He looks first at me, then at the pot of food on the table. “You made dinner?”
“I did,” I say, and I want to jump up and down likethose excitable dogs at the main house. Because he’s home. He’s here.
I feel like I’m outside of myself again, terrified at how overjoyed I am to be with him. Terrified at how intense all this is, and also completely unwilling to stop it.
Like we’re driving in a speeding car not paying attention to the speed limit, and I guess if we hit the wall, we’re going to do it together.
“Well that was… That was really…” He crosses the room, eyes intent on mine, and wraps his arm around my waist, pulling me in for a kiss. “You changed your dress,” he says.
“I did,” I say. “For you.”
“It’s pretty,” he says, grabbing hold of the flowy purple fabric. I could’ve gone with a short dress, I know he would’ve liked it, but I went with a maxi dress because I thought pretending to be demure might drive him even crazier.
I want to drive him crazy. “I’m informed that this is one of your childhood favorites,” I say, going and taking a couple of bowls down from the cupboards and bringing them to the table.
“You colluded with Kaylee,” he says.
“I did,” I say. “I colluded with her completely. I mean, since your family saw us making out on camera anyway.”
He laughed. “Yeah. Apparently.”
“I hope you didn’t get crap for that today.”
“No. Clearly, my dad didn’t tell my uncles or my aunt. Otherwise, I would’ve been getting ribbed all day. But I wouldn’t mind.”
“You said you’ve never had a girlfriend before,” I say. “Not that I’m your girlfriend.”
He nods slowly. “I haven’t. And that doesn’t quite sound like the right term for you, you’re right.”
I balance on the knife’s edge between being hurt and complimented by that. Because I could take it either way.
I decide to be complimented as I take a ladle and scoop a portion of noodles for him and for me into our respective bowls.
“Why not? Because you’re really very functional,” I say.
“I didkind ofhave a girlfriend in high school, but you know it was one of those things. Where it’s high school. And you know it’s not going to turn into anything.”
“That’s not never having a girlfriend,” I point out, jealousy nipping at my shoulders.
“It’s not in the sense that it… We both knew that we weren’t going to marry each other. We just wanted to have dates to prom. You know? We wanted to… lose our mutual virginity.”
I hold back a hiss, but I need to not be vile about him sharing the parts of his life I wasn’t around for. The truth is, so much of us is tangled up in all the trauma that’s happened to me before and since he came back into my life. I need to be able to listen when he talks about himself.
I flash back to something he said last night. That sleeping with me was the only time he felt safe.
I know that his mom lost custody of him, but I know very little about what his life was like before that. He’s never really talked about it. It’s only just occurred to me. I filled in all kinds of blanks in my head. Because I know what happens to me. Because I know enough to make up decent stories about what might’ve been.
I take a bite of the stroganoff, and wrinkle my nose. “It’s a bit monotextural,” I say.
“What?”
“Ifind it a bit mushy.”
“Really? That’s why I like it. It, like, blew my mind the first time she made it for me.”
“Were you immediately happy to be with them?”
“I was… It’s complicated. I was. But I was also afraid that I was going to fuck it up by being myself. Because at that point, I had just torpedoed every single relationship in my life. At that point, I was a professional at making a mess of things, and I didn’t know if I could make something work just because I wanted to.” He sighs. “I was pretty much a stereotype. I was… Angry and difficult because I didn’t want to go, but I didn’t want to admit that I didn’t, and I was afraid that if I acted too hungry for it, I would lose it. I was afraid that if I admitted even to myself that I wanted this to be my permanent home, then it would be gone. Just like that.” He snaps his finger.
