Always Forever Maybe

by Anica Mrose Rissi

  “Sure. I’ll drop you home.” He unlocked the helmets.

  I cringed. “Is it too weird to ask you to leave me a few blocks away? I’m not sure they’ll be cool with my showing up on the back of a motorcycle.”

  “You mean you haven’t been riding bitch your whole life? You’re a natural.”

  I got serious. “No, and I want to do it right. Teach me how to do it better.”

  He pulled on his gloves. “I’d say you’re doing great.”

  “Should I, like, lean into the curves, or try to stay upright? Or something else?”

  “Betts.” He kissed the tip of my nose. “Don’t think. Just feel it.”

  Six

  AS I FLOATED UP THE SIDEWALK TOWARD MY HOUSE, I saw I was in luck: no cars. My parents weren’t home yet.

  I scrolled through Jo’s texts—mostly exclamation points and question marks—let myself in the door, and bent down to greet Rufus, our dog. I tousled his ears while he sniffed my coat and face with suspicion. I loved the idea that he could smell Aiden on me, that our scents had mingled together and now, even after we’d parted, the new perfume of us remained on my clothes and skin. That Rufus could smell the caffeine and adrenaline and happiness seeping out my pores.

  My phone buzzed. Are you pregnant yet? Jo asked.

  Almost, I answered. I dumped my bag and headed to the kitchen. We went to the lake he kissed my nose he is perfect and so pretty and ahhhhhhh

  I washed my hands and filled a tall glass with water as Jo sent a string of dancing emojis in reply.

  Rufus ran to the front hall and I heard a car door slam shut in the driveway. Parents home talk later, I wrote. My mom walked inside, balancing a pizza box, her purse, two totes, and a pile of papers. I put down my water and went over to help.

  “Why haven’t you set the table?” she asked as I took the pizza box from her hand.

  “Fine, how was your day?” I set the pizza on the counter and pulled open the silverware drawer.

  “Don’t be fresh.” Mom unloaded her bags with a sigh and slipped off her shoes before heading upstairs to change. My brother, Kyle, could have gotten away with a comment like that, but of course coming from me it fell flat. My sense of humor didn’t translate with my mother these days. If I were smarter I would just keep my mouth shut.

  I filled two more water glasses and carried all three to the table, trying not to hum. Despite my mom’s crank, my good mood was hard to suppress, but it might set off parental alarm bells.

  Rufus danced at the door again. “Hi, Dad,” I called. He dropped his keys into the key dish and grunted in reply.

  Three plates, three napkins. I went back to the kitchen for red pepper flakes.

  “Did you put out the waters?” Dad said into the fridge, like I didn’t set the table, including waters, every single night.

  “Yup, got it.”

  He straightened, opening a beer. “Good.” The liquid fizzed and cackled while he split it between two glasses.

  I followed him to the dining room and slid into my usual chair. “Open the box, let’s eat,” Mom said as she walked in, smoothing the hem of her shirt. My mom was a high school English teacher—not at my school, thank goodness—and she spoke to everyone she encountered like they were unruly children it was her job to discipline. Especially me, and especially lately, with whatever was going on with the new head of her department making her come home every evening extra nerved up and exhausted. I’d never have called her a shiny, happy person before, but this school year was making her miserable. Thank goodness I’d had Jo’s as an escape hatch.

  I blotted the grease from my pizza and folded over the paper towel while my parents complained about their days—Mom grumbling about a memo on expectations for standardized test scores, Dad reporting on the guy at the deli who still couldn’t get Dad’s order right, no matter how many times he said no mayo.

  I let their voices recede into nothingness as I replayed the afternoon in my head. I wanted to remember every detail of every second Aiden and I had spent together. Every look he’d given me. Every word he’d said. Each moment our bodies had touched or almost touched. I could see the slow lift of his smile, the way it started with a quirk in one corner of his lips and grew until it reached his eyes. His eyes that were so vivid in my mind, I could almost count the lashes. He was the realest person I’d ever met.

  “JoJo.”

