Life by Committee

by Haydu, Corey Ann

  “What if I came over?” I say.

  Joe laughs low. It hurts. My spine feels that laugh, the sexiness of it.

  “Well, what if?” he says, and I know that’s a yes.

  When I get to the door of his house, I can smell garlic simmering and a salty seafood scent. It hits me hard—I’m hungry.

  Once I am safely inside his house, we hug and I feel the whole of his body against mine. I am so not over him. Every piece of me seems to line up with every piece of him: my thighs kiss his, my chest to his, our stomachs and collarbones even find each other. He is only an inch or two taller than me, which some girls would hate but I find sexy. The meeting of our bodies feels good, the parallel body parts and the way they attach when we hug is a revelation every time.

  “Hi,” I sigh out.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.” It’s hard not to kiss, since our mouths line up too, but we resist, letting our breath mingle but keeping an inch or two between our faces.

  “Want early dinner?” he says.

  “With . . . you?” I am stupider around him. Not always, but now.

  “Mom made seafood pasta. It’s really good. Her specialty.” I lick my lips nervously and he goes on. “I’m always starving right after school, so she lets me have dinner right away if I don’t have practice. Weird, I know.”

  “Oh wow.” I have not met Joe’s family, since I am not his girlfriend. I’ve been to his house two times, but only when his parents were out to dinner and only in a group of people wanting to get drunk. Seafood pasta and early dinner with the family is a new level of our relationship, and I can’t wait to tell Star about this leap.

  “I’m starving too,” I say, and a smile finds its way onto my face. Then it grows into a grin. I’m screwed.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  Fourteen.

  If I thought the smell of garlic and Italian cooking was tempting before, it is nothing compared to the way it hits me once I’m actually in the kitchen. The onion-garlic-tomato-butter deliciousness practically knocks me over.

  His mom is standing over a few pots: pasta, sauce, spitting simmering cloves of garlic. She’s heavy and her hair is the same color as Joe’s; just as thick, but wiry and knotted. She reminds me of a book Cate used to read me when I was little, Strega Nona, about an Italian pasta-making witch. Joe’s mom is totally Strega Nona. Her apron is paisley and covered with tomato remnants and oil splotches.

  “Hi, Mrs. Donavetti,” I squeak out.

  “Mom, this is Tabitha. My friend,” Joe says. He puts a hand on my back and pushes me toward her. I stick my hand out and she smiles and nods to the huge wooden spoons she has—one in each hand.

  “So nice to meet you, Tabitha,” she says. “You’ll be joining us for dinner, I hope?”

  “Smells amazing,” I say, nodding. She glows and exchanges an indecipherable look with Joe.

  An hour later I know exactly what that look meant. Mrs. Donavetti hates Sasha Cotton. I know this because she talks about Sasha through the entire meal, wringing her hands and chomping so hard on her mussels and clams and al dente pasta that I think she’s going to chip a tooth.

  “Joe just shouldn’t be with a girl that troubled,” she says, spinning long strands of linguini over her fork with expert ease. “You know her well?”

  “Not too well,” I say.

  “Not too close with her?”

  “Oh, no,” I say. She smiles and nods. Right answer.

  “You’re a good friend to Joe,” she says. “He needs someone like you. Grounded. Smart. Good girl.” I nod and don’t look in Joe’s direction. The conversation has gotten so strange I don’t feel able to really participate in it.

  “Mom, chill,” Joe says at last, and Mrs. Donavetti shrugs and smiles my way. Like I am the girl she’s been waiting for.

  “Want a little more, Tabitha?” she asks. I’m not really hungry after devouring a whole bowl of her stupendous seafood pasta, but the sauce is so spectacular and the noodles so comforting that I can’t say no.

  “Yes, please.”

  “Good girl,” she says, and again looks to Joe with that I told you so look. I guess Sasha never asks for seconds.

