“Yeah . . .” Even though I know he’s with Sasha and I guess kind of loves Sasha, or at least likes sleeping with her, it hurts to hear him say he has feelings for “two people.” It slips out of his mouth so easily, but it thuds in my head, the worst reality, the thing I don’t want to believe.
That stupid kitchen clock almost sounds like it’s speeding up, but I know it’s actually my anxiety that’s getting higher and faster. This is my chance.
“I like you for different reasons, you know?” Joe’s musing. I don’t want to hear him muse about his feelings. I get the sense a pro-con list could be coming, and I don’t need to be lined up against the messy-sexy neediness that is Sasha Cotton, so I cut him off with the first and only thing I can think of that will shut him up. And the last thing I actually want to do.
“Yeah, I totally know,” I say. “About liking two people.”
My phone buzzes. I can hear it going crazy in my purse, but I know it’s Cate and Paul calling to see where I am. I forgot to tell them about my impromptu after-school trip.
“You . . . do?” Joe says. His hand moves to the place between my shirt and the back of my jeans. It finds that little patch of skin and tortures me.
“I really, really do, actually,” I say. “I know all about it.” Assignment completed? the voice in my head asks. I could go further. I could push even more against all my impulses. His hand is rubbing my back. Tracing circles around the discs of my spine, and I am dizzy from the wonderfulness of it all.
“I don’t want to share you,” he says. And he comes in for a kiss, right there in his kitchen with his mom humming along with the TV commercials upstairs. The kitchen is still warm from all the cooking and Joe himself is warm, and nothing has ever felt this damn good.
It works. Doing something brave and strange and unexpected. Because the aftermath, too, is strange and unexpected and brand fucking new. I am on cloud nine.
Until: Joe comments on the buzzing of my phone, in between kisses, and I go to shut it off. I can’t stop myself from checking LBC for updates, while the phone is in my hand anyway. I want to find a way to type in Assignment completed, update soon, but I know Joe will ask what in the world I am doing. He’s watching me from his chair. I open up the website and let my eyes linger long enough on the page to see the red exclamation point on my profile page. Zed has come up with the other Assignment for me.
I click the link and look, bend over my phone at a strange angle so that he can’t see.
ASSIGNMENT: Time to bond with your dad. Get high with him.
I gasp. I don’t know that I’ve ever gasped in real life, but I do it now and it’s loud. “Kinda insulting when your phone is more interesting than, you know, this,” Joe says. I look his way, but my heart’s pounding from the seriousness of this new Assignment. I almost give in to the terror of what I have to do.
But.
But.
But Joe’s right there and his lips are still wet from the kissing and his mother calls out to say she is going to go out for groceries. And I’m going to do something terrifying and life-altering in the next twenty-four hours, so I might as well do something ecstatic and ridiculous right now.
I rush at him. Forget about my chair. Climb onto his lap. And dive at his mouth.
I keep one hand wrapped around my phone. I can’t let it go. I can’t let go. I want to be only in this moment, but right outside this moment, visible even from the gooey, sweet center of it, are Sasha Cotton and my Assignment and the fact that everyone hates me and that my parents both have hoarse voices from all the yelling. It’s a crowded view, and impossible to ignore. The kissing is beautiful, but everything else we have to contend with is neon and unrelenting and loud.
“Tell me about this other guy,” Joe says, when the kissing has subsided and my shirt is half off and my bra strap’s pulled down nearly to my elbows. He is distracted too.
“Other guy?” I say. My mind is a black hole. I couldn’t come up with the capital of our own state if it killed me, let alone grasp what Joe’s getting at.
“You said you get having feelings for two people. . . .” He’s rubbing my bare back, and his eyes are huge and maybe even brimming with real live feelings.
“Oh. Right.” I’d momentarily forgotten that I was still in the middle of building a whole other lie. I’m not the best liar anyway. I shrug and lower my eyes and try to go in for a kiss.
“I need to know,” he says. “It’s only fair.”
“He’s a little older,” I start, going nowhere. “Skinny. Sarcastic. Not like you at all. Likes weird music and, you know, readings at the bookstore. He reads a lot.” I ramble on for a moment before realizing what I’m doing.
I am describing Devon.