  My head snapped up at the sound of my name. Both my parents were watching me closely. I swallowed the giant bite of pizza I’d been chewing, cheese glomming onto the sides of my throat as it went down. “Hmm?” I managed to say around it.

  “I said, how did the studying go?” Mom repeated.

  Studying. “Oh,” I said. “Great. Fine. It was fine.” I reached for my water as an excuse to hold something in front of my face while I lied. Though I sometimes bent or partially evaded their rules in order to make my life more livable, I never straight-out broke them like I had today. Kyle did, all the time, ever since we were kids, but I’d never quite dared. I didn’t have that Kyle charm that often helped him get away with it, and I was kind of a goody two-shoes anyway. Yet somehow I was the one our mother always seemed suspicious of. As Jo pointed out, there were endless double standards for girls, including those enforced by other women. “We got a lot done,” I elaborated.

  I braced myself, certain that once my parents really looked at me they would know. The spark of Aiden’s kiss had set off a glow that had radiated across my cheeks, seeped into my skin, and gone coursing through my veins. The change had to be all over my face. How could they not sense it? I expected them to pounce on the lie and demand to know where I’d been.

  But for all their careful monitoring, my parents clearly didn’t see me. Mom nodded. “That’s good. I hope you’ve still got energy for your other work, though. Surely history isn’t the only thing on your plate.” One would think, since I’d already gotten into college, she might trust I had it under control. One would think wrong.

  “Yeah, I’ll probably be studying the rest of the night.” I would probably also be texting with Jo, but of course I wasn’t going to say that. Even if I hadn’t supposedly spent the afternoon at her house, my parents would still want to know what we could possibly need to talk about when we had already seen each other all day at school. My parents did not have real friends of their own, and it showed.

  I took another slice of pizza, trying to choose the one with the fewest mushrooms. Mom still got our pizzas with Kyle’s favorite toppings even though my brother had been at college for almost a year and a half. Seventeen months of the parental scrutiny focused solely on me. Although if Kyle were here, he would still be the golden child—whereas my parents treated me like I was a toddler playing with knives at the edge of a cliff.

  It could be worse. I could have the kind of parents Lexa had—the mom-and-dad versions of Lexa herself, who acted like their kids’ own personal cheerleaders or their overaged best friends. I didn’t want that. But it would be nice to have parents who fell into some sort of middle ground. Like Jo’s parents, who were supportive of her and Eric’s lives, but not all up in them, either, because they had lives of their own. But the Metmowlee-Ruben family was basically perfect. It was pointless to compare.

  “May I please be excused?” I asked, rolling up my napkin to put back in its ring. I couldn’t tell my parents about Aiden yet, but the everything of him was so good, it was hard to contain it. I needed to get upstairs so I could let it all spill out with Jo.

  My father eyed my empty plate. “Yes, if you clear your dishes and put away the pizza box.”

  I jumped up. “We’re having ice cream later if you’d like dessert,” Mom said.

  “No, thanks.” My phone buzzed in my pocket. “I already ate a few cookies at Jo’s.”

  I pulled out the phone on my way up the stairs. One new text from Aiden: Hey

  Hey, I wrote back.

  You free on Friday?

  I might be

  I’m picking yo
u up at 6. Dress warm

  Seven

  “WITH THE SCARF OR WITHOUT?” I ASKED, TURNING away from Jo’s mirror to model both options.

  “Without,” Jo said. “Don’t hide the V-neck. You want to show off some skin.”

  “No, with,” Eric said. “He said to dress warmly, right? If he picks her up on that motorcycle, she’ll freeze.”

  “It’s not that cold tonight. And she’ll be warmed by the heat of his loooooove. Plus a coat.”

  “Wear it,” Eric said to me. “You can always take it off later.”

  Jo wiggled her shoulders, shaking the queen-size bed where they sat side by side. “She can take it allllll off later.” Eric rolled his eyes.

  I put the scarf back on. Now that Friday was finally here, my dizzy high from the past few days was swiftly crashing down. Aiden and I had been texting cute banter and funny, random pics all week but I felt nervous and almost shy about seeing him again. The scarf was good armor.

