Page 21 of Just Like the Brontë Sisters

“Huh?”

Jo Beth was sitting, but Mitch lay down, stretching his long limbs, and arching his neck. He gazed up at her. “I think about it a lot,” he said. “One day I’ll be an old man. And just like the world’s ultimate path is to keep expanding from dark energy until all matter is ripped apart, my body’s cells will keep reproducing and changing, but ultimately, they’ll self-destruct, you know?”

She laughed. “Did you just smoke some weed? If so, where’s my share?”

“Sorry, this is just how I think. But do you get what I mean?”

Jo Beth wasn’t sure that she did, but she shrugged her shoulders like she totally followed him. Mitch continued. “Maybe my body will be too banged up for skiing, maybe I’ll be too tired for travel, but I’m still going to do stuff.”

“Like what? Golf?”

He sniffed dismissively. “Probably not golf. I made a list, actually.” Mitch started counting off on his fingers. “Gourmet cooking class. Leatherworking. Chess tournaments. Learn magic…”

“Wait, you mean real magic? Like Harry Potter?”

Mitch’s laugh was deep and chortle-like. “No. Like David Blaine—you know—illusions.”

Jo Beth did her best to sound unimpressed. “Is that all?”

He shook his head. “I’ll get some really big tattoos—maybe even learn to do them myself.” His eyes shone with enthusiasm.

“But you already have a tattoo.” Jo Beth pointed to the tiny pi symbol on his bicep. “What’s that about?”

He shrugged. “I liked the irony of making something that’s endless so small. They say you shouldn’t get tattoos because when you’re old, you won’t want them anymore. But what if you wait to get them until you’re actually old? Then that argument’s dead.”

Her fingers crept to the base of his head. It had become impossible not to stroke his curls. “I hear what you’re saying, but life is short. Maybe you shouldn’t wait several decades to get going on all this stuff.”

“But I want to travel and ski while I’m still young and that takes time.”

“I suppose.” She let her fingers skim his forehead and that simple action made her heart pound. “But when I make a to-do list, I can’t wait. It has to happen right away.”

“Oh!” His face lit up. “I forgot the most important thing. I’m going to go back to school, for cognitive studies.”

“You’re like my sister. She’s smart too. She’s convinced that her life depends upon getting into Cornell.”

“Then I hope they accept her. But what about you?”

“What about me?”

Mitch sat up and met her eyes with an abrupt intensity. “What’s on your to-do list?”

Jo Beth was suddenly so flushed that she had to look away. She spoke to the floor. “See the world; learn to paint; make up for all the crappy mistakes I’ve made.” Glancing back at him, she shrugged. “It’s not an extraordinary list.”

“What about love? Is that on your list?”

Moonlight shone through his one window, casting his face in light and shadow, and though they’d only just met, Jo Beth could no longer remember what not knowing Mitch felt like. “No,” she told him. “I like to make my goals attainable.”

“Too bad,” he said, inching towards her, taking her face in his hands, and tilting his head so their lips could meet. “But then again, if nothing ever felt impossible, there would be no surprise.”

Jo Beth let Mitch kiss her and it was sweet, like bubblegum that’s still soft and flavorful. More importantly, by kissing him, some crucial defect in her personality, one she hadn’t even been aware of, felt suddenly and miraculously fixed. As she wrapped her arms around him she became a nicer person, balanced and generous all at once. “You don’t feel impossible,” she murmured between kisses. “Even though you are a huge surprise.”

He laughed. “Please keep calling me huge.”

Jo Beth giggled. When had she ever felt so light, like she had to clutch his shoulders or she might just drift away? That sensation never left her, not the next morning when she had to tell Magda that she’d fallen for her ex, and not in the weeks that followed, when Jo Beth spent all of her time with Mitch, falling in love like she was a heroine from one of Skylar’s Brontë novels.

For underneath the giddiness was a dark desperation, the knowledge that if she clung too hard, she’d reach past the bubble’s walls, and then it all would pop.