Chapter Sixteen December 7
Chapter Sixteen
A mischievous smile dances on John’s lips as he walks to his car, where I’m waiting.
Like I’ve done every Friday for the last three months.
John slows his gait as he approaches, and he opens the door for me.
He takes my backpack and tosses it into the back seat.
He doesn’t even have to say anything, nor do I.
It’s like we know how to be around one another.
In a constant state of real-life reverie.
He’s chivalrous in this low-effort kind of way that feels natural.
We’ve slipped into a comfortable routine together, one I try to savor, because some days I still can’t believe it’s real.
We’re pretty reserved within the school.
No hand-holding or kissing. We don’t even eat lunch together.
I reserve that time for Andie. But John will stop by my locker between classes, sometimes walking me to mine.
Then we part with a quick hug before we go our separate ways, living our separate lives.
At night we text, sometimes FaceTime if my parents are out.
But Fridays are ours. We drive around. Get something to eat. Kiss. Talk. Kiss.
Lately, though, I’ve been wanting more.
John climbs into his seat and starts the car. It doesn’t always catch on the first try because it’s so cold out.
“Let’s go somewhere,” I say, once the car engine has successfully turned. “My mom isn’t getting me from Andie’s until nine.”
“Okay.” He nods. “You want to go to the mall? It must be fun Christmas shopping with a baby in the house. Won’t be long before Mikey will be trading in toys for video games.” John takes my hand, intertwining his cold fingers with mine.
“Too many people there. How about your garage?”
He tilts his head.
“I just think, with it being December, we should move to an indoor location.”
“My garage isn’t any warmer than my car,” he says. “Besides, my mom and Mikey are home.”
“Right.” I nod.
“Do you want to get pizza or burgers?” he asks.
“Not really hungry,” I say, my tone doing a poor job of hiding my disappointment.
John runs his free hand through his hair. “Something’s on your mind.”
“Yeah.”
He shifts so he’s closer, leaning in, still holding my hand. “Tell me.”
I pull at my earlobe, looking out to the parking lot. I’m jarred by the sight of students and staff getting into their cars. Sometimes when I’m with John I have such tunnel vision that I forget there’s a world that exists outside of us.
“I hate that on Friday nights I walk out of your car and don’t get to see you for two days.”
He smiles this sweet smile, his cheeks pink, and I’m relieved that my truth-bomb didn’t scare him away. For now, anyway.
“And I guess,” I say, continuing, “a part of me is worried that on weekends you go and do whatever it is you do, and maybe you forget about me. Or you wish you weren’t tied up with me in the way you are tied up with me.
” I’ve practiced this conversation with him in my head and in front of the mirror so many times, and already I’m veering off script.
“What makes you think that?” His thumb strokes my hand, and it helps calm my racing heart.
“You’ve been with other girls. And you’ve been with Avery.
And I guess I thought because of that you might expect more from me, and I’m okay with that,” I say quickly.
“But every time I slide my hand up your thigh, you pull away. Not like you’re disgusted—at least, I don’t think so.
But enough to tell me you don’t want to go any further.
Maybe you’re just not that into me, because if you were, you’d want to do more.
And I was thinking that maybe on weekends, when we’re not together, you get your… fulfillment elsewhere?”
John lets go of my hand and leans back in his seat, facing forward. He exhales a long breath. His fingers run up and down his thighs. His face is stoic. Too far, I guess.
He shifts suddenly, facing me. “First of all, I don’t get my ‘fulfillment’ elsewhere.
Unless my hand counts.” He says it so factually, without a hint of embarrassment.
“Second of all, we agreed that we wouldn’t hook up with anyone else while we were…
” he pauses, looking me in the eyes, “doing this.”
“I know, but…”
“But what? You thought I’d do that to you? Lennon, I would never betray you like that.”
I freeze at his words. Those are not the kind of words someone in a casual relationship says to the other person.
I try to read John’s face to see if he regrets what he just said, but it’s hard when his face is on its factory default setting.
So I stay silent, waiting for him to clarify, or take it back. But he doesn’t.
