“Hmm, I see where this is going.”
“Yes. Yes you do.” And she talks about him for a while, and it's interesting enough that I can pay attention and ask the right questions and respond in the right ways, but it's not good enough to distract me from the day I'm about to have. Though really I'm not sure anything would be.
Theo's not waiting in the parking lot, but he rarely does, since I'm a little cautious about being seen together when Josey's not around (and now that she's helping out with the breakfast program at the local elementary school, she barely gets here in time for her first class). That's either going to be a lot harder or a lot easier now, depending on whether I'm okay with people knowing about us.
The thought that I might be makes me kind of dizzy, because if it wouldn't be lying to people to make them think he and I are in a simple relationship, it means Josey's really gone.
I see her before I see him, crossing paths with her when she's on her way to AP Spanish and I'm on my way to the bathroom. I don't get much more than a glance of her—we're both really trying to seem like we're not looking at each other, I think—but I can see that her hair's pulled back even more perfectly than usual, that she's wearing one of her least bag-lady outfits, and that her face and eyes are swollen in a way that I don't think has anything to do with the pregnancy.
And I realize that I'm not angry at her anymore. That I no longer want her to hurt.
I'm just so exhausted.
Theo looks like hell too, and the way he looks at me when he sees me outside my study hall room before it starts makes me think I probably do too. We give each other the most platonic hug we can manage.
“I called her last night,” he says, which might explain why he's so hoarse, since we were on the phone together for almost three hours as well.
I don't really think that's why he's so hoarse, though.
“We said you weren't going to,” I say.
“I know,” he says. “I'm sorry.”
“Hey, no no no.” Not angry. Just tired.
No skids.
“Did she pick up?” he says. If this were a movie she would have turned her phone off and he would have left a dozen desperate voice mails and made himself look pathetic.
“Of course,” he says. It's not a movie. “We talked for a really long time.”
“But we didn't...”
He shakes his head. “We just said the same things over and over again.” He's clinging to my sleeve. “Have you talked to her?”
“No.”
“Maybe you should talk to her,” he says.
“Theo...”
“I just...maybe she'd listen to you. If I'm the one holding her back, maybe it doesn't have to...”
And I realize what he's saying. He's saying that Josey and I could still be together, even if he and Josey aren't.
Theo. Theo, baby, you are not the problem, you are the reason. You're how I know how to do anything. You're how I managed to come to school. You are my goddamn sunshine.
“Come on,” I say.
“What?”
“No study hall. Today is just...there's not going to be study hall today. Let's go to your car.”
He nods and follows me like a sleepwalker.
We climb into the backseat of his car and just lie all over each other. I listen to his heartbeat and the drizzle outside, and suddenly remember, “Lucas.”
He lifts his head just a little. “No, Theo.”
“Shut up. I mean Lucas knows about us. He would understand. I wouldn't have to do the whole explanation and worry about him disapproving or...he already knows. I could talk to him.”
“I can't talk to anyone,” he says, quietly.
I kiss his chest. “You can talk to me.”
He reaches down and fits his hand into my hair, somehow, and scratches a little at the back of my head. I lean back into him. It feels wrong that I should be happy right now, that I should be feeling him and thinking about how solid he is and how indestructible we are. How all of this has made me feel more immortal with him. He and Josey broke up and he and I are still together. We're solid.
I am so happy and so sad all at the same time.
We kiss for a long time and then cry for a long time. At lunch, we sit across from each other, and Josey sits alone.
23
Theo and I still have fun. That's possibly the most shocking part of all of this.
It's a little desperate it first, a kind of manic clinging that we do because we're the only people who understand what it's like to be so in and so out of a relationship all at the same time, what it feels like to be in love with two people when that's not a transgression but it's not thrilling anymore, either. With tax season looming work has picked up for my mother and Dominic, and between that, the wedding, and a convenient week off in Alexis-custody, I have a lot more freedom right now than any romantically-inclined sixteen-year-old should. If my parents ever find out that I'm not really a bitter old shrew, that would be a very bad thing for me.
They're not likely to figure it out any time soon, though, since it's not as if I'm jumping for joy a lot of the time lately. Everything is still on the extremely awful side, but when Theo and I are together, away from it all, that can be so hard to remember. We go out every evening. Twice we say we're going to see a movie and don't; the first time we go
