I know I shouldn’t say it. Shouldn’t even suggest it. But I’m a goner now. Might as well pillage and plunder on my way down. “If you ever feel like it, you can come on up. Stop by. Whatever.”
“Really?”
I have to be imagining the hopefulness in his voice. “Yeah. Just.” I shrug and look down at the rock I’m rolling around with my shoe. “Just whatever. Whenever. If you get bored.”
“Okay. Like tomorrow morning?”
I look up at him, shake my head with a smirk. “Tomorrow’s Sunday and I’m sleeping in.”
“Oh.” He nods like he should know this. “Yeah. Sure. Um.” He gives me a pensive look. “Later then?”
I shrug like it’s no big deal, take out a cigarette. “Sure. That’s cool.”
“Okay.” He smiles again, and I can’t help but return it. “See you, um, see you tomorrow.”
He skitters through the gate and he’s gone. I could go on up and probably catch him going through his aunt’s yard, glance down at that shrub where he watched me from, and tell myself I should know better.
“He’s never even had a beer,” I grumble to myself as I go inside, take off my jacket, and look for another pack of smokes. I almost do my usual, go out onto the balcony with my cigarettes and a beer, but something stops me. I sit down at the kitchen table instead, feeling suddenly alone, really alone for the first time in a long time.
I finish a cigarette and decide to hop in the shower, but instead of looking at one of my girly magazines, I get into the hot steam with him on my mind. I’ll allow it. I’ll allow my mind to be filled with thoughts of his smile, his body against mine, his fingers tight around my waist.
Just this once, I think.
Just his once, and I won’t ever think of it again.
CHAPTER THREE
Paul
I THINK ABOUTall the things I was right about:
He’s a mechanic. He’s got cigarette-burns on his kitchen table. There’s engine grease staining his fingers. The scent of him after a ride on his motorcycle.
And his eyes.
Oh, his eyes.
I lie in bed with my hands clasped together as if I’m in prayer, but really I’m just holding it all right there. Everything about him is in between my palms and close to my heart.
And hiseyes.
I should read or sleep or do something more useful than just lie here. But I don’t want to. I just want to lie here and dream. Dream while I’m awake. I turn over on my pillow and close my eyes so I can fully see his. They’re as blue as a new day, but there’s a kindness around them I hadn’t noticed from so far away. A gentleness that diminishes the sternness when he smiles. And he smiled at me. There’s no way I imagined that. What a thing to happen, to go from mortified to…this.
I pick idly at the tufts of yarn in the quilt. My grandmother made it, and wouldn’t she just be turning over in her grave to know what I think about when I lie under it? Wouldn’t she just be panicked in her pearls and starched skirts, beseeching Aunt Amy to drag me to a head shrink? I don’t have a bit of shame. Not a drop. I’ll revel in the delicious thoughts of his lips when he smiled at me, the clear blue sky of his eyes when he looked at me at the drive-in, and how I was able to touch him on that bike. I’ll do it until I’m dead. Nothing will stop me from reliving today over and over and over again. I never in a million years would’ve dreamed, and I can dream…oh, I canreallydream.
Is this what Marius felt like? When he first saw Cosette? When he first spoke to her? In that garden, in the evening, and in secret. She couldn’t let her father know, and I get it. I get that. But let us not forget the one who brought them together, let us not forget the tragedy that is Éponine. Let us not forget those that sacrifice.
I turn on the lamp and get up for my book. I decide to read the part where Hugo just goes on and on about the cloistered nuns where Valjean sends Cosette. That square could really babble, but it’s important. It shows thatM'sieur le Mairewas keeping his promise to Fantine when he took Cosette to raise as his own. He was a good man, a brave man. And I need that bravery. I need goodness.
Now is the time for it and Marius was brave too. I’ll have to be brave tomorrow when I go over. And what are we going to do? Just sit around? Talk? I’m nervous at that gaping hole of unknown. In just one day, everything has changed and I don’t like not knowing what to expect. I liked to watch him each day because he was reliable, predictable. But now it’s all been cast into chaos, and I don’t know what to expect.
And, in a way, I can’t help but worry this is a trick. I’m being tricked by….something. Someone. Maybe when I get over there tomorrow, he’ll be annoyed. Looking at me the way he did when I first showed up at his door. He was ready to let me have it, and I can’t blame him. So, maybe all that earlier, that “come by if you want” was just him being polite. The things people say to be nice, but they don’t mean.
It’s like how Pops would look at me across the dinner table when my mother wasn’t there, how he’d say, “Well, just let me know if you need anything.”
Just let me know.
And that wasn’t what I needed. People say that to one another to be polite, but it’s really cruel. Throw it back on the other person, the one who needs. Absolve oneself of having the burden and still be able to sleep at night.
