I don’t know that I’d ever noticed that moment of dialogue before seeing it through the Red Pen Margin Note Taker’s eyes. And I don’t know that it would have mattered much to me if I didn’t have LBC. But I get it now. It’s good for things to be messy. It’s not necessary to clean your life up all the time. You can let it grow wild.
“Tea Cozy?” Elise says, sneaking up behind me and grabbing my sides so that I drop my phone and have to scramble to pick it back up. “I could use some Elise-Tabby time.”
I swallow. I should not be saying no to the only person in school who doesn’t hate me. But my forehead is a Slip ’n Slide of sweat and I am in the midst of about a hundred life-changing epiphanies right now.
“How about tomorrow?” I say. “Bookstore and Cozy and catch-up?” I make it sound breezy.
“How about today?” Elise counters. She’s hopping from foot to foot. “You look like you need sugar. And a pep talk. And, like, I don’t even know. Ritalin? Where are you right now?” She taps my wrist with her thumb. I guess I’ve been twiddling my fingers and staring somewhere unfocused, not at her face. I shake my head awake.
“I think the word you are looking for is nap. I need a nap,” I say.
“You need to be taking better care of yourself,” Elise says. I know she’s not talking about Assignments or anything, but she’s right, of course she’s right. I need to be doing better. I need to be more.
“Totally,” I say, and take a huge breath.
I know I have to do the new Joe Assignment. Zed’s right. They’re all right. I’ve been living with all these rules and ideas of how to do things. I’ve been keeping my little garden tidy. And all it’s doing is holding me back from the life I want.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I bring it out. It’s another LBC update, a picture from Star: bare legs hanging off what I assume is her guy’s bed. Boys’ slippers on her tiny feet. The caption: No one in their right mind would leave something that feels this good. Don’t worry, Bitty. It all works out for the best. Promise. If there were a swell of music, this would be a movie, and I’d be trying to keep tears in by holding my forefingers under my bottom lashes. Since it’s not a movie, but actually my life, I take another lifesaving inhale.
“Um, hi?” Elise says. I’d completely forgotten she was even there. She cranes her neck to get a glance of what is distracting me on my phone, but I pull it away from her. “Keeping secrets?” She taps my wrist with her thumb again. She thinks it’s Joe.
“We can hang tomorrow, I promise, okay?” I say. She musters a lame smile and walks me to my car.
And when I’m halfway through my drive home, I call him.
Joe almost never answers his phone, but this time there’s a “Hello?” and the sound of his car, probably as it zips away from school to Sasha Cotton’s sickbed or whatever.
There is nothing better than hearing someone grin over the phone. I try to convey that same warmth right back, hoping he gets an identical rush of warmth from the unlikely softness, the intimacy of dropping my voice and squinting my eyes and holding the speaker so close to my mouth that we are almost kissing, our lips meeting across channels. No one has ever wanted something so badly. If sheer will were enough, our lips would be touching.
“What if I came over?” I say.
Joe laughs low. It hurts. My spine feels that laugh, the sexiness of it.
“Well, what if?” he says, and I know that’s a yes.
When I get to the door of his house, I can smell garlic simmering and a salty seafood scent. It hits me hard—I’m hungry.
Once I am safely inside his home, we hug and I feel the whole of his body against mine. I am so not over him. Every piece of me seems to line up with every piece of him: my thighs kiss his, my chest to his, our bellies and collarbones even find each other. He is only an inch or two taller than me, which some girls would hate but I find sexy. The meeting of our bodies feels good; the parallel body parts and the way they attach when we hug is a revelation every time.
“Hi,” I sigh out.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” It’s hard not to kiss, since our mouths line up too, but we resist, letting our breath mingle but keeping an inch or two between our faces.
“Want early dinner?” he says.
“With . . . you?” I am stupider around him. Not always, but now.
“Mom made seafood pasta. It’s really good. Her specialty.” I lick my lips nervously and he goes on. “I’m normally starving right after school, so she lets me have dinner right away if I don’t have practice. Weird, I know.”
“Oh wow.” I have not met Joe’s family, since I am not his girlfriend. I’ve been to his house two times, but only when his parents were out to dinner and only in a group of people wanting to get drunk. Seafood pasta and early dinner with the family is a new level of our relationship, and I can’t wait to tell Star about this leap.
“I’m starving too,” I say, and a smile finds its way onto my face. Then it grows into a grin. I’m screwed.
Fourteen.