“Let’s dance?” I asked him, wanting to hold on to him one last time.
An R&B version of “Let It Snow” started playing, as the singer crooned, Ohhhh, come over here and help me trim the tree / I wanna wrap you up.
“Please?” I asked Dash. I wanted to remember this last moment, wrapped up in him.
He stood so tall and stiff, uncomfortable. But then Boomer and Sofia came over and led us to the center of the room. They began a slow dance, and then, following their lead, Dash placed his arms around my waist, and I placed mine on his shoulders, and we danced.
I was giddy. I knew Dash hated it, and I loved him for going along with it anyway. My heart actually surged with joy as I pressed my body closer to his, and I thought I could feel his heart beating against mine. He felt so good, and I never wanted to let go. I had to tell him I loved him—just take the risk, just get over my insecurities and doubts about the impossibility of it all—before it was too late.
“I have something to tell you,” I whispered into Dash’s ear.
“I have something to tell you, too,” he said.
I had to tell him. I had to.
And just as I was about to, I saw Dash make a momentary glance at twerking Sofia, giving her the look I always wished he’d direct at me. Pure want. I try not to be jealous of effortlessly gorgeous Sofia and the fact that she and Dash used to be a couple; I don’t always succeed.
So I said it first. “I think we should break up.”
Thursday, December 18th
And I said, “No.”
Wednesday, December 17th
When I didn’t hear back from Lily after her mysterious return from Staten Island, I went back over all the texts I’d exchanged with Langston, and one name popped out: Edgar Thibaud.
Why had Langston asked me about him?
What was he to Lily?
I knew they had an unsavory history. I knew he’d tried to hijack her affections when my own affections for her had been new.
Most of all, I knew he was King Asshole.
I suppose I could have asked Langston—but our newfound respect was only a day old, and I didn’t particularly want to test it.
Lily had let slip at some point that Thibaud had been sentenced to community service at the place where her grandfather had gone for rehab. So after school, I decided to go to the source.
Thursday, December 18th
“What do you mean, no?” Lily asked. “What do you care?”
She tried to pull away.
I held on.
Wednesday, December 17th
Thibaud had a way of making the professionals as forgetful as their patients. Every nurse had a different answer when I asked for his whereabouts. None of the answers were correct.
Finally, a Smirking Sadie with a bright pink walking stick took pity on me.
“You looking for the troublemaker?” she rasped.
I had no doubt I was, and told her so.
“Well, then, look in the custodian’s closet between 36A and 36B. He’s usually dodging work there. But be careful—he’s a wobbly pair of dentures, that one. Don’t let him out if you don’t want him giving you the slip.”
The way Smirking Sadie said this, she almost sounded jilted.
I skirted around the wheelchairs, and a whole lot of people watching Wheel of Fortune, to find the closet she was talking about. Once I got there, I didn’t know whether to knock. Then I heard the sounds coming from inside and knew it had to be Thibaud.
I plunged in.
What I saw was disturbing in the extreme. Thibaud was watching porn on his phone, featuring two women, a horse, and a man who looked uncannily like Donald Trump. At the same time, he was smoking a cigarette, tipping the ashes down into a bedpan. His feet were on the custodian’s desk.
“Surely this breaks a limit for simultaneous vices!” I announced in my most authoritarian tone. Thibaud startled, jumping up and switching off his phone.
“What the—!” he yelled. Then he saw it was me, and didn’t seem quite as freaked out. “Oh. Dash. What, did you think your missing girlfriend was in here with me?”
I didn’t like his insinuation, and told him so. Then I added, “Plus, she’s no longer missing.”
“Have you seen her?” he challenged. Then, before I could bluff, he extinguished his cigarette in the bedpan and said, “I thought not.”
Before I could edgewise a word into his skull, he opened the door and pushed out into the hallway. I followed on his heels.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” I said. But he did, pushing into the TV room, completely ignoring me.
“Does anybody need anything?” he asked the old people there.
“A vowel! I need a vowel!” a blue-haired lady cried out, gesturing to the TV.
the screen said.
“Love caster!” the blue-haired lady trilled.
“Love master!” a man in a wheelchair called out.
“Love washer!” a man in gray corduroy called out.
The man in the wheelchair was offended. “What the hell’s a love washer?”
“Heh heh,” the corduroy man laughed. “You don’t remember, do you?”
“Why are you texting Lily?” I asked Thibaud. “What is she to you?”
“Why are you asking me and not her?” he shot back.