Your eyes go to mine then, softening a little. “It didn’t look like it downstairs.”
I hesitate, then cross the room and take one of your hands. You don’t pull away.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking,” I say. You’re right to be upset. If I’d seen you dancing like that with another girl I would have lost my shit. God, I am so bad at being a girlfriend. “Honestly, it really was nothing.”
You sigh, your eyes on our hands. “Summer would do stuff just to torture me,” you say. “I have no idea why. It was all this … power shit with her. Like, she’d flirt with guys right in front of me. And she’d lie to me about where she was going. One time I caught her at the mall, hanging out with this guy from her math class. She said they were just friends, but…” You shake your head. “That’s not what it looked like.”
I have to ask the question that nobody seems to be able to answer.
“Is that why you guys broke up?”
Your hand tightens around mine. “I found out she’d been having these, like, nightly calls with him—the guy from the mall. When I confronted her about it, she just … went crazy. Said all this shit to me and I just couldn’t take it. By the time I got home I felt … worthless. Hopeless. And I—”
Your voice is shaking and you look away, clear your throat. This is the closest we’ve ever gotten to talking about that night.
“I’m such a fucking pussy,” you mutter.
“Hey,” I whisper. I gently place my hand on your cheek and turn your face back toward mine. “I will never hurt you like that.”
You don’t say anything and I wrap my arms around you and you are paper thin, so fragile. I realize that there will be days when I’ll have to be strong enough for both of us. You hug me back, tight.
“I will never hurt you like that,” I repeat.
“Okay,” you say softly.
You let go and sit on the bed, then draw me onto your lap.
“It drives me crazy when I see other guys touching you,” you say.
I love how possessive you are. You want me all to yourself. At home, I think they’d get down on their knees and praise Jesus if I disappeared.
“When do other guys touch me?” You give me a look. “Okay, I mean, other than with Peter tonight.”
“They hug you, like, all the time.”
“As friends!”
“I just … Can we have a rule? Like, no touching someone of the opposite sex?”
“You don’t trust me,” I say, my voice flat.
“I do. It’s them I don’t trust, okay? I know they think you’re hot. You have no idea what a turn-on you are.”
I blush. “Gav…”
“I’m serious.” You tuck my hair behind my ear. “Just promise me. No touching.”
I can’t think when we’re this close. When you smell so good and look at me with those bedroom eyes.
“I mean, if it’s that important to you…”
“It is.”
You reach into your pocket and hand me something wrapped in tissue paper.
“I got you something at this store near my grandma’s house,” you say.
I smile. “You didn’t have to get me anything.”
You brush your nose against mine. “I love getting you things.”
I unwrap the tissue paper and inside is a silver bracelet fashioned into an infinity sign.
“Because,” you say, tracing the bracelet, “that’s how long I want to be with you.”
I slip it on, then pull you to me. I tell you how much I love it—love you—with my lips and hands, with the fast beating of my heart, with everything in me.
“I’m ready,” you murmur against my collarbone. “Whenever you are.”
I pull away for a second, my eyes on yours. “Is it okay if I’m not ready yet?”
“Of course.” You smile. “I don’t think you’ll be able to resist me for long.”
I laugh. “Probably not.”
We go back downstairs and you grab a beer. In a matter of minutes, someone is putting a guitar in your hands. I curl up on the couch next to you as you play whatever people request. A few weeks ago, I would have been just another admirer at the party, standing in the semicircle around you. I love how, every now and then, you lean over and kiss me, not caring that we’re in front of everyone.
I don’t know it now, but this will be one of my happiest memories of us. It’s before the screaming and crying, before the guilt trips and the uncomfortable silences. Before I stopped wanting to be the girl you kissed.
FIFTEEN
“Doritos are essential to life,” you say.
We’re at the grocery store, picking up snacks for a movie night at your house. Your mom and my mom have both accepted that we’re together even though your parents really didn’t want you dating again so soon after your last breakup. It sucks, though, because my mom’s imposed all these rules about how often we can see each other and your mom watches us like a hawk. She likes me and everything but will not, under any circumstances, allow another girl to break your heart. It scares me, your mom said to me once, when you were in the bathroom, how much you two already love each other.
Mom thinks the whole high school/college thing will only end in tears. She doesn’t like that I want to spend so much time with you.
You’re in high school, she says. You shouldn’t be this focused on one boy. But I think about how happy your parents are. They met in high school. Besides, it’s not like I’m going to take love advice from my mom. She married my dad and The Giant. Enough said.
My mom says we’re only allowed to see each other three times a week and, even if you come over for five minutes to bring me a Pepsi Freeze, that counts as one of the times. My mom’s a fascist dictator, but you and I are strategic. We’re so good that the military should hire us. I invite you over for dinner each week and you make Mom laugh, love on Sam (you call him Little Dude, which makes him ecstatic), help with the dishes. You’re cordial with The Giant, but mostly try not to get on his bad side (which is hella easy to do, as you well know). Mom’s gonna cave and let me see more of you. I know she is.
Later, I will realize that she should have stuck to her guns—it would have saved me a hell of a lot of heartbreak. I will come to realize my mom and I are both suckers, perpetually won over by male charm and our own loneliness. She and I, we dig our own graves. Then we lie down in them, cross our arms, and wait for boys to pour dirt over us.
“I hate Doritos,” I say as you throw the worst flavor—spicy nacho—into the shopping cart.
You stare at me, aghast. “Tell me you’re joking.”
“I’m not. Sorry.”
You shake your head, aggrieved. “Wow. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this before. I don’t know if you and I are gonna work out.…”
I laugh and you toss a second bag into the cart, daring me to protest, then grab my hand as Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud” comes on over the store speakers.
“And, darling, I will be loving you ’til we’re seventy…”
“What are you doing?” I squeal as we proceed to tango up and down the aisle.