“You seriously thought I would be mad?”
“I don’t know … maybe?”
I’m more upset that he stopped kissing me.
It’s getting late and we seem to have broken the spell. I want him to kiss me again, but I’m not sure how to get him to do it. I’m definitely not bold enough to grab him and pull him closer. So instead we talk a little more about school and his jobs and little things until he stands up, signaling it’s time to go home. When he drops me off, he leans in and kisses me again, but this time it’s a soft brush of his mouth against mine, light, sweet, crazily romantic.
I’m not sure how I got into the house. I’m sure I walked, but I don’t remember at all. All I remember is the minty-vanilla taste of his mouth.
Chapter 24
Essie presses her tiny, cool hands against my cheeks. I can tell it’s Essie because she is gentle and quiet. If it were Libby she’d be bouncing on my mattress, screaming, Wakeupwakeupwakeupwakeup! I open my eyes to find the sun shining brightly through the crack in my curtains. Essie’s hair is a tangle of fine blond curls. The night has slipped away. The world is still spinning. Nothing has changed.
Except everything.
I give Essie a piggyback to the kitchen and set her up with a bowl of Cheerios and slices of banana stacked in a cylinder. She likes it when I arrange her food in shapes. I’m sure she’ll love it someday when I teach her how to calculate the volume of those shapes (cylinder = Πr2h). Once she’s set up I study the contents of the fridge, exhausted by the effort of not spilling my heart to a three-year-old. It’s tempting to gush to someone, anyone, about Zenn. About his mouth and his hands and his delicious smell. I shove a bagel in my yapper to keep myself from telling Essie something completely inappropriate, like how I wonder if anyone has ever lost their virginity on the play set she goes to every Friday morning.
Yeah. So not cool.
But, God, I want to touch him again. I want to feel his actual skin with my fingertips — its heat and probable silkiness. I want to see if the lack of fractals was a fluke. I want to run all sorts of experiments on him, touching every inch of his bare skin to see if all of him is safe. Wouldn’t be a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
And if he is safe … then what? My breathing gets shallow at the thought of it.
I promised Charlotte details and she’s a more appropriate audience than Essie. I grab my phone and text her.
Me: Hey!
I’m amazed and flattered by how quickly she texts me back, even after being sort of estranged. She’s always been a better person than me.
Charlotte: Hey! How’d it go???
Me: So good. So so good.
Charlotte: AAAAAHHHHHHH! I want to hear but I have riding this morning.
(Did I mention that Charlotte is an equestrian? Ralph Lauren picture complete.)
Me: That’s OK. We’ll talk later.
Charlotte: OK, but … was there … lip action?
God, she’s such a goofball.
Me: There was.
Charlotte: AAAAAHHHHHH!!!
I smile at my phone. God, I missed her.
Charlotte: Tongue??? Tongue action??!
Me: I’ll text you later.
Charlotte: AHHHHHH! You better!
I set my phone down, smiling. He likes me. It seems hard to believe, but even I know that a kiss like that is evidence of like.
And if I’m thinking about him this morning, maybe he’s thinking about me.
So, it wouldn’t be that weird for me to … say … drive by his house. See if he’s home.
Before I talk myself out of it, I shower and get dressed and head over to his apartment, telling my mom I’m running to the library. I’m such a nerd that she doesn’t even question it on a Saturday morning. But when I get there, I see his truck is gone and I realize he’s probably at one of his many jobs, trying to support his family. Stupid of me to think he’d be sleeping in on a Saturday morning. Silly to think he’d be lounging in bed, remembering what it felt like to kiss me. Guys don’t do that anyway. Do they?
I sit in my car for a moment, knowing I should leave and text him later, like a normal person. But then I have the genius idea to leave him a note. How cute is that? A real note, like on paper. So I dig up a scrap of paper from the glove compartment — a preschool coloring worksheet of Ethan’s where Jesus’s face is a royal blue — and scribble a few casual words on the back.
Was driving by, wanted to see you. <3 Eva
I think the obviously unplanned quality of it is charming. I get out of the car and am heading up the driveway when the door to the apartment opens and I freeze in my tracks.
Crap, whose stupid idea was this? A note? On a Jesus coloring sheet? I quickly turn back down the driveway to get out of there fast.
“Hey.” A voice rings out behind me. It’s a woman’s, rough and smoky.
I turn and see Cinde halfway down the stairs in her robe and a pair of UGG-style boots, her hair tucked under a baseball cap.
“Eva, right?” she greets me happily. “I was just coming out to get the paper.”
The paper is sitting a few feet to my left. I pick it up and cross the distance between us to hand it to her.
“It’s really their paper.” She nods to the main house, her voice conspiratorial. “I read it real quick and put it back.”
Her covert operations to get some local news make me a little sad, but I suppose a newspaper subscription is a luxury they can’t afford.
“You looking for Zenn?”
“I —” I crumple up the note and tuck it in my pocket.
“He’s at work.”
“I figured. I saw his truck wasn’t here.”
“You wanna come up for a cup of coffee?”
“No, thanks,” I say. “That’s okay.”
Her face droops and I realize she’s not just being polite. I’ve seen the look on my own mom’s face a hundred times, searching for connection only to be rebuffed. She shoves her hands deep into the pockets of her robe.
“I guess I don’t blame you. I was awful yesterday. I’ll tell him you stopped by.”
Before I can talk myself out of it, I step closer. “Actually, coffee sounds good.”
She smiles and, despite the mascara smudged under her eyes, I see she’s actually quite pretty. Or she was once. She looks older than she probably is. Her skin isn’t as smooth as my mom’s, and she has deeper crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes, slight wrinkles around her mouth, probably from smoking. But she’s thinner than my mom, too. I guess a mostly liquid-and-cigarette diet can do that.
I follow her up the stairs and she gestures for me to sit down. It feels really weird being here without Zenn and I wonder if I’ve made a big mistake.
“I’m just gonna throw some clothes on real quick.”
I sit at the kitchen table and wait, like I did just yesterday. Was that just yesterday? My mind wanders back to his mouth, his lips, his hands …