I looked at him, and right then he went in and touched my lips with his. Just like that. It was a kiss so soft and sweet, and salty, too, that I didn’t even have the chance to think: Do people on dates still kiss in the movies? Especially a first kiss. Nope. By the time my brain had the capacity for critical thinking, the kiss had already happened and the movie had started.
We both turned to watch the screen, but I couldn’t focus on anything but my panic.
This was a bad idea—as I’d been repeating to myself every time Kevin made some obvious, yet still unbelievable, gesture toward liking me. Bad, bad, bad. Now wasn’t the time to let anyone get close. Especially someone so connected to the situation. I’d spent so much of my life alone, loveless, sexless, under my bedspread binge-watching away my loneliness. And now—now?—I strike upon a potential boyfriend? A man who isn’t certifiably insane, or an active alcoholic, or an unemployed drummer in a noise band—a man who recognizes the intense synergistic effect Cherry Coke has with movie popcorn? WTF, as they say.
Kevin moved his hand to my knee. He gently, almost imperceptibly, stroked a soft circle up my thigh.
Not smart, Fontana. Bad, bad, bad. But, goddamn, it felt good.
11
AT LAST, on an overcast day in late July, we finished paying off Margie’s blackmail debt. Kevin and I had been dating for reals for about three weeks. There was never a conversation like, Are we boyfriend and girlfriend now? But after our movie date it became obvious to me that we were soul mates—as long as he never found out about, you know, the embezzlement thing.
During the days and weeks that followed, we went to fancy Upper East Side restaurants and took in the pretension. We went to Lower East Side dive bars and took in the hipsterdom. We went to the Guggenheim and took in the art. When we stayed in, we took in each other—though not literally, to Emily’s horror. Kevin and I had not yet slept together, but like the popular girls in my high school used to say, we’d done everything but.
The truth is, I was still testing him. I had a natural inclination to mistrust people who had a lot of money—people who grew up with money—because how could anyone who’s never suffered be depended upon to suffer through me? I am not a low-maintenance girlfriend. I’m more like a fixer-upper in a dicey neighborhood.
Kevin came from money, but the weeks of testing were conclusive that he didn’t act like it—and he didn’t seem to care that I didn’t. In fact, the more time we spent together, the more it dawned on me that Kevin liked that I didn’t come from money. I hadn’t told him much about my immigrant parents or the tiny Bronx apartment I hailed from, but whenever I’d slip and forget myself—like the time I lost my r’s and g’s saying, Aw you fuckin’ kiddin’ me? when a car cut us off in front of a crosswalk—Kevin would throw his head back and laugh. He’d pull me in and smack my low-rent cheek with a kiss. It was all kind of perfect . . . too perfect.
I kept waiting for the moment when teenage Freddie Prinze Jr. and the rest of the cast from She’s All That would jump out from the shadows, pointing and laughing, revealing this was all a cruel joke. But it never came.
Kevin and I shared a mutual appreciation for Freddie Prinze Jr. movies—I Know What You Did Last Summer, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, Scooby-Doo Knows What You Did Last Summer—and anything and everything by John Hughes. We once acted out the entire first half of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. We once acted out the post-prom kiss from Pretty in Pink. I knew we would sleep together soon. Kevin had managed to gradually wear me down, to get me to let go of who I thought I was supposed to be and instead just be who I am. So doing the nasty had to be the next step.
But on this particular overcast day in late July, I did everything in my power to push Kevin out of my mind as I rode the elevator up to Margie’s office with her final payment—the last bundle of cash stuffed in an envelope, stuffed in a bigger envelope. Dear God, please let this really be the end, I prayed while squeezing the envelope close to my thumping bunny-rabbit heart. That I was in no position to be asking God for jack shit didn’t stop me from trying anyway.
The elevator doors opened and I marched, head down, to Margie’s office, handed her the envelope, and recited my line: “Robert would like you to look at these documents right away.”
Margie picked her head up and fastened her eyes to mine, and it occurred to me that no one else was around. The bespectacled accounting underlings who usually buzzed around Margie’s desk were nowhere to be found. Had she arranged that? If this were a movie from the late nineties, now would be the moment when some ambient, concern-inducing Radiohead music would start to play.
Margie rested her meaty hands flat upon the envelope.
“Okay?” I said.
She blinked her round eyes a few times but said nothing.
“So we’re good?” I said.
Margie leaned back in her chair, and it squeaked formidably. As much as I knew this was supposed to be the end, part of me never believed it. Whether I was conscious of it before this moment or not, I’d been afraid all along that Margie wouldn’t let us go.