Of course it could. My body chemistry had probably changed, addicting me to Noah’s hormones. The biological imperative was laughing its little brain off, encouraging me to procreate even though Earth had too many people, and it would be nice if humanity had an off switch for a while, or at least until we’d terraformed Mars.
God, I wanted him so badly.
“You’re back!” Jane bounded down the stairs and joined me at the kitchen table. “How did it go?”
“It was great. We found this one recording—”
“Tell me about Noah.” She dashed milk into a bowl of Cheerios. “You spent the night together! And don’t tell me only technically. Your texts were very coy.”
I put my spoon down, a smile worthy of the Cheshire Cat crossing my face. “Well...”
“Oh my god, what happened?”
Jane made all the right noises and exclamations as I told her. When I finished, she let out a whoosh of air. “Finally!”
“What do I do now, though?”
“You could text him.”
Right. I could. I did, theoretically, have command over my phone and the English language. Except. What did you text someone after you hooked up? Why wasn’t this covered in school? Why did we learn pre-calc and bio, and yet I didn’t know how to respond to a human who’d stuck his tongue in my mouth? How the helldidwe manage to propagate the species? I scooped up my last three Cheerios. “No. Definitely not.”
Jane smirked. “The bravest girl in Nantucket.”
I made a face.
For the rest of the day, I was a nervous wreck. At work, Maggie paused in the middle of a conversation and asked if I was all right. Ipulled myself together for the rest of my shift, but honestly, I wasn’t sure.
Most of the time in the books I read, hooking up served as the culmination of the romance, and after, everyone was happy. Or, perhaps, the couple made out because they were in a fake relationship or a marriage of convenience (I read a lot of historical romances) or because of a fit of angry passion, and were in situations where they kept running into each other.
But what if you hooked up and weren’t in a relationship or forced to keep interacting? What if you just made out once, and were really into someone, but had no guarantees? How did you figure out how to communicate afterward?
I’d resolved to text him when my phone finally buzzed in my pocket. I froze in the middle of shelving a book. I couldn’t bring myself to pull out my phone: At the moment, I existed in the Schrödinger’s cat–land of text messages. The moment I looked at my phone, I’d either be deliriously happy or wildly upset.
I waited as long as I could, like a child holding her breath underwater, until the uncertainty became worse than potential disappointment. Then I whipped up my cell.
Mom:
did you know teens spend an avg of 17 HOURS A DAY LOOKING AT SCREENS
WHAT R U LOOKING AT
GO PLAY OUTSIDE
Mom. Disappointment poured through me in a gale,followed by a wry laugh.
Me:
I’m literally spending 6 hours today looking at books, not screens
Also I bet you read this in an article ON A SCREEN
My phone buzzed again. I glanced down and let out an audibleeek, throwing my gaze away from the screen, panic and hope now battling for supremacy. Breath coming fast, I forced my eyes back down.
Noah:
What are you up to tomorrow?
Oh my god. Noah. A text. Why had he rendered me verbally incompetent? Would I ever recover? Was this my life now?
