Page 78 of One Adult, Please

"I don't know how to be that person," she whispers. "The brave one. I only know how to be the funny one."

"You're both." I'm closer now. The stools are right next to each other. My knee is touching hers and I'm closer than I've ever been to anyone in my entire adequate life. "You've been both since you walked in the door."

"Joel."

"I'm not good at this." My voice sounds wrong. "I don't know how to... I fix things. Machines. Systems. I see what's broken and I repair it. I don't know how to do this."

"Do what?"

I've said more in the last ten minutes than I've said in the last three years combined and I'm empty now. I'm running on fumes, and the only thing left is the thing I've been not-doing since the fish tube.

I kiss her.

It's not smooth. It's been long enough since I've done this that I've forgotten most of the mechanics, and the angle is wrong because we're on stools and she's shorter than me. I have to lean down and she has to lean up. Our noses bump once, briefly, before I figure out the geometry.

But then I figure it out. And Grace makes a sound against my mouth that rewires something fundamental in my brain.

Her hands find my shoulders. Then my neck. Then my hair, her fingers curling into it with a grip that borders on painful, and I don't care. I don't care about anything except the fact that she's kissing me back with the same chaotic energy she puts into everything.

I pull her off the stool. Or she climbs off. Or we both move at the same time and physics handles the rest, but the result is that she's in my lap now, her knees bracketing my hips, and my hands are on her waist, under the hoodie, finding skin that's warm and soft and alive.

My palm slides up her back. Her spine arches. She gasps into my mouth. I swallow the sound, and I think: I've never wanted anything this much in my entire life and I'm terrified and I don't want to stop.

"Joel." My name in her mouth. Against my lips. I feel it more than hear it.

"Yeah."

"I need you to know." She pulls back just enough to look at me, her eyes huge and dark in the emergency light, her hair a mess, her lips swollen, her hands still in my hair. "I'm probably going to fall off this stool at some point and ruin everything."

"I'll catch you."

She kisses me again. Harder this time. Her hips shift in my lap and my hands tighten on her waist. I'm about three seconds from doing something that requires more privacy than a restaurant with two sleeping men in the booths behind us.

Something hits the window. Hard. The glass shudders. Grace jerks back so fast she almost falls off my lap. I catch her hips, and we both turn to look.

There's a face pressed against the glass.

Wrong face. Dead face. Gray skin and clouded eyes and a mouth that's working open and closed against the window, trying to bite through the pane. It's wearing a Hawaiian shirt, bright orange with little blue parrots on it, and cargo shorts, and a fanny pack, and there's a lanyard around its neck with a plastic sleeve that says HELLO MY NAME IS and then a name I can't read because the plastic is smeared with something I'm not going to think about.

It hits the glass again. The whole window rattles.

"Oh my God." Grace scrambles off my lap, catches herself on the counter, and spins to face the window. "Are you kidding me?"

The wrong person hits the glass again. Its hands are slapping at the pane now, palms leaving prints, fanny pack swinging with each impact.

"Great timing, Gregory."

The wrong person, who is definitely not named Gregory based on the lanyard, continues to slam against the window. It doesn't care that it has a new name. It only cares about the glass between it and us and the fact that the glass is, for now, winning.

"Gregory?" I say.

"That's Gregory. He's interrupting. Gregory is rude."

"The lanyard says..."

"I don't care what the lanyard says. His name is Gregory now. Gregory the mood killer. Gregory who showed up at the worst possible moment."

"Grace."