“We can be something?” I say, and hate myself for repeating his words and for being this girl right now. Belle and Sebastian whistles through the speakers, the sound of sweet indie love, and I could kill Cate for obviously changing the playlist to suit my mood.
“Something,” he says, and now we’re caught in a loop of longing and regret and an unidentifiable third thing . . . is that deceit? Danger? I don’t know, but it makes Sasha’s stupid poem run through my head again. I flush, which Joe must take as a good sign, because he reaches out and brushes my fingers with his. It is the smallest and best gesture imaginable.
“Hey,” he says, and it’s so quiet I take a step closer in. The heat from the fire singes the backs of my legs. I’m uncomfortable, but I just can’t step away. “Please don’t hate me. I couldn’t take that. You know I feel—”
But the door opens and I recognize the sound of Sasha entering, because she sighs when she enters a room. She sighs so much, I think it might be her way of breathing, but Tea Cozy is tiny and I don’t have to look to know that the pretty, half-vocalized exhale expelled right in time with the chimes on the door belongs to her.
The leap in my chest makes me grab at Joe’s fingers, but that of course makes him pull his hand away, and the result is an awkward moment when I lose my balance a little and my hand grips into a fist and the cookie I never set down on the table falls from the plate to the floor.
“You really couldn’t meet somewhere else?” I hiss, choosing now to get pissed at him, even though Sasha can probably hear the tail end of what I’ve said.
“Oh my gosh! You dropped something!” Sasha says in her breathy, always-surprised voice. “Joe, were you buying me a cookie?” She leans over to kiss him on the mouth before he has a chance to answer.
I can’t look away.
“Joe knows I love cookies,” Sasha says. Then she giggles, as if what she’s said is dangerous or quirky or adorable or in any way even remotely unique.
Doesn’t everyone like cookies? Isn’t that more or less the actual definition of the word cookie?
“Oh,” I eke out. “That’s sweet of him.” Sasha bats her eyes like a cartoon-character version of herself and smushes into the armchair with Joe, so that the two of them are piled on top of each other.
Joe’s not correcting her, not telling her I brought the cookie over myself, or that it was some other table’s cookie or anything. He’s actually going to sit there while she rubs his thigh and take the credit. Still looking sheepish at least, but mute, too. He keeps pressing his lips together and opening them again, like a fish who gets less attractive by the minute.
What’s the word for being red-hot-angry and kind of shamefully in love at the same time? That. That is what I am feeling right now, while Belle and Sebastian sing what should be my anthem, “Get Me Away from Here, I’m Dying.”
“Can you bring a replacement cookie?” Sasha says. I hadn’t even realized I was still standing here.
“Oh, sure,” I say. Sasha giggles again and blushes. There is no reasonable explanation for the sudden modest flush on her cheeks, but Joe likes it, that much is obvious. He brushes some hair out of her face. He smiles like she is a child and he must take good care of her. All that and she’s a fragile, emotionally disturbed sex addict, apparently. I am rocked with the understanding that I can never compete, no matter how low my shirt is or how silky and straight I get my hair or how dark and screw-you my eyeliner is. I have the cleavage and the make-up, but Sasha has the little-girl voice and the mystical-creature look and has actual sex. She doesn’t need cleavage, I guess. My toes turn in toward each other, and I cannot think of a single word to say or a single move to make.
I clear my throat and hate the fact that I am weirdly shy in any situation that actually matters.
“I’ll help you pick one out,” Joe says, unwrapping himself from Sasha’s legs just as I have taken one half step away from Sasha and her watery eyes. It’s only a few steps to the counter where we keep the extensive cookie selection, but it feels marathon long. After my seriously heated stare, Cate gets the hint to move to the other end of the counter. Her eyes flit to Sasha Cotton, to Joe, to me, to the cookies, and then to Paul. I stare harder, until she turns away and busies herself with unsticking a bottle of honey.
“I’m sorry,” Joe whispers as we gaze at the oversize cookies and superthick brownies in the display case. “You hate me.”
“I don’t hate you,” I say, and roll my eyes at myself. I take a huge inhale and let the exhale out in a perfect slow stream of breath.
“I know this all sucks,” he says. If Sasha strained, she could hear us, I’m sure. “Let me get you a cookie. I’ll buy you whatever you want.”