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But I ended up just lying in bed and replaying the whole picnic with Augustus. I couldn’t stop thinking about the little moment when I’d tensed up as he touched me. The gentle familiarity felt wrong, somehow. I thought maybe it was how orchestrated the whole thing had been: Augustus was amazing, but he’d overdone everything at the picnic, right down to the sandwiches that were metaphorically resonant but tasted terrible and the memorized soliloquy that prevented conversation. It all felt Romantic, but not romantic.
But the truth is that I had never wanted him to kiss me, not in the way you are supposed to want these things. I mean, he was gorgeous. I was attracted to him. I thought about him in that way, to borrow a phrase from the middle school vernacular. But the actual touch, the realized touch . . . it was all wrong.
Then I found myself worrying I would have to make out with him to get to Amsterdam, which is not the kind of thing you want to be thinking, because (a) It shouldn’t’ve even been a question whether I wanted to kiss him, and (b) Kissing someone so that you can get a free trip is perilously close to full-on hooking, and I have to confess that while I did not fancy myself a particularly good person, I never thought my first real sexual action would be prostitutional.
But then again, he hadn’t tried to kiss me; he’d only touched my face, which is not even sexual. It was not a move designed to elicit arousal, but it was certainly a designed move, because Augustus Waters was no improviser. So what had he been trying to convey? And why hadn’t I wanted to accept it?
At some point, I realized I was Kaitlyning the encounter, so I decided to text Kaitlyn and ask for some advice. She called immediately.
“I have a boy problem,” I said.
“DELICIOUS,” Kaitlyn responded. I told her all about it, complete with the awkward face touching, leaving out only Amsterdam and Augustus’s name. “You’re sure he’s hot?” she asked when I was finished.
“Pretty sure,” I said.
“Athletic?”
“Yeah, he used to play basketball for North Central.”
“Wow. How’d you meet him?”
“This hideous Support Group.”
“Huh,” Kaitlyn said. “Out of curiosity, how many legs does this guy have?”
“Like, 1.4,” I said, smiling. Basketball players were famous in Indiana, and although Kaitlyn didn’t go to North Central, her social connectivity was endless.
“Augustus Waters,” she said.
“Um, maybe?”
“Oh, my God. I’ve seen him at parties. The things I would do to that boy. I mean, not now that I know you’re interested in him. But, oh, sweet holy Lord, I would ride that one-legged pony all the way around the corral.”
“Kaitlyn,” I said.
“Sorry. Do you think you’d have to be on top?”
“Kaitlyn,” I said.
“What were we talking about. Right, you and Augustus Waters. Maybe . . . are you gay?”
“I don’t think so? I mean, I definitely like him.”
“Does he have ugly hands? Sometimes beautiful people have ugly hands.”
“No, he has kind of amazing hands.”
“Hmm,” she said.
“Hmm,” I said.
After a second, Kaitlyn said, “Remember Derek? He broke up with me last week because he’d decided there was something fundamentally incompatible about us deep down and that we’d only get hurt more if we played it out. He called it preemptive dumping. So maybe you have this premonition that there is something fundamentally incompatible and you’re preempting the preemption.”
“Hmm,” I said.
“I’m just thinking out loud here.”
“Sorry about Derek.”
