Chapter 27
CJ
What CJ needs to do is just … say it. She needs to move her lips and let sound emanate from between them, until words can form and she can articulate to Ash exactly how she feels.
Which is … confused, and jealous, and hopeful, and really goddamn scared.
Basically, whatever CJ’s carefully crafted personal brand is?
Everything she exists as right now is the exact opposite.
She can’t remember who suggested it was time to go, only that she and Ash stood up at roughly the same time, headed in the direction of CoLab at roughly the same time, slowed down into a dawdle at roughly.
The same. Time. The air between them feels soupy, thick with the unsaid.
CJ knows she has feelings, but the terrifying part now is that apparently, in the face of Ash considering a liaison with anybody else, not least another woman, she cannot hide it.
But, more than that, the way Ash has been looking at her.
Touching her. Laughing with her. I’m not not into women …
They’ve been together non-stop. Sure, it could just be as friends, but it isn’t, is it?
It can’t be. CJ doesn’t know any friends who spend this much time together, who part and then continue to text, so that it’s less about them meeting up every day and more like they haven’t been apart, at all, in weeks, because even apart they’re still talking, even when they don’t say much at all.
CJ wishes Ash would say something, initiate a conversation about how they really feel.
It’s agony. The truth about being in love is that death would be preferable to waiting for the other person to decide that they feel the same.
The exquisite torment is inhumane. For example, now, this walk home that is so slow they are practically walking backwards, side by side, fingertips a hair’s breadth from gently brushing against one another, the very definition of almost. It’s horrible.
CJ wonders, should I kiss her? She tries to imagine how this would go.
Last time, with Luis there, it was soft and sensual and everything she wanted it to be, so much so that she’d had to leave.
But at least she had been sure Ash wanted that, that everybody was there for the same explicit purpose.
Now, with the exchange of awkward, wordless half-smiles between them, CJ doesn’t feel sure of anything, save for the fact that the only thing that might be more painful than trying to kiss Ash and being refused is to never try to kiss Ash at all.
They reach CoLab. Ash looks at the ground, swallows hard, gives the impression she might finally look up at CJ and say the words CJ needs to light the fire beneath her courage.
That’s all CJ needs, for Ash to say, this is real, isn’t it?
CJ could take it from there. She could. But Ash doesn’t speak.
She blinks fast, like trying to wash away a thought, and gives a big, dissatisfied sigh.
CJ opens her mouth in the hope that words will follow.
Ash senses it, eyes darting up to CJ’s mouth, and is CJ imagining it?
That she looks hopeful? Expectant? Maybe that is the push!
Maybe that could be enough! Yet she freezes, heart racing double time, unable to look at Ash directly, instead focusing on the wall, on the brick to the left of Ash’s head.
And if Ash is now looking at her, CJ moves her gaze away sharpish when she finally meets her eye.
They head upstairs, and CJ suddenly thinks, but I don’t even live here.
She’s come into CoLab without thinking, followed Ash without thinking, is going up the stairs to Ash’s studio.
Is she walking her home, or …? She feels the seconds rushing by, seconds she will never get back, seconds she is desperate to stop at any cost. She’d push her fingers up to the gap in the giant timer of the world if she could, use the force of her whole body to stem the grains of sand trickling through the hourglass so time could pause, so she could fucking gather herself, sort herself the fuck out.
Is she going to do this? She’s going to do this.
‘This is me,’ Ash says, somewhat unnecessarily. She puts her key in the lock, pushing the door wide open. It hangs, Ash taking a step into the room and then turning, slowly, to look at CJ.
But CJ can’t do it, can’t cross over the threshold herself, and so they look at each other, an expression on Ash’s face that CJ cannot read until it smudges into sadness, maybe regret, and then the door is closed and Ash is inside.
In the dark of the hallway, the door shutting behind her, CJ is on the other side, alone.