  I am in Joe’s house. I am smiling at his mother. I have found the one person in the universe who prefers me to Sasha Cotton, the one person immune to her long legs and dim smile and breathy lullaby voice. I am touching elbows with Joe because we can’t hold hands, but touching elbows might be even better. My funny bone tingles with recognition: This is love.

  Halfway through my seconds I duck into the bathroom and post to Life by Committee. I’m a pot boiling over, and I can’t tell Elise. I can’t tell Cate and Paul. No one I love would approve of this or give me the response I’m looking for. I want a squeal of delight and encouragement and stories about @sshole’s parents, who got married after their shady start.

  I want LBC.

  I wish I could speak out loud to them, because capitalized words and emoticons and exclamation points aren’t enough to convey what it feels like to be in this house playing Girlfriend and knowing that I never could have done this alone. Alone I would chicken out and stay home eating scones and texting Elise and watching Cate’s belly grow and my life vanish.

  BITTY: I’m terrified. But it’s sorta all happening. The life I want. Not the way I pictured it, but the way it has to be.

  Mrs. Donavetti eventually leaves us alone, when she is sure we are stuffed full of pasta and shellfish and garlic. Joe and I stay at the kitchen table and she busies herself upstairs and I want it to be this way forever.

  “Your mom likes me,” I say. I scoot my chair a little closer to his, and he doesn’t protest.

  “She does.”

  “She’s not so into Sasha.”

  “Come on, Tabby,” he says. He fidgets in his seat.

  “Just saying.”

  “I don’t want to talk about Sasha,” he says. I scoot my chair in a little more. Fine by me.

  “I just—Don’t you want us to be . . . more?” I can’t believe I’m actually saying it to his face, not hiding behind the computer screen or my phone or anything.

  “Don’t get like that. You already know how I feel.” The words Joe says don’t always match up with the things his body is doing. For instance: he sounds like he is annoyed with me, but his hand has found its way to my thigh, and his face is now close enough that I can feel his breath travel across that sweet line from my ear to my neck.

  “Sort of . . .”

  “This is all so hard,” he says. “Having feelings for two people at once.” He keeps pressing his lips together and rubbing my thigh. I’m not even moving, but I’m out of breath from sitting near him.

  “Yeah . . .” Even though I know he’s with Sasha and I guess kind of loves Sasha, or at least likes sleeping with her, it hurts to hear him say he has feelings for “two people.” It slips out of his mouth so easily, but it thuds in my head, the worst reality, the thing I don’t want to believe.

  That stupid kitchen clock almost sounds like it’s speeding up, but I know it’s actually my anxiety that’s getting higher and faster. This is my chance.

  “I like you for different reasons, you know?” Joe’s musing. I don’t want to hear him muse about his feelings. I get the sense a pro-con list could be coming, and I don’t need to be lined up against the messy sexy neediness that is Sasha Cotton, so I cut him off with the first and only thing I can think of that will shut him up. And the last thing I actually want to do.

  “Actually, I totally know,” I say. “About liking two people.”

  My phone buzzes. I can hear it going crazy in my purse, but I know it’s Cate and Paul calling to see where I am. I forgot to tell them about my impromptu after-school trip.

  “You . . . do?” Joe says. His hand moves to the place between my shirt and the back of my jeans. It finds that little patch o
f skin and tortures me.

  “I really, really do, actually,” I say. “I know all about it.” Assignment completed? the voice in my head asks. I could go further. I could push even more against all my impulses. His hand is rubbing my back. Tracing circles around the discs of my spine, and I am dizzy from the wonderfulness of it all.

  “I don’t want to share you,” he says. And he comes in for a kiss, right there in his kitchen with his mom humming along with the TV commercials upstairs. The kitchen is still warm from all the cooking and Joe himself is warm, and nothing has ever felt so damn good.

  It works. Doing something brave and strange and unexpected. Because the aftermath, too, is strange and unexpected and brand fucking new. I am on cloud nine.

