by Ariel Kaplan
And I was cut off by the force of his mouth meeting mine. My eyes popped open, and his were staring back at me, our lips in this awkward locked position, my mouth half-open because I’d been talking and his lips sort of between mine and against my teeth.
I’d just bared my heart. And now we were staring at each other like a pair of goldfish, his lips puckered, my cheeks puffed out. I started to laugh, and he leaned away and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “That was terrible,” he said, but when I opened my mouth to reply somehow, he said, “Just, shh.”
I closed my mouth. He took the coffee out of my hands and put it back on the table. And then he kissed me for real.
He leaned in so slowly I had to reach for him, and then his lips were so, so soft, and then I tried to pull him closer by his shirt, and then I remembered he wasn’t wearing one and I was just running my hands over his bare skin, which was smooth and warm. “Say it again,” he whispered between kisses. “Please.”
“I love you,” I said, which earned me two arms around my back, pulling me closer. “I love you,” I said again, and he lay down again, pulling me with him, tucked in between his body and the back of the couch. “I love you,” I said, and his lips moved to my neck, whispering, “Yes, yes, yes.”
* * *
—
It was sometime later that we finally came up for air. My lips were tingling, and his hair stuck straight up from my fingers running through it.
I felt a little weird then, because he hadn’t exactly said anything back. Maybe he made out with everyone who said they loved him, because he was unfailingly polite that way. Or maybe he was just a horndog.
He gave me a lazy smile and said, “So, for a long time, huh?”
I nodded. We were both under the blanket, and I picked at the edge.
“How long is that, exactly? Since last week? Last month?”
“Since always,” I said. “I’ve loved you since always.”
“Hmm,” he said, running a finger along the edge of my jaw. “Not since always. I would have known that.”
“Why would I lie?”
“You don’t even remember. Do you?”
“Remember what?”
“I kissed you,” he said. “The third week I knew you, I kissed you.”
“You never kissed me!”
He laughed. “See? You don’t even remember. We were watching a Ray Harryhausen marathon on TV, and halfway through Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger I kissed you, and you patted me on the shoulder and went to make more popcorn.”
I blinked a few times. I remembered that day. But it was right when I’d first met him, and he’d been dating Pete Neilson and just broken up a few days before.
“I thought you were gay,” I admitted. “Anyway, it was on the cheek! It didn’t count.”
“I was fourteen,” he said, looking me dead in the eyes. “It counted.”
I touched the cheek in question, as if I could still feel his kiss there, like it’d been waiting all this time. I’d lain in my bed that night, touching it just like this and wishing it had been real somehow. But I’d dismissed it, because he’d been with a guy, and I hadn’t understood what that meant.
“You never said anything,” I said. “Not a word.”
“I made a move. You turned me down.” He shrugged. “I don’t force my attentions on people who don’t want them.”
“But I did want them. I tried to tell you. I told you there was someone I liked.”
“You never said that was me,” he said.
“You’re always asking people out. I thought if you wanted things to go that way—”
He laced his fingers through mine. “You were always talking about other guys. You spent all of sophomore year talking about Jim’s hair.”
“I was trying to get over you,” I said.
“Well,” he said. “What a lot of time we’ve wasted. Hang on. I’m still wasting it.” He sat up, pulling me with him, and put a hand on either side of my face. “I love you,” he said. “Sorry for not saying it earlier.”
I kissed him hard enough to knock us both off the couch.
After a couple of hours on the couch, my mouth was feeling pleasantly numb. I leaned away for a little air. “Hi,” I said.
“Hi.”
He kissed me again. And then we jumped because there was this loud beeping followed by the roar of a vacuum as Robbie the robot unhooked himself from his charging station and started making his rounds of the room.
Nate leaned his forehead against mine, and we laughed. “I hate that thing,” he admitted.
“You could just vacuum yourself.”
“Let’s not get carried away.”
“Could you turn it off?”
“I don’t actually know how. It’s on some kind of programmed schedule.”
Robbie bumped my foot, which I lifted off the floor. “Could you just move it to another room?”
Nate smirked. “Hang on.” He scooped up Robbie—still vacuuming—shoved him into the bathroom, and closed the door.
“Will he freak out that he can’t get back out again?”
“It’s a vacuum, Mischa, not a dog.”
My stomach started to growl.
“Coffee wasn’t enough, huh?” he asked.
“I guess not. Are you hungry?”
“Starving,” he said. “I really want sushi. Is that weird?”
“It’s not weird, but I’m not sure where we’re going to find a Japanese place open at ten in the morning.”
“I think that conveyor-belt sushi place over in Fairfax opens at eleven.” We’d been under the blanket, and he pushed it off himself and got up, running a hand through his hair. “By the time I get dressed and we drive over there, it’ll probably be open.”
I sat up. “I don’t know,” I said. “Sushi’s kind of…”
“Delicious?”
