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Though due to a lack of hands-on experience, I cannot be sure.
But in the bathroom, while chasing droplets down Jack’s throat,my legs wrapped around his waist as he pushes me into the tiled wall, I wonder if maybe this is it. This warm, comforting weight glowing shyly behind my sternum could be something like hope.
Hope that there’ll be more days like this one.
“Stop smiling like that,” he whispers in my ear. The jet of the shower pounds over his back, and his lips taste like hot water. “Or I’ll be on you all day.”
I laugh into his neck and pretend I didn’t hear him.
The clock in the bathroom, the one I imagine Jack curses at when he runs late in the morning, reads 12:37. I towel myself dry, buzzing with possibilities, with the tenuous, burgeoning impression that for once I’m not running away, butheadingsomewhere.
“Food,” he tells me once I’m wearing my—his—hoodie and a pair of socks that won’t stay up on my calves. His smile is handsome, self-deprecating. “I have these elaborate daydreams that I’m feeding you a five-course meal I hunted, field-dressed, and prepared all by myself,” he says with a kiss on my forehead.
“Why?”
He gives me an arch look. “Don’t askwhy, like it’s a rational impulse. So, what do you want?”
“What can you make?”
“Nothing.” He shrugs at my startled laugh, then throws me over his shoulder to take me downstairs. I feel like a sparkly drink. “I’ll learn. It’s a new obsession for me.”
I can’t remember the last time I giggled this much.
The five-course meal turns out to be slightly burned grilled cheese with boxed tomato soup. I sit onmystool at the island, and he eats his own standing across from me. It’s simultaneously the most ordinary and the best thing I’ve ever tasted.
On my phone there is a text from Cece, time stamp 9:23 a.m.
CECE:“I’ll never spend the night at Jack’s,” she said. “I’m destined to die alone, strangled by the tumble of cobwebs that have overtaken my vulva due to sexual inactivity,” she said.
I laugh, and Jack smiles just because of that, which is a little unlike him and also stupid. He’s stupid. I’m stupid. We’re stupid. Or maybe we’re just sixteen. Jack Smith, Jack Smith-Turner, Jonathan Smith-Turner and I have had sex. More than once.Morethan more than once. And now we’re having breakfast at one p.m. This is not my timeline, but I’ll claim it anyway.
I tell him about the science of grilled cheese, the negative surface charge of the lipid molecules, stress and strain, the optimal pH, which should always be somewhere around 5.5. (“Manchego, then,” he says. “Or mild cheddar. Gouda, too.”) My heart is spinning dizzily at the thought of this man who knows the pH of different cheese types off the top of his head, when my phone beeps.
A reminder to change my insulin pod. I consider putting it off till I’m home, then look at Jack and think,Honesty. This day, this not-too-good soup, this man with a black-hole tattoo peeping out of his T-shirt sleeve, they are too good to not spend some honesty on.
“I’m going to need a few minutes upstairs,” I say, hopping off the stool. “But I’ll be back.”
“What’s going on?”
“Just need to change my insulin pod.” I rummage in my purse and then hold my kit up triumphantly—a pale yellow bag with little hedgehogs Cece got me years ago. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to be there. I know people get squeamish. I’ll do it in your bedroom—”
“Show me how you do it.”
He puts down what’s left of his sandwich. Washes his hands.
I laugh. “Why?”
“Because I want to know.”
“Why would you—oh myGod. You want to put high-fructose corn syrup in my insulin. Was this a long con to murder me?”
He smiles and shakes his head. “I’m starting to be partial to the way you bypass all rational explanations for everything I say, and dash straight to me being an unhinged serial killer.”
“I think it’s our thing.”
His biceps bunch up when he leans his palms against the table. “Show me how it works,” he repeats. It sounds like a soft order, and I answer with a soft question:
“Why?”
