“What movie?”
“Any movie. I just want you in my room, pretty girl.” His hands run up and down from the top of my rib cage to my pointy hip bones, and he smiles at the curve they find there. I go in for a kiss. I want a little one, the kind that is mostly lips and nothing else. The kind that says, I care. I put a hand on his cheek and another around his waist and keep my lips pressed together, but he probes them apart. It feels good, the warmth, the hitch of desire, the swimming feeling in my head. But it’s not what I wanted. Today is not what I wanted.
“You’re so hot,” he says when I pull away. I miss our first kiss, and the way it seemed like it meant something. Without warning, without even the preliminary pulse of heat behind my eyes, I start to cry.
“Why’d you say that, about my friends? I can’t talk to you about stuff?” I try to keep the tears in the realm of pretty. I don’t sniff or snort or let the crying make its way to my mouth, where it would get all wet and distorted. I let the tears fall down my face and drip from my chin to the space between my body and Joe’s.
“I didn’t think you came here to talk,” Joe says. He keeps his voice in a whisper, like that makes the words he’s saying nice, somehow. He takes my pinkie finger with his hand, but that’s it. Just hangs on to that one tiny finger and rubs it with his thumb. “I do a lot of talking already, you know? I sort of . . . you’re sort of . . . a break from that stuff. Like, a vacation. Like the best vacation.”
I am a vacation. I am the Caribbean, and a fruity drink and a sunburn and a break from real life. But I am not real life. No one lives in the Caribbean. No one wants a fruity drink every day. I’d rather be water: necessary.
“Oh,” I say. The tears do not stop. Joe rubs his forehead like there’s an ache there.
“I have a girlfriend.” Whispered again. Thumb rubbing pinkie. Eyes on mine. He lifts his other hand to my face and brushes away some of the tears, but it’s a sloppy effort. He uses the rough back of his hand instead of one single, gentle finger, and he uses so much force that it hurts.
“I thought Sasha and you—”
“I mean, you know how stressful that all is for me. I have to be a total rock for her, and I’ve always liked how independent and confident and together you are.”
“I’m really not,” I say, hoping he will see me and hear me.
“I think you’re so awesome, you know? And I love hanging out with you and not worrying about anything.” Joe closes the little space between our bodies and comes in for another kiss. One hand snakes around to my ass and squeezes.
“I think I should go,” I say. It takes everything in me to say it, because those strong hockey-player arms are tight around me and kissing is the only thing I can think of to distract myself from the mess I’ve been making. I don’t know how I force the words out, except that the way he’s talking to me is suddenly so not the way you talk to the girl you are going to leave your girlfriend for.
“Come on . . .”
“I mean, you’re already sleeping with Sasha, right? And, like, comforting her and being at her beck and call and having sexy poems written about you. So I’m not really sure what you actually need me for, now that I think of it.” I’m saying it to the floor, mostly, but at least I’m saying it.
“I have feelings for you—” Joe sounds flustered, and his voice cracks on the word feelings.
“But not like your feelings for her,” I finish for him.
“I’m in love with her. It’s different.” He shoves his hands into his pockets and sighs, and I know that this is it, this is the place where we end. It might be the place where my heart stops beating, too. Everything stops, for thirty seconds following that statement. Then the hurt comes, fast and hard and shocking as hell.
“Right. Cool,” I say. I cannot believe I am able to say anything at all. He reaches for me again, even after that, but I don’t hug him good-bye. If I step into his arms and let my nose find the place near his collarbone that feels like some kind of home, I will forget why I have to go.
I listen to “Rainbow Connection” on the way home. Maybe most girls wouldn’t have the Muppets on every playlist on their iPods, but I am not most girls.
BITTY: It’s not a secret, but I’m a lot fucking stronger than I thought. Or maybe it is a secret.
And this is no secret either, but he loves his girlfriend, not me.
There are some replies, but not many. Agnes has posted a secret; the LBC spiral lights up to inform me that I can check in on her Assignment, but I don’t. I’m sick of Agnes, and I have enough going on in my own life.
I’d love an update from Star, so I can, like, believe in love again.
Twenty-One.
ZED: Seventeen hours to complete your Assignment, Bitty.
ELFBOY: Bring her down.