I tilt my head down without moving the rest of me. Her face is turned toward me. Her mouth is open just slightly. Her hair is across my collarbone in a dark wave I can feel against my skin, and I don’t move because if I move, she’ll wake up, and I’m not ready for her to wake up yet.
The mustache I drew on her face last night is still on her. It’s smudged on one side. Where her cheek’s been pressed to my shirt.
She’s still asleep.
I brush a piece of her hair back off her forehead. My hand does it on its own. I tuck the strand behind her ear, and she makes a small, soft sound in her throat and burrows her face deeper into the side of my neck. My whole chest goes warm in a way I haven’t felt in a very long time, and I just lie there.
I lie there for a minute. I don’t think. I just have her on me.
My arm under her has gone numb. Fuck. I have to pee. I can’t hold it in any longer.
I move her slowly.
One hand under her shoulder, one at her hip, and I roll her off me toward the wall side of the bed. She makes a small, unhappy noise in her sleep. Her hand under my shirt slides away from my ribs, and her cheek leaves my neck. She settles on her side, the hoodie bunched at her back, her hair across my pillow. Her mouth is still open. Her eyes don’t open.
I pull the blanket up over her and tuck it under her chin.
I sit up. The room spins for half a second and then steadies. My shoulder grabs hard when I push up on it. I look around for my hoodie and realize that the only one I have is on Melly. The bedroom is cold, but I man it as I cross the room.
I look at her in the bed before I open the door. She’s small in it. The hoodie is around her like a shell. One bare leg is out of the blanket — she must have taken off the nylons at some point,I don’t remember her taking them off — and her hand is under her cheek.
I open the door slowly and pull it shut behind me.
The hallway is quiet. The single yellow bulb is still on. Somebody left a Solo cup on the runner.
I cross the hall to the bathroom and close the door. I pee, wash my hands, and splash cold water on my face. I stand at the sink with the water dripping off my jaw, and I look up at the mirror. I look like I haven’t slept. The eyes are bad. The hair is bad. I’m hungover but not destroyed. I look like a guy who had a night.
Then I see a mark. My brain clocks it as a hickey, but there’s no way. I know for a fact we didn’t do anything inappropriate last night, so I look closer. It’s a smudge. A thin black smear across my collarbone, half an inch above the neckline of my t-shirt. I lean into the mirror. It’s from the pen I drew her mustache with. It’s where her face was pressed against my throat all night. Her mouth at my collarbone.
I have her face on my body.
I put my hands flat on the edge of the sink and look at the smudge. I look at my eyes in the mirror, and then I look at the smudge again. My stomach drops.
She has a boyfriend.
That’s the thought that gets me. Just the word.Boyfriend.The full weight of it dropping through my chest, all at once, slow and final, and the heat I’ve had in me since I woke up turns. Just turns. The way milk turns to cheese.
She has a fuckingboyfriend.
Chasesomething.Chasethe guy who has had her for two years. Twofuckingyears. God, that’s a long time. I can’t even imagine that. She was eighteen or nineteen when she got with him? Holy shit. She’s even brought him here. The guy has been inside my house at a classic Hawthorne House party. He was at her side all night that night, his arm at her hip, his thumb on herlower back, and her lips on his. I couldn’t even let myself look at the guy because looking at him made me feel things I had no right to feel.
That guy is, somewhere, ninety minutes away in our hometown.
And I spent the last twelve hours dancing with his girlfriend like a fucking asshole.
I gave her my jersey. I gave her my bed. I gave her my only hoodie. I gave her my t-shirt. I gave her my pillow. I let her sleep on me all fucking night.I let her sleep on my chest.I let her hand stay flush against my ribs this morning. And now there’s a fucking smudge from her face on my neck like some kind of mark to remind me that she was never mine.
I helped a girl cheat. Maybe not physically but emotionally.
I close my eyes.
Aw, I amsofucked.
I open them.
The smudge is still there. It hasn’t gone anywhere.
I am the other guy now.
