I sit up and stare at myself in the mirror over my dresser, watching my eyebrows try to settle between surprised and irritated and flattered, my jaw flapping open, my forehead wrinkling, my breasts chilling out, completely naked, nipples still tight from that orgasm, phone to my ear, and?—
And I completely lose it.
Laughter overtakes me as I flop back on my bed.
“You… You’re not angry?” Simon asks.
I can’t answer.
I’m laughing too hard.
Laughing, and maybe crying just a little too.
“Bea?”
“You’re a disaster.”
He barks out a laugh too. “That I am.”
“And you’re perfect.”
“That I am most certainly not.”
“Simon.”
“Ah, do say my name like that again.”
“Have you ever had a normal relationship with someone where you could just say that you liked them and they could say they liked you back and you did dinner dates and sometimes went to each other’s houses to make out and watch TV and cuddle and have sex and cuddle more?”
The silence stretches longer this time.
“Simon?”
“You are the closest I have ever come to that level of perceived normality.”
My heart squeezes.
My hopelessly romantic vagina does too, but mostly, it’s my heart.
“And I’ve hardly seen you in nearly a week.” His words are rushed, like if he doesn’t say it quickly, he won’t say it at all. “But I still—I miss you. I think about you constantly. I wonder what you’re doing when we’re not speaking. I feel a contact high from being in your presence even when we’re both clothed and unlikely to be naked because I simply enjoy…you. And I don’t entirely know what to do with that.”
“Do you know my favorite thing about you?” I whisper.
“I’m honestly afraid to guess, and I rather hope it’s slightly unflattering. I’m far more comfortable in the uncomfortable and awkward. If you could do us both the favor of insisting it’s my British accent, that would be lovely.”
“My favorite thing about you is that you’re so very, very real, when you have all of the tools at your disposal to be anything but.”
He’s quiet again.
Am I wrong?
Is thisnotreal?
The stories about his parents, about his spite smile, about his intentions to never have this level of success, his confession that he never wanted to be a father and he’s afraid he’s messing it up—who would say any of that if it wasn’t real?
“And my favorite thing about you,” he finally says, “is that I feel safe being real with you. Truly, it’s a gift I cannot adequately thank you for. Regardless of what happens at the end of the summer, you, Beatrice Best, and your friendship have changed my life for the better.”
My eyes water.
