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Silly, but it makes me grin.
“She does it all the time, Jace!” Tito shouts from the couch. “If you sign, you have to deliver. It’s a serious matter, trust me.”
I raise my eyes to Lu.
She tries to project that mischievous playful attitude, but her eyes are burning like they did back on the terrace before I kissed her.
Without breaking eye contact, I pick up a pen. Yes, I want to be bound to her by promises and a silly drunken contract.
“If you sign,” she says, flinching, “you’d have to come back here even if you move out and return to California.”
Boom! My heart does that weird thing again where it thuds and then halts for a moment.
No, this is not silly. She wants to know that even if I leave, I’ll come back to her. That even if something happens before that, she has a reason to call me and say, “Hey, Jace, you promised.”
I don’t need a reason.
I sign.
I feel like I’ll always find my way to her. And I’m not sure I want to part at all.
I push the paper toward her. “Sign.” Because she didn’t yet.
Without looking away from me, she takes the paper and goes for the pen that I hold out. Her fingers brush against mine because I hold it so that there’s no other way.
We both hold it together for a moment, our eyes locked.
“If you sign,” I say quietly, “you’ll have to make sure I make it.”
Her playfulness is gone. She nods, whispering barely audibly, “I will,” and signs.
And the dim living room becomes this happy hopeful bubble that I don’t want to leave unless I leave with Lu.
Tito starts singing, “Magic In The Hamptons,” and holly hell does he have a sexy voice.
Everything going on seems so sexed up. And I can’t stop staring at Lu’s bare feet, now that she got rid of her boots, as she walks to her room.
She comes back with a blanket and a pillow for Tito.
“Good night, guys! Love you!” she says before disappearing into her room again.
Love you…
The door to her room shuts. I can’t see her but still smell her on my skin, taste her on my lips, remember her luminous eyes, her soft, “I will,” to something, to the future, to me.
It’s maddening.
She’s a sweet ghost, and I’m stuck with a very real drunk Tito, who stops singing and starts blabbering about life and Jamie, and that I’ll make a better domestic partner than him because I take care of people and things.
“Jamie is a lucky bastard to have a guy like you,” I tell Tito. “You are comparing everyone to him, you know that?”
That’s how I know that Jamie is the real deal, despite Tito being a playboy, and Jamie being in the closet.
“Everyone always inevitably finds the way out,” I murmur as I go out to the terrace and pick up cigarette butts and empty cans.
When I’m back in the living room, Tito is splayed on his back, in only a white tank and boxers, one arm and leg hanging off the couch.
“Good night. See you in the morning,” I say, tying up the last garbage bag and setting it by the front door.
