that level of-what's the word..."
"Intensity," Evan suggests.
"Yeah! I'm into him, but there's very little panic and angst and craziness," Sharice says, waving her hands in the air to punctuate the words. "When we make out, I mostly just feel ... fun. I feel fun, and I feel flirty."
"Fun and flirty," I repeat. "What's that like?"
She throws her pillow at me. "Don't act like you can't be fun and flirty, Casey! Otherwise, we'll have to call up Archie and ask him to serve as a reference."
"Yeah, but that was middle school. That should be another general life rule. Nothing from middle school counts, because we were in middle school and therefore dumbasses."
Sharice gives me a mischievous look. "Suree."
"It's not even really about me," I raise my voice over the sound of them laughing. "It's Izzie. It's Izzie and her whole ..."
I squint my eyes and tilt my head to the side, trying to imitate that look that Izzie gets sometimes. Like the meaning of life will become clear if she just muses hard enough on whatever happens to be in front of her at the time.
"The point is," I start, when my impression gets nothing more but raised eyebrows and a puzzled look, "the two of us could be playing checkers and it would probably feel momentous and emotionally loaded. Because it's Izzie, and that's the type of person she is."
"Uh-huh." Sharice pauses. "And do you ... like that?"
"I don't know ..." I trail off.
The one thing I haven't shared with Sharice and Evan is the whole Izzie-being-depressed thing, because I still don't know what to make of it, and it doesn't really seem like my place to share.
I hesitate and Sharice starts talking about how she and Jude might go on a double date with Victoria and her boyfriend next weekend, and then Evan mentions that he and some senior on the debate team really hit it off last night, and then Sharice spends the next hour grilling him because she swears he's incapable of maintaining non-platonic relationships.
The next thing I know, it's midafternoon and we only have an hour and a half to clean the entire house before Sharice's parents get home from their two-day trip.
So I put the rest of my thoughts and feelings about Izzie's thoughts and feelings on the back burner. It's been an eventful enough Halloween.