  Until: Joe comments on the buzzing of my phone, in between kisses, and I go to shut it off. I can’t stop myself from checking LBC for updates, while the phone is in my hand anyway. I want to find a way to type in Assignment completed, update soon, but I know Joe will ask what in the world I am doing. He’s watching me from his chair. I open up the website and let my eyes linger long enough on the page to see the red exclamation point on my profile page. Zed has come up with the other Assignment for me.

  I click the link and look, bend over my phone at a strange angle so that he can’t see.

  ASSIGNMENT: Time to bond with your dad. Get high with him.

  I gasp. I don’t know that I’ve ever gasped in real life, but I do it now and it’s loud. “Kinda insulting when your phone is more interesting than, you know, this,” Joe says. I look his way, but my heart’s pounding from the seriousness of this new Assignment. I almost give in to the terror of what I have to do.

  But.

  But.

  But Joe’s right there and his lips are still wet from the kissing and his mother calls out to say she is going to go out for groceries. And I’m going to do something terrifying and life-altering in the next twenty-four hours, so I might as well do something ecstatic and ridiculous right now.

  I rush at him. Forget about my chair. Climb onto his lap. And dive at his mouth.

  I keep one hand wrapped around my phone. I can’t let it go. I can’t let go. I want to be only in this moment, but right outside this moment, visible even from the gooey, sweet center of it, are Sasha Cotton and my Assignment and the fact that everyone hates me and that my parents both have hoarse voices from all the yelling. It’s a crowded view, and impossible to ignore. The kissing is beautiful, but everything else we have to contend with is neon and unrelenting and loud.

  “Tell me about this other guy,” Joe says, when the kissing has subsided and my shirt is half off and my bra strap’s pulled down nearly to my elbows. He is distracted too.

  “Other guy?” I say. My mind is a black hole. I couldn’t come up with the capital of our own state if it killed me, let alone grasp what Joe’s getting at.

  “You said you get having feelings for two people. . . .” He’s rubbing my bare back, and his eyes are huge and maybe even brimming with real live feelings.

  “Oh. Right.” I’d momentarily forgotten that I was still in the middle of building a whole other lie. I’m not the best liar anyway. I shrug and lower my eyes and try to go in for a kiss.

  “I need to know,” he says. “It’s only fair.”

  “He’s a little older,” I start, going nowhere. “Skinny. Sarcastic. Not like you at all. Likes weird music and, you know, readings at the bookstore. He reads a lot.” I ramble on for a moment before realizing what I’m doing.

  I am describing Devon.

  It makes sense. He appeared. He’s cute. I have a crush on him the way you have a crush on a musician or an actor. Not in a real way. He’s convenient. He’s on my mind because of this morning. I like that he flirts with me. And I miss being around him all the time. But that’s not the same thing as having real feelings for him.

  It’s not like I’m considering completing the second part of that Assignment. The part where I actually start dating someone else, to make Joe jealous. That would be too far.

  But there I am anyway, talking about the buckles on his boots and the fact that I’ve known him since I was six. Acting like I have feelings for him. Acting like he is my Sasha Cotton.

  Joe nods and nods.

  By the time we have finished kissing, it’s dark outside and both of our phones keep buzzing and beeping and singing and blinking.

  He’s even ignored a call or two from Sasha. I can’t contain the bliss I feel at that knowledge. I want to spend our last five minutes together staring into each other’s eyes and making promises about What Happens Now. But Joe’s hands are nudging their way under the waistband of my pants.

  It makes me miss our conversations online. It is the thing I have been wanting: him close to me, him tugging at me, choosing me, wanting me most of all. But here I am, sweater discarded, top button of jeans popped open. And all I can think of is how sweet it was to hear the ping of his chats, and see the words as they appeared onscreen: halting, erratic, unpredictable. I didn’t know where we were going.

  Now, I think I know.

  “I wish the drive home were longer,” I say to Joe after he walks me out to my car and kisses me through the open window once I’m inside.

