Come over. Now. I miss you.
Six words, and the whole world changes. I don’t even think. I drive. I drive fast and straight and smiling until I’m in his driveway. If it’s not a sign of our soul-mate status, it’s at least a sign that things are coming together, that the things I’m doing are adding up into something beautiful.
Joe and me together is something beautiful.
His mouth is on mine before I can say hello.
He tastes brand-new, like he just squirted a tube of toothpaste into his mouth and doused himself in cologne and aftershave. I can taste the effort, and it doesn’t have the appeal of Joe’s messier side. I pull back.
“Hey there,” I say, and touch his face like it has all the answers written in braille on it.
“Hey, sexy,” Joe says, but the words are lost in my mouth and accompanied by his hands squeezing my ass.
“It’s been, like, the worst few days,” I say. He helps me out of my coat and I take a few steps in the direction of his kitchen, with the idea that he’ll offer me some water and we can sit at the breakfast bar and talk for hours, the way we used to do online but haven’t been doing lately.
“Been missing you,” he says. His tongue lingers over the s of miss, and the little whistle of breath makes it sound like a huge lie. He has a shit-eating grin and he wraps one hand around my waist, pushes me gently against the wall. We kiss for a minute, so hard I forget to breathe and I think, yeah, okay, I could get lost in this instead of talking. This is the swooning part anyway, right? This is the passion. I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him in closer, think about relaxing my shoulders, which keep inching up to my ears like they have a mind of their own when they’re under this much stress.
I pull back again, try to do it the way a sexy person might. Slowly and looking into his eyes, with a little sigh like, I can’t really handle how great this feels so I’m going to take a quick breather. It works, and I get some eye contact, and there’s a crazy spin-cycle feeling in my stomach at how much I think I could really love this guy whose hands are holding me steady as tiny bits of my world fall apart.
“People sort of, like, know. About you and me. And they all are hating me. Are they hating you?” It’s not exactly a romantic thing to say, but he rubs my back and kisses my earlobe like it totally is.
“Don’t you worry about me. I’m fine. Okay? I’ve got it under control.” He moves his lips to my throat. He doesn’t ask me if I’m doing okay. I don’t tell him not to worry about me. If anything, I’m trying to tell him to worry about me. He pushes his hands into my hair. My whole scalp tingles in the most incredible way. I wonder if I could faint from my hair being touched.
“I mean, honestly everything is sort of falling apart at once, you know?” I say, doing my best to not give in to how good his hands feel. I want to talk, not make out. I want him to hear me. “My parents are totally freaking out,” I say. “Like, get this, my mother is taking some time off from, um, living with us. What is that? That’s not normal, right?”
“Totally weird.”
I sort of wiggle out of his arms so we can look at each other and have an actual, nongroping conversation. It works for about a second.
“Is everyone talking about it?” I say. “Do people know? It’s so weird. They’re so weird.”
“Yeah,” Joe says, but his eyes are looking down into the space between my breasts. “I don’t know, you should ask your friends.”
“My friends?” I say. The word, even, is a punch in the stomach.
“Your friend, I guess,” Joe says. I think it is supposed to be a joke. He gives a laugh that is mostly breath and assholery, and shrugs. A month ago, online, I described what happened with Jemma the night of the dance last spring. I described every detail, down to the dress I was wearing (yellow, vintage chiffon, scoop neck, knee-length), the song that was playing (Beyoncé. “Single Ladies.” Practically mocking me.), the relative temperature (so hot I had to put my hair into a terrible makeshift bun) and the look on Jemma’s face (contempt mixed with envy and topped with an extra sprinkle of total disappointment in me as a human being).
The point being, Joe knows how it is I ended up with no one but Elise on my side, and the idea that he would joke about it makes my head spin. I give him this look I think is maybe meant for just the two of us. The kind of look you give your boyfriend in the middle of a crowded room that communicates something particular and sacred between the two of you.
“Let’s go watch a movie in my room,” he says. Like the look didn’t even hit him.