But it’s your arms that I need this time around.” My heart starts pounding. That’s not the reaction I was expecting. “We have a lot in common.” He leans in closer. “And we’ve already started this thing, so let’s make it a thing, so to speak.”
I know I should object, and I probably should stop this, but every single thing in me is like a magnet, drawn to him. We’re connected. I’m connected. I’ve only just started this crazy thing, and the longer it’s going on, the more we’re intertwined.
In the few weeks he was home, he’d come in the house and find me and drag me downstairs and we’d make out for hours, and kiss my neck and my earlobes. He’d leave me in bed long after the sun rose.
Or, one of those days where we were in my bedroom, I was on the couch on the phone with my mom, and he kissed my ear, and one of his hands moved up my arm, brushing my hair behind my ear, and he whispered something, and I laughed. The sound was so loud it brought me out of the conversation I was having, which was bad for both of us. I saw what I thought were firecrackers at the end of the street and jumped up and said something like, “Oh, my god, look! They’re lighting fireworks!” and we both took off running out of the house in our socks, to watch them light off fireworks all along the pier and down below at the jetty. He ran in front of me down the stairs, and I tripped on a stupidly small rug, but got right back up, laughing.
The first time I told him I didn’t want to be his girlfriend, he still didn’t leave.
And then he told me he wouldn’t be my boyfriend, and I started crying. But I didn’t tell him to leave. He kept his distance for a few days. The next time he came over he stayed for hours and made me dinner and when we finished he said he had one more thing to do for the night. I ran into the kitchen for a bowl and he made me chocolate banana milk. We sat at the table, eating chocolate milk out of cereal bowls, and he just sat across from me and watched me eat the chocolate milk out of my cereal bowl. And then he watched me wash it down with milk that had milk in it.
On the couch, sometimes, we watch TV. Usually we’re both on the couch, watching something. I’m not great at sharing my room with people, and I always sleep on the bottom bunk. On days when he stays, he comes upstairs and watches TV with me for a few minutes and then walks downstairs and goes back to his place or his room. We watch TV. Sometimes there’s an action movie, and he sits next to me on the couch, and every now and then he tries to hold my hand or touch my arm. I sometimes get that spark of electricity from someone touching me. If I push his hand away, it feels really weird. And if I don’t push him away, it feels like he’s trying to hold me hostage or something. I usually can’t get rid of him fast enough.
It’s been three months and a half since he left, and he doesn’t know. Maybe I should have told him, but I just couldn’t say it. I keep hoping, sometimes, that he’ll be back, but he never has been.
***
“I’ve missed you,” Ben says, as he walks in, holding a beer. He sets it on the coffee table. He’s taller than I’d imagined. Not as short as I thought, though, and he’s thinner than he seemed in his online pictures, too. It suits him.
“I’ve missed you, too,” I say, with a sigh. “Not that much. I’ve been busy.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.”
“What? Busy doing…?”
“Not being a brat. Busy doing something.” He’s taking a beer for himself from the counter, and he hands me one, too.
“I’ve been doing okay. Going to school. That’s something. Keeping up with everything online. I’ve been keeping myself busy.”
He leans over to the couch and sits down next to me. He gets a beer for himself, too. “What are you doing with yourself?” he asks.
“I’m taking online classes in psychology.” I don’t bother going into how it’s on my own, online college classes. “I’ve been spending more time with people. With my friend from college. She lives here now. I’m helping her out a lot.”
“With what?”
“With whatever she needs help with. Anything. Everything.”
He nods, smiling. “Good for you.”
“Yeah,” I say, rolling my eyes. “That was going to be your next sentence.”
He takes a sip of his beer. He’s watching me, not saying anything. I can see he’s trying not to be awkward, and that he’s not completely happy with that, either.
“How are things with you?” he asks. “How have you been? How have you been spending your days?”
I don’t like this. This isn’t how I expected this to go. “I’ve been okay,” I say. “Same as usual.” I want to say that I’ve had to work on the schoolwork, and my mom’s been really busy at work and everything, but I don’t. I don’t have to, though. That’s obvious. He must be thinking that everything is fine, and it will make him happy, if I tell him that. But it won’t make me happy. “I’ve been doing better, though.”
“Me, too,” he says. “I’m doing better, too. Better than when you first saw me, that’s for sure.” He glances at the TV, and takes another sip of his beer. “Your mom was right about that. About me. How did she put it? ‘Mental health issues’. That sounded so good. I can see how I would have been a danger to myself. You’re a lot better now. And I’m better.” He nods his head at the TV, too. I follow his gaze, but don’t have a clue what he’s looking at.
“You got a new TV?”
“Yeah, I did. And a new monitor, too. Did you notice the new decorations in the bathroom? Somebody redid it. I was like, ‘Wow, that’s cool.’ A friend of mine put them in. He can do anything. Got it all done in a week, just like that. We made an awesome bathroom. And you should see my new kitchen, it’s great. You need to come over again sometime. Just check out my awesome appliances.”
He wants me to come back over to look at his fancy new stuff, and he’s trying to say all of this nice and fast, so I don’t have a chance to do anything other than say okay and stuff. I should probably tell him that it looks really nice in his house, and then say something like, “And you really should get your furniture replaced, your old stuff looks really beat up,” but I can’t tell him that, because I don’t want him to feel like he’s doing something wrong. I want him to feel like he doesn’t have to. I don’t want him to feel like he’s doing something bad. And I don’t want to tell him what he should or shouldn’t do. I don’t want him to know how I feel. How I’ve been feeling. I want him to have that power over me.
“You ever go anywhere? A show, or something? For fun, I mean?” he asks.
“No, I haven’t,” I answer. I don’t tell him that it’s the reason I came out of hiding. There’s a reason, if you’re wondering. Or there was. “I’m busy.”
“I bet you are,” he says. He smiles, and glances at the TV again, and reaches over and picks up my beer. “Here, come on, sit down with me, I want to talk to you. I’ve been waiting for you to come over all day, and now it’s like, I don’t know, I’ve been wondering what else to do until I saw you show up. You should have called me. You shouldn’t just wait until I come to you. It’s not fair. You should let me know.” He puts my beer down and takes my hand. “Don’t you like beer? How come you’re not drinking? You’re going to miss out on all that fun.”
“It’s not that,” I say, and tug my hand back. “I just can’t, this is an emergency, this beer…”
“I’m only joking. You should be more like