  “Hm?”

  “Never mind,” I say.

  What I meant was: everything changes after tonight, and I’m not sure I’m ready.

  What I meant was: this is the last perfect moment before I do more terrifying things.

  STAR:

  Here are a bunch of secrets.

  I want to get married.

  Yeah, I mean, I know. I’ve lived in L.A. for less than a week, and maybe we don’t know each other that well. But I want to know I’ll never lose him. I want to know I can live this life and that it is mine.

  There’s a picture hidden in his bedside table, I think of an ex-girlfriend. She’s a redhead and one of the skinniest girls I’ve ever seen. I asked him about it, and he said he meant to throw it away but never got around to it. Which is funny, because throwing something away isn’t hard, isn’t something that takes time.

  I threw it away for him.

  ZED: Propose.

  STAR: What?

  ZED: Assignment. Propose.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  Fifteen.

  BITTY: Assignment completed. I told Joe I have feelings for someone else, too.

  ZED: What about the rest?

  BITTY: The rest of what?

  ZED: What about actually going for this mystery person? To make Joe jealous. Action’s better than words, right?

  BITTY: Right.

  I am trying to be agreeable. But I am already so worked up about having to do drugs with my father that I’m not sure I can handle anything else. I don’t want to say as much. I want to be steely and strong and spontaneous. I want to be an LBC-er. I want to be like Star, telling a million secrets and getting the world’s biggest Assignment.

  I mean, a proposal. Shit.

  STAR: Jesus, Zed, give the girl a chance to breathe. One Assignment at a time, right?

  ZED: She seems pretty formidable to me. Reminds me of you.

  STAR: Still. Come on. Her Assignment today is for real. Don’t overwhelm the new girl.

  ZED: Is it possible you’re projecting? I haven’t heard any updates on your Assignment yet.

  Star doesn’t reply.

  I wonder what smoking weed will feel like. If it will make me giggly or dizzy or sick. I wonder if Paul will coach me through it or, like, ground me for life or start wanting to smoke up together all the time.

  Maybe I don’t know him well enough to even guess what his response will be. Or maybe I don’t know myself well enough to know what my own response will be either.

  Paul’s at the kitchen table with coffee and clear eyes when I wander down Saturday morning before I head to Tea Cozy.

 
“Little Bitty,” he says with a sober smile. My heart rate spikes. Hearing my LBC name out loud makes my hands shake. I should not have used a name that Paul calls me all the time. He gets up to pour me a coffee and make me some toast. I love when Paul makes me breakfast, even when it’s only toast or cereal. I like that sometimes he’s in charge. I don’t commit to sitting down. I don’t think I can sit across the table from him and act like a normal person right now.

  “Big Ole Paul,” I say, and do my impression of a person with a boring day ahead, smiling at her father.

  “You feeling better today?” he says. It’s a strange question, because it’s not the question he actually wants to ask. I assume he wants to know if I’m still mad at him, if we can move forward without actually acknowledging the terrible things we said to each other.

  “Are you?” I say.

  “We gotta do better than this, Tabs,” he says. He looks sheepish. He hasn’t shaved still, and he shrugs and gives me big puppy-dog eyes.

  “I know. Now that the baby’s coming and stuff,” I say. I crunch through the toast and crumbs fly everywhere. Paul doesn’t make me sit down or use a plate or use margarine instead of butter or anything.

  “Nope. We gotta do better than this because I am still going for Family of the Year, and we’re not going to pull it off if we’re yelling at each other in public.”

  I can’t help laughing. Paul has long joked about our ability to win Family of the Year. Over the years it’s become a thing we reference as totally real, like the Olympics. Like any day now they’re going to show up with a trophy.

  “Germany could pull ahead of us?” I say.

  “I think the real competition is going to be from Australia this year. There’s some contenders,” Paul says. He goes to put more toast in the toaster for me, but I shake my head and pour some of the coffee from his full mug into my empty one.