8
I wake up the next morning feeling… good. Lighter than I have in recent memory. After all, I have two reasons to be excited now: a brewery trip with my best friends today, and a perfectly low-pressure rebound date next weekend.
I get out of bed mid-morning and check my phone for the weather.
Shockingly, Boston in late February is still—as Nolan says—“colder than a yeti’s ballsack,” so I throw on jeans and a fitted maroon sweater.
Standing before the mirror, I pull my hair into a high ponytail and pop in my contacts.
And you know what? For the first time since the breakup, I actually feel pretty good about my reflection.
I pick up my favorite ruby earrings from the top of the dresser, rolling them over in my hands a few times. I don’t even notice I’m smiling until I’ve secured the second one in my ear.
Spoiled as I’ve become with Andy’s cooking, I’m a little disappointed when I don’t find him in the kitchen this morning, so I decide to keep breakfast simple, grabbing a box of Chex from the cabinet and sitting down at the long wooden table to eat it dry.
I’ve just shoveled the first handful into my face when I hear the bathroom doorknob turning.
The next moment is like a movie. Both because it happens in slow motion, and because it’s hotter than anything else I’ve ever seen in real life.
The bathroom door swings inward. A plume of steam cascades out, and through it walks Andy, a white towel slung low over his hips, a second towel roughly tousling his hair.
And sweet baby Jesus.
I realize that, up until this moment, I’d still been thinking of Andy as the scrawny 19-year-old I met at a party the first week of my freshman year—all limbs and angles, too tall for his own skin. He’s still lean, but he has definitely grown up in the intervening nine years.
My eyes catch first on his arms, raised to dry his hair with only an effortless, utilitarian flex of biceps that shouldn’t be nearly as sexy as it is. Then my gaze drops to his chest, his stomach, the dark trail of hair leading down...
“Oh, you’re up,” Andy says as he lowers the towel from his face. “Sorry—I would’ve put clothes on if I realized…”
I avert my eyes as quickly as possible. “No, no, I’m sorry. You’re good. Carry on.”
I stare into my bowl of Chex like it contains the lost texts of Sophocles, waiting a full three seconds after his bedroom door snicks shut before daring to look up again. What is wrong with me???? A single week without sex and it’s like my brain has already turned to horny mush.
(Well, that’s not entirely true. My brain has a history of turning to horny mush for Andy.)
I know, I know. It’s never going to happen. Nor do I even want it to, really! I wouldn’t want to ruin our friendship with something as superficial as sex. Especially since he already turned me down once, you’ll recall.
It’s been long enough that I can laugh about it now.
(Sort of. Maybe.) It actually almost seems surreal, that I straight up asked him if he wanted to hook up.
I’ve never been that bold in my life! Needless to say, I never made the same mistake again.
But every once in a while something like this happens, and it reminds me why I did it—while also burning a scorching hot hole of embarrassment straight through my chest.
I pray to any and all Gods that he’s completely forgotten about that night by now.
And anyway, I eventually found a way to turn those feelings off.
Well… if not turn off, at least tamp way down into oblivion.
That is, until a few years ago.
It was an uneventful Saturday in an uneventful month, and Andy and I set out to watch all of the Lord of the Rings movies in a row to pass the time.
It started as nothing. I was cold and asked for a blanket.
Andy brought one. Then Andy was cold too and tucked himself under the other half.
Our knees touched and neither of us moved away, but that was excusable, plausibly deniable, even normal for us to maintain that small point of contact.
We talked and watched and talked some more and eventually the first movie ended and the second began.
Halfway through, Andy made popcorn. We fought over the last handful until Andy scooped up the kernels and jokingly put them in my mouth.
I clamped my lips over his fingers, sucking off the butter as he pulled them free.
And it was fine—just a joke. (Kind of.) I laughed, and he laughed at my laughter, and then he was pulling me down across his chest.
We fought and twisted and fell until our laughing died down and all that was left was the curl of our bodies into each other.
Him flat on his back, my head resting on his shoulder.
And there we stayed.
I swear in that moment I could feel my pulse just under my skin. Could’ve counted my heartbeats from the pressure of it. The movie kept playing but I didn’t take in a single second of it when my entire attention was focused on the press of Andy’s warm body against mine.
The second movie ended. Andy sat up, reached for the remote, pressed play on movie three, then laid back down, exactly as he had been. Our silence was a shield and I followed suit, tucking myself into his side without ceremony.
