My stomach flips, and I pull the comforter tighter around myself, suddenly cold. A voice in the back of my brain whispers,How much has he lied, exactly?
“No?” I sound steadier than I feel.
“I always liked you as more than a casual fuck,” he says and shoves a hand into the wild halo of his hair, locking eyes with me. “Ever since—maybe not quite the moment I saw you, but pretty soon after that. Maybe when you saidMadeline, like thelittle French girl with the nuns,or when you said you weren’t going to dance on the table but that I could? I don’t know.”
“You almost did,” I say, because it’s true. He had one foot up there, ready to go, and I had to grab his wrist to pull him off.
“I would have,” he says, and now he’s smiling a little, like we’re sharing a secret. “I was smitten by the time you saidCome back to my place, you know.”
Of course I didn’t know, but I don’t bring that up now.
“I didn’t lie at our parents’ engagement dinner,” he says, serious again. “I really was six weeks out of rehab, working at a candy store by the boardwalk, and living with my mom. And I really was trying not to make any huge life changes for a while—it was supposed to be a year—because you’re supposed to focus on your sobriety and on taking it one day at a time. On learning to function in this shiny new life you’ve got. It’s not supposed to be too exciting or too out of the ordinary. Like, that’s the point. Function at baseline for a while. Learn to deal.”
Javi grabs one of the pillows, readjusts his legs, pulls it into his lap, and starts wrapping a corner of it around one finger.
“But I didn’t tell you that I was already fucking it up. My parents had just split up, my sister was fighting with both of them about her new boyfriend, and my brother had taken that opportunity to come out to our mom. And they were all walking on eggshells around me, and I wasn’t really handling any of it. I was supposed to go to meetings and do check-ins, but I was skipping them and lying to my mom and my therapist about it. And I had been talking a little with old friends who were still using, and I was sobored.”
He’s found a loose thread from the pillowcase, and now he’s pulling at it.
“I was going to bars, for fuck’s sake,” he says quietly. “And I’d managed not to drink so far, but how long was that going to last, you know? Even if booze wasn’t my big problem, it’s not like ithelped me make good choices. I’d relapsed twice already, and by then it had started to feel like…that was it, that was my story. It felt inevitable, like it was always going to happen.”
I clutch the comforter tighter and try to ignore the cold swirl of guilt and unease in my stomach, the fact that I’m glad he went to a bar so we could meet.
“That’s where I was when we hooked up,” he says. “And afterward, I was, like, head over heels. Smitten. Downsobad. But it would’ve been the worst thing for both of us. I was already slipping, and I knew that the first time we got into a fight or something, I’d blow it.”
Javi sighs, then tilts his head back against the headboard of my bed.
“But I also didn’t trust myself, so I lied about being on vacation. That way I couldn’t come clean without you knowing I’d lied in the first place. Not my finest moment, but I couldn’t bring myself to sayI like you, but if we date I might relapse, either. You seemed so together, and I didn’t want you to realize you’d just slept with the world’s biggest fuckup.”
“Javi, there are serial killers,” I point out. “You can’t possibly be the biggest fuckup.”
“I can’t even have that?” he says dryly, and I can’t help but laugh. He flips the pillow around on his lap, twirling it by the pillowcase. “It worked, though. I didn’t see you again, and it helped, I think, for me to remember I could do hard things. It didn’t make the rest of it any easier, but I felt a little more like I could get through it.”
My phone starts buzzing again, still on the floor, and this time I lean over and manage to snag it with two fingers. I only flail a normal amount. Predictably, it’s my dad. I toss it onto the mattress in front of me.
“I should probably answer the next one,” I say. “So we just tell them, right? Fuck lying?”
“Yeah.”
“I also liked you,” I say in a rush once my phone stops. “But first I thought you were just looking for a vacation fling, andthenI thought you’d lied so you wouldn’t have to see me again—which I guess you sort of did?—”
“Ijustexplained why that was actually romantic.”
“And after that, we kept agreeing that everything was super casual and not a big deal, and I just—didn’t want to throw my heart out there to get stomped on,” I finish and then laugh. “Wow, what if we’d talked about our feelings?”
“Crazy talk,” he says. “Blasphemy. C’mere.”
He grabs the front of the comforter around my shoulders and pulls me off-balance toward him.
“Wait!” I yelp unbecomingly, my face two inches from his.
“What?”
“Morning breath.”
“Jesus Christ,” Javi mutters, rolls his eyes, and kisses me.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
