“I’m in love with him,” I blurt out.
Emily blinks. “Yeah, I know. I think the only one who didn’t know was you.”
She’s probably right. God, even Brendan probably knew. And he cares about me. He loves me as a friend. He always has. Maybe all of this, even him wanting to date, was just for me, to make me happy.
Maybe he thought he would feel it if he put the effort in. He probably hoped he could be in love with me someday.
Is that what he didn’t want to say to me this morning?That he knew now that without that passion he never would?
“Hey.” Emily leans forward. “Hey, what’s—sorry, we’re closed right now,” she says in a firm voice to a guy digging through the basket of finger puppets.The guy looks up, startled. She makes a shooing motion, and he walks away.
“You don’t have to—” I start, but she shakes her head.
“You put me in charge of the merch. And right now we’re not selling merch. We’re talking. He’ll deal with it.”
Or he’ll be a pissy ex-fan who will loudly hate on me on the internet, but right now I can’t bring myself to care.
“I thought it would be this incredible thing, you know?” I say, already forgetting about the disgruntled fan, suddenly desperate to get the words out so they won’t be pinging around in my head like a broken arcade game. “And it was for me. But I don’t think it was for him. I think he . . . I think I wasn’t, um, as good as he was expecting.”
Now Emily’s jaw has practically dropped to the floor. “Did hesaythat?”
“No, he didn’t,” I say quickly, because she sounds pissed enough to track him down and strangle him with one of our XXLStarving with the Sockst-shirts. “He didn’t say anything. I mean, neither of us did.” I frown. Maybe I should have. But it was so clear he didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want to even think about it. “When I woke up, he was already dressed, and it was so awkward, and he just kept talking about the launch, and—I think he wishes it had never happened.”
“No way,” Emily says, after a moment of consternation. “There is no way in the world that boy wishes you hadn’t given him a blow job.That goes against everything I know about both him and men in general. No.”
“It’s not like I don’t think he wanted it at the time. But I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t very good for him.”
I’m trying to avoid Emily’s increasingly confused expression, but she turns the chair so I have to face her. “Um,” she says slowly, like she’s talking to a very, very stupid person. Which I’m feeling more and more that I am. “It’s kind of hard to miss whether a guy enjoyed a blow job.”
I glare at her. “I’m not saying he didn’t enjoy it at all. Yeah, he came, okay? But it’s that whole sex as pizza thing—”
She groans, but I roll over any protests she’s going to make, though she clearly already knows about the sex as pizza theory. “I know guys always like sex,” I say. “Because it’s like pizza. Even if it’s bad pizza, it’s still pizza, you know? But there’s a world of difference between, like, crappy pizza and really good pizza, right?”
“And in this very scientifically sound metaphor, you think he just had some cheap freezer pizza?”
“Right. Or maybe mall food court. But the kind that gives you heartburn afterward. And regret.” I slump down in the chair. Candace was probably like Chicago deep dish. Or maybe the perfect slice from the best pizzeria in New York.
Zing.
I’m scowling again now. Becoming un-Su-Lin.
“There is no way you are mall food court pizza,” Emily says. “Not to him. Not to any straight guy with a working dick, but definitely not to him. Are you sure he didn’t just panic?”
I shrug self-consciously.That wasn’t a panic attack. It was something else, and I think I know what. “It’s not like I have atonof experience,” I say. Or any, really. But Emily doesn’t need to know that. Maybe no one does, ever. Maybe I’m just going to die a virgin, and no one ever needs to know. “And he had all this passion with his ex-wife—”
“His cheating bitch ex-wife.”
“Yes. Definitely. But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t great in bed. Or that he can’t help but compare me to her and—god, look at me!” I glare down at myself, at my frayed jean shorts, and my chucks, and my faded vintage-looking tank top with the Care Bears on it. “I’m wearing a Care Bears t-shirt! And braids! I’m not a grown woman. I’m a fucking cartoon character!”Tears are spilling over, and I wipe them away furiously. “There’s no way he can feel that way about me. God, why did I think we’d do that and he would actually want memore?There’s no—ow!”
I grab my head, wincing at the hard tug she just gave one of my aforementioned braids. “What did you do that for?”
“Because you were saying awful things about my friend Su-Lin and you need to stop,” Emily says, her eyes narrowed. “You are fun and adorable and sexy and tons of guys wish in their wildest dreams they could bang you.”
This is true about Emily, for sure—it always has been. She’s gorgeous, with her shiny dark hair and her dark eyes and delicate features. In high school, she always seemed to care way more about whatever project she was working on than whether guys liked her or not. And actually, she’s kind of like that as an adult, too—except now when she does want a guy’s attention, she knows how to turn her focus to that and get it.
God, I envy her that. (Though not withTate, because ew, my cousin.)
Is she right about me? Or is she just being a friend and saying what she thinks I need to hear?
