Kiss Her Once for Me (81)

“I’ll replace it.” Jack hunts for two clean glasses. “What else are we going to do for the night if we don’t drink this?”

“Sit in terrible silence while contemplating the cosmic clusterfuck that put us in this position?”

“Exactly.” She nods. “Instead, we’re going to drink a little bit of whisky and do the queer-women thing.”

I focus on stirring the soup, and not on thinking about how I wish the queer-women thing meant something else. “What, uh, do we have to talk about?”

“Elle.” Jack pushes a glass with three fingers of whisky into my hands. “Come on.”

“Fine. I know we have a lot to talk about, but can we eat first?”

Jack props her body against the counter behind her and leans, goddamn her. “Yeah, we can eat first.”

We take our gourmet meal of soup that is somehow both too salty and too bland—and crackers that contain the same inexplicable flavor palette—over to the fire, eating on the floor close to the heat. “Can I ask you something?” Jack starts, washing down the soup with a swig of whisky.

I also take a sip of whisky. It tastes like barbecued nail polish remover and goes straight to my head. Why does anyone drink hard alcohol neat? “I haven’t finished eating yet,” I argue, using the dregs of my soup as protection from a conversation I don’t want to have.

Jack asks anyway, lingering soup be damned. “Do you think my mom will ever leave my dad?”

“Oh.” It’s not what I expected, and I take another drink of my whisky even though I despise it. “I don’t know their marriage well enough to say. Relationships are complex.”

Jack lounges back on her elbows, her long legs stretching in front of her, feet bobbing up and down to an unheard beat. I stare at the tattoos visible from where she’s pushed her sweatshirt up to her elbows. And people are always making a fuss about male forearms, which, sure, are nice, but have these people never seen the tattooed forearms of a butch lesbian? The sleek, slender line of the humerus, the sharp jut of the wristbone, the vulnerable dip of the inside elbow, the contrast of strength and softness. Jack’s lean muscles and her delicate wrists.

“I’m worried she’s going to stay in a relationship that doesn’t make her happy because it’s safe,” Jack says, looking directly at me. Because we’re not talking about Katherine at all. Three fingers of whisky is never going to be enough for the coming conversation, and I reach for the bottle and give us each a splash more.

“You didn’t seem surprised,” Jack remarks, “to see your fiancé kissing someone else.”

“Well,” I say, stupidly, “I’d kissed someone else the night before, so…”

“So, you’re not in love with Andrew, and you don’t seem to care that he kissed someone else…?” Jack’s gaze burns the side of my face. “Why are you getting married, exactly?”

It’s suddenly too hot by the fire, so I get up and take my whisky over to the record player in the corner of the room. Tucking my legs beneath me, I survey the Singhs’ extensive vinyl collection, because anything is better than acknowledging Jack at the present moment.

I’ve honestly never seen so much Creedence Clearwater Revival in one place.

I take another, larger sip of my whisky. It’s starting to taste better. Nutty and grassy and expensive. Or maybe I’m just drunker.

There’s a rustling sound as Jack stands up and crosses the room to sit cross-legged on the ground next to me. She leans in to press a fingertip to the thin sleeves of the albums. She’s sitting awfully close. Her forearms are right there. And God, she smells so good.

“God, you smell so good.”

Apparently, six fingers of whisky is enough to obliterate my inhibitions.

Jack stiffens beside me. “What do I smell like?”

“Freshly baked bread.”

Jack scoffs. “I definitely do not smell like bread. I haven’t baked bread in days. I probably smell like body odor and the Singhs’ organic laundry detergent.”

I shake my head. “No. No, you always smell like bread. It’s infused into your skin somehow.”

Jack laughs as her fingers stop fluttering over the edges of the records. She’s found what she wants. She plucks Dolly Parton off the shelf, and the record slides out of its case and onto the player with ease, her square-knuckled fingers adjusting the needle until “Here You Come Again” fills the cabin. Jack leans back on her elbows, because of course she does.

“A bit on the nose, isn’t it?” I point at the record player.

Jack takes a drink of her whisky. “I have no idea what you mean.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, finally, “for kissing you in the bathroom last night. For putting you in an awful position with your brother, who I know you love. I… shit. I’m a fucking selfish, terrible person.”

She restlessly swirls her glass a few times, watching the brown liquid create a whirlpool. “The most confusing part of this whole thing is, I know you’re not a terrible person. Even when you ghosted me last year, I didn’t think you were a terrible person. I knew you.”

I chew miserably on my thumbnail. Jack sighs.

“So, why are you marrying a man you don’t love?”