But you’re not a Pokemon
By the time I get home from Philadelphia, Maddy is already in my bed. By choice, obviously.
We are watching Pirates of the Caribbean. Also obviously.
God forbid this girl allow another film franchise access to her nights, especially after a long drive. I agreed to watch it with Maddy once, and now I’m watching it over and over again. Her obsession for Will Turner and dirty pirates are slowly driving me nuts.
Nate has a few people downstairs playing video games, and apparently three grown men require the television for that. So Maddy and I are watching an epic maritime adventure on my iPad. It is thirteen inches, so not offensively small.
We have already kissed, which should make sitting beside each other feel less awkward.
I’ve been tense since she climbed onto my bed carrying a bag of sweet potato chips and settled beneath my blanket. I guess this is what we do now.
“It’s a healthy chip,” she assures me. “I promise you won’t lose any muscle.”
I already chuckle. The ribs has got better, I am once again permitted to experience life’s joy. “I can eat chips too, Maddy.”
She nods but her entire face looks deeply unconvinced. She places the chips over to my side.
We manage to watch half the movie and whatever low Maddy went through a few days ago seems to leave her a little.
I don’t want to ask her about it because if she wants to, she’ll tell me.
Eventually, I hope. I also don’t want to ask her about our unfinished conversations that whoever Leila is, has interrupted.
We’re propped against the headboard while the Black Pearl crosses the screen, and I pretend I’m not acutely aware of every place our bodies meet. Her shoulder keeps brushing mine. One of her knees rests against my leg.
Whenever one of the sea monsters appears, her fingers close around my bicep with suspicious enthusiasm.
“That did not scare you.” I glance down at her.
“It startled me.” Her eyes glue on Will Turner. “And it’s gross.”
“You have seen this movie fifty times.” Fact.
She grins and reaches for the chips with her free hand.
I haven’t fully noticed her nails before but they’re painted red today. New manicure, maybe. So fucking pretty on my arm.
On screen, Will Turner gives out orders to the ship crew. “Oh my God, hot.” She gasps. “He’s already a captain before anyone gives him the title. Jack does shit and Will fights the Kraken in the second movie.” She points dramatically to the screen.
“We’re watching the first one though. He’s just a kid.”
“I know. But he’s grown into this ship captain in the second movie.”
Then Turner does something reckless and shirtless for Elizabeth, a girl he's known a week. Or longer. I don’t really care about the details anymore.
Maddy sighs dreamily.
I look down at her. “Are you about to go on about how romantic this guy is?”
“It’s not just romantic, Will. It’s the whole I’m in charge but I’m romantic vibe.” She reaches into the bag, finds another chip and holds it loosely between two fingers without eating it. “You know why he falls for her that hard, right?”
“Because the script requires a romantic lead.”
“No.” She nudges my ribs with her elbow, gently enough that I know she remembers they still hurt. “Kid's basically an orphan. Shipwrecked, no mum anywhere in the story, dad's a pirate everyone assumes is dead. First person who actually sticks around and he’d sail the sea for her.”
“Sure,” I say, eyes on the screen.
“Of course he spends the rest of his life trying to prove himself useful to her.”
I glance sideways. “Maddy, he becomes a pirate.”
“Same thing. I devote my life and risk everything for you.” She keeps waving her chip instead of eating it. “That whole conquer-the-seven-seas vibe? Screaming I have to earn this or it doesn't count. You show up, you fix the problem, then you can call it love.”
She looks so pleased with herself, it’s my new entertainment. Her brightness seems to come back a little more now that she talks about the forever favourite topic for Maddy Fairfax: why are people so fucked up? Especially when it comes to Will Turner.
I give her a smile. “Congratulations. You have just diagnosed a fictional blacksmith.”
“You're doing the jaw thing.” She pokes it.
Before she can do it again, I catch her wrist and turn her hand over, slide my palm into hers, lacing our fingers together. Hers warm in mine.
Maddy looks down once, then back the movie watching everyone fighting each other violently on my iPad screen.
My phone vibrates on the nightstand on Maddy’s side. I lean across her to reach it with my free hand, in case it’s Coach or one of the guys.
Mom: Miss you already handsome ?? LA at Christmas? Let me know xx
Thank fuck, it’s a text from mom.
For one second, with Maddy's chin practically on my shoulder, I was braced for a group chat notification I don't have in my phone any more.
Which is stupid, but the panic is real.
I answer with a quick I’ll let you know mum ?? and put the phone face-down. Maddy is still watching me, our fingers still laced between us beneath the blanket.
“You have a face.” She squints her eyes at me.
“So do you.” I smile a little, glancing at her sideways. Her thumb shifts once against mine.
She doesn’t find that funny but lets me have it anyway. “You’re going to LA for Christmas?”
I lean back to the headboard, shaking my head lightly. “Probably not.”
“Why not?” She asks immediately.
“Basketball.”
She waits. I know that wait now. It’s the one where she stays silent enough for me to either answer the actual question or demonstrate that I can't.
I chose the latter one.
“Your mom is in LA?” Her fingers stay loose in mine. “You talk about your dad constantly. You've told me twice that he thinks being on time is late.” A beat. “You've never once mentioned your mum.”
Well. There it is.
I could deflect it. I’m genuinely really good at it, better than I am at basketball if we’re grading. But Maddy’s looking at me with those bright blue eyes of hers like she actually is curious, instead of the gentle avoidance everyone else generally manages for politeness.
