Rules for Being a Girl

“Oh!” I was fully expecting to wait in the car, peering up at the mismatched windows and trying to figure out which one belonged to him; the thought of seeing the actual inside of his apartment has my heart doing backflips inside my chest. There’s a part of me that wants to text Chloe right this second. Another part of me never wants to tell her at all. “Um, okay.”

The hallway inside the house is overwarm and violently wallpapered, cabbage roses in aggressive pinks and fuchsias. A dusty chandelier casts dim, dramatic light across his face.

“Watch yourself,” he says as I follow him up the staircase, nodding at a place where the maroon carpet is peeling up off the tread. “My mom won’t even come visit me here anymore. She thinks she’s going to break her leg or get lead poisoning or something. She sends me real estate listings for these renovated, dorm-looking condos like every single day.”

“Aw,” I say. An image has started to form in my head of Bex’s parents: stern and mostly humorless, the kind of classic New England WASPs we read about in The Wapshot Chronicle at the beginning of the year. I feel like he’s probably lonely in a family like that. “I think it’s great.”

As promised, the Franzen book is sitting on the table in Bex’s tiny foyer. He hands it over, and I tuck it into my backpack, but instead of herding me back out onto the sidewalk like I’m expecting, he slings his messenger bag over a teetering coatrack and shrugs out of his jacket.

“You hungry?” he asks, putting a hand on my shoulder for the briefest of moments before heading toward the narrow kitchen. “I’m just gonna grab something to drink before we go.”

I shake my head. “I’m okay,” I say, letting a tiny breath out as I hear him open the refrigerator. I don’t want him to catch me gawking, but I can’t stop looking around, wanting to commit all of it to memory: the worn leather sofa and the antique desk strewn with papers, the shelves and shelves of books. He’s got actual art on his walls—real paintings by actual artists, nothing like the scrolly Live Laugh Love canvases my mom is always buying at HomeGoods and hanging on every available surface. A wine crate full of records sits next to a turntable by the window.

I creep farther into the living room, pulling an album out of the pile and turning it over: Nina Simone Sings the Blues. The sleeve has gone slightly fuzzy around the corners from being handled. I don’t know anything about her, but I make a mental note to google her so I can drop her into conversation later on.

“Whatcha looking at?” Bex asks, coming into the room behind me and peering over my shoulder, a bottle of flavored fizzy water in one hand. His whole house smells like him, coffee and something that might be incense; there are more books stacked in the fireplace, a basket of New Yorkers overflowing on the hearth.

I hold up the record, turning to face him. “Do you actually listen to these?” I ask.

Bex smirks. “Yeah, smarty-pants,” he says. “Sound quality is way better than Spotify or whatever.”

“Is that true?” I ask. “Or is it just, like, what they tell you at Urban Outfitters to make you spend more money?”

Bex’s eyes widen. “I don’t get my records at Urban fuckin’ Outfitters,” he says with a laugh, reaching out and taking the album gently from my hand.

“Oh no?” I ask, thrilled and a tiny bit horrified by his language.

Bex grins, a flash of perfectly straight teeth. “No,” he says, lacing his fingers through mine

and tugging me a step closer to him. “I get them at a record store, like a person with half an ounce of self-respect.”

I make a quiet sound then, not quite a laugh, startled by the contact and the movement and the sudden suspicion that something bad is about to happen. He reaches out and pushes a loose strand of hair away from my face.

I don’t have time to register any of it though, because that’s when Bex puts his free hand on my cheek, ducks his head, and kisses me.

My brain shorts out for a second, lights flickering during a thunderstorm. It’s like his mouth is pressed to someone else’s, not mine. I stand there frozen and let him do it in the moment, until I feel his hand move down from my face toward my chest. Suddenly every panic response in my body comes screaming to life.

“Um,” I yelp, pulling away and taking an instinctive step backward. My neck feels like it’s on fire. My skin is two sizes too small. “What are you doing?”

“Easy,” Bex says immediately—holding his hands up in surrender, a half smile playing across his face. “I thought you—” He breaks off, clearing his throat. “Easy.”

“Um,” I say again, taking another step toward the doorway. I remember my mom once describing going out to dive bars in her twenties, how at the end of the night the bartender would suddenly shut off the music and turn the lights all the way up, the fun abruptly over and the whole world in stark relief. “No, I just—I should probably go.”

“Oh! Yeah, totally,” Bex says. He pats his pockets, flustered. “Lemme just grab my keys and I can—”

“You know what?” I shake my head. “It’s not too far from here. I can totally walk.”

Bex frowns. “Marin,” he says. “Hey. Can we just talk for a—”

“That’s okay,” I say, my voice canary-bright and maybe a little hysterical. “We’re totally good, I swear.” I gesture toward the doorway. “I should. Um. Enjoy your weekend!”

I thunder down the narrow stairs and hoof it all the way home, even though it’s freezing—my hands jammed in my pockets and a cold wind slicing through my coat. My mom is in the kitchen when I get inside, gathering ingredients for a winter spice cake to bring to my gram while Gracie plays chess on her laptop at the kitchen table.

“Hey,” she says, setting the bag of flour on the counter. “I was wondering what happened to you.” She looks at me for a moment, eyes narrowing like possibly she can see the blood moving under my skin. “What’s wrong?”

I hesitate for a moment, gaze flicking back and forth between my mom and my sister. I have no idea what to say. If I’m being honest with myself, there’s always been a tiny part of me that wondered if maybe some of the stuff Bex said wasn’t totally aboveboard, if a teacher that chill and funny—and, okay, hot—was too good to be true. If sometimes his attention didn’t feel . . . different. But I said yes to the ride anyway, didn’t I? I sat with him in the newspaper office.

I agreed to go over to his house.