X looked at me. “Did you think she meant bad sex?” he asked, deadpan.
“You know,” I said, also deadpan, “I wasn’t sure.”
She ignored us both and then made us dance for an hour, saying the competition was ours to lose.
——
X is already holding up the wall outside the practice room when I get there.
“What’s with you getting to places on time these days?” Iask.
“Maybe you’re a good influence on me,” he says. He pushes off the wall but doesn’t give me his usual smile.
“What’s the matter?” I ask. “Nerves again?”
He shrugs. “It’s nothing.”
But I can see it’s not nothing, so I say so.
“Just thinking about the future.”
“The one ten minutes from now, or the future-future?” Iask.
“Future-future.”
I start to tease him about living in the moment, when it occurs to me he might be talking about something more concrete.
“What’s wrong?”
“Talked to my dad last night.”
“Did you fight again?”
“No, wasn’t like that. I told him I was thinking about finishing up school and he was really happy about it. He said he’d set it up so I could come home for the summer and get it done. Get my degree.”
“Thissummer?”
He leans back against the wall and looks down at his feet. “Yeah.”
And I know I told him he should get his degree, and he really should. But summer seems so close now.
I feel sick. The part of me that’s been avoiding kiss visions pipes up. All relationships end.
Is this what happens to us? He goes home for the summer? Then, in the fall, I go to NYU and he picks up his life in LA, and we just fade away?
“Are you going to go?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he says. “What do you think I should do?”
I know he’s not asking me for advice.
“We could make it work,” I whisper.
He lifts his head. “How?”
“I hear New York City has a pretty good music scene,” I say.
He moves closer to me, but not close enough. “I’ve heard that too,” he says.
