“What are we doing?” I say in between kisses, but I know the answer. What I want is for him to say it’s over with Sasha Cotton and that we are marking the start of our new, committed, totally legitimate and morally palatable relationship. This is not going to happen, but asking makes it feel like I am doing my moral duty.
Joe pulls back, and we have the sort of extended eye contact that could make me do something terrible, which is exactly what I’m doing.
“You’re so beautiful,” Joe says, and tucks my hair behind my ear. He kisses my neck, and I let him, because we’ve been chatting almost every night until two or three in the morning for the last month and I’m not friends with his girlfriend, Sasha Cotton, anyway, and being against him is better than any other single feeling I think I’ve ever had.
“Thanks,” I say, and blush hard. I push Sasha Cotton out of my head and focus on the certainty in Joe’s eyes.
“I really want to just be here with you,” he says, moving his face so close to mine that our noses touch. Then my hand is on the back of his neck and my lips are locked on his and I’m basically saying, with my mouth and my hips and the swing in toward his body, I trust you.
When we finally break apart, Joe holds my face in his hands and I grin so hard it hurts.
“What are we gonna do?” he says.
I think he should leave Sasha Cotton and become my boyfriend, but short of that I think we should keep kissing. Of course, I can’t say that. I’d sound like some old corny movie, and I’m simply not willing to be that person around him. So we sit and stare at each other for the longest five seconds in the history of the world. I think of when Joe and I first started talking in the parking lot, after school or practice every afternoon. He teased me about the way I braid my hair when I’m nervous or spacing out, and he laughed hard when I made fun of him and his hockey friends, imitating the loud grunts and hypermasculine energy they have on the ice. I told him he was the only stoner-hockey player I’d ever met and that my dad would love it.
He joked about smoking up with my father.
“Stoner Jock Joe! The least useful but hungriest of all the jocks!” I said, and he laughed along with me and told me he’d never met a girl as funny and hot as me.
I’m thinking about that right now. About the fact that he basically said he likes me more than Sasha Cotton.
I kiss him again, pressing as much of my body against him as I can. I put a hand on his face, and he makes a happy noise into my mouth.
“You have to decide what we’re gonna do,” I say when he moves his lips from my mouth to my neck. He takes another break to look me in the eyes, and I can’t hold back a ridiculous smile.
“You’re so freaking pretty,” he says. He is a little high and I am a little drunk on the way it feels to be around him.
When his phone rings, I know it’s Sasha. He could ignore it, but he doesn’t, and his voice goes soft on his “Hello?” which hurts since I’ve still got a leg over his leg and a slight breathing problem from how deep and ceaseless the kissing was. If she strained, I bet Sasha could hear the unmistakable shakiness and rhythm of my breathing even over the phone.
All of a sudden, I want to throw up.
“I’ll be over soon,” Joe says. “Are you okay? Can you stay where you are for ten minutes? Don’t move. Don’t do anything until I get there. Hug the bear I gave you, turn on the TV, and I’ll be there before you know it.”
He hangs up and we have to untangle our limbs. He clears his throat and I wipe my mouth. The kisses were good, but not neat, not expertly delivered. They were messy, which is exactly what Joe is. A huge mess. He stands up fast so I stand up too, but he sort of shakes his head at me like I shouldn’t have gotten up, like he’s not gonna even hug me good-bye. Which is crap, ’cause I know, I know he’ll be online in a few hours telling me how badly he wanted to stay.
“I have to go,” he says without looking at me.
“Sasha,” I say. There are implicit quotation marks around her name.
“Don’t say it like that. She’s really . . . fragile. I told you, she has, sort of, problems. Like, depression and stuff. It’s bad.” I hate when guys say the word fragile like it means hot or lovable.
“But what about what happened today?” I say. I am fighting the urge to hold him down and physically make it impossible to leave.