We’re sitting on my living room rug, doing homework at the coffee table, when AJ scoots closer, runs his hand around my back, and starts kissing my neck.
“Sam,” he murmurs.
“Yeah.”
“I think we should tell people.”
That’s when I realize this isn’t the beginning of the typical post-homework making out on my living room rug we’ve been doing nearly every day for the last two weeks. I don’t know how to respond, so I kiss him, but my mind’s off somewhere else, caught up in a thought spiral that’s a lot like the guilty one I have about Caroline, but worse.
AJ isn’t like the guys the Eights go out with. He’s not popular. He’s not his brother, deemed acceptable even though he’s a year younger, because he’s not an athlete in any way. He doesn’t dress like our clean-cut jock friends, especially when he wears that ski hat (which I admit, I find kind of sexy). He walks around campus with his head down, avoiding interaction, and he eats lunch with two people who appear to be his only friends: Cameron and Emily.
Of course, none of this is the real AJ, but that’s the AJ they’ll see.
He reaches over, grabs me by the waist, and pulls me onto his lap so I’m straddling his hips, and I wrap my arms around his shoulders and bury my fingers in his hair. I look at him, seeing him the way I do: slightly scruffy but beautiful inside and out.
“There’s a reason I think we should start telling people,” he says.
“Oh?” I ask curiously.
“Devon called me last night.”
“Oh,” I say, already panicking.
She knows I’ve been researching her….Okay, stalking her.
“Did she call for any particular reason?” I ask, hoping I don’t sound jealous, or worse, freaked out.
Caroline’s baseball trick works a lot of the time, but I’m still checking on Devon. A lot. And I want to stop, but I can’t, because telling someone with OCD to stop obsessing about something is like telling someone who’s having an asthma attack to just breathe normally. My mind needs more information. The rabbit hole still hasn’t come to an end.
“No. She called to say hi. To see how I’m doing.”
Breathe. She called to say hi.
“And you told her about us?”
“No, but I wanted to. I think I should.”
Breathe. He wanted to tell his ex-girlfriend about us.
“I’d want her to tell me if she had a serious boyfriend.”
Serious.
I bring my hand to the back of my neck and dig my fingernail in three times, but I don’t know why I’m upset. This is good.
“What’s the matter?” AJ asks.
“Nothing.”
“Yes, there is. I can tell. Your forehead gets all crunched up when you’re thinking too hard.” He kisses my forehead and I feel the muscles relax under his touch.
One. Breathe.
Two. Breathe.
Three. Breathe.
I know what I need: information about the two of them. Information I can’t find on my own.
“I need to ask you something,” I say, interlacing my fingers behind his head, forcing them to stay still and not scratch against anything. I look right into his eyes. “You loved her. Last time I checked, you weren’t sure if you still did.”
I bite the inside of my lower lip three times and hope he doesn’t notice.
“I did love her,” he says. “But I don’t anymore, not like that. I mean, I still care about her, but…” He’s fumbling through this but he sounds sincere. “Trust me, you don’t have any reason to be jealous, Sam.”
Not jealous. Just obsessed.
I start to correct him, but then it occurs to me that I’m better off leaving this where it is.
“Seriously, I don’t know how to explain it,” he says, “but this…” He wraps his hands around my waist and kisses me, pulling me closer to him. “This is different.”
The thoughts are already losing some of their power. Maybe with a little more information, I can kill them completely. “How is this different?” I ask.
“I never told Devon about Poet’s Corner. She never met any of my friends, not even Cameron. She knew I played guitar, but I never showed her my songs or anything.” He laughs under his breath. “That day you were in my room and I handed you my clipboard…It kind of surprised me. I’ve never done that before.”
“Really?”
“Really. We’re just…different, Sam. In every way that matters.”
We.
He doesn’t say we’re better. He doesn’t say he loves me more than he loved her. And that’s okay; he doesn’t need to, because now his fingers are in my hair and his mouth is on mine, and my thoughts are all about him and this different thing we have, and my toxic Devon-thoughts are scattering away in all directions. They might return, but I no longer feel the impulse to check on her. The rabbit hole has come to an end—at least for now—and I’ve landed in wonderland, a peaceful place where my mind can finally relax and quit pleading for information.
“Thank you,” I whisper, not necessarily to him, but of course that’s how it comes out.
“You’re welcome,” he says, kissing me with even more intensity. I feel his hands travel underneath the back of my shirt, his fingers pressed into my skin, inching my hips toward him.
“You should stay for dinner,” I say, pulling my hands away and attempting to change the subject. “Paige keeps asking about you.”
“Will your mom mind?”
“Only if she walks in and catches us like this.”
“I’ll take my chances.” He takes both of my wrists, guiding them around the back of his neck, positioning my arms right where they were. Then he kisses me again, moving slowly from my lips to my cheek to that spot right behind my ear that he knows I can’t resist. And when I’m sure he can’t see me, I bring one hand to my jeans and scratch my leg three times.
“I think we should tell people,” I say.
