Kat stares out the window with a familiar warmth in her eyes. “Yeah,” she sighs, “I like him too.”
A question takes shape in my chest, and I’m barely brave enough to ask it. “Do you think you might…love him?”
Kat’s head snaps to face me, those two vertical lines between her eyebrows back out in full force. “It’s only been two months.”
“Do you think that matters?”
“I…I don’t know.” She heads back to the bed, hugging a pillow against her chest. “Maybe I love him already. But like, I wouldn’t tell him I love him yet, you know? Because that’d be too much too soon, and I don’t even know how to know. You know?” She pauses, looks at me, and asks, “Do you know?”
The only thing I know is that she’s speaking in riddles. I guess we’re both still a little high. I sit next to her on the edge of the bed and match her question with another question. “How do you know you love me?”
Her eyes slip from mine and drift back toward the Wall of Fame. I can’t tell what picture she’s looking at, but she steadies her gaze there as the words start to come. “I know I love you because I want to be around you even when we’re not doing anything. Because just having you around makes everything better. And I’d drop everything and make my boyfriend wait in the car when you need me. No matter what happens between you and me, I know we’re gonna work it out.”
I squeeze Kat’s hand, and when she squeezes back, there’s a prickle at the end of my nose, threatening tears. “Do you feel that way about Daniel?”
She looks back toward the window, back toward the dark that’s swallowed our view of the car. “Almost,” she whispers, then clears her throat and speaks a bit louder. “Do you think it’s the same?”
“What do you mean?”
“Friend love and love love,” she specifies.
I blink back at her. An answer doesn’t come to me. “Doyouthink it’s the same? You’re closer to knowing than I am.”
Kat lifts a shoulder. “I always assumed love love would be just a little bit better. But maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s just…different.”
“Different,” I agree, “but definitely related. Otherwise we couldn’t have stayed friends this long.” I trace back my gaze to me and Kat as Girl Scouts. I can’t help but think of Ellie, whoselongest running friendship isn’t half as old as Kat and I are in that picture. “We’re lucky,” I say. “Most people don’t get to have a Kat in their life.”
“And hardly anyone gets to have a Murph,” Kat says. “Which sucks for them because one of the coolest things about my life is having you in it.”
“Me too.” I barely smile. “About you, though.” I pull her tight against my hip and lean my head onto her shoulder. “I love you, Kat.”
“I love you too.” She rests her head on top of mine. “And anyone else I love, I’ll know how to love them because you taught me first.”
“I think you’re right,” I say, and Kat’s shoulder shakes with a laugh.
“Of course I’m right,” she says. “Can’t remember a time I’ve been wrong.”
I don’t remember Kat leaving, I don’t remember falling asleep, and I don’t remember which happened first. What I do know is when I wake up, squinty-eyed and searching for her, all that’s left are the shorts, folded neatly on the dresser for the next time she comes by.
nineteen
“Hell-OOOO!”
If not for the constant buffering of this episode ofRuPaul’s Drag Race, I may not have heard my parents come home. Lucky or unlucky for me, the living room TV has been still for the last fifteen minutes aside from a spinning loading wheel over the panel of judges, and the low grumble of suitcase wheels rolling across the hardwood comes over loud and clear in the silence. I hip check the dishwasher, sealing off the last of four days’ worth of dirty dishes, and hit start while dragging a rag across the counter. To say the house is spotless would be downplaying it; after a hectic Sunday morning barista shift, I’ve spent the rest of the afternoon erasing all evidence that anyone has ever set foot in this house. Not me, not Kat, and certainly not Ellie. Any hints of her have been bleached away, returning the house to its usual state—tidy to the point of looking practically uninhabited.
“Anyone home?” Mom’s voice bounces off the vaulted ceilingsand lands right in the middle of the kitchen floor, where I spot and immediately snatch up a clump of dust and hair. How I manage to shed this much and still have a single strand on my head, I may never know. I pocket the dust bunny, silently cursing the traffic from O’Hare for not being worse. I was planning to wrap up an afternoon of cleaning with a second sweep and a third round of vacuuming, but I was also planning on at least another hour before Mom and Dad got home. Instead, a leathery, middle-aged Barbie and Ken waltz into the kitchen, dragging identical black suitcases behind them.
“Well, don’t rush to greet us or anything,” Mom teases, tucking a stray strand of silver hair back into her airplane-friendly ponytail.
“Sorry, sorry. Welcome home.”
Mom gathers me up in a hug that feels straight out of one of those soldier-comes-home videos. When she grants me full use of my airways again, she doesn’t let go altogether; instead, she holds me at an arm’s length, like she’s searching for evidence that I’ve changed or grown up at all over the course of less than a week.
“Florida wasn’t the same without you.” Her eyes are welling up a little, but her subtle yet tragic sunglasses-shaped tan line keeps me from slipping into feeling sentimental. And of course, if the sunglasses tan didn’t do it, Dad sure would. He’s just a few steps behind her, his winter coat zipped over an unseasonable pair of khaki shorts.
“Hey, Toto, I don’t think we’re in Florida anymore!” He flashes me the sort of big, eager smile and bouncy eyebrow maneuver that tells me he tried this joke out on Mom already.
“I guess not.” I scare up a fake laugh, which I always do, even for Dad’s worst jokes.
