He could have just saidThat was fun, but it was a one-time thing—have a nice life. I’m an adult! It would have been fine! It’s been fine several times in the past!
“Eurgh,” I say aloud to the game closet. Specifically, I say it to the copy ofStar TrekMonopoly that we’ve played once but cannot get rid of. I bet James T. Kirk would sympathize with me right now. He probably banged Spock’s mom, and they managed to have their healthy situationship anyway.
Then there are footsteps, and I stop thinking about the deal with Kirk and Spock because my own not-a-situationship appears around the corner as I shut the closet door.
“There you are,” he says and pulls a hand through his hair.
For some reason, I do jazz hands and follow that up with “Ta-da!” Maybe to show how totally chill and not at all upset I am.
Javier doesn’t crack, just looks mildly concerned. “Can we talk?” he asks. “We should talk. Privately.”
Noshitit should be privately, but I manage not to say that out loud.
“Yeah,” I say, and fiddle with my necklace for a moment, thinking. It’s got the caffeine molecule on it. “Can you be enthusiastic about really big goldfish?”
“The animal or the cracker?” he asks. “Actually, never mind. Yes to both.”
“The animal,” I say, though now I kind of want a giant goldfish cracker. Do they make those?
Javier nods soberly, so I forge ahead.
“Okay,” I say and glance over my shoulder, just in case. “Here’s the plan.”
As we walkacross my dad’s backyard with our bowls of ice cream, it occurs to me that I could have, possibly, acted normal about this. A quickHey, Javier, would you like to see the koi pond?would have sufficed rather than the one-act play the two of us just put on in the kitchen regarding fish enthusiasm.
“So,” Javier says, the two of us standing on the edge of the koi pond, determinedly looking into the water and not at each other. “If you get a goldfish from the pet store and plunk it into a pond, this is what happens?”
Below the surface, an orange fish with white-and-black splotches swims past.
“Maybe. I’m not sure,” I admit, eyes glued to the fish. Javier’s about a foot and a half away, but we’re both perfectly still, like we might accidentally touch if we move. “Someone once told me koi and goldfish were the same species, but now that I think about it, that sounds wrong.”
There’s a long beat while we both stare hopefully at the fish, like maybe it’ll magically pop out of the water and guide us through this awkward conversation.
It doesn’t. May as well fucking get this over with, I guess.
“I should?—”
“So when you?—”
We both stop mid-sentence and look at each other. Javier swallows. “You first.”
I’ve got a white-knuckled grip on my quickly melting bowl of ice cream, the condensation dripping off my fingers and onto the flagstone path below. Now that I’m here, I have no idea what to say.
“Did you ever actually live in New York?” is the thing that comes out first, and Javier’s already shaking his head by the time I finish the question.
“Shit,” he says, and rubs the back of his hand across his forehead. “No. I didn’t. I wasn’t on vacation, I just—wanted to make it easy.” Like I would’ve made it hard otherwise.
“You lived here then, right?”
“I did. With my mom,” he goes on, and it’s mostly dark outside next to the koi pond, and Javier’s voice is deep and quiet and intense, and he’s looking at me like he’s never paid attention to anything else. “And?—”
“And instead of just telling me you didn’t want to see me again, you made up some story about a bachelor party,” I ask, as quiet and controlled as I can be. I’m not mad or anything, notreally. Just—he didn’t have tolie, like I was going to beg for his phone number.
“It was stupid. I’m sorry,” he says. “It seemed easier…that way.”
I take a deep breath, look down at my quickly melting ice cream, and try to get a handle on whatever my feelings are about this. As lies go it’s not that bad. Not really. It’s not like it changed anything. It’s probably not worth being mad about.
“We were looking for the exact same thing,” I say. “If you’d asked for my number, I probably would have said no. I wasn’t going to demand you become my boyfriend just because we fucked once.”
