Chapter 22 Then #2
Alex slaps his cards down on the table, brow furrowed as he watches me come closer. Standing behind his chair, I bend low enough to wrap my arms around his shoulders and chest. I set my chin on his shoulder.
“Ever read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up?” I ask.
Alex’s head lists toward mine. His temple settles, snug against my cheekbone “No. But I’ve heard about it.”
“What have you heard?”
He wraps his hands around my wrists, his thumbs grazing my pulse points. “The gist. You get rid of stuff you have no use for. Keep what you do. Then organize it in a way that you can find and use what you’ve kept. Basically, how I keep my kitchen.”
I smile. “Right. There’s a phrase she uses to guide that discernment process. You only keep what ‘sparks joy.’ ” I squeeze him tight. “For me, you spark joy.”
Alex is quiet for a moment, then says, “So that means… you’ll keep me?”
For as long as I can.
“Yep,” I tell him. “But it also means you spark joy.”
Alex’s grip slides up my arm, tugging me around the chair, toward him, onto his lap. I land with my hands on his shoulders to steady myself. His hands settle on my waist, thumbs brushing my hip bones.
Our eyes hold. And then he pulls me close, wraps his arms tight around my waist. I curl mine around his neck and breathe him in. Warm skin, clean spice.
My phone’s timer goes off, but neither of us move.
His voice is hoarse, so quiet, I almost miss it. “You spark my joy, too, Ted.”
“This crème br?lée,” I tell Alex, “sparks my joy.”
“Your ‘crème br?lée sparks my joy’ noises,” Alex says, “spark my joy.”
I peer over at Alex beside me, both of us stretched across the floor in front of the fireplace, heads propped on Mia’s gigantic beanbag. The spoon slips from my mouth. “Oh no. Was I making foodgasm noises again?”
Alex coughs, I’m pretty sure to hide a laugh, then scrunches up his face. “Nah. Not at all.”
“Ughh.” Mortified, I tug up the hood on his sweatshirt that I borrowed and yank the drawstrings tight, until all that’s left is a small circle that I can barely see out of.
A second later, I hear his phone’s shutter-click sound.
“Alex!” I yell.
“No yelling!” he whispers. “Mia’s sleeping.”
I hiss back, “Seriously? A picture?”
I reach for his hand holding his phone, but with my limited vision, I end up half-punching the ceramic ramekin he’s holding in the other.
Alex yells, “Back off my crème br?lée!”
“No yelling!” I parrot in a whisper. “Mia’s sleeping.”
Alex snorts. “You honestly could yell, I’ve got her sound machine blasting, and once she’s out for the night, she’s out. I was just trying to sidetrack you.”
I growl in frustration, lunging for him again. “I want that photo deleted!”
“It sparks my joy!” he yells. “That means I should keep it!”
I yank at my hood to widen my field of vision, set my ramekin on the floor beside me, then dive onto him.
“Ted!” he wheezes as I throw myself across his body, reaching for his phone. “Hold on. Let me—”
He turns enough to set his ramekin on the ground, and as he does, I get a good grip on his phone, then yank it out of his hand.
Alex is breathing heavily as he rolls toward me, his hair poking out everywhere from wrestling against the beanbag. He props himself on an elbow, takes his phone back, unlocks it, then hands it back to me. “Go on,” he says. “Delete it. Unspark my joy.”
And then he casts a forlorn glance to the ground. He looks like Argos, after he’s been caught chewing up one of my Birkenstocks. But somehow, even cuter.
I groan, flopping onto the beanbag. “Fine.” I drop the phone on my stomach. “You can keep it. If you also have a not-terrible picture of me, too.”
“I already have lots of those,” he says.
I peer slowly his way. I’ve never once been aware of his taking my picture.
Alex opens his mouth, then shuts it, then says, “That sounded really creepy.”
“Yep.”
“I’d like to address that.”
I tell him, “I’d like that, too.”
“Mia,” he says. “She takes your photo when you’re around. Like, every time.”
My heartbeat stutters. “What?”
Gently, he lifts his phone from where it rests on my stomach and navigates to his photos, down to Albums, where a rounded rectangle says on the right, Thea, my smiling face on the left side.
I scroll through the album, laughing. Many of these photos are objectively unflattering, taken beneath me, from her four-year-old height. Even so, they make my heart pinch. Mia wanted my picture.
Some aren’t unflattering, at least. My goofy smile as I’m juggling her size-three soccer ball in the backyard.
My who’s-a-good-pup look I give Argos, as I cup his face and pucker up to kiss his head.
My upside-down grin as I hang from the playground bar, jazz hands out, my hair frizzy and wild, nearly brushing the ground.
“Why?” I ask Alex.
He eases down beside me on the beanbag, opening an arm. An invitation. I roll toward him, setting my head on his shoulder, and his arm curls around me. He holds his phone above us in both hands, just like he did that first night at my apartment, as we Wordled and tore through mini crosswords.
“She has albums for her special people,” he tells me.
I watch him swipe through to his Albums, catching fragments of faces and names.
Jen’s face on an album named Mommy. An older couple, head-to-head, that I think might be his parents; a man with Alex’s vivid blue eyes, a woman with his dark waves and curls hair.
Another older couple who might be Jen’s parents, based on their looks.
Three women, one after the other, who have to be his sisters.
“No Album for Ethan,” I observe. I am vindictively pleased.
Alex frowns down at me. “Hell no.”
“You wouldn’t let her make one?”
Alex grins. “Even better, she didn’t ask to make one.”
I try to hide my glee, the delirious grin squishing up my cheeks.
Alex lifts his eyebrows. “Wow,” he says. “Now that sparked your joy.”