When I come down the stairs on Monday morning before work, my mother is in our living room, talking to a man I’ve never seen before. He has reddish-brown hair and a goatee.
“Thank you so much for dropping in so early. I don’t get off work until five, so it had to be this morning,” she is saying.
Yesterday, the last time I saw my mother, she couldn’t get out of bed, but today she looks put together and alert. Her hair is pulled into a tight bun, and she’s wearing work clothes.
“Morning,” I say, and she spins around to look at me.
“Oh hi, honey. This is Chase. He’s going to be doing our repainting,” Mom says.
“We’re repainting?”
Mom frowns. “I was sure I mentioned that.”
Chase gives me a nod of acknowledgment, and the two of them go back to discussing colors while I head into the kitchen to get some breakfast. I’m in there still, eating a banana, when Mom comes in.
“You look nice,” I tell her, and she looks down at herself and smiles.
“Thank you.”
Now that she’s closer, I notice that she has small dark circles around her eyes and she looks tired, like she’s not fully inhabiting the role of Mom 2.0 yet. Maybe more like Mom 1.5.
“Are you okay? After yesterday, I thought—” I’m used to us not acknowledging her dark days, but for some reason, I can’t stop myself today.
“You thought things were back to the way they were?” she asks, and she looks sad. She reaches forward and touches my cheek. “I just had a bad day. Those are normal, but we’re not going back there,” she says. “I promise.”
I’m surprised by the way my eyes fill at her words and even more surprised when I feel myself reaching forward and hugging her tightly. I want to tell her how happy I am to see her up and about today, how scared I was yesterday when I saw her in bed again, but the words won’t come.
Somehow, though, from the way she squeezes me back, I think she knows.
I’m feeling good, happy even, when I get to work. But my mood takes a swift turn when I see Luke. He’s chatting to Rouge and a couple of other leaders outside the art cabin, and he doesn’t see me, but I feel my body going hot with rage even as I head in the opposite direction. The words he said in Mel’s kitchen last night come storming back to me, and they infuriate me.
You’re welcome to fuck whoever you’d like. This is just for show, remember?
As if I’ve let myself forget for even one second that we’re pretending. As if he has let me forget it, with the way he barely looks at me when we’re alone.
In the rec room, I noisily arrange chairs around the four round tables we’re using for this morning’s first activity.
“Is everything okay?” Willow asks me.
“Dandy,” I say, and keep pulling plastic chairs off the stack and setting them down around the table.
“What’s wrong? Is it Luke?” she asks, stopping in front of me. “What did he do?”
“Nothing,” I say.
She narrows her eyes at me. “I thought we agreed no more lies.”
My lips twitch with guilt. If Willow only knew all the things I haven’t told her, she would be completely done with me. My not telling her about a stupid fight with my pretend boyfriend would be the least of her concerns.
“You’re right. Sorry,” I say.
“So what are we mad at him for?” she asks, hands on her hips.
“He just made this comment . . .” I look to Willow and see that she’s waiting for me to continue. I can’t think of anything to say on the spot, so I give her the version closest to the truth. “Like, he doesn’t care what I do when we’re not together.”
I’m hoping it’s ambiguous enough that she’ll let it go, but Willow’s smart, and her eyes widen. “You guys aren’t exclusive?”
“Um,” I say, wondering how I walked into this. “I don’t really know.”
“Is he seeing other people?”
I shrug.
“You have got to sit down and talk about it. But honestly that sounds like bullcrap to me.”
“What does?”
“That he doesn’t care what you do when you’re not together,” she says. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you. The day Eric was saying all that stuff about you, he looked like he was going to hop the table and smash his face in.”
Oh, Willow. Sweet, sweet Willow.
“Obviously he opted for kissing the living daylights out of you instead,” she says, smiling. “An unexpected choice, but since I’m pro kissing and anti punching, I wholeheartedly approve.”
