12. Joey
Ikissed John.
Or he kissed me.
As I sat on the end of the bed, replaying the event in my mind, it was all a blur, and if I”d been called upon to testify about what exactly had happened out there on the couch between us, I”d have admit I wasn”t exactly sure.
He”d put his hand on my shoulder, and he did it in a way that felt like he knew exactly what I”d needed in that second, and given it to me on instinct. There was something so appealing about that all by itself. Because I wasn”t sure of much right now, but I was sure I needed... something. Some reassurance, someone to tell me things would be okay. Maybe something more?
But the second his hand slid up to gently touch the skin of my neck, everything had shifted, and it was like the lid had sprung open to a box I”d pretended wasn”t there all this time. The box where I”d put all the ideas I”d ever had as a girl about the hot hockey player and me.
And those ideas?
They”d been around since I”d challenged him to that very first race.
But I”d never been quite sure if John had them too. Sometimes it seemed clear that he did—I thought I saw it in the way he looked at me, felt it in that always charged air between us. But the one time I”d felt sure he might take the initiative back in high school... he didn”t. And it had almost broken me. But John”s friendship was too valuable to me to let it come between us, and so I”d accepted that we would always be friends, and that was all we”d ever be.
I”d spent the rest of high school telling myself he just didn”t see me like that.
But this kiss?
This kiss said something different.
It had been sexy and hot, demanding and gratifying all at once. It had begun to fill some need inside me I didn”t even know I had—like cool drops of water landing on the floor of a desert so parched it didn”t even remember the last time it felt rain.
And then he”d stopped and told me what I needed. Or what I didn”t need. And the desert had dried right back up.
I might not have been sure about a whole heck of a lot right then. My life was a battlefield with corpses of my past selves lining the path to where I stood now, staring at an empty horizon ahead.
I stared around the beautiful interior of my temporary room in my temporary home and contemplated everything that had happened in the last few minutes. And while uncertainty lingered within me, the attraction I felt for John Samuels was managing to overtake most of it in the form of questions I couldn”t seem to stop from coming.
What happened now?
Why had John finally kissed me after all these years?
Was it something to do with pity? Or did he want me too?
And then, somewhere behind all those questions lay another. Was John right? Was I just reacting to my situation and unable to make good choices in the midst of all the uncertainty?
I flopped backward onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling, and a few seconds later, a green-eyed gaze set into a fuzzy grey-blue head leaned into my view, staring back at me.
Hank.
”Why are you in my room, Hank?” I whispered. There was no venom in my voice though. I was too confused to be angry now.
”Rrooowrrr.”
”Right. I know.”
One soft paw landed squarely in the center of my forehead and rested there.
”You trying to tell me something?”
Hank just rumbled his answer this time.
”Are you mad I kissed Sammy?”
No answer.
”I think he might have kissed me actually,” I told the cat, who kept his paw on my forehead as if he was blessing me or giving me some kind of feline psychic reading.
”Hank?” I looked deep into the cat”s mesmerizing green eyes. ”I need to figure things out, don”t I?”
Hank let out a very low ”rrrrrr,” the way my mama often said ”hmmmm” when she was agreeing with something she knew I didn”t want to hear.
”Should I make a list?” I asked the cat.
He didn”t seem to have an opinion about that, but he lifted his paw from my head, as if giving me permission to get up. I did, moving to the little desk by the window, where there was a notepad and a pen in the drawer. (I might have done a tiny bit of snooping around that first night.)
I took the pad and sat in the chair at the desk, and for a second, I was taken back to being a little girl hanging out in my daddy”s office. He had a little desk for me, and I”d sit and pretend to be a lawyer just like him. Only, I knew for sure I didn”t want to be a lawyer.
I began writing words, trying to sort what was in my head into something that made some kind of sense.
1. Money
- Go home and apologize.
- Get a part-time job here.
- Put together a resume and start looking for a real job.
(Virginia?)
(Alabama?)
2. House
- Pay rent to John
- Get an apartment
- Go home and live rent free
3. Future
??
”It”s a stupid list,” I told Hank, dropping the pen. ”There are so many things I could do, should do. But I don”t really know what I want to do.”
I did know one thing, though, and I crossed out the line ”Go home and apologize,” followed by ”Go home and live rent free.”
What was done was done, and I didn”t regret that. I didn”t regret stopping my wedding either.
But I missed my parents. Not so much their meddling and constant control of everything about my life, which, honestly, I”d hardly even noticed until recently. I missed them in a more general way. As people who I knew cared for me. Despite their misguided efforts to demonstrate it, I knew they really did have my best interest at heart.
The problem was that none of us knew where my best interests—or any of my interests, for that matter—really lay.
I thought about what John said.
In high school you were pretty determined to cure cancer.
I doubted I”d be able to do that, but I wondered if there wasn”t something to the notion. I had studied biomedical science. And I was still fascinated by the field. But while my peers had been getting real-world internships and jobs, I”d been spending long weekends during my last two years of college back at home, accompanying Evan to important dinners and events to help him establish his career. His life. Our future, he said.
And now that we didn”t have a future, I didn”t have much to show for that time. And I wasn”t sure where to begin making up for it.
I sighed and dropped the pen.
Hank seemed to have lost interest in my list making, and had jumped up to the windowsill, where he stretched out long in the sun rays spread there to watch the street out front.
I followed his lead and stretched out on the bed beneath him, eventually curling into a ball and falling asleep.
When I woke, I felt better, if not any more clear about what I needed to do next. I pulled on my skinny jeans and a lacy summer blouse, touched up my hair and makeup, and carried my sandals out to the living room.
John looked up at me from the tablet he held. His face wore a look of uncertainty, and I knew I owed him an apology for snapping at him. It wasn”t his fault I had no idea what I was doing with my life.
”I”m sorry,” I began. ”About earlier.”
He put the tablet down and jumped to his feet. ”Don”t apologize,” he said closing the distance between us. His expression was so open, so earnest. ”Joey, I didn”t mean anything by what I said. I want to help you, to make you see how many amazing possibilities you have in front of you. When I said that, I just meant, I didn”t want to get in the way of you figuring things out.”
I reached for his hand and squeezed, a little twist of nerves erupting in my stomach as I registered the roughness of his skin, it”s warmth. ”It”s okay,” I told him. ”I know you want the best for me, and I also know you”d never do anything to hurt me.”
”I wouldn”t.” His eyes held mine and that same fission erupted in the air between us that had always been there. This time, I did my best to ignore it, pulling my hand from his and stepping back.
”I”m just gonna get my shoes on and then I”ll be ready to go meet the Wombats,” I said, moving to sit on the couch and fasten my sandals. I was nervous to meet John’s teammates.
”You say that,” he said, his voice light and filled with fun. ”But no one can really ever be prepared for these guys.”
I looked up at him, hoping for more explanation, but he”d turned to the kitchen counter to collect his keys and wallet. I swallowed down my nerves and made myself a promise: Starting tonight, I wasn”t hurt Joey leaving things behind. Instead, I was going to be strong Joey, building a future.
I stood and faced John again.
”Hey,” he said, his gaze on my exposed upper arm. ”I think I see some muscles forming there.”
I looked down at my arm. It had only been a week—was I going to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger soon? I lifted my arm and bent it at the elbow like I”d seen men do when they wanted to show off their biceps.
John was right, there was a little change there, a bit of a contour I was pretty sure hadn”t been there before. And oddly, I felt a surge of pride when I noticed it.
”Sexy,” John murmured, and he walked past me toward the garage, leaving that word swirling around inside my head as I followed him to the car.