“You shouldn’t be in here,” I tell him. “You’ll get in trouble.”
“I put a sign on the door,” he says. “‘Caution. Wet Floor.’ You know, Cuidado piso mojado.” He cracks an old joke, bending his body into a ridiculous position.
“Thanks, Captain Accident,” I say, a small smile tugging on my lips at the name we gave the anonymous silhouette of a man who always seems to be falling on floors, jamming his hand into tight spaces, and dropping hair dryers into bathtubs.
But it’s no accident that Heath has followed me here, and I know it. I’m trapped, the stall door against my back, myriad copies of myself staring me down. Heath leans against one of the sinks, the tail of his shirt dipping into more STDs than he’ll have a chance of catching in the next twenty years.
“You didn’t answer my texts,” he says. It’s not sad or accusing. It’s a statement of fact; typical Heath. I don’t tell him that I never read them in the first place.
“I’m sorry,” I say. And I kind of am. Maybe. He might be boring, but that doesn’t mean my salacious sister gets to skewer him for entertainment. “I’ve got a lot going on.”
He holds my gaze for a minute, and I wonder if he’s going to call me out on the fact that I’ve always had a lot going on. Instead he studies the puffed skin around my eyes, the dark circles underneath.
“I’m worried about you,” he says.
“I’m fine.” These words are stockpiled for me within easy reach. Always locked and loaded, both a weapon and a defense. But Heath has heard them too many times and familiarity reduces their effectiveness.
“You’re not fine,” he shoots back. The endless line of Heaths on both sides of the bathroom are an army now, one I know I can’t hold off for long. The tail of his shirt is wet, hanging against his jeans to spread a dark oval there. “Something’s . . . off, Sasha,” he says. “Something is wrong.”
How can someone who knows me so well not realize?
Sasha Stone is not off.
Sasha Stone is not wrong.
But Sasha Stone is closing the distance between us, watching as thousands of Sashas and thousands of Heaths find some comfort in the nooks of each other. And while these places are not a perfect fit, they are at least familiar.
He smells like Tide, because heaven forbid his mom ever buy generic. I’m simultaneously repulsed and attracted to his cleanliness, the fact that he’s not Isaac both a magnet and a mark against him.
Newton says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, but lately everything that happens inside of me ripples out in twos, my love and hate doled out equally between Isaac and Heath, satisfying no one.
“We okay?” Heath says into my ear, his breath moving a lock of my hair.
It’s so normal, so deeply programmed into who I am that I lean forward just enough that his lips are against the soft skin of my neck. “Yeah,” I say. “We’re good.”
And that’s the thing. We are. Heath and I are good. Good the way sugar cookies with no sprinkles and white cotton undies and organic deodorant are good.
We’re good.
I’m good.
Sasha Stone is good.
I repeat this as I walk into the hallway, my hand in his, my heart a dead thing in my chest.
eleven
What. The. Fuck. Wait, I k(no)w this one. DON’T tell me. He’s so n-ice. So gòód. What if he k(new)? I said out with the old—you remember the IN part. These boys . . . your FEELings. Equal and opposite erection. HA. What Would Jesus Do? What Will Mom Say? Will Dad Even Notice?
I owe you something but not everything. The one for you is not the one for me.
Love y(our) choice of w(or)ds. The 1 4 you is not the 1 4 me. Paradigm shift, sister—Now 1 + 1 = 4—Math is hard. You + Heath = Good, Me + Isaac = Bad, You – Me = ?
I look at my sister’s response on Saturday night and sigh. I’m going to have to make some hard and fast rules about punctuation if we’re going to continue to communicate like this. I can feel my GPA slipping as I read her embarrassingly inaccurate blocks of text. I minimize the doc and scroll down on the browser to discover that my crack about the GPA isn’t just a turn of phrase.
The Faulkner paper I turned in and subsequently crumpled before dissolving into a hot mess and hiding in the bathroom did not do me any favors. Neither did the take-home government test where I answered the essay section with a series of exclamation points and unhappy faces—or, somebody did. If my sister insists on sharing this body she’s going to have to agree that it’s going to Oberlin next fall, or else.
My phone vibrates on the laptop, mercifully sliding across the touchpad and relegating my grades to a folder labeled To Improve, alongside an app I’d downloaded to brush up on my Italian and an online course covering the musical history of the baroque period. It’s a text from Lilly, whose been monitoring my relationship status like she’s a cardiologist and it’s got a pacemaker.
So you and Heath are back together?
Don’t know that we were ever apart.
What does that mean?
And while I acknowledge the inherent bitchiness in my statement, it’s also technically true. I didn’t break up with Heath, I simply told him he could choose to not have me for a girlfriend and then never read the texts that may have held his decision.
And then I had sex with someone else.
“Shut up,” I say. Unfortunately my fingers are working in tandem with my mouth and I end up texting exactly that to Lilly, who for once didn’t deserve it.
WTF?
Sorry. Not for you.
She texts me back but I ignore it, the low purr of a motorcycle pulling into the driveway drowning out the vibration of my phone. It’s one in the morning, and I should be asleep, reading, studying, improving—doing anything other than what I’m doing, which is pulling on a pair of shoes and a jacket and sneaking downstairs to talk to the boy who I lost my virginity to last week and haven’t spoken to since.
I put on my pissed face as I walk out the door, considering if I’ve got it in me to slap him. Even if I do, most of the anger that’s fueling me has morphed from steam in my head to bubbles of anticipation in my stomach. I don’t know whether I’m going to hug him or hit him until I see him leaning against his bike, the bobbing ember of a cigarette in his hand.
And it’s a hug. A full-out, body-to-body, squeeze-me-please hug. One that goes from soft squishy to hard angles in a second, our mouths finding each other and his cigarette dropping to the ground. A tendril of smoke finds its way to my nose as my heel crushes it out, and I pull away.
“Hi,” we both say at the same time, breathless. I swear he’s blushing.
“So, uh . . .” His eyes go to the crushed cigarette. “I thought you were mad at me.”
“I was mad,” I tell him. The words sound funny coming out in the shape of a smile, the dichotomy of my sister and I fighting for control. “I still am.”