The Vow

shimmering. It doesn’t matter though, because I’m there, pulling up to Reed’s Grandma’s, heart in my throat. I park at the curb and wait for useful thoughts to come and form a plan. They don’t.

Maybe this is what talking yourself into suicide feels like, forcing yourself toward one horrific but necessary end. People do it—contemplate it, plan it, actually follow through with it. I’m not that brave. I’m not even brave enough to do this.

At least I think I’m not brave enough, but my fingers somehow end up on the door handle. And I’m opening it. And I’m getting out of the car, walking up the gravel driveway. The windows above the garage look dark, but I go there first anyway, climbing the stairs up to the entrance like I’m walking through knee-deep sludge.

You don’t have to tell him now. You can just be stopping by to say hi.

I can’t even pretend to believe the liar in my head. I don’t have the stomach for avoiding him, or worse, being with him and knowing what I have to tell him but not telling him. Slow death. The poison started seeping through me from the moment I realized that I was losing him. I think I might hate myself.

I knock.

No answer. I don’t know whether to scream or cry. My arms feel strangely loose and long and out of sync with my body, so I fold them and pinch the skin. He’s not here. But as I’m turning to leave, I glance over at the house, through the open window, and I see him.

He’s on a foot ladder with his back to me, one arm stretched above his head, swaying slowly back and forth. He’s painting. I lean against the wooden railing to watch.

There’s something magical about watching somebody when they don’t know they’re being watched. Even from here I can see the definition in his outstretched arm as he pulls the roller along the wall. He’s wearing just an undershirt with his jeans, and I realize that I’ve never seen his back before. The color of his skin makes me sure that if I put my palm on his shoulder blade, he’d be warm. Reed’s skin is like his hair, melted caramel.

He turns sideways, and there’s his profile. No glasses, just like when we kiss. He crouches to dip the roller, and for just a second I forget why I’m here. I want to grab an extra roller and help him, to splatter paint on each other, to reach out and smear yellow fingerprints across his jaw, his collarbone.

But he feels my stare. He must, because he turns and looks out the window, up the stairs, and into my eyes. He smiles.

I remember why I’m here.

He disappears, and I want to run before he’s any closer, but I only make it halfway down the steps on shaky legs before he’s taking long strides across the lawn toward me.

“I thought you were working today,” he says. He’s grinning, and the sun is glowing in his hair.

“I’m supposed to be.”

He gives me a funny look. “Playing hooky?” He grips either side of the railing at the bottom of the stairs and starts his way up to meet me in the middle, where my legs have stopped working.

“Playing sick.”

“You should play harder. You don’t look sick. Actually, you look pretty good to me.” He stands on the step below me, reaches out and puts his hands on my hips, his fingers hooking my side, his thumbs at my navel. He’s pulling me toward him, and I have no choice but to look into his eyes. It’s a mistake. They’re gentle, and they see right into me. I can’t keep looking into them, so I look down to the base of his neck, where a single drop of sweat is about to roll over his collarbone. He smells like salt and paint.

“Come on up,” he says. “It’s boiling out here.”

I turn weakly to follow him into the apartment, but my chest drains a little with each step. I’m empty by the time I’ve reached the top, like I’ve left my heart below to bake in the sun. He holds the door open for me. I duck under his arm and inside.

“I don’t want to interrupt you,” I say, closing the door behind me. “You looked like you were in the middle of a room.”

“You aren’t interrupting. I need a break.” He stops and grins sheepishly. “And I was sort of thinking about you anyway.”

Yesterday that would have made me smile. Today it makes me want to die.

“Do you want something to drink?” he asks.

I shake my head but follow him to the kitchenette.

He takes a soda from the fridge, opens it, takes a sip. “So, playing sick. I’m not complaining, but any other reason, besides saving me from boredom?”

My mouth won’t open and my legs feel weak. I hoist myself up so I’m sitting on the countertop and stare at my lap. I realize too late that it’s the wrong thing to do, that he sees something else in how I’m sitting, in me being here. He steps toward me and rests his hand on my thigh. “Have I ever told you how sexy you are? And this dress . . .” He leans in to my knees. He puts the soda down and the shock of his cold fingers on my other thigh almost makes me shudder. “Seriously, it does something to me to see—”

“Stop.” I almost yell the word, and he jerks away. It rings between us like a slap.

He takes a step back, hands hanging by his sides, and I pull myself together. I won’t look at his face.

He waits. Of course he waits. There has to be an explanation coming, because it was only two days ago that he made me dinner and we talked on the couch and then we kissed on the couch and he had his hands all over me on the couch and it was okay with me. It was more than okay with me.

I don’t have the right words for this. If I’d have planned out the words, I couldn’t have made myself come here. I’m a coward.

He’s still waiting.

“I need to talk to you.” I shake my head. Obviously I need to talk to him. “Something happened.”

“Are you okay?”

I make the mistake of looking up. His eyes are full of worry—worry for me, instead of worry for what I’m about to do to him. “I’m fine,” I say, and look back down to the safety of my lap. When I start again, my voice is shaky and too high. Not my own. “Remember that conversation we had the other day about Mo?”

“Yeah.”

“About how our relationship was, you know, platonic?”

Reed folds his arms, and I see that caramel skin ripple over muscle. “Yeah.”

“Well, something happened.”

“Something.” His voice is hard and flat, a penny with the shine scuffed off.

“It’s not quite . . .” I pause, hating the sound of the voice coming out of my mouth. I sound like the kind of girl who would cheat on her boyfriend. Intentionally. I have to. “It’s not quite like that anymore.”

“You mean platonic.”

“No. I mean, yeah, it’s not platonic.”

“Anymore,” he says, not a drop, not a single whiff of emotion.

“Right.”

His arms, still folded over his chest, move up and down with his breath. “But the other night, two nights ago, when you said it was, it still was? Or were you lying then?”

Was I? When are my lies supposed to have started? This is too muddy, but I can’t think whether it matters or not. I guess I was married then. I guess the lying was supposed to already be happening, I just didn’t know it. So I guess I’m supposed to be lying retroactively, even if I thought I was being honest then. Which I sort of was. I close my eyes. I’m not smart enough for lying about lying.

But then I remember the deliciousness of that night, the food, the ice cream, talking, kissing, and it doesn’t matter if I was supposed to be lying then. I can’t lie about that night. “No. I was telling you the truth then.”

He snorts and takes a step toward me, gripping the edge of the counter on either side of my knees. I can feel his breath on my forehead, but I won’t look up again. “It’s been two days. You’re telling me in those two days, the two days I’ve spent not being able to think about anything but you, you just all of a sudden decided it’d be a good idea to screw your best friend?” He’s not yelling, but it feels like he is. It’s not loud, but it’s brimming with anger. I keep my head down. “The one who thinks of you as a sister? And I’m supposed to believe that it honestly never occurred to you when you sat on that couch and looked at me like I was some kind of pervert for suggesting he might actually want you like that?”