  “Maybe you should add more layers,” Jo said. “I bet it’s a fetish. He wants you to wear as much clothing as possible so it takes him hours to undress you.”

  I shook my head. “Stop. He’s not going to undress me. We haven’t even kissed yet. And that’s not a thing.” I didn’t want to joke around about this, but of course Jo pushed it further.

  “Sure it is! It was a thing for me.”

  “Oh boy. Here we go,” Eric said.

  “No, really. It was my first sexual fantasy. When I was eight years old I used to jerk off while picturing my wedding night—which was, of course, the first time I would be doing it. I knew my new husband would be very, very handsome and I knew we’d be in a hotel room and he’d kiss me and we would do stuff on the bed, but I didn’t really understand what the stuff was or what he might look like naked, so I imagined us both wearing tons of clothing so I could fantasize about removing layer after layer without having to get to the really scary part before I was finished.”

  I would never even think the words sexual fantasy in front of my brother, but Eric and Jo had always been different. He was unperturbed, at least by that part. “You were masturbating when we were eight?” he said. “I’m not sure whether to be alarmed or impressed.”

  Jo shrugged. “Perks of being female. Tell him, Betts.”

  “Nah, that’s okay,” Eric said before I could decline to get pulled into it. I hated when she used me as a prop in the Jo Show, even when our audience was Eric. Or maybe especially when our audience was Eric. He stood and wiped his hands down his jeans. “I’ve gotta go layer up for Lexa now anyway. Have fun, Bumble Bee. See you at breakfast.”

  I stuck out my tongue in response to the nickname (while behind his back, Jo made a face at the mention of Lexa) and he laughed as he crossed the room. Eric was the only one who could get away with calling me that.

  Jo narrowed her eyes at the door he’d shut behind him. “Something is up with him.”

  “Because he doesn’t want to hear about your earliest sexual fantasies? That seems like normal brother behavior to me.”

  “Hmph.” She blew her bangs off her forehead. They fell straight back into her eyes.

  She didn’t elaborate on her theory about Eric and I didn’t push. Jo was my best friend but Eric was her twin, and she was both twin territorial and older-sister protective of him. It could get intense. On their eleventh birthday, Jo’s gift to Eric had been a poem she wrote about how she sometimes wanted to kill him but would nonetheless take a bullet for him, eat the poison apple, fall on a knife, drink the cyanide, or accept an arrow through the heart, no hesitations, no regrets, so they could leave this world as they had entered it: together.

  He had given her a pudding cup. Butterscotch.

  Jo had been writing a lot of dramatic and macabre poetry at the time, but still. I’d learned early it was best not to insert myself anywhere near the middle of that.

  For about ten seconds of sophomore year I thought I was in love with Eric. It was the only real secret I had ever kept from Jo, but falling for your best friend’s brother, let alone her twin, crosses all the lines of acceptability. Jo would have taken it as a straight-up betrayal. Eric was hers. And I wouldn’t ever want her to look at me with the same mix of tolerance and mild disapproval with which I’d seen her eyeing Lexa and the other Lexa-types he’d gone out with before her.

  Besides, it was pretty obvious at the time that my crush was in no way requited. Eric loved me, but not in that way. And I wasn’t even sure that my feelings for him were really about him. It was hard to separate loving Eric from loving the whole package deal—Jo, their parents, this house. Even Stella, their terrible cat. I loved everything about the entire Metmowlee-Ruben household. I always had. My childhood fantasy had been that I would wake up one day and be one of them.

  But just as I would always be Jo’s best friend but never her twin, I would always be welcome in this home but never belong here, no matter how long I stayed or how many of their snacks I consumed. I wasn’t a charismatic, talented, extraordinary Metmowlee-Ruben. I was an uptight, control-freakish, self-doubting Betts.

  Except maybe with Aiden I could be something else, a different kind of girl. The kind that would climb onto the back of a near-stranger’s motorcycle, putting her life and her heart in his hands because he’d asked. There had been a power and a freedom in deciding to give myself over to what fate had thrown my way—to wrapping my arms around him and being fully in for the ride. I felt safe with him. I felt central, already.

