The Girl He Used to Know(49)
“Do you mean Lily or the cat?” I asked.
“Both,” Lily said. Jonathan smiled really big when she said that.
“You doing okay?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said, because I wanted to show him he could take me to parties, and that I could fit in. It didn’t matter to me that so far, my only interaction had been with a girl and her cat.
Lily was right, though, because later it did get loud. Tiger disappeared around eleven thirty when the hallway became crowded with people going in and out of the bedrooms and bathroom. I found a small spot near the laundry room off the kitchen, and I hung out there for a while by myself. The living room was packed, and I didn’t really want to fight my way through the crowd to look for Jonathan. Instead he found me fifteen minutes later.
“Where’d you go? I’ve been looking all over for you. I was worried.”
“There are so many people in the living room. I thought I would hide out here until it was time to go.”
“Let’s go now. I’m ready to climb back in bed. I just want to say good-bye to Lincoln real quick.”
Jonathan clasped my hand firmly in his and led me through the crowd. Lincoln was sitting on the couch with Lily on his lap. There were several guys seated next to him and a few standing in front of it talking to them.
“This is my girlfriend, Annika,” Jonathan said.
“Hey, Annika,” they said. Everyone smiled at me, and I was so glad we came.
“So, we’re taking off,” Jonathan said. “Thanks for the party. It was great.”
“It was nice talking to you, Annika,” Lily said. I felt so tongue-tied that all I could do was nod and smile.
A super tall guy with blond hair and a patchy beard winked at me. “When you get tired of Jonathan, give me a call. I may not be as smart, or as handsome, or a chess wunderkind, but I’ll treat you right.”
Everyone looked at me, but no one said anything. I didn’t say anything either, because I loved Jonathan and wasn’t ever going to get tired of him, and I certainly wasn’t going to call up this guy who I’d just met for the first time and barely knew. Lily, though, seemed like someone I might actually want to get together with sometime. Unfortunately, I wasn’t very good at making those kinds of things happen.
“I wouldn’t wait by the phone if I were you,” Jonathan said, slinging his arm over my shoulder. Everyone laughed and then Jonathan pulled me closer and asked if I was ready to go.
I said yes because Lily was right. It was really loud. Besides, I hadn’t seen Tiger for a while and my back was hurting again.
* * *
On the way home, I watched the windshield wipers sweep the rain away, enjoying their rhythmic motion and the silence inside the truck. I found it very soothing. I tried to tell Jonathan about Lily and her cat, but he kept his eyes straight forward and only answered when I asked a direct question. I knew I’d done something wrong but didn’t know what it was.
I got ready for bed and slipped beneath the covers, but Jonathan didn’t join me. I read for a while and then went into the living room to see what he was doing. He was flipping through the TV channels, a beer on the coffee table in front of him.
“Aren’t you coming to bed?”
He clicked through the channels on the TV. “Eventually.”
“I don’t understand why you’re mad at me.” I wanted to know what I’d done so I wouldn’t do it again.
“I’m not mad,” he said. But he was, and I wasn’t so dense that I couldn’t hear it in his voice.
“Yes, you are. I don’t understand why you’re upset. I don’t know what I did!”
He set down the remote. “You’ve got to give me something to hold on to, Annika. You’ve turned me into this … this lovesick fool, and all I get in return for my romantic gestures is a blank look. When someone hits on you, especially when they come right out and reference your current boyfriend, it would be nice to hear you say that you’d never be interested in that person because you already have someone. Someone you claim to love. So, help me out here. Throw me some kind of bone once in a while.”
I didn’t get the bone thing at all, but I finally figured out that everyone had been waiting for me to make some kind of proclamation about how I felt about Jonathan. I squeezed my eyes shut, angry, so angry at myself. My eyes filled with frustrated tears.
“I did think that! I thought it in my head, but I was afraid if I said it out loud, I’d mess it up somehow and then everyone would think I was stupid. I’ve never been in love before, so I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do. What I’m supposed to say. But when you walk into the room my whole body relaxes because I think ‘Jonathan is here.’ And I never want you to leave, even when it’s just to go to class or work or the pool. I want you to be with me. So when we go places or you introduce me to people, I’m so happy to have someone like you holding my hand or standing by my side that I don’t think of those things. I just see you, and I think ‘Jonathan wants to be with me.’ I love you more than I’ve loved anything in my whole life except maybe Mr. Bojangles but that’s because not a lot of people love him. Probably just me and my mom and maybe the vet, which isn’t very many and that makes me so sad.”
I was really bawling by then and Jonathan pulled me onto his lap and put his arms around me. “I’m sorry, Annika. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry. I know you love me. You show me all the time in your own special way. I’m being an asshole.” He pressed his forehead to mine and we stayed like that, our eyes closed, until I stopped crying.