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I give him a cool look. “None of your business.”
He nods once. “Do I know him?” he asks after a few seconds of silence.
I think about it for a second — everyone knows Rush, but that’s not who I’ve been dating. Not for a while, anyway. If you were going to call what we were doing ‘dating’ — which I wouldn’t, though my grandmother might. Rush and I, we’ve let them think that we’re together because people always talk and sometimes it’s easier to have them talk about the wrong thing. It gave me a minute to work out if the other thing was the right thing, but it wasn’t. He wasn’t. I don’t think anyone else will ever be. It doesn’t matter anyway. I shrug with both my shoulders and my mouth.
“I’m not sure — I don’t know. No, probably.”
He nods again, relieved a bit, maybe, and my eyes snag just below his right thumb.
I nod my chin towards it, which makes me feel strange because once upon a lifetime ago I would have reached over to touch him just so I could touch him. “Is that a tattoo of two dead bees?”
He looks sprung and covers it with his over hand, flashing me an apologetic smile and my shields slide on up.
“Yeah.” He shrugs like it’s silly and not callous.
I nod once. “Right.”
He peers down at it, mouth pulling a bit strangely. “Someone told me once that they’d never go extinct—” He looks over at me. “She lied.”
I give him a curt smile. “She wasn’t the one who killed them.”
His eyes fall and he swallows, breathing out of his nose.
“Anyway,” I sing brightly as I spin my Jennifer Meyer flower diamond ring around my finger, “I should get back to bridesmaid duties.” I tell him this quickly — I don’t know why — maybe because even though he’s figuratively killed the metaphor of us and displayed it permanently on his body, I still don’t think I could bear the thought of him leaving me first.
He presses his lips together as he nods. “Yeah.”
I take a step away from him.
“Bye—” I do a weirdly passive non-wave but almost wave.
His mouth twitches, amused at it. “Bye.”
I turn away.
“Hey, Parks—” he calls after me and I look back. “Can we meet up before you go back? Have a chat?”
My heart starts racing.
“Yeah.” I nod very, very casually. “I guess... We can do that.”
“Okay.” He smiles a little. “I’ll call you.”
“You don’t have my number anymore,” I tell him just because I want to, I don’t know why.
“I’ll get it from Hen,” he says, not letting go of my gaze.
I nod again and walk away, ignoring all the eyes on me and him — I haven’t missed this, the fishbowl effect — but I don’t care because it’s BJ and something about him will always be worth it.
I slip into the bathroom, lock the door and lean against it as a terrible revelation dawns on me. It’s like the morning sun when you forget to close the curtain — it’s my fault, I should have closed the curtain, I knew the sun was there, I knew the sun would eventually rise again, but I didn’t close the curtain and now this invasive, bright, shimmering light wakens me from the slumber I was using to avoid it.
I still love him.
