I’d been thinking about her all day.
Not the way I’d been thinking about her for the past two months: that simmering low-grade desire I’d managed and contained while telling myself I was fine. This was different. She was mine now and I knew it, and that thought sat warm in mychest all through the Saturday night crowd and the tourist rush and Dave Prentice nursing his usual at the end of the bar.
She’s mine.
I was still getting used to being allowed to think it.
Her light was on when I came around the corner. Second floor, the window I could pick out from the street. A lamp was on in that window, lighting it up with gold, and I could see her silhouette.
She opened the door before I was even all the way up the exterior stairs.
“Hi,” she said, smiling. She looked…tired. Guess I’d kept her up past her bedtime, two nights now. That was fair. She stepped back to let me in, and I walked past her to see her apartment for the first time.
Cute, like her. Cozy. A bookshelf of collected kids’ books, which struck me as also very her and made me feel things.
She was quiet, and when I turned around to look at her, I clocked something as just…just a little wrong. She was wearing sweats and a t-shirt just like she had the first night we slept together, her hair in a messy bun just like that night, dark circles around her eyes.
It struck me all of a sudden that she wasn’t actually mine.
She was gonna end it…again.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
She nodded, glancing over at the small grey couch. “You should sit down.”
I huffed a laugh. “Yeah…no way.”
Her brow furrowed. “Why?”
“Because if you’re about to tell me you can’t again, I’m not sticking around to talk about why—” I started.
Her eyes widened in confusion. “No, no—that’s not it at all.”
“Then what?—”
She held her finger up and turned to walk down the little hall, taking the first right. When she came back, she had a very familiar white plastic stick in her hand.
I blinked at it as she held it out to me.
Took it in my hands…looked back at her.
“What is this?”
“It’s not a covid test,” she said.
“Yeah, I know,” I laughed. “But…it’s not possible, right? Positive after—what, last night?—?”
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I think the condom broke that first night. It’s…it’s the only explanation.”
“You haven’t been with someone else?—”
“I hadn’t seen Bryce in almost six months in person,” she said. “Only you.”
I looked at the test again.
Two pink lines. Clear. No ambiguity.
I did the math I hadn’t let myself do until right now—October, September, two months ofgood morning Mr. Nashand swear jars and festival bathrooms and her asking me to fill her up when it was already done. Already decided. Already happening before either of us had admitted what this was.