“Is there a third of all?” I ask, knowing my question is laced with both hope and desperation.
“Yes.” He sighs. “You’re fourteen, Lennon. And I’ll be seventeen soon. I just don’t feel right about us doing anything more than kissing right now.”
“Are you serious?” My voice comes out louder than I expected. “Your birthday isn’t until April. Which means you don’t turn seventeen until I’m fifteen. Besides, Avery is in the same grade as me.”
“Avery’s birthday is earlier in the year than yours is. Besides, she’s different. She’d…I wasn’t the first guy she was serious with.”
“It’s my lack of experience, then?”
John releases another heavy sigh.
“John, experienced or not, you have my consent. This isn’t illegal or anything. I’m really trying hard to wrap my brain around this so-called logic of yours.”
My heart is racing so fast and my chest is burning, but I need to chill out. I can’t let this conversation get away from me, from us.
John swallows, hesitation flickering in his eyes. “I just don’t know if you can give me consent in a way where you fully understand what it is you’re consenting to.”
“Because I’m autistic?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “I’m happy just kissing you.”
“Well, I’m not,” I say, like a frustrated, sulky child. “I want more than that.”
John brings his hands to his face, pulling them down in frustration. “I don’t think we’re ready.”
“No. You don’t think I’m ready.”
I can already tell I’m going to hate whatever it is he says. He’s looking at me the way adults look at children when they want to explain something to them and they’re trying to figure out the path of least resistance.
“Once you start doing those things, you can’t go back,” he says. “And feelings start to get really twisted up.”
“Then this is your way of, what, keeping me at arm’s length? To stop me from expecting something from you? From this?”
“I like being your friend,” he says simply.
“And you think if we do other things we won’t be friends anymore?”
He nods.
“Okay,” I say, before letting out a long, dramatic exhale.
“What if I told you that it’s already too late?
” I immediately regret my words, but only kind of, because I needed to say them.
I needed to release them from where they lived, inside of me.
“What if I told you my feelings are already twisted up in you? I don’t see us, this, as just a fun thing I do between classes.
I kiss you because I want to. Because I like you.
Because it’s all I can think about. Because you’re all I ever think about. ”
“See?” he says, releasing an impatient breath. “This is what I didn’t want to happen.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’re the one who set the guidelines,” he reminds me.
“So, you’re going to pretend that when we kiss, when we text back and forth all day and all night, when you smile at me the way you smile at me, it means nothing to you? That this is in fact a casual…thing?”
“It’s what we agreed to, isn’t it?” He says it like I’m his lawyer and he’s repeating the contract back to me. But I don’t buy it.
“I don’t buy it,” I say.
“What don’t you buy?”
“That you are impervious to everything I’m experiencing. That you are not feeling what I am. That you are not falling in love with me in the exact same way and with the exact same force with which I am falling in love with you.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“The truth. Obviously.”
He lifts his eyes to meet mine. They are full, beaming. He loves me. I know he does.
“I don’t feel the same way.”
The car goes silent aside from the faint ringing deep inside my ears.
“Bullshit,” I snap, returning to the scene of the crime. This isn’t just a situation I misread. This isn’t my autism failing to read the signs. I saw the signs. All of them. He’s lying.
He goes on, his voice breaking. “I think, in order to preserve our friendship, that we should, um…this should stop.”
“I’m going to make this really easy for you,” I say as tears prick my eyes. “I’m no longer your friend. I’m nothing to you.”
“That’s not true.”
I reach into the back seat to grab my bag before opening the car door and stepping out. I slam the door shut and head back to the school building. I need to get as far away from him as possible. I can only handle so much humiliation in a lifetime.
Another car door slams and John calls after me.
While this is what I’d want to happen in one of the romance novels I consume, I don’t want it to happen here.
I don’t want him to see me like this. What he’s turned me into.
I don’t want him to know he has this power over me.
I’m so sick of men having power over me and my emotions.
“Lennon,” he calls again, and I can tell he’s getting close. “Let me drive you home. Please.”
