“I don't know.”
“Is Theo off, like, banging Vermont girls in the snow?”
“New Hampshire, and no.”
“How do you know for sure?”
“You seem very interested in this,” I say. “Maybe you want to be banging Vermont girls in the snow.”
“New Hampshire, Tay.”
“Right, right.”
“Okay,” I say. “You want to know what the arrangement is?”
“Yes ma'am.”
“So Theo dated this girl—Josey--for a long time, since they were freshman or sophomores. And Josey's parents are polyamorous.”
“Like...Mormons?”
“Mormons aren't even....sure. Like Mormons. And Josey's seen that work for them for as long as she can remember. And that was always something she at least wanted to try because it's what made sense to her. So at some point she proposed it to Theo and he was interested.”
“Yeah, what guy wouldn't be.”
“Heh.”
“So...wait.” She sits up. “Are you saying he and this Josey girl are still together?”
“Yeah.”
“Like, committed together.”
“Yeah.”
She scoots forwards. “So does he like, sleep with both of you?”
“What, like at the same time?”
“Oh my God, does he?”
“No.”
“Do you sleep with both of them?”
“I don't sleep with anyone. It's not about that.”
“But they sleep together.”
“Why does that matter?”
“Sex changes things, Taylor,” she says.
“I don't even know what that means.”
“I wonder why.”
“Hey.”
She shrugs. “Just sleep with him! Maybe then he'll leave her.”
“Wow, that is....so incredibly not what this is.”
“You have to admit it's a possibility, though,” she says. “He was dating this other girl and she gave him permission to see other people, and he's all whatever and then he meets you, and he's all wow oh my God Taylor's amazing because he's not a moron, but then you won't sleep with him but she will so he's not going to break up with her when he's getting something from you he can't get from her.”
“So I should sleep with him to increase my value.”
“You take everything way too seriously,” she says.
“That's not even kind of the situation,” I say.
She shrugs. “Can't argue that it makes sense, though.”
“Yeah, if Theo were an entirely different person.”
“Different how?”
“Obsessed with sex. Incapable of thinking of girls as more than sex objects. Not in love with Josey.”
“So he's in love with her,” Aanya says.
“Yeah.”
“And she's in love with him.”
“Yep.”
“And you're in love with him.”
“Yeah.”
“And he's in love with you.”
“I think so.”
“Are you in love with her?”
“That's...”
“Let me guess,” Aanya says. “That's complicated.”
“Yeah.”
“And I couldn't possibly understand.”
“Hey. I didn't say that.”
“Please, you're talking down to me about this guy every time he comes up. Like you guys have such a sophisticated thing that you can't even fill me in on it because I'd never get it.”
“Maybe I have been doing that,” I say. “I'm sorry.”
“I mean, did you consider that if it sounds like I'm arguing with you, it's probably because I'm worried about some guy using you, not because I'm not edgy enough for your relationship status?”
I didn't consider that, really. But. “He's not using me,” I say.
She sighs.
“Come meet him,” I say. “You'll see for yourself. Just come up sometime.”
“Yeah. I will.”
I hug her tight.
We get back to Arcadia in the late evening on December 29th. I've been home for all of twenty minutes when I hear my phone, which is unnecessary considering I can also hear them hollering and singing from outside.
“Going out,” I tell my mom, who's already settled in for sleep. Driving makes her tired, even when she's just sitting there watching Dominic do it, apparently, but she's physically unable to sleep in the actual car. Strange woman.
“With who?”
Eh, screw it. “You know Theo and Josey?”
“Oh, sure, you've mentioned them,” she says. “Have fun.”
I kiss her cheek. “Thanks, Mami. Back in a few.”
I manage to walk out of the house like a sane person but practically sprint to the end of the driveway once I'm out the door. Josey's in the backseat, and the second I climb into the front they're all over me, hugging me like they haven't seen me in years—although there probably would be awkwardness in that, unsureness, unfamiliarity, and there's none of that here, not any.
We go to the diner and we drive around belting along to ten-year-old pop songs on a terrible radio station, and it's one of the best nights I can remember.
Once they drop me back at home, though, and I watch them drive off together, I realize that I've never been in a relationship that makes me this happy when we're together, but I've also never been in one that makes me this lonely whenever we're apart.
I don't know what to do with that.
18
Josey and Theo have interviews with colleges coming up, and neither of them has clothes that don't make them look like bag people. So mid-January, when Josey finally has a weekend free from basketball and family picnics—seriously--and animal shelter shifts, Theo and I find time in our schedules of doing back-to-back nothing to hit the mall together. Now that the musical's over, he has a lot of free time, aside from helping his dad at the store once a week after school and doing tech theater work at the middle school whenever they call him with a crisis, which isn't as often as you might think for a middle school. And since swim team is over and SAT prep class hasn't started, my obligations are limited to babysitting and bi-weekly plans with Mike and Elisha in my continued and half-hearted—one-third-hearted—attempts to prove to myself that I have friends outside of Theo and Josey.
All of that means that Theo and I have been spending
