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I make the mistake of looking before she presses my hand down over it again, and I get seriously light-headed. Blood is my kryptonite. Massive amounts of puke I can handle, but I can’t do blood. Especially my own.
Josh Bennett laughs, and for one minute, everything is right in the world.
“Sit,” he repeats, and it’s gentle. Not a command. Not a request. Just the only thing left to do. “There’s no reason to keep hiding in the bathroom. Hide here. There’s a force field, you know.” He lowers his voice when he says it, like he’s telling me a secret, and then just barely hints at a smile that no one but me would catch before he puts it away and sobers, adding quietly, “No one will bother you.” So I sit. He’s on the backrest and I’m on the seat. We don’t touch. We don’t speak. We aren’t even at eye level with one another. And today, for the first time since I came to this school, the
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My grandfather died this morning. Nothing changed. I thought that when he died I would crack and cry and get drunk and throw shit because it was over, because he was the last one. But I didn’t. I didn’t break down. I didn’t punch holes in the wall. I didn’t start fights with every asshole in school. I just kept going like nothing even happened. Because it was all so incredibly normal.
I haven’t started counting yet. I wonder if it’s just me or if it’s like that for everybody; that every time someone dies you start counting how much time has passed since they’ve been gone. First you count it in minutes, then in hours. You count in days, then weeks, then months. Then one day you realize that you aren’t counting anymore, and you don’t even know when you stopped. That’s the moment they’re gone.
“Yeah, it’s sweet,” I say, not meaning it. “Except he didn’t actually meet her until three years after he had that accident; that’s why he didn’t get it at the time. But once he saw that swing and that house, then he knew. He knew he wasn’t supposed to die. He was supposed to come back so he could meet her because his heaven was where she was, even if he didn’t know it at the time. And that’s why he wasn’t scared.”
“He said”—and I’m almost embarrassed telling her this—“that every woman has one unforgivable thing, one thing that she’ll never be able to get past, and for every woman it’s different. Maybe it’s being lied to, maybe it’s being cheated on, whatever. He said the trick in relationships was to figure out what that unforgivable thing was, and to not do it.”
I’m used to being alone, but tonight I feel more alone. Like I’m not just alone in my house, I’m alone in the world. And maybe that’s its own blessing, because now I never have to do this again. Tonight when I climb into bed, I don’t even bother to count.
“What’d you wish?” “I can’t tell you that!” I say indignantly. “Why not?” “Because it won’t come true.” Do I really need to say this? I’m pretty sure it’s a given in wish situations. “Bullshit.” “It’s the rule,” I insist. “It’s only the rule with birthday cakes and shooting stars, not pennies in fountains.”
“No one ever asks. Like they think they’re doing me a favor. That if they don’t bring it up, I won’t have to think about it. I never stop thinking about it. Just because I don’t talk about it doesn’t mean I forget. I don’t talk about it because no one ever asks.”
I wonder if I’m supposed to say something, but I don’t want to, because if I say something I’m afraid I might say everything.
“I’d ask you, you know. If I was allowed. I’d ask you a thousand times until you’d tell me. But you won’t let me ask.”
“I wished that my hand would work again,” I tell him when he climbs in after me. It was my first wish and the only one that mattered. “I wished my mother was here tonight, which is stupid, because it’s an impossible wish.” He shrugs and turns to me, drowning the smile that cracks me every time. “It’s not stupid to want to see her again.” “It wasn’t so much that I wanted to see her again,” he says, looking at me with the depth of more than seventeen years in his eyes. “I wanted her to see you.”
She reaches over and finds my arm, just below my shoulder and follows it until she reaches my hand. It reminds me of the way she touched the piano keys earlier, and I can feel the trail her fingers leave all the way down my arm. There’s a comfort that wasn’t here a moment ago. Then, without a word, she curls up next to me and that’s how we fall asleep. Her hand in mine. Together.
“When you look at her what do you feel?” “Are you fucking serious? Forget it.” He can kiss my ass if he wants to start talking feelings with me. “You obviously want it for a reason.” “I want a picture to jack off to. What do you care?” I keep drawing so I don’t have to look at him, but I’m mutilating the sketch I’m working on. I’ll have to start over, but I don’t care. “Joy, fear, frustration, longing, friendship, anger, need, despair, love, lust?” “Yes.” “Yes, what?” “All of it,” I reply, because I’m all in now whether I like it or not. “I can have it to you in a couple of days.”
