“I’ve got it,” Topher said, taking it off himself, and I stretched up to kiss him again before reaching down and pulling my own shirt off, tossing the tank top in the direction of my purse. “Yeah?” he asked, sounding surprised but not at all displeased as he smiled down at me.
“Sure,” I said, then added quickly, “I mean, yeah.” I pulled him down toward me, and even as we kissed, my skin against his for the first time, I couldn’t lose myself in the moment, couldn’t shut off the sense that something wasn’t quite right. I opened my eyes, realizing at once what it was. There was no laughter here, no playfulness. No Karl-and-Marjorie-getting-busy-in-a-barn narrative tangents, no Clark making me laugh about how my bra clasps had all been designed by the same people who made bank vaults, since they were impossible to open.
This, now, just . . . felt like it always did with Topher. Like it could have been three months ago, or any other time in the last three years. Which until now had been fine. It had been what I’d thought I wanted. But now I knew there was something else. Something better—something more.
And before I could distract myself, or stop the thoughts from coming, I was missing Clark so much, it hurt to breathe.
I moved back and sat up, pushing Topher away as I tried to get my thoughts in some kind of order.
“What?” Topher asked, blinking at me. “What’s the matter?”
“I’m not sure,” I said slowly. I knew what it was—but not how I could put it so that Topher would understand. “I just . . .”
“Is it that guy?” Topher asked, shaking his head as he sat back from me. “Seriously?”
I looked across the narrow bed at him. The disdain in his voice would have been enough a few months ago that I would have denied it. But I realized, all at once, that I couldn’t have cared less about that any longer. “Seriously,” I said, nodding.
Topher let out a short laugh, still looking at me like he was expecting me to go back to who I’d been, start making sense again. “What, were you like in love with him or something?” he asked sarcastically, phrasing it so that the only answer to this was no.
“Yes,” I said without even thinking about it, but knowing as soon as I said it that it was the truth. It had been the truth for a while now, but I hadn’t let myself see until this moment. “I was.” I took a breath and made myself say it. “I am.”
“Oh,” Topher said, sounding utterly thrown. “Um . . . okay.”
“Yeah,” I said with a small laugh. I sat up a little straighter and pulled the sheet up in front of me, tucking it under my arms, my fingers tracing, for just a second, the pattern of the Little Dipper that was printed there. I looked over at Topher and knew that this—whatever we’d been doing for three years now—was over. That it was better to have what I’d had with Clark than something like this. I might stay safe with Topher and never get hurt, but that also meant I’d never feel anything real. “Sorry I didn’t realize it until right now.”
“You love him?” Topher asked, sounding not cool or dismissive or sarcastic, but for the first time in a long time, genuine. I could hear the hurt in his voice, but also the confusion underneath.
“I do,” I said, nodding. I wasn’t sure what, if anything, I was going to do with that information. But for tonight, knowing it felt like enough. “So I think, you and I, we’re probably . . .”
“Yeah,” Topher said, pulling on his shirt and buttoning it up. “I figured that.” I pulled on my tank top, and then we just looked at each other for a moment, across the comforter with rocket ships printed on it. “I sometimes wonder,” he finally said, his voice soft and maybe the most genuine I’d ever heard it, all games and stratagems gone, “if maybe in the beginning, I’d just . . . if we’d actually . . .” He reached forward and brushed his fingers through the ends of my hair slowly, like he knew that soon he wouldn’t be able to do this. “Never mind,” he said, shaking his head, some of the briskness coming back into his voice. He looked away from me and adjusted his cuffs, and when he looked back, I could see the little authentic window he’d shown me was now closed.
Topher headed back down to the party after that, and I waited two minutes, more out of habit than anything else, before following him. I let myself out the front door and walked to my car, which I’d parked half a mile up the road. It was a breezy night, the humidity cut by the wind, and I took off my flip-flops and held them in one hand as I walked barefoot, tipping my head back to look up at the sky.
I remembered the stick-on, glow-in-the-dark stars that had been all over the walls of the kid’s bedroom—the ones that looked pretty good until you had the real thing to compare them with, and then they just looked like pale imitations. I thought about the guy outside, and his galaxy theory, and as I looked up, I wondered which of these stars—the ones that seemed so permanent and fixed—weren’t actually done changing quite yet.