You told me I looked good, I type. You asked me why I wasn’t with my friends. I remember how his face fell when I struggled to explain that my friends weren’t my friends anymore.
You did look good, he types, his signature winking face punctuating the sentence. And kind of sad but also kind of like . . . you weren’t going to let them win. You looked determined. I liked that.
I smile at that, because it reminds me of Mary. Sad and determined.
You liked that my hair was longer and blonder, I type, winky-face-ing right back at him.
Hey, that didn’t hurt. But it was electric, right? Like, immediately I just . . . I had these feelings for you that I hadn’t had before.
I guess it doesn’t qualify as love (or lust, or whatever) at first sight, because we’d known each other for years. But what do you call it when you see each other for the thousandth time but everything has changed all at once? Our liking each other wasn’t gradual or earned. It was sudden, immediate, and overnight. Love at thousandth sight.
Invite me over, he says. No ellipses. No question mark. Certain.
“Tab, I need a latte assist here,” Cate calls out across the café, and the customers who aren’t too lost in books and laptops and overly intimate conversations giggle. Cate is good at making strangers giggle with her funny turns of phrase.
I can’t today, I write back. But I don’t say no. I don’t say never. I don’t say, Not until you break up with Sasha Cotton. I know I should say all of that, but I can’t. My fingers won’t do it.
A gaggle of young moms has all ordered skim lattes, so I tell Joe I’ll be back, and head behind the counter to help. I burn a whole bunch of milk, so stuck I am in the wonder of what Joe and I will do or say next. I try to imagine the exact texture of his thick black hair and wish myself pressed against those red, red lips.
I decide not to care about anything else.
Tomorrow, Joe has typed by the time I’m back at my computer. He’s signed off, but the word remains and I keep it on my screen, staring me down, for the rest of my time at Tea Cozy. I sort of capture the word inside me and let it stir things up and get me excited and anxious and terrified and blissed out. Tomorrow, my brain says on repeat. Tomorrow.
Three.
Tomorrow does eventually actually occur, thank God.
Tomorrow is today, I text when we’re playing hearts together during a free period. I get to watch him check his phone, register that it is me texting, arrange his face into something casual after reading the words. He types a response immediately, and my phone buzzes. I inspect my cards instead of checking the message. Let him sweat it out for a minute.
He grins. He likes the anticipation, too.
Your place after school to do homework? his text reads when I finally look in my lap. I try not to blush. I rearrange my cards so that the hearts are all together on the far right side. I can’t look at him, for fear of breaking into a ridiculous grin.
It’s not a decision so much as a reflex when I type back Yes.
A few hours later, we’re on my carpet, I’ve got a Top 40 playlist shuffling, and we’re singing along to every stupid song that’s come out in the last few months. We are also “doing homework,” and Joe keeps giving me this look like he has to have me. He moves about a half inch closer to me every five minutes.
“You have a good voice,” he says.
I do not have a good voice.
“You’re in my room,” I say, and giggle like it’s the world’s greatest secret.
“I’m definitely in your room,” he says with a grin. “I like your room.”
“I like you in my room,” I say. My mouth feels funny. My limbs feel funny. I can’t stop swallowing. And we are having the world’s stupidest conversation.
“I like that you like me in your room,” Joe says. He puts a hand on my knee and sort of taps along with the music. I can feel myself shaking but I don’t want him to feel me shaking, so I try tensing every muscle in my body to see if that works.
I give what I hope resembles a smile, but my mouth feels so strange that I can’t tell.
Then Joe’s mouth is on mine and it tastes exactly the way I thought it would: sweet and red from the berry-scented ChapStick he uses. His body is wide, and he has a thick, scratchy stubble, so he can do things like use girls’ lip balm and not seem any less the tough guy he is.
My chest is tight with desire and joy and that other thing too. Guilt? Fear? Worry? I try to push it down, so I can enjoy the way his hands rub my back and the insistent pressure of his lips and tongue. It doesn’t exactly work—I’m positive I can feel my heart shrinking and expanding with terrifying speed—but the physical confirmation of how much I adore Joe wins out for a few minutes at least.