  I took off the scarf. “You sure you’re okay with my ditching you tonight?”

  “Okay with it, yes. Thrilled about it, no,” Jo said. “But I know you won’t make it a habit.”

  “Never,” I swore. If things went as well as I hoped they would tonight, I’d ask Aiden to take me on a “first” date and meet my parents, and Jo wouldn’t have to be my cover anymore.

  Jo widened her eyes. “Incoming,” she said. I turned toward the window. It was too dark to see out but there was the unmistakable hum of a motorcycle approaching. “Go. I’ll see you after. Come back with juicy details, okay?”

  I gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “Okay.” I threw on my coat, stuffed the scarf in the pocket, and flew down the stairs, nearly tripping over Stella at the bottom. “Meowww,” she complained. I walked right past.

  I slipped on my shoes, reached for the doorknob, and took a deep breath.

  He was here.

  Eight

  I WALKED DOWN JO’S FRONT STEPS INTO THE COLD OF early night, toward the boy who was waiting for me. Aiden lifted off his helmet and ran a gloved hand through his hair as he watched me approach. His face stayed solemn as I moved toward him, drawn in like he was my gravity.

  I stopped one step short of pressing against him. “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey.” He pulled off his gloves and, without breaking eye contact, reached for the zipper of my halfway-fastened coat and zipped it all the way up to my neck. His fingers brushed my chin. “There,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  He held my gaze a beat longer and swept a hand toward Ralph. “Shall we?”

  “We shall.”

  I didn’t ask where we were going. I didn’t need to know. I pulled on the helmet he held out to me, swung my leg over his bike, and wrapped myself around him. This was where I belonged.

  “You been here before?” Aiden asked as we walked up the road into Cazenovia Park.

  “Sure,” I said, “but not at night. Are we allowed in here after dark?”

  Aiden reached for my hand and we passed through the glow of an old-fashioned streetlamp. “You don’t want to go all Bonnie and Clyde with me?”

  I pretended to consider it. “I’m not sure I’m dressed for a full-blown crime spree,” I said, thrilling at the easy way our arms swung in sync. “I’d consider jaywalking, though. Or illegally downloading something.”

  He gave my gloved fingers a squeeze. “The park’s open until ten. I will not make you an accomplice to my crimes. Not t
onight, anyway.” He led me off the pavement onto a dirt path along the creek. It was darker here away from the streetlamps, but not as dark as I would have expected. The sky glowed purple-gray from the lights of the city, and there was a nearly full moon sliding in and out of the clouds over the spidery canopy of branches above us. Our footsteps in the gravel and the distant traffic were the only sounds.

  We came to a small clearing beside the water and Aiden let go of my hand. He shook out a blanket he’d pulled from his bag and spread it on the dead grass. “I hope you like picnics.”

  “Everyone likes picnics. But who picnics in winter?”

  “We do,” he said. We. I liked the sound of that. “Sit.”

  I arranged myself cross-legged on the blanket and shifted on the lumpy, frozen ground beneath my butt. Perhaps this was why only we picnicked in winter: Winter was cold. Aiden draped a second blanket across my shoulders and I cuddled into the cozy fleece of it. Much better.

  He kneeled and uncapped a thermos. Steam escaped in wisps that curled up toward the moon as he poured me a cup of something hot. I held it to my lips and breathed in the scent. Coffee. Black. Of course.

  I took a small sip. Nope, still not used to it.

  “Good?” he asked. I nodded and braved another taste. It was bitter, but I appreciated its heat. And even though I didn’t like it, I loved the idea of it—of drinking it here with him, in the park at night on a picnic during the first chilly weekend of March.

  “Bread. Cheese. Coffee. Chips.” Aiden named each item he’d laid out. “And Devil Dogs for dessert.”

  “Amazing,” I said, accepting the hunk of baguette he ripped off the loaf for me. I tore it open with my thumbs and piled a few slices of cheddar inside.

  “You warm enough?”

  I nodded and chewed, marveling at how much better everything tasted outside. “You?”