Afterparty(48)

I say, “Yes.”

The boy of my dreams and my make-believe self.

Dylan is grinning his punch-drunk, plastered-in-London face, which I’ve only ever seen before on Facebook. At least I think he was plastered in London. Maybe he had just eaten a delicious plate of pancakes.

I say, because I have to know, “You wanted me to flirt with you?”

Dylan looks at me sideways over his largely devoured stack of red velvets. “Is this a trick question?”

“No.”

“Yeah. Even when you were with the French guy and I was busy: yes.”

The compass screeches, ?Are you stupid AND morally impaired? Stop pledging undying devotion and tell him!

But my whole body is vibrating, and this demands attention.

“But that time in the caf. Your hands . . .”

His hands are in my hair.

“Like this?”

Exactly like that.

I say, “Hold still.” I wipe a drop of syrup off his cheek with a fresh napkin.

I am staring at his lips. He walks around the table and sits next to me, and I know what’s about to happen. I lean toward him and this time, he kisses me. At first, only our lips, just barely, just brushing, and then he is out of the chair, he’s pulling me to my feet, his hand is at the back of my head, and something that must be the tip of his tongue would seem to have caught fire.

First kiss with Dylan, right on the sidewalk, with traffic whizzing by on Sunset. It goes on and on, but I don’t think that there actually exists enough on and on in the world to suit me.

Dylan says, “So we’re good?”

I am completely I don’t even know what.

I have to say something: Hello? Thank you? Let’s do that constantly forever?

I am undone, done and undone, stripped of resolve and magnetically bent in the direction of Dylan Kahane’s lips.





CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE


AT LUNCH, SIOBHAN SLIDES IN next to me at a table in the corner of the patio. “You look unusually smiley, missy.”

I hold my head down and try not to look too smiley. “It’s on. I told you.”

She rubs her hands together over her chef’s salad. “Checkmark city. You should be thanking me. Do you want the list? I crossed out LSD.”

“No.” She looks disappointed. I am trying to keep my voice down and my heart beating at a normal rate. “I think I can take it from here.”

“Just get in and out,” she says. “He’s not as cool as you think.”

Siobhan giveth and Siobhan taketh away.

“Weren’t you the one who said he was surprisingly nice?”

She frowns and starts stabbing cherry tomatoes, watching their mashed interiors gush out.

“You should listen to me,” she says. “He’s all, I’m Kahane and I’m too cool for school, but he’s not. I don’t want you getting messed up.”

“I thought the whole idea was for me to get a little bit messed up.”

Siobhan laughs, and I think, Go ahead. But I’ve been waiting for this day since I got here. There’s too much momentum to stop.

And then there’s my ear and my lips and the unhinged, sensation-ridden pit of my stomach.

Siobhan is snapping her fingers in my face. “Are you even paying attention?”

I say, “And listen, Jean-Luc, he can’t keep showing up all over.”

“Don’t look at me,” Siobhan says. “Kimmy was all freaked out that he didn’t come see you at Christmas, Yak-yak, I’m Kimmy, why, tell me why, how come, where is he, boo-hoo, why? What was I supposed to do?”

“He needs to disappear. Like now.”

Siobhan says, “What’s the big deal? It’s not like he’s real.”

? ? ?

After dinner, Dylan and I spend two and a half hours Skyping.

I say, “How was your day at the office, dear?”

He says, “Who knows? I was unusually distracted.”

“I thought that was your general state of being.”

Dylan says, “My goal at that place is to achieve distraction. Or get kicked out, but not by doing anything so gruesome that I don’t get into college. You made the achievement of distraction easier than usual.”

“You’re welcome.”

Periodically, my dad pops his head in at the door and I yelp, “Working on my physics lab! Group session!”

Dylan, his Latimer tie undone and hanging down in two bands of striped navy-and-maroon silk on either side of his neck, looks amused. His hair falling over his forehead, his cuffs unbuttoned and pushed halfway up his forearms, his shirt sliding around over his torso. Where, dear Lord, there is a tattoo—which my dad is not going to believe is an unusual blue-black birthmark in the shape of Chinese calligraphy on one side of my supposed physics lab partner’s chest.

He says, “Does your dad always look in on you every few minutes or am I a new guy to keep away from you?”

I say, “You might have to button your shirt really fast.”

Dylan does a twitch-at-the-left-corner-of-the-mouth smile facsimile. “My father hasn’t stuck his head into my room that many times since I was six.”

“Don’t get too jealous. He’s protective on steroids.”

He says, “I am jealous.” He buttons up his shirt.