“Hey, can I put you on hold for a sec? Thanks!”
Javi jolts behind me as I pull the phone away from my face and chant “Fuck, fuck, fuck”while I jab every button, hoping one is Mute.
“Wait. Fuck. Shit,” he says. “You were on the phone?Fuck.”
I hang up by accident, then fling my phone onto the floor. We’re both very, very still for several seconds.
“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice still ragged. “I didn’t realize you were on the phone. Shit. Uh, was it?—”
“My dad,” I say, rolling onto my back. “You’re missing. Well, you were.”
He swallows, and even though it’s dark except for the first gray light of dawn and the streetlight filtering through my curtains, I can see the muscles in his throat move. According to the clock on my bedside table, it’s 6:34 in the morning.
“Did he say anything else?” He’s on one elbow above me, hair dark and wild around his face. I want to reach out and push it back, run my fingers through it because Javi looks alarmed and soft and sleepy. He looks like he belongs in my bed.
“He said, ‘Was that—’ and then I panicked and hung up,” I confirm.
“You think he knows my voice?”
“Probably, but he definitely just heard a male-sounding person in my bed at six thirty in the morning, so I’ll probably end up explainingsomething.” I pause and try to think of an alternate explanation. “I could always tell them that after ice skating I went out and picked up another guy, then slept with him? So that’s who he heard? And you’re still missing?”
Javi frowns the grumpiest frown I’ve ever seen on his face. It’s kind of adorable. “Uh, that’s okay. You don’t have to.”
My phone starts buzzing on the floor. We both glance over, but neither of us moves to pick it up.
“If I don’t answer do you think your mom would come over?—”
“Yes.”
I wait for the buzzing to stop, then stare at my ceiling. When I was a kid, we painted my ceiling dark blue and stuck glow-in-the-dark stars on it. I should do that again.
“We can still lie,” I say. “Tell them that you were tired after ice skating, it was late, you didn’t want to bother anyone at your mom’s house so you crashed here. No big deal. Still a secret.”
Javier blows out a breath, then flops onto his back. “We could,” he agrees without enthusiasm.
“Or, I don’t know.” I fold my arms over my eyes. “We could sort of tell the truth, that we hooked up but it was a casual one-time thing, no big deal, won’t affect anything going forward? Would that be better or worse?”
Javi sits up, shoves a pillow out of the way, and leans back against my plush headboard. I swear that if I look hard enough, I can see where I held on to the top of it last night.
“Is that what you want?” he asks.
I roll over onto my stomach and shove my face into my pillow.
“I don’tknow,” I say and then push myself up. We both fell asleep wearing underwear and nothing else—sleeping fullynaked has always felt too weird—so he’s in boxer briefs and I’m in panties. I pull the comforter around my shoulders. “I want to not ruin our parents’ wedding. I want your mom to not kill you. I want the next two weeks to not beweird.”
“We were going to tell them anyway,” he points out.
“But this wasn’t the plan! We were going to have time to figure out what to say, how to deal with it tactfully. They were going to be in a good mood right after getting back from a honeymoon…” I trail off. “I’ve done enough spontaneous shit in the last six months to last me a lifetime. I’d like to planoneimportant event in our relationship.”
“You think it’s a better plan to lie to them now and then in a month tell them we lied?” he questions, a little incredulous. “Fuck, I hate lying. I’m terrible at it.”
“You lied tomethe first time we met,” I say, and, shit.
He looks at me, steady and serious, like he’s hoping the right words will fall from the sky. “I know,” he says softly.
“Sorry,” I say in a rush. I squeeze my eyes shut against the feeling that I’m really fucking up right now: I know I should be over that, and Iam, almost, but it’s still there. Like a tiny splinter that hasn’t worked its way back through the skin yet. “That wasn’t fair. Forget I said it. We don’t have to lie.”
“I never did tell you the truth,” he says. His voice has gone low and quiet.
