I so want to say yes. I want to say yes so badly that I start to say yes, get out the initial y sound, and then clamp my mouth shut and shake my head no.
“So you just . . . thought you’d stop by?” Devon is trying so hard to make sense of this moment. I can see the effort on his face. He grimaces and blinks a lot and rubs his eyes and moves his chin in little circles, like he is caught between a head shake and a nod and a total seizure.
“I was looking for something?” I try to stop myself from up-speak, but now that I’ve started, there’s no way I’ll stop.
Devon takes a huge breath in. So large and deliberate that I watch his whole abdomen fill, watch his lungs expand under his almost-tight-but-not-quite gray T-shirt. I notice his red plaid pajama pants for the first time and get an unexpected surge of pleasure. One side of my mouth lifts into what could almost be considered a smile, which is an epic feat, considering.
“Are you okay, Tabby?”
“Yes?”
“You seem a little . . . off. Lately. Not in a bad way. But in a . . . noticeable way.”
“Life changes?” I say.
“Right.”
We stand in silence. There’s eye contact. The extended kind, where you almost don’t want to blink, so as not to break the connection. I’m afraid if I look away, even for an instant, we won’t ever find this steady gaze again.
I love the slow, unsurprised way he reacts to my total insanity. Like it’s okay that I’m a little crazy.
“So. What were you looking for? Let’s at least make it worth your while,” Devon says at last. He doesn’t take his eyes off me. He smiles. He has a tiny dimple in his chin and one in each cheek. He smiles like he’s holding in a laugh. Maybe it’s the pajama pants or the fact that he isn’t calling the police, or maybe it’s the rockiness of his voice this late at night, but he is gorgeous. All of a sudden.
“It’s dumb.” We’re both still whispering, but I go even quieter now that we’ve started this portion of the conversation.
Devon shrugs and flashes that smile again. Lets out a hushed chuckle. A bit of my heart lights up. It’s strange how easy it is for me to feel this way, pretty and alive.
I think a thought that makes me hate myself: Maybe if Joe got jealous, he’d realize he could love me, not her. I swallow. I have no idea what to do. Those photographs are so close to me, and maybe if I could get even the quickest glimpse, I’d have some vague idea of who I am.
“You don’t seem like the breaking-and-entering type,” Devon says at last, trying, I guess, to help me figure out how to explain myself.
“You can call the cops. Seriously. I probably need the consequences, you know? It’d probably be good for me or something.” My voice is shaking so much, I barely recognize it.
“Naw, I’m an accomplice now,” Devon says. He takes a step closer to me, looks at the bookcase, like maybe he’ll be able to figure out what I wanted. “Helping you steal. Aiding and abetting. I don’t know all the legal jargon, but it’s a serious offense.”
“Well, as long as we go down together,” I say. I don’t blush. I flame.
Devon does his low breathy chuckle again and picks out one of the family Bibles. “This what you wanted, I assume?” he says. I am going to kiss his dimples if his face gets any closer to mine. I’ve never kissed a dimple before. I giggle, but it comes out all choked.
“The photographs,” I say, and point at the binder. “I mean, I could just look at them. I don’t need to take them.”
“Don’t come this far and then give up,” Devon says.
The words make me shiver. He’s right. He doesn’t know how right he is.
Devon grabs the binder and opens it, and there I am. Me, but not me.
The me I used to be.
The very first picture is me in a pile of leaves. I could be six, but I’m fourteen maybe. I’m sitting, and the leaves cover most of my lap. I’ve thrown half the pile in the air, and they are raining down on me as I look up at my hands, still lingering above me. I am grinning. My ears look bigger than I think they do now, like I grew into them a bit, but not enough. In the photograph I’m wearing an oversize sweater and French braids and my eyes are squinting and mascara-less.
“That’s you,” Devon says. It’s almost a question.
“It used to be.”
The tears come back. I sniff and bite my cheeks and blink really fast to try to keep them inside, but they are the reckless kind, and by the time we’re on the next page, they are running down my cheeks. My face next to Jemma’s stares up at me. My mouth is wide open, my nose scrunched, my hands blurry with movement. I must have been telling some story. Jemma’s mouth is open too, and I can almost hear the laughter.