“There’s an xothelodown saying there somewhere, isn’t there?” I say. “Smash lips, not faces.”
She laughs. “Not bad, not bad. Take anger, make love. See, it only works when it comes out naturally.”
“No, that was actually pretty good,” I say.
As our campers start arriving, I still think Willow is completely off about the way Luke feels about me, but our talk makes me feel better.
The day passes uneventfully until it’s science time and we’re in Luke’s classroom.
The kids are in a particularly rowdy mood, so Willow and I are sitting with different groups of kids to try to limit the level of acting out. I’ve made a point of not making eye contact with Luke, not that he’s looking at me.
Each table is creating a papier-mâché volcano in preparation for tomorrow’s experiment. When Luke comes around to my table to see what the kids are doing, a kid named Kevin goes, “Hey, Duke? Is J.J. your girlfriend?”
“Kevin, that’s so not appropriate,” I say right away.
“We saw you kissing in the cafeteria,” Patrick, Kevin’s wingman, pipes up.
My face burns, and I pointedly do not look at Luke.
Then Kevin is singing, “‘Duke and J.J. sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.’”
“Kevin, you’re asking for a time-out right now,” I say. How the hell did I end up back in third grade? “Is that what you want?”
“But are you his girlfriend?” Kevin asks. At this point I am exasperated, but Luke stoops down to his level and says, “Depends why you’re asking, Kev. If it’s so that you can keep singing, then it’s none of your business. If it’s so you can ask Jessi for her number, then yes, she is most definitely my girlfriend.”
Patrick laughs, but Kevin says, “Why do you call her Jessi?”
I don’t hear what Luke says, because at the table behind him, Willow is grinning maniacally and mouthing, I told you. I roll my eyes. As if what Luke says to a nine-year-old is of any importance when we’re lying to pretty much everybody we know.
Later, at lunch, Luke slides into the seat beside me.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” I say coolly before going back to listening to something Rouge and Willow are discussing.
Luke’s arm falls around my shoulder, and as his fingers make circles on my arm, I try to ignore the feeling of his touch on my bare skin. Embarrassingly, goose bumps prickle all the way down to my elbow, and I’m hoping he doesn’t notice.
“Hey, Jessi?” Willow says, and I startle at the sound of her voice. I guess I wasn’t doing that good a job of listening to their conversation. In fact, Rouge seems to have moved on completely to talking to the person beside her.
“So I meant to tell you . . . Brett is coming over to my house tomorrow,” she whispers to me.
One of my eyebrows skitters up. “You told your parents?”
She shakes her head. “No. But I agreed he could come over—under . . . duress.” Her face flushes, and I laugh.
“Is that what they’re calling it these days?”
“You don’t work at All Saints on Tuesday nights, do you?” she asks.
I shake my head. “Why?”
“I was hoping you might be able to come too?” she says. “That way, my parents just think I’m having a bunch of friends over and not A Friend.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Luke, you could come too,” Willow
says now, which is the first time I realize he’s listening to our conversation. “You both could.”
I shoot Willow daggers with my eyes, trying to convey the fact that Luke and I are still not on good terms. She pretends she can’t read my expression.
“I’d be down,” Luke says, and I look at him, surprised. He’d be down? To hang out with work people outside of work and have to continue our façade? “We’ll be there.”
“Perfect.” She claps her hands. “We’ll have the pool all to ourselves, and Eric won’t be there.”
I know she’s alluding to the terrible party at Bailey’s a few weeks ago, and it’s definitely a relief to hear it will be just the four of us. If Luke and I are going to have to keep up this charade outside of work and Mel’s, the smaller our audience, the better.
We go back to talking about the activities we have scheduled for the rest of the day.
When lunch is done, I push off from the table, wriggling my body out from under Luke’s arm. I’m almost out of the cafeteria when I notice that he’s on my tail. I keep up the pace, walking faster, until he has no choice but to jog to catch up with me.