She really is a pretty girl; she just always looks mad, but maybe that’s just when she’s looking at me.
“I’m afraid I might break you,” I say when she makes me come at her again. Really I’m afraid she’s going to break me. She’s freakishly strong. She snatches a piece of paper from the counter, scribbles on it, and shoves it at me. Her eyes are narrowed in challenge and I try not to smile. You’ll have to try harder than that to break me. Quit being a pussy!!!!!
I closed my eyes, and for the first time since I had been with Leigh, it wasn’t her face I was picturing. I didn’t see blond hair and green eyes and simple and uncomplicated. I saw dark hair, dark eyes, dark, complicated, frustrating, messed-up everything. And the moment I broke away and opened my eyes to look at the girl pulling my shirt up over my head, I knew what I would lose if I did this. There was never a price before, but now there was and it wasn’t worth it.
“Why does it mean anything to you?” “Because she’s mine and I don’t want you touching her.” I’m a five-year-old fighting over a toy. I feel like an idiot as soon as I say it, but it’s said and it’s true. And I don’t want it to be. “I know,” he says arrogantly. “You know?” “I’m not stupid, Josh. The two of you have been eye-fucking each other since the beginning of school. I wasn’t going to do anything with her and she was never going to do anything with me.” “Then why all the bullshit tonight?” “Just wanted to hear you say it.” He smiles and heads back toward the house. I’m too relieved to be
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“Because I know you, and no one makes you do anything you don’t want to do. If you didn’t want to come, you wouldn’t come. And if you didn’t come, you wouldn’t be here. So it follows that if you didn’t want to come, you would not be here right now. But you are here, so by the transitive property of Sunshine, you want to be here.” “I hate you.” “I know that too,” I say nonchalantly, and one side of her mouth turns up in response.
“I like finding things no one else is looking for. Things that got lost or forgotten, shoved in a corner. Stuff I never knew existed. I don’t even need to buy it. I just like to find it and know that it’s there. That’s the part I like.”
“Usually you get all flowery and descriptive talking about the curves of the wood and the symmetry of the lines and the marriage of form and function.” She puts on a pretentious tone and waves her hand around in the air. “I talk like that?” “When you talk about wood and furniture you do.” “I sound like a pompous ass.” “If the shoe fits.”
The iridescent painted cat she insisted I buy her is between us on the seat, and I can’t wait to get home because it’s scaring the crap out of me. I think she saw the fear in my eyes when she picked it up at the store, and after that, there was no way she was walking out without it. I told her I’d rather buy her a bracelet to replace the one she lost on her birthday, because I really did feel shitty about that, but she said no. She said it would be inappropriate, whatever that means. I guess nightmarish ceramic cats are acceptable because that’s what she’s got. Every time she looks at it she
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She cradles the cat under her arm and reaches for the door handle, stopping to look at me before she jumps out. “Just so you know,” she says, her smile fading as her eyes lock onto mine. “You didn’t lie.”
I’m in her driveway before she can get her key in the door. I left my house as soon as she was off my street, because fuck if I can do this anymore.
“You know I meant it. I am human. And male. And not remotely blind. Do you want me to say it again? You are distractingly, even-if-that-is-not-a-real-word, pretty. You are so pretty that I bullied Clay Whitaker into drawing me a picture of you so I could look at you when you aren’t around. You are so pretty that one of these days I’m going to lose a finger in my garage because I can’t concentrate with you so close to me. You are so pretty that I wish you weren’t so I wouldn’t want to hit every guy at school who looks at you, especially my best friend.” I stop to catch my breath. “More? I can
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“I’ve changed my clothes at your house a hundred times. You never try to look. I sleep in your bed. You never come near me.” “I didn’t know I was allowed.” “You were waiting for permission?” She looks at me like I’m insane, and I wonder if I am. “I said I was male. I didn’t say I was an asshole.” The silence that used to be so comfortable is torture right now, so I fill it. “I’m not Drew.”
“Will you have dinner with me tomorrow night?” I spit the words out before I can talk myself out of them. “It’s Sunday. We always have dinner together.” “No. Just us.” “You don’t want to go to Drew’s?” She looks confused. “No.” I definitely do not want to go to Drew’s. “Why not? Are you still pissed about the sex thing? He said he told you it wasn’t true.” “I’m trying to ask you out, and you’re making it really impossible.” She stops spinning the baton. “Why would you ask me out?” “Isn’t that what people do? Go on dates?” People still do that, right? Leigh never expected movies and dinner
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I trace my thumb under her bottom lip and back away before I let myself kiss her, because I’ve been waiting to kiss her for months and I don’t want to do it standing in the foyer while she has a weapon in her hand and we just got done talking about Leigh.