“Expensive.”
“Oh, I’m totally buying. I’ve got some pre-Emory money from Grandma burning a hole in my pocket.”
“Pre-Emory money?”
“I don’t know. She sends me a check; I don’t ask questions.”
“I’m in my pajamas,” I reminded him.
“You can borrow something of Rachel’s,” he said. “You’re about the same size.”
“I’m like three inches taller than her. Anyway, she’ll kill me!”
“She has so many clothes, she won’t even notice.”
* * *
—
I felt kind of bad poking through Rachel Miller’s closet uninvited, but I also really didn’t want to go for sushi in my jammies. “There’s a lot of glitter in here,” I called to Nate, who was brushing his teeth in the bathroom. I pulled off my pajamas and tried to put some little tank top on. It wouldn’t even reach my belly button.
“Aim for the back,” he said. “That’ll be the stuff my mom buys her that she never wears.”
I scrounged around and pulled out a blue dress and held it up to myself.
Definitely not my size. I checked the label. Not going to happen.
“Nate,” I said. “I can’t wear these.”
He came in through the doorway. “Maybe I can help you find—oh.”
I crossed my arms in front of my bra.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
He coughed and turned around to face the wall. “You are half-naked in my little sister’s bedroom.”
“Hey,” I said. “There’s a subject for next Thursday’s therapy session.”
He said, “No, no. It’s fine. This is not at all awkward and totally my fault.”
“I could wear something of your mom’s, maybe.”
“Okay, now you’re not helping.”
“I have to wear someth
ing, Nate.”
“Maybe I have something.” He went into his room and came back with a blue T-shirt and a pair of shorts. “My grandma just sent me the shirt, and the shorts have a drawstring.”
It was, of course, an Emory T-shirt. I slipped it on over my head. The shorts were kind of a weird length, but they fit well enough. It was strange wearing Nate’s clothes, like, oddly intimate in some way. They smelled like Nate’s laundry detergent. I felt a little like he was hugging me. “Do I look okay?” I asked.
“You look perfect,” he said.
I felt myself blush, just a little.
He said, “Seriously, though, you are going to brush your hair, right?”
* * *
—
Kurenai Sushi is one of those places where there’s a big conveyor belt and the food goes around on little plates—color coded by price—and you have to grab it as it goes by. I’m not sure why it’s so much fun to catch your food like that; maybe it harkens back to our hunter-gatherer days, I don’t know. But every time I grabbed a California roll as it whizzed past, I felt a little jolt of victory.
“Hey!” I said. “Tempura!” I grabbed the plate and set it in front of me on the shiny red table. “And I’m wearing your drawstring shorts, so, like, I can pretty much eat forever.”
Nate had given up on his spicy tuna and was smiling at me.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing,” he said. “I’m just glad you’re happy.”
“I am,” I said. “I am happy.”
He came around to my side of the booth and slid in next to me. “I have a thought,” he said softly into my ear.
“Is it a good one?”
“It’s a very good one. If I were Peter Pan, I could fly with this thought. You want me to share it with you?”
“Pixie dust,” I said, stuffing tempura into my mouth. “You need a happy thought and pixie dust.”
“Not this time,” he said. He pulled me a little closer and whispered into my ear, “Come to Atlanta with me.”
I jerked away. “What?”
“Come to Atlanta with me. You don’t have to go to community college here. You can go there. And maybe transfer after a year.”
“But. Where will I live?”
“In an apartment. With me.”
I dropped one of my chopsticks. “And we will pay for this apartment how?”
He shrugged.
“You think your parents are going to pay for it?” I asked.
“They were going to have to pay for the dorm room.”
“I don’t know…”
“Just think about it. We’ll go to class. We’ll come home. We’ll eat tempura.”
“I’ll have to have a job,” I said. “To pay for the tempura. And the classes. And my half of the apartment.”
He shrugged, like this was no big deal, to move to Atlanta and get a job. “So you’ll get a job.”
I put my chopsticks down and pressed my face into his chest. “You’ll be embarrassed of me.”
“What?”
“You’ll be at Emory all day, and then come home to your loser girlfriend.”
“You’re not—”
“I am. I am, Nate. If you liked me before, it’s because of the person I was. And I’m not that person anymore.”
“What, because you’re not going to a fancy college? I don’t care about any of that,” he said in my ear. “I never cared.”
I closed my eyes tightly, wishing it were true, but not understanding how he couldn’t care. “Come on,” I said.
He ran his nose along the edge of my jaw, and my breath hitched. “You think I care what college you’re going to? You think that’s all you’re worth to me? That has nothing to do with who you are.”
“It has everything to do with who I am! It’s who I chose to be.”
“Mischa—”
“No, listen.”
