Jesse looked down at me and, not breaking eye contact, reached back and pulled his T-shirt over his head. I just blinked at him for a second—it was all I could do not to reach out and touch his bare chest, trace my fingers down the ridges of his abs. There was a question in his expression, not quite a challenge, but almost. I stood there, my hair dripping, shivering in Jesse’s sweater, aware all at once of the implications of what was happening here. I was in a room that was mostly bed with the boy I’d loved practically all my life—a college sophomore, who had experience, who would never have taken weeks to try to hold somebody’s hand. He’d kissed me. He’d carried me through the rain. I knew I could leave now—everything that had already happened was so far beyond what I’d ever dreamed might happen tonight—and go home happy, with enough to think about and hold on to for months.
Or I could stay.
I stood there, wishing I didn’t have to decide this right now, that I could take a time-out to think about it and get back to him sometime next week. Suddenly, I thought about the guy I’d been talking to earlier and his parallel universe theory. Maybe there had been another version of tonight, where Jesse had waved good-bye to me from the couch and I’d put my coat on and had just gone home, thinking about him like always, not even daring to imagine the situation I was in could even be possible. What would that Charlie have said to me right now, somehow in the throes of indecision because the thing I’d always dreamed would happen to me was actually happening to me?
I took a breath, telling myself that I could change my mind at any time, that this didn’t mean anything, while knowing full well that I wasn’t going to, and that it did. I pulled Jesse’s sweater over my head, and he looked at me, his eyes searching mine, and I nodded.
Jesse found the guesthouse thermostat and cranked it up and we dove under the covers together, him helping me out of my jeans and then kicking his own off, both of us cracking up at how frozen all our extremities were. I’d touch my foot to his calf and he’d yelp, and then he’d place his hand just over my collarbone and I’d shriek. But soon, as we started kissing again, our legs and feet tangling together, my hands exploring his neck, his chest, his leg, suddenly we weren’t so cold any longer. And it didn’t seem that funny anymore.
While this was happening, while everything was just his lips and his hands and the spot I’d found on his left side that made him straight-up giggle like the Pillsbury Doughboy, a thought flashed into my mind before I could stop it—Mike wouldn’t like this.
But a second later, I pushed this away. I didn’t at all care what Mike thought. As far as I was concerned, he had given up having his opinions matter. He’d made it clear that he didn’t want to be part of our family, when he hadn’t come home in a year. And even though Jesse was Mike’s best friend, and on some level I knew this was crossing a line, it wasn’t like my other siblings hadn’t done it.
Mike and I had grown up seeing Danny and Linnie and J.J. basically star in their own soap opera called Hey, Is Your Friend Dating Anyone? in which they all dated each other’s friends, with disastrous results. So I’d kept my Jesse crush secret from Mike and had never told any of my other siblings either, not even Linnie, because I knew that at some point it would become too valuable to keep. The five of us traded secrets like baseball cards—it was the highest form of currency we had. And I knew that this—me, nearly naked with Mike’s best friend—would have been a big one.
“You okay?” Jesse asked, breaking away and looking down at me.
“Yes,” I said quickly, trying to focus on him—the last thing I wanted to think about right now was my brother. “I’m good.”
And he smiled and kissed me again and then, not very much later, he was stroking my hair back from my forehead as he looked into my eyes and asked, “Ready?” and I nodded as he reached down to the floor where he’d tossed his jeans and found his wallet in the back pocket.
There was a pause, and then Jesse muttered, “Shit.” I looked over, not sure what was happening, but not sure if I should ask, or if it would just highlight the depth of my inexperience.
“Are you, um . . . ?” A second too late, I realized I had no idea how to finish this sentence and just let my voice trail off.
“So here’s the thing,” Jesse said, swinging his legs back under the covers and looking at me, propping himself up on one elbow. “I thought I had one in my wallet—I was almost sure that I did. But . . .”
“Not there?” I asked, and Jesse shook his head. I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disappointed—I seemed to be feeling both equally and at the same time. Outside the guesthouse, I heard thunder rumble somewhere off in the distance and then the sound of the rain picking up again.
“I could get dressed, go out and buy some,” Jesse said. “And—oh shit, my car would need a jump first. My battery died last night. We could take your car. . . .” But even as he was saying this, the conviction was ebbing from his voice, and it seemed like he was feeling the same thing I was—that the moment was passing right now, slipping away from us.
“Or maybe,” I said, “another time would be better? Like tomorrow or something?” I was warming to this idea even as I was saying it. Tomorrow would give me enough time to talk to Siobhan, get her take on this, let me think about it in the light of day, away from Jesse and the way my brain seemed to turn to mush around him.
Jesse groaned and shook his head. “We’re leaving to go skiing tomorrow,” he said. “And then I’m heading straight back to school from there.”
“Rutgers, right?” I asked, hoping this sounded casual and not like I’d committed this fact to memory since the day Mike had told me where Jesse was going, not like I occasionally visited the school’s website, looking at the “candid” pictures of the students wearing a suspicious amount of branded school gear, laughing together in the library or the quad, searching for Jesse in the happy multicultural groups, imagining him walking past that building, those stacks of books.
“Yeah,” he said, giving me a quick smile, like I’d surprised him. “Good memory.” He dropped onto his back and then pulled me closer to him, so that I was lying next to him with my head on his chest. My left arm was getting totally squished against him, but I didn’t know where I could put it if I moved it, and besides, it wasn’t like I needed it for all that much anyway. “What about you?” he asked after a moment. “Do you know where you’re going yet?”
I shook my head slightly, not wanting to move it too much from where it was resting. I hadn’t applied anywhere early decision, so some of my applications weren’t even in yet. “Not yet.”
He laughed—and I felt it more than heard it, like a rumble in his chest. “Well, where do you want to go?”
I looked up at him as the names of the schools I was thinking about flashed through my head. But the true answer to Jesse’s question was that I wanted to stay right here, right where we were. And that if I had my choice, I wouldn’t be going anywhere. “I’m still figuring it out,” I said, moving closer to him still.
“Nothing wrong with that,” Jesse said, running his hand over the top of my head and playing with my hair.
I closed my eyes for a second, just trying to commit it all to memory, since I had a feeling, when I was back in my room, in my house, this would all seem like a faraway dream—that I’d been lying naked in bed with Jesse Foster, his arm around my shoulders, my head on his bare chest, hearing his heartbeat. I didn’t want to think about when I might or might not see him again, or what would be happening next year, where I would be. I just wanted this moment, right now, to last forever.
I opened my eyes and stretched up to kiss him again, and as he kissed me back, he pulled me close and the rain started up again, harder than before.
FRIDAY
* * *
CHAPTER 1
Or, Never Trust Anyone Named After a Fruit
* * *
THE DAY BEFORE MY SISTER’S wedding, I woke up with a start, like an alarm had just gone off. I looked around my room, heart hammering, trying to figure out what had woken me. I was still half in the dream I’d just had—Jesse Foster was there, my brother Danny, and there was something about Schoolhouse Rock!, that old cartoon my sister had shown me when I was in elementary school . . .