Forget about everyone else laughing. Now I want to laugh. This can’t be happening. It can’t.
She’s going to tell me more. She’s going to push it further. She’s going to say my name like that again, and I am going to hear music in it I shouldn’t hear.
I hold up my hand. “No more,” I insist. “Not now.” And then it’s there—the answer I don’t want, the benefit against the doubt. “Tomorrow. I’ll give you tomorrow. Because that’s one way to know, isn’t it? If what you say is happening is really happening—I mean, I need more than a day.”
I’m waiting for her to put up a fight. I’m waiting for her to argue it some more. Or maybe this is the part where the camera crew comes out and I discover my humiliation has all been filmed for some cruel TV show.
But no.
None of that happens.
All that happens is that she thanks me. Genuine thanks. Thankful thanks.
“Don’t thank me until I show up,” I warn her. “This is all really confusing.”
“I know,” she says.
It’s my life.
I have to go. But then I turn back one last time to look at her, and I see how she’s on the border between hope and devastation. It’s that visible to me. And even though the alarms are loud and clear in my head, I feel I can’t leave her like this. I want to push her a little closer to hope and a little farther from devastation.
“The thing is,” I say, “I didn’t really feel it was him that day. Not completely. And ever since then, it’s like he wasn’t there. He has no memory of it. There are a million possible explanations for that, but there it is.”
“There it is,” she echoes. There’s no bragging in her voice. No trickery.
It can’t be real, but it’s real to her.
Fact. Feeling.
I shake my head.
“Tomorrow,” she says.
Now it’s my turn to echo. “Tomorrow,” I tell her, committing myself to something I feel like I became committed to a long time ago. Tomorrow. A word I’ve used for as long as I knew what it meant.
But now…now it feels like it means something different.
Now it feels like it means something slightly new.
I don’t text Justin. I don’t call him.
No, I go straight to his house and pound on the door.
His parents are still at work. I know he’s the only one home. It takes him a couple of minutes, but he opens the door. He’s surprised to see me.
“We weren’t supposed to be doing something, were we?” he asks.
“No,” I tell him. “I just need to talk to you for a second.”
“Um…okay. Do you want to come in?”
“Sure.”
He takes me into the den, where his warfare game is paused. I have to move the controller to clear a seat next to him.
“What’s up?” he asks.
“It’s about last week. I need to talk to you about it.”
He looks confused. Or maybe just impatient.
“What about last week?”
“When we went to the beach. Do you remember that?”
“Of course I remember that.”
“What songs played as we drove there?”
He looks at me like I’ve just asked him about rocket science. “How the fuck am I supposed to remember what songs were playing?”
“Was it cold or warm?”
“You were there. Don’t you know?”
“You told me a story about climbing a tree when you were eleven. Do you remember that?”
He snorts. “I could barely climb a ladder when I was eleven—I don’t think I was climbing any trees. Why are you asking me this?”
“But you remember being there, right?”
“Sure. There was sand. There was water. It was a beach.”
I don’t understand. He has some memory. But not all of it.
I decide to try a lie.
“You were so nice to me when I was stung by that jellyfish. God, that hurt. But I liked the way you carried me back to the car.”
“I wasn’t going to leave you there!” he says. “You’re easy to carry.”
He wasn’t there. He was there—but he wasn’t there.
I am so confused.
His hand is brushing over my knee, up my leg.
“I can carry you somewhere now, if you want.”
He’s coming in for a kiss. His lips are against mine. His body is starting to press.
This is not what I want, and he has no idea.
And I don’t know how to explain, so I kiss him back.
Acceleration. His hand going under my shirt. His tongue in my mouth. The cigarette taste of him. The sweat and grit on his hand from the controller.
I know it’s really bad to pull away. That it will hurt him if I pull away. But I pull away. Not far. But enough.
He pulls back in reaction. “What? I figure, if you came all this way…”
“I can’t,” I tell him. “I’ve got too much going on in my head. I’m not in the mood.”
He moves his thumb slowly against my breast. “I believe I know ways to put you in the mood.”
Usually my body reaches out for this.
“Stop,” I say.
He’s not a jerk. When I say stop, he stops. But he doesn’t look happy about it.
“Are you getting tired of me?” he asks.
He wants it to sound like he’s joking. And I could point out that if he’d stayed sober on Saturday night, we could have done something then. But is that really true? After dancing with Nathan, would I really have had sex with Justin?
I know what I’m supposed to say, and I say it: “No, I could never get tired of you.” I kiss him again, but it’s clearly a goodbye kiss. “I’m tired, yes. But not of you.”
I stand up, and he doesn’t get up to walk me out. Instead, he grabs the controller, unpausing his game.
I’ve hurt him. I didn’t mean to, but I have.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says.
Tomorrow. The version he’s offering isn’t the same as the one the girl—A—offered.
I guess I’m not going to know which tomorrow I’m stepping into until I actually get there.
Chapter Eight
I fall asleep right after dinner and wake up right before midnight. And in that waking moment, I think: I want to go back there. I want to go back to that day when everything was perfect, and Justin was everything I want him to be.