When I stirred awake in the middle of the night, I was still on that couch, lying across Andy’s sleeping chest.
The TV cast a faint, cool light over the room, and I took in a deep breath.
The body beneath me smelled like laundry detergent and…
Andy—a faint muskiness that was familiar and comforting, like the soft embrace of bed after a long day.
And it just felt… right. It felt like I should’ve been there the whole time. It horrified me, actually, how good it felt to hear the rise and fall of his breath. To feel the warmth of his skin, the weight of his arm curving around me.
I repositioned myself by just an inch, my cheek moving against his shoulder.
“Soph?” Andy whispered, almost under his breath.
Shoot.
“Yeah?” I whispered back.
“You awake?”
I hesitated. “A little.”
“Should…” he started but trailed off.
The radiator clanged. A siren passed outside.
“Should I get up?” he finally asked.
It was a yes or no question, so I simply said, “No.”
He said nothing else, and eventually I drifted back into sleep.
By the time I awoke the next morning, Andy was already up and dressed and acting like nothing happened. But I couldn’t stop it. That old longing had bubbled back to the surface.
I tried to remind myself that I’d already humiliated myself with him once and gotten an answer: we’re just friends. Just. Friends. I refused to humiliate myself a second time.
It was moot anyway, because a few months later I met a guy named Elliot at a conference and we hit it off.
He was handsome in that old-money, waspy kind of way.
He took me out to nice restaurants and had season tickets to the symphony and made me feel special, for a while.
And it was just so nice to have someone.
Even if there was no magic. Even if—in between our “I love you”s—I was never sure if he actually liked me.
Maybe that was enough, I thought.
Maybe that’s all I could ask for.
But even so—even after all that—didn’t my heart still catch with every innocent touch that passed between me and Andy? A tap on the arm, a pull of the hand, a head on a shoulder.
And when I woke with my cheek pressed to Elliot’s chest, didn’t I sometimes keep my eyes closed for just a minute longer, imagining it was someone else?
Didn’t I even—sometimes—think of him when Elliot was pushing inside me?
No. Definitely not.
Andy and I don’t interact again until it’s time to head across the river to the brewery. It’s pretty much right off of the 86 bus route, so we take the cheap transit option. When we plop down onto the hard blue plastic seats, Andy seems lost in thought.
“Hey, where are you right now?”
He shakes his head a little. “I’m here.”
But he’s not. And there’s a (growing) part of me that worries it’s because of the combined moments of weirdness between us recently, not the least of which was my fault earlier today.
“Sorry about earlier,” I try. “I didn’t mean to like… completely stare you down this morning.”
“No, that’s okay.” He blushes the slightest bit as he says it, but otherwise seems unaffected. So alright, if that’s not what’s bothering him, time for guess number two.
“How are you feeling about the Owen thing?”
Andy shrugs, then turns to look out the bus window. “He wasn’t sure if he could even come.”
Bingo.
I tuck my arm into the crook of his. “If he shows up, do you want me to stay with you or do you want time alone with him?”
“I don’t know.”
“We can play it by ear.” I know he’s freaking out, but I also know he doesn’t want me to make a big deal about it, so I just rest my head on his shoulder in solidarity.
“Maybe we can stick together to start, but if you feel like you want to talk to him alone you can squeeze my hand and I’ll take it as a cue to clear out.”
“Okay.” He tilts his head down at me, and a small smile tugs at his lips. “Nice earrings, by the way.”
I smile back. “Thanks.”
We walk up to the large red brick building only a few minutes after the event is supposed to start.
Gigantic, colorful banners reading Art Pop Your Pussy are hanging everywhere, depicting a mandala of repeating iconography with little to no apparent theme (horses, skull and crossbones, cacti, and flaming hearts among them).
There’s music playing from the crappy outdoor speakers, and a steady stream of hipsters flowing through the doors.
Inside the cavernous open-concept space, we’re met with an assault on all senses: the smell of fried food, the glare of neon lights, the twangs of an obscure singer-songwriter over the sound system. The bar is in the very center of the room, with vibrant fiber artwork hanging from all the walls.
“Look who it is!” someone cries from our left, and Lia runs over to squeeze us each in a hug.
She’s wearing a tight black skirt, bright purple thigh-high boots, and a purple crop top turtleneck (a garment that begs the question: what weather is this designed for?)
. Her hair is up in a high ponytail, and she’s wearing purple eye makeup with shining silver earrings.