“What is it about that girl that makes everyone think they have some sort of ownership or obligation to protect her?” Me, included. “In case you haven’t noticed she should probably be the one protecting all of us.”
“I’ve done that before. I just haven’t done this before.” I motion back and forth between myself and the direction of Nastya’s house even though he probably has no idea what I’m doing.
She places it on her stomach and it’s the weirdest feeling in the world. I almost expect an alien to burst through her abdomen at any moment.
“You look different,” he says, repeating the same words he used the first night I ended up at his house, and I smile because it’s exactly how I’d like to look tonight. “And distractingly pretty,” he adds softly, his lips turning up just slightly.
And then we drive. And we drive. And we drive. “Seriously, Josh. What the hell?” No wonder he picked me up so early. We’re on a freaking road trip. “You’ve said that four times since we left.” “Yeah. Because seriously, Josh. What the hell? Where are we going?” “Close your eyes. Relax. I’ll let you know when we’re there.”
“Sorry,” he says. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a really long time, I just wanted to do it again.” “How long?” “Since the first night you walked into my garage.” “I’m glad you didn’t,” I confess. “Why?” “I had just thrown up. I think it would have ruined the moment.”
It’s perfect and I want it to stay perfect, but nothing ever does. People like Josh Bennett and I don’t get perfect. Most of the time, we don’t even get remotely tolerable. And that’s why it scares me. Because, even if there was such a thing to begin with, perfect never lasts.
And with that, he backs his truck out of the driveway, and we go home.
I have to tell him something, so I tell him what I know is true. “Sometimes I just forget how to breathe.”
“Sell it to someone who’s buying, Sunshine. Have you seen the way he looks at you?” I’ve seen the way he looks at me, but I don’t know what it means. “Like you’re a seventeenth-century, hand-carved table in mint condition.” “So he looks at me like I’m furniture.” “Exactly. See? You know what I’m talking about.”
“I just like your hands,” he continues, not taking his eyes off them. “Sometimes I think they’re the only real thing about you.” He says things like that a lot. Like he’s reminding me that just because he doesn’t ask the questions, it doesn’t mean he forgets they exist.
“You’re going to move the love of your life into the middle of the room where Drew can violate it with his shoes any time he likes?” This is genuinely surprising because I know how Josh feels about that table. “Since when did it become the love of my life?” He sounds bemused. “You talk about it like it’s a girl.” “What can I say?” He shrugs. “That table makes me want to be a better man. Jealous?”
“Just so you know,” I inform him, “one day, I’m going to get tired of sharing your affection with that coffee table and I’m going to make you choose.” “Just so you know,” he mimics me, “I would chop that table up and use it for firewood before I would ever choose anything over you.” It’s a ridiculous thing to say, but he nails me with those eyes, making sure I know he’s serious and I wish he wouldn’t do that.
“Any. Just one. Just something. Tell me something true.” His arms are solid, wrapping around me, pressing my back against his chest, and it feels more like truth than anything has in such a long time. But I still have nothing to give him. “I don’t even know what that is anymore.”
We haven’t become normal; we’ve become expected. And not just by everyone at school. I’ve come to expect us, too. I expect her. I expect her here. I expect her at home. I expect her in my life. And it’s terrifying.
I’m more at peace with Josh than anywhere else in the world, and I want to run away before I ruin us both.
There are a thousand words in his eyes, but all he says is, “Sunshine?” It’s not my name. It’s a question. Or maybe it’s more than one, but I don’t let him say anything else.
“Are you okay?” He’s inside me but he still doesn’t move. His hands are on either side of my face, and he looks like he’s scared of me. “Yes,” I whisper, but I don’t know if it comes out. I don’t know if I’m okay. It shouldn’t be possible to be this close to another person. To let them crawl inside you.
Nothing about her is real. I’ve had her sitting in front of me for months and I didn’t see her. I didn’t hear her. I didn’t know her any better than everyone else. I feel like I’ve failed somehow. Failed me, failed her, failed us.
The world should be full of Josh Bennetts. But it’s not. I had the only one. And I threw him away.
It’s been five weeks since she walked out of my house. I started counting the second the door closed. I wonder when I’ll stop.
