You in Five Acts(61)

“Beautiful and terrible, huh?” I smiled, impressed with your off-the-cuff poetry. “What makes you say that?”

“It’s from a page on my mom’s 365 Quotes of Faith calendar,” you admitted sheepishly.

“Huh.” I pressed the button again; this time the doors sprang open. “That where you get all your pickup lines?”

“Not all of them. The Book of Job is pretty dark, makes for awkward sexting.”

I shot you a particularly charged side-eye, and you laughed.

“Hey,” you said, “I’m kidding, but I know this is serious for you, so if you want me to go . . .”

“No.” I looked up at your face, marveling for the hundredth time in days how I could have looked at it for so many years and not felt the spine-tingling tremor of longing I was feeling just then. I pulled you in and kissed you as the elevator made its slow ascent, lingering on every floor like it had a mad crush. You finally pulled back, your eyes warm and dark, searching.

“You sure?” you asked.

I nodded, still holding you, dizzy from adrenaline. “I need the distraction.”

When the elevator doors dinged opened again, I led you inside my apartment and tossed the thick Barnard envelope on the dining room table, unopened.

“Are you sure?” you asked again as we paused outside my bedroom door. A breeze was coming in through the open window, and the chimes I’d hung out on the fire escape crashed together, releasing a tumble of notes that washed over me like a sweet fever—like your touch on my skin.

I nodded and kissed you, first on the mouth and then on each cheekbone, each eyelid, the side of your neck, your Adam’s apple. I heard your breath catch in your throat, felt your heart as I traced my fingers down your chest.

We were standing on one side of a door, and I think we both knew that once we stepped through, there was no going back.

I pressed into you and felt your arms encircle me, lifting me ever so slightly just like you did onstage. All that time you’d been literally sweeping me off my feet, and it had taken me so long to feel it that it was almost too much—a dam breaking deep inside, pulling me under, leaving me breathless.

I love you, I almost said, but the words felt too new on my tongue, green like unripened fruit.

So instead I whispered, “I need you,” which was just as true. . . .

? ? ?


The only thing missing from that week was Liv. I was bursting to tell her what was happening. She’d spent so many years trying to force me to fall in love—wrong-headedly, of course, but kind of sweetly, in her way—and I finally understood why. It felt like she’d been speaking another language since we turned fourteen, and I’d suddenly become fluent overnight. I couldn’t wait to practice.

I told my parents—not everything, don’t worry, I wasn’t trying to kill anyone—but it wasn’t the same. They were cautiously happy for me (they’d always liked you) but kept interjecting my lovestruck babbling, saying things like, “How will you find time for him with your ballet schedule and all your finals?” and “You know, it’s highly unlikely you two will end up in the same place next year.”

What I needed was someone who would shriek when I told them, who would breathlessly ask me what it was like, and how I felt, and what exactly had happened and in what order, spare no details. I needed someone I could confess to, and whose job it was to tolerate long, rambling monologues about infinitesimal gestures and glances and what they might mean, while prophesizing wildly with me about the future. I needed my best friend.

But she was gone. Every text I sent went unanswered—even my shameless attempts to drop hints that that I had big, big news—and when I finally called her, her voicemail box was full. On Friday I caved, and asked you to ask Dave to find out if he’d seen her, just to make sure she was OK. When you reported back that she was alive and in the city and “just flaky, like she is,” I’d stopped feeling worried and started feeling hurt. How many times had I patiently listened while Liv talked about a crush, or “educated” me about sex, or painstakingly analyzed a boyfriend’s motives? You were my first real boyfriend, my first real anything, and she didn’t even know. She didn’t seem to care.

“I just thought she’d be excited,” I said. That was Saturday. We were waiting in line at the movies. I was in excruciating pain by then; I’d been so caught up in you that I’d been careless. I had to wear the air cast Dr. Pashkin had given me just to be able to walk, and I couldn’t take a step without feeling a tingle of paranoia that someone would see me, and that I’d lose everything. (That was when I thought “everything” meant the chance to dance in Showcase.) At least you kept me distracted. You liked to joke that I probably needed to spend more time lying down.

I’d been talking to you a lot about how I wanted to talk to Liv about you, which was what happened when the best friend was taken out of the equation: a crazy-making feedback loop of misplaced angst.

“She’d probably be too excited, actually,” I went on. “She’d try to micromanage everything and I would hate it after about five seconds. But I just want her to know about us for some reason.”

“To make it real?” you asked.

“Nah.” I leaned into you playfully. “It’s gotten pretty real already. Maybe it’s just a girl thing.”