I keep walking, and he catches up, grabbing my arm.
“Let go,” I demand, turning to him, the movement like whiplash.
He does as I ask and stands across from me, his own eyes rimmed with red.
“I just don’t know how you want me to be,” he says, a deep frown in his forehead, his voice raw.
“I literally told you.”
He shakes his head, like he’s telling himself no. “I’m not the person you think I am. I’m not the guy you want.”
“Says who?”
“Says the universe,” he replies, arms outstretched like he’s mad at the world.
“Where is this coming from? Did Theo get in your head again?”
“No. It’s not Theo. It’s me. It’s you. It’s everything.” He rakes a hand through his hair so forcefully, it looks almost painful.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I ask, wrapping my arms around my body.
The battering December winds howl in the aftermath of my question. John’s gaze is focused on the ground below us, and just as I’m about to ask him again, he finally looks up.
“I saw where you live, okay?” John says.
His Adam’s apple moves around a tight swallow.
“Theo told me you were rich, and I didn’t believe him.
I said you didn’t act like you were. That you don’t wear expensive-looking clothes or things like that.
But we were driving around, and he pulled up to your house and I saw it. ”
“We’re not rich. And my house isn’t all that special,” I say, hiking my arms up farther.
“Do you not realize how much nicer your house is than mine? Than, like, 99 percent of the houses of people who go to our school? Do you not see your privilege?”
“We’re comfortable, yeah,” I say, shrugging off his awkward observations.
“Your house looks like a palace compared to mine. Tell me you didn’t notice a difference when you came over that day.”
“I’ve never even been inside your house.”
“Come on, Lennon. You don’t need to see the inside of my house to know that our families are not on the same level financially.”
“Sure,” I finally admit. “But it doesn’t bother me.”
“What happens next?” His jaw clenches as he exhales through his nose. “We fall in love, then what?”
“Then we figure it out.”
His eyes search mine, like he’s trying to make me see what he does. “We don’t belong together.”
“Because I live in a nice house?” I ask, incredulous.
“It’s not about the house, it’s what the house represents. What it so clearly highlights.”
“What does it so clearly highlight?”
John clears his throat and straightens his posture.
He glances around the parking lot as if he’s searching for something.
Answers, maybe. The right words. “Do you really want your first relationship to be with a guy that your father would never accept? That doesn’t fit into your lifestyle?
Face it, Lennon. You and I exist in different worlds.
Eventually, the outside forces are going to creep into our relationship, and they’re going to pull us apart.
And I’d rather not have to…I don’t want to put you through that.
We were fooling ourselves thinking this,” he says, pointing a finger between us, “would be okay as long as we kept things casual. I can’t do it anymore. ”
“You’re just scared.”
He shakes his head again, and I step up to him.
“You are. You’re scared of letting yourself feel something real, so you’re pulling away.
Making up excuses to feel better about ending things.
But it won’t work. It’s too late,” I say, my sharp tone punctuating each word.
“I’m not only in your head, I’m in your heart.
And you can try to bury me, and the idea of me, away.
You can probably even convince yourself that we’re nothing.
But you can’t lie about the fact that you love me back.
Because I can feel it. And you’re just too afraid to admit it. ”
“If you stepped outside of this, us, you’d see realistically…” His voice trails off as his eyes trace over me softly.
It’s silent again. The days are short. Daylight is creeping away. A motion-sensor light outside the school building turns on, spotlighting John and me, like we’re actors on a stage.
“Maybe we are different,” I say, cutting through the quiet. “Because, to me, you’re worth it. All of it.”
“I can’t make you happy, Lennon,” he says, his eyes glued to the ground. “It’s not me you want or need.”
I swallow down the anger that his words are responsible for. “You don’t get to tell me what I want or need. No one does.” I take in a breath through my nose and let it out in a quiet exhale. “By the way, I turn fifteen tomorrow. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”
“I’m sorry,” he says, his shaky voice causing a tear in my heart.
“You don’t have to be sorry,” I say passively, all hope drained out of me. “Truth is, you were never mine.”