“Go ahead,” he says. “We probably shouldn’t show up together. In case we look… suspicious.”
“Right.” With shaky hands, I do my best to re-form my hair into something resembling a style. “Okay. I’ll, um—see you out there?”
When I’m back on land later, I’m still dizzy with the scent of him, the press of his fingertips lingering on my skin.
14
Cute or trying too hard?” Julia says, gesturing to a welcome mat that says DORM SWEET DORM. It’s a game we’re playing at Target. Fringed blankets, fairy lights, and succulents are calling our names.
Well—they’re calling Julia’s. I’m here for moral support.
“I want to say cute.” I lean against Julia’s shopping cart, assessing it. “But it could honestly go either way.”
“Trying too hard,” Julia says emphatically.
“I’m starting to think you don’t value my opinion.”
“Excuse me,” she says, faux-offended. “I absolutely do. It’s just not as meaningful as mine.”
It feels like we haven’t done something just the two of us since the beginning of summer. Julia and Noelle confessed their feelings after their movie date, and while I’m glad they’re officially together, I’ve missed my best friend.
It’s the first week of July, which means that in eight short weeks, she’ll get on a plane to New York, and I’ll drive home from the airport, willing myself not to cry. We’ve weathered other separations: different Jewish summer camps, the art intensive Julia did two summers ago, the three-week road trip the Kirschbaums took through the Pacific Northwest the summer before high school. But this one feels so permanent. That will be her home, while I’ll be staying here. A prisoner up in my tower.
We pass other almost-freshmen trying to talk their parents into buying mini fridges and record players, because nothing screams college like music snobbery.
“Trying too hard,” Julia whispers.
“Has Noelle done her college shopping yet?” I ask as we turn down the bath aisle.
“She said she’s going to do most of it when she gets there so she doesn’t have to take too much with her. Which is starting to sound really smart,” Julia says as she eyes her cart.
“And you two—things are going well?”
“It’s just as I feared. The more time I spend with her, the more I like her.”
I clutch my heart. “My baby’s in love.”
“I didn’t say love. Did I say love?”
“Your face did.”
“Damn my overly expressive eyes.” She tries to school her face into a non-expression but spectacularly fails, letting out a frustrated little whine. “I like her. A lot. Let’s go with that.”
“Speaking of… well, not love, but two people who are attracted to each other spending time together… Tarek and I, um, kissed on Saturday. On a boat.”
I’d wanted to wait to tell her in person. I could barely sleep Saturday night, even though we got home after one a.m., and last night I replayed it so many times when my head hit the pillow that for a moment I convinced myself it all happened inside my mind. Saying it out loud reminds me it was real, his warm mouth and the press of his tongue and the way his thumb stroked my hip bone.
“Excuse me.” Julia brings the cart to an abrupt halt. “We’ve been hanging out for a whole hour and you have yet to tell me about a boat kiss?”
She says this last part in a whisper-shout that draws attention from a few shoppers around us. A mother pushing a toddler in a cart gives me a look that I can’t describe as anything other than Bravo, stranger.
I feel my face flush. “Does it make it better or worse that it was a yacht? And we were in a very small, very cramped laundry room?”
“Both.” She props one elbow on the cart, fanning herself. “Wow. Okay. I didn’t even realize that was still going on. You and Tarek, I mean.”
“To be fair, I’m not entirely sure what’s going on. I don’t think either of us expected it to happen.”
“Well, do you like him?”
“I liked kissing him.” Truthfully, I’m not sure what I want to happen now. I haven’t texted him and he hasn’t texted me, and while normally that would ratchet my anxiety up to eleven, I feel oddly calm about the whole thing. Maybe because I’m still trying to process it for myself. “You’ve seen what his relationships are like on Instagram. We wouldn’t be right for each other.”
I did like kissing him. But I’ve seen so many miserable brides, miserable grooms, miserable families putting on a show because they think they’re supposed to. I’ve seen the expressions my parents wear with their clients. None of it is real, and I already do enough pretending.
I learned from my parents like I learned how to bustle a wedding dress: love is a performance.
“Right, of course, how could I forget you don’t do the whole emotion thing,” she says. “Maybe that’s what I should have done with Noelle.”
“It wouldn’t matter anyway,” I say. “He’s going back to UC Davis at the end of the summer.”
“My levels of horniness don’t mesh with this last-summer-before-college-everyone-splitting-up thing,” Julia says. “It’s like my body is trying to sabotage my brain.”
Most of the time I feel the opposite. I pick up a pillow shaped like a pineapple before tossing it back in the bin. “I’m not sure how I feel about making new friends in September. It sounds hard. I just want to find some unsuspecting art student who vaguely looks like you and force them to listen to all my problems.”
“For what it’s worth, I’m not worried about us.” She holds up an alarm clock shaped like a guitar amp. “Cute,” she declares, just as I say, “Trying too hard.”
After Target, we wait in line at Molly Moon’s in Capitol Hill, where Julia asks to try every seasonal flavor before settling on her usual, melted chocolate. I go with salted caramel, and we take our cones and
