“Teddy—”
“And then, yeah, I saw you cry in San Francisco. But it was a good thing, actually, because I got to see how strong you are. You let me in. That’s not the same thing as crumbling. Not at all.”
I stare at him, unable to think of a response.
“And it didn’t scare me,” he says with a smile. “It was just the opposite. I’ve always known how much you had to deal with, how awful it must have been. But being there with you…” He sucks in a breath, then shakes his head. “I can’t even imagine how hard that had to be. How hard it muststillbe.”
There’s a certain tension that comes over me whenever anyone talks about my parents, an automatic stiffening in my neck and back, and it happens now as I stare at the cracked sidewalk. There on the pavement, my shadow overlaps with Teddy’s, and for a second it almost looks like we’re holding hands.
“So,” he says with a note of finality, as if he’s now explained everything. “I realized I had some work to do.”
“Why do you keep saying that?” I ask without looking at him. “What’s that even supposed to mean?”
“Al,” he says, and when he reaches out and puts a hand on my shoulder, all the tension goes draining right out ofme.
“What?” I ask, and my voice wobbles.
“I know I’m probably not saying this very well….”
Without meaning to, I begin to laugh, because this is such a dramatic understatement of what’s happening right now. But then I immediately feel terrible, because Teddy looks so serious, and for an awkward moment we both simply stare at each other. There’s an undercurrent of something new between us, and though I’m not sure what it is, I can feel it all the same. It’s making my heart thunder in my chest, making my hands shake, making every inch of me feel like putty.
“I have to go,” I say quietly, but I don’t move. His eyes have me pinned in place. To leave right now would be like walking out of a movie before the end. Like skipping the punch line of a particularly good joke. Like stepping away from a jigsaw puzzle when there are only a few pieces left to snap into place.
Instead I force myself to look up at him.
“I had a lot of work to do because of you,” he repeats, more insistently this time, like it’s a message that’s not coming through, a signal I’m not quite picking up. “You’re the best person I know. And I knew I needed to…I wanted to be better too. Or at leastdosomething better. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”
I laugh and wipe away a tear that I didn’t realize was there until it was halfway down my cheek. “Not even a little bit.”
And then he kisses me.
Just like that.
He steps forward, and he leans down, and he kisses me.
It’s not like the kiss after the lottery; it’s not hasty or impulsive. This is a kiss that’s been in the works for months now, maybe even years. It’s something more durable, more lasting. It’s those last few puzzle pieces clicking into place.
His hands are in my hair, on my neck and my back, and his lips are moving against mine with a kind of urgency, and all at once I understand what he’s been trying to say,and I stand on my tiptoes, and put my arms around him, and kiss him back.
“Teddy,” I say a little breathlessly when we finally break apart. We’re still clinging to each other, his hand twisted in my jacket, my palms pressed against his shoulder blades.
He tips his head down to look at me. “Yeah?”
“You know you didn’t have to invest millions of dollars and come up with a whole business plan just to kiss me, right?”
He grins. “I didn’t?”
“I’m notthathard to win over.”
“Yes, you are,” he says, then he kisses me again. It’s the kind of kiss you could vanish inside, the kind you could lose hours to, days even, and it feels like we do; it feels like we’ve been there forever, twined together like that, the rest of the world falling away, when the bag from the drugstore slips out of Teddy’s grasp.
We both jump aside as the contents clatter to the sidewalk, and I stoop to gather them up again, my head spinning. Everything still feels off-kilter, which means it takes me a second to understand what I’m looking at.
“Why’d you buy so much deodorant?” I ask, grabbing one of them just before it can roll onto the grass. “You don’t smellthatbad.”
“Thanks for that,” Teddy says, laughing as he reaches for a package of dental floss. “But they’re not actually for me.”
I straighten up again, staring at him. “Wait.”
