Very Bad People by Kit Frick

Author:Kit Frick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Published: 2022-04-05T00:00:00+00:00

41

On the way to Manny’s Joint Tuesday morning, a text from Nico:

I might lose the nerve to say this in person, or when I’m fully awake, so here goes: can I ask you on a proper date, Calliope Bolan? You, me, somewhere off campus this evening?

A “proper” date. I beam.

Now it is evening, and we are walking into Alyson-on-Hudson. The moment we step through the entry arch and into town, Nico slips his hand into mine. Our feet keep time against the pavement, left and then right. Together, together, together.

We turn onto Chicory Lane, and I know I need to be brave again.

“Can I ask you something a little uncomfortable?”

“Sure, go for it.” Nico’s voice is light, but his hand twitches against mine. Or maybe it is my imagination.

I draw in a deep breath. “So on Saturday, we kissed. Twice. But since then, on campus, it’s been like before. Before the kiss,” I clarify unnecessarily. I hope Nico can’t see how red my cheeks are in the semidark. “Is there a protocol I don’t know, or are you embarrassed of me, or…?”

“Oh my god, no!” Nico looks horrified. He scrapes his free hand through his hair. “I thought I was following your lead, but now I don’t know why I thought that exactly. I may have kissed a couple more people than you, but the truth is, I don’t know what I’m doing either.” The streetlamp light catches his smile, shy and perfect.

“Oh!” I laugh, the tension inside my chest breaking into a thousand tiny bubbles. “We can be bad at this together.”

Nico laughs too. “Deal. I like you so much, Calliope. I was trying to not be too pushy, I think? I’ve never had a girlfriend at school before, so this is pretty new to me too.”

He likes me so much. I grin, big and goofy and uncontrollable. “Then we will figure this out.”

Nico tells me he has had two girlfriends, ever. Emily was his “camp girlfriend” for three weeks the summer between seventh and eighth grade, which sounds legitimate enough to me, but he insists hardly counts. A girl called Simone was his first real girlfriend. They started dating after his first year at Tipton, when he was home for the summer in New Hampshire. They stayed together long distance for all of sophomore fall, then broke up over winter break.

“So I don’t want you to think I have all this experience or anything,” Nico says. “I might do more stuff like forget to ask you what you actually want and assume I have things figured out when I clearly don’t. I might need you to tell me when I’m being dense, but please do tell me and don’t just let me keep being dense. Can I ask that? Is that okay?”

“That is more than okay.”

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