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“I was not!”
“You would’ve let me do anything to you that day. ”
“No, I wouldn’t. ”
“You so would have. I should’ve kissed you. Skipped all those months we spent kidding ourselves. Don’t tell me you weren’t thinking about it. ”
“I wasn’t. ”
“Right, because you’re such a good girl. ”
I get my hands around his head, pull him clos
e, kiss him. “Okay, maybe I was thinking about it. But only because you so clearly needed an outlet for all that rampant testosterone. ”
“You would’ve volunteered to be my outlet?”
“Your receptacle. Because I’m a giver. ”
“I just gave you an orgasm that made your eyes cross. ”
“Well, sure. Giving has its benefits. ”
He starts laughing again, and I hug him tight, loving the way his body feels against mine.
Loving him.
When we come out, we bump through the bedroom doorway, West’s hand at my hip, a shit-eating grin on his face that I can’t see but can feel with my whole body.
Happy.
It’s amazing, I think, that we can find so much happiness at a time like this. I mean, yes, sex. But it’s not really the sex. It’s what’s underneath the sex. It’s how he makes me feel, how I make him feel, how we are together. This golden ribbon of something beautiful we’ve always had between us, there even when I was peering into his car and trying not to look too hard at the bare slice of flat stomach reflected in the car window. Even when we were arguing at the library, not-touching at the bakery, kissing on the train tracks.
Even when I told him to make up his mind and walked out on him, that ribbon was there—a shining possibility underneath.
I do feel a little awkward, though, about Krishna and Bridget. Who are sitting on the couch, watching TV kind of … tensely.
I think the tension must be in their bodies. Bridget sits ramrod straight, the back of her neck pink. Krishna’s got his arm braced along the top of the cushions, his whole body turned toward her, one knee up on the couch, even, and I get this impression of haste, like maybe he just moved away from her, even though I would have seen it if he had.
If he’d been two feet closer to Bridget, his arm right behind her, leaning over her, leaning into her, and then hastily moved away to where he is now when I pulled open the bedroom door—I never could have missed it.
Except I think maybe I did, because when Krishna turns around, this kind of hard, glistening something in his eyes reminds me of a horse about to buck.
I’ve never even seen a horse about to buck, but that’s what I think of. A terrible impulse, barely contained.
“What are you watching?” West asks.
It’s a fair question. Because they’re watching My Little Pony. With the volume weirdly low. Like, barely audible low.
Bridget is picking at her track bottoms, pinching little tents at the spot where her knee bends and the material wrinkles up.
Krishna is looking everywhere, at nothing.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen the two of them in the same room together but not talking. They are both Olympic-medal talkers. Talking is practically their religion.
I’ve definitely never seen them look so awkward.
Nor have I known Bridget to fail to answer a direct question.
