The Sea of Tranquility

by Katja Millay

They just stopped. He said Enough and that was that. Because I said so. End of story. Don’t make me have to tell you twice.

I’m wondering if I’m allowed to hate Josh Bennett, because I’m thinking I might start.

Josh Fucking Bennett. By now, I’m pretty sure that if I was to find his birth certificate, that is exactly what it would say.

Josh Bennett doesn’t ask anybody to stay.

“How come you call her honey and never use terms of endearment on me?” he fake whines. “I do,” Mrs. Leighton says, patting him on the cheek as she walks by. “Just last week I called you the bane of my existence.” “That’s right,” he says. “That was a good day.”

He made sure there was no place for me to sit on the counter so I’d be forced to notice it. Because the chair was meant for me. The realization is enough to propel my ass straight up and out of that chair. He looks up, jarred by the sudden movement, and for a moment we just stare at one other. I must look like a crazed animal, ready to bolt like the first night I walked in here. I can say what I’m thinking, but I don’t need to. He already knows. “It’s only a chair.” He’s talking me down off a ledge.

I have one of Josh Bennett’s secrets now. He gave it to me. I wish I could give it back.

Josh Bennett laughs, and for one minute, everything is right in the world.

“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.”

“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 can tell he’s still struggling to understand, to make this fit into his view of the world, but it never will. And it shouldn’t. It has no place in the world, no matter how often it happens.

I need to know that there’s a way for people like us to end up okay.

“I love you, Sunshine,” I tell her, before I lose my nerve. “And I don’t give a shit whether you want me to or not.”