And we’re so alike and I—I can talk to you. I like that.”
“I can talk to you too,” he said, and smiled at me. “You don’t want me to learn how to Botox old ladies like my family does.”
“Or get face peels.” I’d heard Tess mention them to him the last time they’d talked. She was good at diverting guys that way. They’d chase, and she’d send them off to fix themselves up—and then they’d usual y end up fal ing for another girl, one who saw the improved them emerging before Tess did.
“I brought food tonight,” Jack told me. “PB&J, with no crusts. Your favorite, right?”
I’d said it was, because he’d said it was his favorite, and so I nodded, pathetical y happy that he’d noticed me, that he’d listened to me. When I was done with my sandwich, I kissed a smear of peanut butter off his mouth.
He kissed me back, and I was even happier.
I think it might have ended there—a few nighttime visits, some shared food and commiseration over having feelings for someone who liked you but didn’t
I thought sex would make him love me.
No, that’s a lie. I didn’t think that. I hoped it, but the bare, honest fact behind what happened is that I wanted to have sex with him. I wanted those pale arms of his wrapped around me; I wanted to see al of him. I wanted him to see al of me.
He said he didn’t think it was a good idea. He said I was only fifteen, and he was eighteen and going away to school and—I’l never forget this—
he said, “I don’t want to hurt you. I just—I like you too much. I don’t want to be the guy you look back on and wish that I’d died a hideous death. And I know you. You’d wish something real y hideous on me.”
I cried. He stil said no.
So the next time I saw him, I gave him Long Island Iced Tea, a drink my mother made only on summer holidays, when she and my father would share a glass and smile at each other in a slow, sleepy way that was sort of cute but also sort of gross.
Jack didn’t say sex was a bad idea with a tal glass of that flowing through him, just laughed and said he was drunk, rol ing the word around in his mouth, and then added it proved his stepfather right, and that he should have gone to more parties.
“He says I don’t know how to drink. Crappy man,” he said, and smiled at me so sweetly, so sadly. “That’s what he says I’m going to be. What I am. Crappy. Crap.”
“Not you,” I said, leaning over and cupping his face in my hands, pressing myself against him. “Not ever. You’re the best person I know, and I love you.”
We had sex on a blanket by the scrubby trees that grow near the beach. He said, “I love you,” during.
Except he said, “I love you, Tess.”
He froze as soon as he said it, but it was too late. I can stil remember how cold I suddenly felt, the wind prickling goose bumps al over my skin.
How he pul ed away from me and knelt, hunched over and silent, the perfect posture of sorrow.
He said he was sorry, that he was stupid, and that he shouldn’t have said it. He said that he knew he’d hurt me, and that he wished he could take it al back.
“They were just words,” I said, latching on to his apology. “They don’t have to mean—”
“Abby, don’t,” he said. “I just said I love your sister when you and I—you can’t come back from that. You shouldn’t want to.”
“But I—”
“I don’t want to come back from this—be this person I am now,” he said. “I can’t—I don’t want to be that kind of guy. And yet here I am, and I …”
He handed me my clothes. “I’m so sorry.”
I didn’t get it. They were just words. I loved him and I knew he liked me. Couldn’t that be enough? It was for me.
And when I said that—and I did, to my everlasting shame—he said, “It’s not enough for me. I can’t—I won’t ever love you. Not like … not like you want me to. Not like I wish I could.”
And that was it. He said he’d come back the next night and he did, sat waiting on the beach, a paper bag in one hand. I hid and watched him until he left.
He forgot the bag, and I waited until I heard the ferry churning over the water before I went over and got it. Inside was a peanut butter and jel y sandwich and a note. Two words.
I sat there, feeling the wind blow sand onto me and into my clothes, feeling the night air turn the paper bag damp. I threw the bag into the river—
peanut butter couldn’t be worse than the chemicals already there—and tore the note into pieces and sprinkled it onto the road as I walked home, watching the tiny bits of paper turn gray and oily as they soaked into the street.
I walked home and watched a movie about the end of the world with Tess. A few days later, she came home from work and said Jack had come in and told her he wanted to know if she’d ever go out with him.
“I felt so trapped, like I had to do something, say something,” she said. “There were al these people watching us, and I could tel he wanted me to say yes. I could tel everyone wanted me to say yes because it would be such a cute story to tel their friends and plus he would be happy and everyone else would too, but I just … I couldn’t.
