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I can’t move, because this isn’t a first kiss or a fourth kiss or an eighth kiss. They have done this many, many times. This has been happening.
When?
When did this start happening?
Krishna’s hand is sliding beneath Bridget’s back, rucking up her shirt, his skin so dark against hers, and my brain is just hammering at me, when, when, when? Last school year? Over the summer, when Bridget took more than one long weekend to visit Krishna in Chicago for reasons that now seem flimsy as tissue paper?
As flimsy as her sports bra, which presents no obvious barrier to Krishna’s hand. It’s working its way around to the front. It’s going to get there, and no. No.
This is wrong. It’s wrong in the way things are wrong when you don’t expect them, but it’s wrong in other ways, too, that I can’t even get a handle on because they hit me in one big mass, a cumulous cloud of emotions, foggy and cold, impossible to sift through, especially because it keeps happening. His hands are over her breasts now. They’re moving, they’re tweaking, and she likes it. So much.
I have to clear my throat against the possibility that Bridget’s hamster noises will actually kill me.
Bridget leaps away from Krishna. Her hand flies to her throat. “You scared me!”
I lift my water-bottle hand, now frozen into a claw. “I just wanted a drink.”
This is the worst thing to say, it turns out, because it makes them step farther apart, clearing a corridor to the sink that I have to walk through.
I have to not-look at Krishna so hard. And not-hear the way they’re breathing. And not-consider how wrong it is that none of us seems to have anything to say at this awkward moment to end all awkward moments.
Bridget. Kris
hna. The two talkiest people in a whole universe of talkers, now totally silent.
The water running into the bottle is louder than any running water has ever been.
I can feel them looking at each other behind my back. I can feel the conversation they’re not having, the frantic exchange of messages through hands and eyes.
I turn off the tap. Set my bottle in the sink. Pivot to face them and say, like it’s no big thing, “So this is a surprise.”
Bridget is the color of beet juice. “It’s not what it looks like,” she says. “Because, you know, it looks like we were going to—”
“It’s exactly what it looks like,” Krishna interrupts.
“It’s not,” she insists. “Caroline’s going to think we were sneaking around and we didn’t want her to know, but that’s—”
“We were sneaking around,” Krishna says. “We didn’t want you to know.”
Bridget punches him in the arm. “Stop it!”
“Stop what? Telling the truth?”
“No! You’re making it sound like we’re—like I’m—and it’s just not …”
“Not what?”
“Not like that. Dirty. And sneaky. And … I don’t know. Convenient housemate hookup.”
Bridget’s expression is searching, earnest in a way that’s painful for me to take in.
Krishna aims his can’t-give-a-shit grin at her. “Nothing wrong with a dirty, sneaky, convenient housemate hookup.”
It’s ghastly. She stiffens. The flush drains out of her face.
She gets smaller.
Krishna claps her on the shoulder like they’re old army buddies. “I’ll leave you girls to it. I need to grab a shower.”