“Hey,” he says.
“Do you need something?” I ask.
He rubs the back of his neck. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I was a jackass yesterday.”
“Gee, you don’t say.”
“Honestly, I thought you’d be happy to hear that you could still hook up with Eric or whoever you want.”
I start walking again, my blood boiling.
“Shit. Sorry,” he says, grabbing my arm to stop me. “Look, it’s weird, okay? This whole thing is weird. I don’t know how to do this.”
I don’t know whether he means he doesn’t know how to be around me anymore or he doesn’t know how to keep up the whole fake relationship thing.
“You could try not making idiotic comments, for one,” I say, folding my arms across my chest.
He nods, runs his hand along his jaw.
“Also, you’re not the one running the show. You don’t get to tell people we’ll be there.”
“You already told Willow you would go.”
“That was before you said you would. Maybe I changed my mind.”
Luke’s face is serious, but I recognize the twinkle in his eyes and I know he’s trying not to laugh. Which makes me even more annoyed.
“You don’t get to decide when we touch and when we kiss, when we hold hands and when we don’t,” I say.
“As I recall,” Luke says now, his voice low, “you were the one who jumped me in the kitchen yesterday.”
“That was one time,” I say, my face warm. “Every other time, it’s been you.”
“So what you’re saying is you want to be the one to touch me?” he asks.
I have no clue how this conversation got here, but I refuse to back down. “Maybe I do.”
“So do it,” he says, taking a step toward me. “Touch me.”
I swallow over the lump in my throat. “I don’t mean right now.”
“I know. Whenever you want,” he says. His eyes are intense, as if he’s saying one thing but meaning another.
“Fine,” I say.
“So, truce?” he asks, holding out his hand.
I hesitate for a second and then put my hand in his. “Truce.”
11
THEN
It felt like some sort of game.
The challenge of going from one mundane task to the next and the payoff of clearing that level. It wasn’t a perfect analogy, but being with Luke felt a little bit like that. The weekdays were the tough part, the anxious, boring moments when I longed to be able to touch him or kiss him, to see his face outside of a palm-size screen. The weekends were the payoff for all the waiting.
The second weekend in October, for the fourth time in a row, Luke drove down again. I felt guilty thinking of all the quality bonding time he was missing with his fellow freshmen, all the social events at the start of a new year that he didn’t get to be a part of. But I told myself that he would probably have made the trip every weekend anyway, to check on Mel. If anything, I was giving him something to look forward to, aside from watching his mother deteriorate a little every time he saw her. For the most part, Mel was still doing okay. She had lost a bunch of weight, and her skin looked sallow and pale all the time, but she kept reminding me whenever I worried that it was the treatment making her look sick, not the Big Bad itself. She could handle the treatment if it kept her around a little bit longer, she said.
After finishing his first midterm late on the Friday, Luke was scheduled to drive down super early on Saturday. He would get something like twenty hours at home before he had to turn around and drive back. It wasn’t ideal, but it was better than not seeing him at all.
Ro, on the other hand, had a tournament an hour away in Millwood, and Mel was determined to go and watch him play, despite the fact that she’d had a bad week. “The season is almost over,” she kept saying, but what she meant was that she’d have to wait a year to see another of his matches, and nobody knew if she had that kind of time. The doctors were hopeful, but not sure.
So, while Ro and Mel drove to Millwood, I turned up at Mel’s house bright and early on Saturday morning to look after Sydney and wait for Luke. It was something ungodly, like five thirty a.m., when Mel hugged me goodbye and Ro jumped into the driver’s seat. The tournament was one in which they would play multiple matches in one day until a winner was determined, so it would be late before they got back.
“Take care of my Sydney baby for me,” Mel told me, and I promised I would.
