I’d lit a candle, put on perfume, spent hours thinking about tracing that slug-shaped scar on his knee, dreaming of touching him, kissing him. And all along he was thinking of me as a friend. That being here alone with me was nothing.
I walked over to the candle, picked it up, and blew it out. He was standing in front of me, the only light in the room from the moon above.
“Well, let’s be just friends again,” I said quietly. “Then you won’t have to worry about kissing me anymore.”
He dropped his head back against the wall, closed his eyes.
I waited for him to tell me that’s not what he wanted. That he wanted to kiss me. That he wanted to run his hands all over me. But he didn’t say a word.
I grabbed the bag and went into the kitchen to make sure everything was back in its place. I put the glasses in the cabinet. The candle back on the table.
Alex came out after a minute. I took his keys from the table, held them out to him, and he took them without a word, his face invisible under the brim of his hat.
We were silent on the ride home.
Alex looked at the road ahead with a vacant stare. There was a lump in my throat, and my whole body was tight. I tried not to look at his hand on the steering wheel, the muscles on his forearm. I tried not to think about the way his tongue felt on mine.
But it was impossible. In my mind, I replayed all of it.
The words he’d said at the house didn’t match up with the way I’d caught him looking at me when he thought I wasn’t watching. The words didn’t sync with the way he’d touched me on the couch, with the look in his eye when he kissed me. None of it made any sense.
And it hadn’t been just today either. I’d felt something between us for weeks. And it hadn’t just been one-sided.
Now something occurred to me, and I turned to face him.
“What did you mean by this changing things between us?” I asked, the sound of my voice suddenly loud as it pushed past the lump in my throat.
“What?” Alex looked over at me and then back at the road. I saw the veins on his hand pulse, his grip tightening on the steering wheel.
I eyed him, my stomach suddenly turning over as the thought in my head became clearer, remembering the phone call from a girl named Amy that he’d ignored, the awkward silence after he’d put the phone in the glove compartment.
Now I cleared my throat. “At the house, you said what happened between us changes things. Believe me, it does, is what you said.”
Alex sighed, rolled down the window as far as it would go, and leaned away from me, as though he wanted to jump out of the truck.
“Can we not talk about it, Jess?” His voice was soft, pleading, but I was back on that couch, seeing the look on his face when he leaned into me. There was no mistaking how he felt about me. I was sure of it. And then he’d walked across the room and made some lame excuse about my age, my inexperience.
My insides boiled, the heat on my cheeks returning.
“Did you say that about someone specific or is it just your advanced maturity talking?” The thought tumbling out of my mouth. The words came out angry, and he flinched, but I couldn’t pull back from it now.
We were in front of my house now, and he pulled the truck over to the curb.
Alex looked out the window at the house. “Someone’s home, right?”
The streetlight lit up one side of his face, and I saw him fiddle with his hat. Push, pull.
“You’re not going to answer me?” I asked.
“I wasn’t sure there was a question in there,” he said, finally looking at me.
“You know everything about me—that I haven’t had any boyfriends, and I’m not allowed to date—but we never talk about you. Then we start kissing and you stop and say you can’t kiss me anymore and give me a bunch of reasons that make zero sense and I guess what I’m asking is did you stop kissing me because of another girl?” I blurted out in one breath.
Alex took off his hat and tossed it on the dashboard, leaned over, and pressed his forehead against the steering wheel, a grunt of frustration coming out of him. When he sat up, he glanced over at me, but he didn’t look me in the eye.
“It’s not like that, Jess.”
“That’s not an answer,” I said.
“It’s complicated. Okay? It’s not a yes-or-no thing.”
The inside of the truck was suddenly cold. I swallowed, pulled my bag up between us on the seat. My voice was caught in my throat, a sob lurking somewhere behind it.
“It kind of is, Alex. Did you stop kissing me because of another girl? Yes, or no?”
He didn’t answer, and in the dim light, I saw the look on his face. Sometimes his face was a city storefront, alive and full of light, and then suddenly closed for the day. A metal security gate rolled down and locked into place.
This was Alex now. Closed and locked up.
I opened the door and got out, pushing it closed behind me. I turned and walked up the stairs. I felt his eyes on me, felt them with each step I took.
The house was empty, but I went straight to my room and shut the door. My bag was filled with the trash from our sandwiches, but I dropped it in the corner and plopped on my bed, not caring that I still had sand on my feet from walking barefoot on the driveway at the Salt House.
After we’d kissed, I’d left the Salt House without slipping on my flip-flops, ignoring the sharp stabs on the soles of my feet from the crushed shells on the driveway. I’d walked to Alex’s truck as fast as I could, thinking Alex was far behind me. Maybe even waiting for me to come back in.
But Alex had been right next to me. Right on my heels. He pulled out of the driveway quickly. Anxious, it seemed, to leave the house.
But no. That’s wasn’t it.
Now, lying in my bed with my eyes closed, it occurred to me that Alex hadn’t been anxious to get away from the house. That wasn’t it at all.
He’d been anxious to get away from me.
?17
Jack
Hope didn’t budge when I kissed her on the forehead. I’d hoped this morning would be like yesterday, maybe a smile, a kiss, something that would send me off with her touch on me. Yesterday, I’d leaned over to kiss her good-bye, and she turned her head so my kiss landed on her lips instead of the cheek I’d been aiming for. She’d put her hand on the side of my neck, her fingers tickling the hair on the back of my head.
She’d slipped her shirt over her head, and I’d sat down on the bed to take off my boots, but she’d tugged at the back of my shirt, whispered to just get in. I’d slipped in next to her, fully dressed, boots and all. It was the first time we’d been together since the night we’d fought. Not that I hadn’t tried. At night in bed, it was as if a cold front was trapped under the sheets with us. I didn’t move after we finished, just wrapped my arms around her. I was an hour late getting on the water, but I was in that bed all day in my head.