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I lay there, thinking about how wild my last two days have been. Yesterday morning, I was trying to convince myself this was the beginning of the most important day of my life. Oddly enough, I’m not even sure I was wrong. After all, it was the day I decided to stop being satisfied with “good enough”. Yesterday, I decided I want my life to be great. I want it to be so awesome I’m afraid to blink because I might miss something.
And so far? I’m about twenty-four hours into this new life philosophy and I’m already floating on an NHL player’s waterbed like Jasmine on a magic carpet ride. Although, I guess if Jasmine had been wearing nothing but a towel, that movie would’ve gone in an entirely different direction.
I smile, even though my face is squished into the pillow. Jesse’s pillow. The thought creeps up on me, and then I start noticing how the entire bed smells like him. Like faint, very nice man smell. It’s the sort of scent I want to bottle and take whiffs of–hypothetically speaking, of course, because that would be super weird if I really wanted to do that. Okay, I definitely wish I could do that, even if it would be weird.
I’m freestyling a dirty version of A Whole New World when Jesse walks in. “I could show you my beaver,” I’m singing, voice badly muffled by the pillow my face is buried in.
“Uh,” Jesse’s deep voice startles me, so I roll my face to the side and see him in the doorway, crinkled paper take-out bags in hand. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“I was, well,” I try to think of how to explain that I was just modifying a beloved children’s song because I have the maturity level of an unripened banana and thought it was hilarious. “This bed is great,” I say instead.
He smiles. He’s already smiling more than he was yesterday, and I like that. Yes, he’s wound tighter than a cat's tail in a room full of rocking chairs, but I feel like I’m gradually helping him ease up, just a little. “You know it vibrates?” he asks.
“You’ve got to be kidding.” I sit upright, looking around for the magic button.
“I wish I was.” He chuckles, but comes toward me, setting our food on the side table. “The switch is kind of hard to reach. Here, if you just–” He puts a knee on the bed and leans like he’s trying to get to something behind the headboard.
I scoot back to give him room and forget how my movement will make the whole bed ripple.
One minute, he’s leaning with his arm fully extended and one leg on the bed. The next, he’s flailing in a highly athletic, coordinated, and ultimately doomed attempt to keep himself from falling on top of me. One of his hands grips the headboard but slips. His other hand swings out, catching my towel and yanking it down so my boobs pop out like two spring chickens.
I reach up to try to get him off me, but the force of his big body coming on the bed sends a rebound ripple that makes him fall harder, planting both hands on either side of my head as he’s sort of straddling me. I’m reaching up to hold his shoulders and help him slow his fall right when a tall figure appears in the doorway.
“Oh, hi, Jake,” I say, tugging my towel up to cover my boobs.
8
JESSE
I’m holding a bag of frozen peas over my eye and trying to purge the image of Andi’s bare breasts from my head. Okay, that’s kind of a lie. I’m not trying that hard to get rid of the image. It’s more that I’m trying to stop picturing them because my best friend and the big brother of the girl those breasts were attached to is currently pacing in the kitchen.
He hasn’t formed a coherent sentence since he walked in on us a couple minutes ago.
One moment, I heard Andi say Jake’s name. The next, I was being thrown to the ground and Jake was on top of me. His fist found my face before I even had time to register what had happened. I didn’t bother fighting back, because it was pretty easy to see what he thought he just walked in on. Honestly, I also kind of deserved to get punched, even if it was only for what was going on in the privacy of my mind.
Andi is sitting beside me on the couch, head hanging like a kid who got caught making out with her boyfriend when her parents came home. She went into my bathroom and got dressed before joining us out here.
“I’m not mad that you hit me,” I say slowly. I’m not sure if it’s the right place to start, but I figure I’ve got to start somewhere.
“Good,” Jake says between his teeth. “Because I’m not sure I’ve finished hitting you.”
“He was just trying to show me how the bed vibrates,” Andi says. “He slipped and fell and then my boobs came out. It’s not that crazy. My boobs were still wet and slick from the shower, so they were honestly really hard to contain in that moment. It’s really–”
“Andi,” Jake says again, somehow still without unclenching his teeth. “I’m going to need you to stop talking about your boobs before Jesse gets any other stupid ideas.”
She lowers her eyes and nods her head.
“You–” he says, pointing at her and then closing his eyes like he’s trying very hard to control himself.
Now that I’ve met Andi, I can see how similar she is to Jake. They’re both dark haired with pale skin. They both have prominent eyebrows and similar noses, even if Jake’s is a little longer and more angular. When he’s not punching me, Jake is also usually pretty easy-going and fun, just in a more subdued way than someone like Carter.
“I’ve barely slept in twenty-four hours because I’ve been making sure nobody comes hunting you down here. I’ve tried very hard to convince several people you are fine and not dead. I even had to convince a cop that I didn’t kill you. Then I drove six hours to get here, which, by the way, took me past where your car is still on the side of the road and covered in caution tape.”
His words are all coming in very controlled and very low tones. It’s honestly a little scary. I can almost picture him suddenly pulling out a hockey stick and trying to beat me to death with it. He pauses, though, and he seems to be finding a way to shove down the buckets of anger he must be feeling. I admire him for that, because if he was too hard on Andi, I might wind up being the one throwing punches. “Do you really think there’s a good explanation for what I just walked in on?”
She sinks a little lower into the couch cushions.
“I’m not remotely interested in your sister, Jake,” I say. “I know it looked insane, but it wasn’t what it looked like. Yeah, I should’ve told her to get dressed before I tried to show her how the bed vibrates, but I didn’t think–”