I stopped to watch a dragon roll go by. I didn’t know how to explain this. It barely even made sense to me anymore. I tried to remember what it had been like to be Mischa a few weeks ago, before I started waking up and doing the “I’m not going to college” mantra.
“Here’s the thing,” I said. “I used to get up every morning knowing exactly who I was and what I had to do.” I waited for him to interrupt me, but he just looked at me expectantly. “I went after every brass ring someone put in front of me. And I was really, really good at that. And now that’s over. I have no idea who I am now.”
“Mischa,” he said. “You are brilliant and funny and sexy as hell. And you’re a really great friend. And you’re all those things no matter what.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not the same. I don’t feel the same.”
“Hey,” he said. “That’s okay, though. Changing is okay.”
“I just wish…”
“What do you wish?”
“I don’t even know. I wish this never happened? I wish I’d known it was going to happen, so I could’ve done things differently.”
“What would you have done differently?”
“I would have had fun,” I admitted. “More fun, I guess. I wouldn’t have joined twenty clubs I don’t care about and studied every minute.”
“Fun,” he said. “Well, that’s easy enough. Let’s have fun.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tomorrow. Let’s skip school. You and me. And we’ll do whatever you want. Anything. All day, it’s your party.”
I closed my eyes. Suddenly everything on the Mischa Abramavicius Bucket List looked kind of stupid and out of my reach. Swimming with moon jellies in Palau? How was I supposed to get there? “I don’t even know what I’d pick,” I said.
He gave me a squeeze. “I guess that’s your homework tonight.”
Nate got to my house at six o’clock the next morning, which I’m pretty sure is the earliest he’s ever been up. I called the school, did my best Norah Abramavicius impression, and told them I thought I had mono. Then I left my mom a note telling her I’d gotten a ride to school from Nate, climbed into Nate’s car, and drove away.
We pulled into the nearest Starbucks drive-thru a few minutes later, where Nate ordered a cappuccino and I got a hot chocolate with a shot of espresso.
“So,” he said while we were stopped in the line. “What’s on the agenda?”
I handed him my phone. I’d gone through the Mischa Abramavicius Bucket List and picked out the local highlights and put them in a separate memo.
“This is some list,” he said, frowning.
“It was everything I could think of within driving distance.”
“Mischa,” he said. “I think you’re missing the point of this exercise.”
“All those things are fun!”
“Individually, yes, but all together? It’s like a marathon.” He handed me back my phone. “You don’t always have to be an overachiever.”
I looked down at the screen. “I don’t know what to cut,” I said sadly.
“Tea at the Ritz?”
“I’ve always wanted to go,” I said. “But I could never justify spending the money.”
“Kayaking the Shenandoah? How are those things supposed to go together?”
“I have varied interests!”
He pulled through to the window and picked up our drinks, stuffing a dollar into the tip jar. “You don’t have to check things off a list,” he said as he pulled into an empty space and lifted the lid of his cup; I could see they’d forgotten the nutmeg, but he didn’t complain about it. “Just pick one thing. What’s your fantasy day? If you had all the time and money in the world?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how to pick.”
“Mischa,” he wheedled. He took my cup out of my hand and held it out of my reach.
“Give
me back my hot chocolate!”
“Just answer the question!”
“Fine! I want to put on an Alexander McQueen evening gown with an asymmetric hem and go to the opera and sit next to Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I want her to drop her purse, and I’ll pick it up, and she’ll say, ‘Young lady, no one has ever picked up a purse in such a dashing and considerate way, why don’t you come back with me to my house for hot fudge sundaes, and also I shall give you an internship and write you a letter of recommendation on the back of this copy of the Constitution that I carry around with me, and also your earrings are heaven.’ ”
Nate stared at me with an expression of alarm. “That’s a very specific fantasy.”
“You asked.”
He laughed and gave me my drink back. I was making him nervous, but I wasn’t sure why. Maybe he was afraid I really was about to have a breakdown. He said, “Why stop there? Maybe the two of you could go skydiving together. I bet RBG loves extreme sports. I mean, just look at her.”
I felt my grin spreading across my face. “Oh my God,” I said. “Nate. Skydiving.”
“I was kidding,” he said. “I don’t think Ruth is really into extreme sports. Like, at all.”
“Not her. Us.”
“Skydiving? You’re not serious,” he said. “Ha ha.”
“I’m serious,” I said, pointing at my eyes. “This is my serious face.”
He waved me off. “How about this: let’s go to Paris.”
“I don’t have a passport.”
“Fine. New York, then.”
“I don’t want to go to New York. I want to jump out of an airplane.”
“And what, precisely, do you think that will do for you?”
I’d read about skydiving once. It takes approximately five minutes to hit the ground: about thirty seconds of free fall and then another four minutes of floating once your parachute opens. I said, “I’ll get to fly.”
I pulled out my phone and started googling.
“Mischa,” he said. “You don’t have to do this.”