Maddy makes it embarrassingly easy to just answer instead of deflecting.
“Yeah. My mum lives in Los Angeles.”
Maddy waits again.
“Left when I was eleven.” I keep watching the screen instead of her. “No scene, no drama. She wanted a bigger life, found one in LA doing film production. I see her sometimes. Birthday texts, mostly.” I shrug against her hair.
Apparently, I only know how to do this in doses of all or nothing. That is basically the whole story of my family.
“So you stay with your dad?” She asks, her voice gentler.
I nod calmly. “I stay with my dad because he understands basketball more. He sat me down, explained that he can’t move across the country because of his company and talked it through to mum before she left.”
“Do you miss her?” Maddy squeezes my hand a little.
I’ve been asked this question a hundred times. Everyone braces when they ask that, like I'm one sentence from falling apart on their couch.
I still have a mother. She still remembers the start of academic year and sometimes I spend the summers with her.
I’ve always been so focused on basketball that scheduling quality time with a top executive has always felt like an impossible task so I gave up around freshman year. Nobody dies.
“No,” I answer. Then, because Maddy's the only person who's ever gotten a truer answer out of me by just not making the face, “I miss the noise though. She had a why don't we try this for everything, right up until my dad got angry. Best ideas in that house always came from her.”
“She sounds really fun.” Her shoulder shakes from light giggles next to mine.
“She was always starting something,” I continue. “New job. New city. New idea. But no, I don’t really miss her. Not really.”
Maddy's thumb moves once, slow, across my knuckle.
“Does she know you still watch Disney movies?”
“God, no.” I shake my head.
“Good.” She finally eats the chip. “She doesn't get to have that part.”
I laugh. Actually laugh, which surprises me more than her. I don’t talk about my mum much, but somehow saying it to Maddy feels weirdly normal.
I finally let go of her hand only so I can get my arm around her and pull her down against my chest before she sees what my face is doing.
Probably too fucking happy about this.
Maddy stays tucked against me and immediately goes back to being the gremlin who drools over Will Turner’s heroic moments and recites every line with full theatrical commitment.
By the second fight, I half expect her to fall asleep against me, considering how much she has going on and how quiet she’s been this week.
But near the end, Will Turner finally kisses Elizabeth after a hanging, a sword fight, a pirate escape and an engagement to somebody else.
Apparently that is what it takes.
Maddy lifts her head from my chest. “Do you still want to kiss me?”
“Depends.” Then I realise it sounds cocky as fuck, I add. “Is it gonna be another scientific experiment?”
“Depends.” A beat. “Do you choose me, Will?”
I pause a little because it is such a strange question to ask. Choose means I have an option not to. But it also feels like no is not an option I could take.
“Duh. Why do you ask that?” I already lean down an inch.
“Just answer me, William Mercer,” Maddy presses.
Oh. She’s serious. “Of course, I do. But you’re not a Pokémon, Maddy.”
She laughs so hard she rolls half off me, taking the chips with her. I catch her around the waist before either Maddy or the sweet potatoes hit the floor.
We’re not pausing this conversation again because of the floor in my room.
“Got it. Not a Pokémon. But you’ll choose me?”
“Absolutely fucking yes. Were you there when we kissed?” I raise my eyebrows at her, settling her back into the bed next to me.
“It was two times.”
“Four times. There was a pause in each,” I correct her.
“Two times! It was like one word in between,” she protests.
“Don’t care. I kissed you four times and I liked them all.” I shrug.
She grins so openly at me. For a moment, I want to disregard all conversations that need to happen and just kiss her the fifth time. But I can’t.
I need to actually clarify this.
She can’t just be a girl who sits on my bed and confirms that she’s not a Pokemon while watching skeleton pirates fighting with chips in her hands. Which is incredibly hard. I am hard. No doubts. Even the slightest touch from this girl has sent electricity straight up my spine all night.
Now her soft hair is falling over my shoulder and I could smell her. Something so Maddy that I don’t know if I’ve turned into a territorial dog or if this is just how things are with Maddy.
“I told you I’m not playing games,” I remind her.
“I’m not playing games.” She turns to me, surprised.
“Then stop doing that.”
“Doing what?” She looks even more surprised now.
“Acting like we’re something one day, then pretending we’re not the next. Like I’m just some guy who happens to live here and wants to watch a movie with you.”
The cheekiness comes back at once into her eyes.
Damn. I missed that cheekiness, even though I can already tell she’s about to say something that will drive me up the wall.
“But you are a guy who lives here and loves Pirates movies enough to watch it three times with me.”
That tracks. She absolutely drives me up the wall.
I chuckle. “Bullshit.”
She bumps her shoulder against mine. “For real.”
“Absolutely not, Maddy.” I gather my thoughts, then turn fully towards her. “You came into my room whenever you felt like it, touched me whenever you felt like it and kissed me like you meant it. You don’t get to look at me now and pretend none of it happened.”
She turns towards me too, her big blue eyes finding mine.
“Call the kiss a controlled experiment all you want. I’d like the results,” I tell her firmly.
She stays quiet, which scares me a little. Maybe I pushed too hard with that one.
Then a smile forms on her lips. “I like kissing you too.”
“Then what are you doing?” I tip my head, amusement creeping back in.
She whispers a quick, sharp Fuck it and leans forward, closing the gap between us.
Final-fucking-ly-fuck-it.