After they were gone, Sydney and I made ourselves comfortable on the couch. Strictly speaking, the dog wasn’t allowed on the furniture, but for years each of the Cohens had been making “exceptions” without telling the others. At this point Sydney had pretty much determined that it was her divine right to sit on the leather throne. I let her climb up beside me, my feet tucked under her furry belly, and turned on the TV. I meant to find something to watch until Luke got home, but within minutes I was yawning.
I woke up briefly to let the dog out and then woke up again hours later, when I felt someone tucking a strand of hair behind my ears. My blurry vision told me it was Luke, but even if it hadn’t, I had developed a hyperawareness to his scent.
“Hi,” I whispered groggily, my face still smashed against the couch in what I’m sure was a deeply attractive pose. “I meant to stay awake until you got here. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” he said, still leaning over me. “Did I ever tell you you’re the cutest when you sleep?”
I gave a tired smile. “I don’t think you’ve ever seen me sleep.”
“Hmm,” he said thoughtfully. “We have to do something about that.”
Despite myself, my heart galloped in my chest.
“I need to go up and take a shower,” Luke told me, still playing with my hair. “Want to come and hang out upstairs?”
“Yeah, okay,” I said. I sat up and held my arms up over my head. Laughing, Luke helped me wrap my arms around his neck, and I wound my legs around his hips.
“Hi,” he said when our cheeks were brushing.
“Hi.” I kissed his cheek. “You’re probably more tired than I am, and I’m making you carry me up the stairs.”
“You’re not making me do anything,” he said.
Once we were upstairs, he pushed open the door of his room and tossed his backpack on the floor. Then he walked me over to the edge of his bed, where he gently let me down.
I tucked my feet under me, watching as he dug through his closet, his back to me.
“How was your trip?” I asked.
“Eh. Went by pretty fast actually,” he said.
“What time is it?” I stifled another yawn.
“Eight thirty, I think?”
My mouth dropped open. “How the hell did you get here in two hours?”
“I left at like three. Thought it’d give me more time here.”
I tried to seem as stern as possible. “Luke. There’s no good reason to be driving when it’s that dark out.”
“Seeing you’s a pretty good reason,” he said, and all the sternness left me. I smiled at him, then yawned.
“You should get in,” he said, pointing to the bed. “Promise it’s clean.”
Flurries swirled in my stomach. Luke was asking me to climb into his bed. Of course, he didn’t intend to be in it at the same time, but that didn’t matter.
Me in Luke’s bed.
I stood up, went around to the side of his bed, and slipped under the covers, carefully lowering my head onto one of his pillows. He watched me the whole time, holding a change of clothes in his hands.
“Be right back,” he said after a moment.
“Okay.”
When I heard the door shut, I buried my face in his pillow, sighing. It smelled just like Luke. Clean and fresh, like boy and like home. Once again, I meant to wait up until he got back, but when I woke up again, he was fast asleep on his back beside me.
I stared at his profile, his long eyelashes, the strong set of his jaw. His perfect nose.
“I’m not as cute when I sleep,” he muttered, covering his eyes with one of his arms. I shifted closer even though he was on top of the covers and I was underneath them.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” I said, running my finger along the contours of his face. I wanted so badly to kiss him, to bury myself in the space between his neck and shoulders. I wanted . . .
“Is Mel going to freak out?” I asked, imagining her walking in and finding us in bed together. For all the talk of how much she loved me, I suspected there was still a good chance she’d throw me out on my ass if she caught us in a compromising position.
“I’ll stay over here. Or I can take the couch downstairs, if you’re uncomfortable,” he said, opening his eyes to look at me. His eyes were intense and worried, like maybe he thought his nearness was freaking me out.
“I’m not uncomfortable.”
Uncomfortable was the last word I’d used to describe the sensations wreaking havoc on my heart and limbs and brain.
“I promise I won’t touch you,” he said, still looking at me.
It was the reason I loved Luke so much. He was always thoughtful and respectful and sincere, but at that exact moment I wasn’t so sure respectful was what I wanted.
Some Other Now Page 16
