The Exact Opposite of Okay(22)
He sighs, still staring at his ragged festival wristband. Pushes his glasses up his nose. “Wouldn’t you rather sleep with someone who actually cares about you? Who’ll still want to know you the next day? Who likes you for you, not just your body?”
I bite my lip, which is chapped as hell from hangover dehydration. “And who would that someone be, Danny?”
He finally meets my eyes, and the look on his face tells me everything I need to know. Silence floats between us like poison gas.
Breathing is hard. When did breathing become hard? The air is loaded.
Finally, because I am so articulate, I manage to say, “Oh. I’m sorry.”
Then I lean over to give him a hug – I mean, what else do you do when your best friend is sad? – and he hugs me back so tenderly and affectionately that The Atmosphere is amplified tenfold. His heart beats against my shoulder, and he’s so warm, unlike most skinny people. Something tickles my neck, and at first I think it’s his hair, but it’s his soft breath, and then my chest starts pounding too.
What’s going on? Betty convinced me I didn’t want this, but right now my traitorous body is telling me otherwise. But I can’t. I can’t. The dude’s in love with me! I can’t lead him on like this! Stop, Izzy. Stop.
No! Now I seem to have pressed my face into his neck too, and oh man he smells good – not like cologne, but just clean, you know, like he uses really good soap probably stolen from a fancy hotel – and WHAT THE HELL, THIS IS DANNY! DANNY! Remember Danny? He’s seen you cry snotty tears when you broke your wrist playing hopscotch in the schoolyard, and he’s seen you make a complete dick of yourself doing your Kevin Spacey impression, and he’s seen you eat an entire sharing platter by yourself at TGI Friday’s, and . . .
Wait, why did I ever think that was a bad thing? Isn’t it nice that he knows everything and still wants to kiss you? Oh! Now I see what he was getting at. It’s deeper, and it feels nice, like home, and even though somewhere in the back of my mind I know it’s not what I want, that voice is getting quieter and quieter, and so when he pulls away just a few inches and our mouths are almost touching, I don’t move a muscle, and I let his lips brush mine, and I shiver, and then . . .
Then we’re kissing and it’s not awful and everything I thought I knew is blown out of the water.
Cue my mind becoming stuck on an eternal loop of this-is-wrong-no-it’s-right-no-it’s-wrong-but-doesn’t-it-feel-good? I can’t recall ever having thought so much during kissing in my entire life, and I have done a lot of kissing, and also a lot of thinking, just never quite at the same time.
Danny’s not a bad kisser. Better than Carson, worse than Vaughan. Is that a really cruel thing to do? Pitting these dudes against each other in some sort of kissing league table? Ooooh, maybe I could create some kind of anonymous online voting system whereby students give feedback on their best and worst kissing experiences, except the results would only be visible to me so I could make smart future smooching choices and nobody’s feelings would get hurt.
This is totally going to become the new Facebook. Maybe I should just sell the idea to Mark Zuckerberg so I don’t actually have to do any of the work, like coding or design or general administration. He probably has teams to deal with that kind of thing. Or maybe . . .
Christ on a bike, O’Neill. STOP. THINKING.
His hands move down to my waist, then the tops of my thighs, then along the waistband of my jeans, and that’s when it starts to feel a bit wrong. Mainly I think I have cognitive dissonance when it comes to kissing. I honestly believe there are not many people on this planet that I would not kiss. It’s just not a big deal to me. But even I find sex stuff way more intimate and personal, and Danny’s adventuring hands are giving me the willies.
There’s a weird expression on his face. Urgent yet tentative, like he knows I will realize this is a huge mistake at any second, and the primal part of him wants to capitalize on the situation before that happens, while the best friend and good guy part wants to make sure I’m ready.
But it just doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t. Not at all. He’s all sharp angles and translucent skin [I apologize if this is offensive to a) angular people or b) vampires] and it’s uncomfortable and I want it to stop. And as soon as I realize this, the guilt is crushing; I’ve made a mistake, I’ve led him on, and all I can think about is how I’m going to have to let him down.
Hopefulness is written all over his face, and I hate it. Because I can tell this moment has confirmed something for him – just in the exact opposite way it did for me.
That’s why, mid-kiss, I start to cry. It starts as a single whimper, and quickly escalates into pathetic sniffles, shortly followed by wracking sobs. All the good stuff.
He knows why. He knows me too well, so there’s no point in lying to him. He knows what it means, and seeing the moment it registers, seeing the moment his hopes come crashing down, is like being slammed in the chest with the butt of a gun.
“I’m s-sorry,” I stammer.
And then, like the coward I am, I run.
I keep crying as I slam out the front door, and I keep crying as I mount my bike and start pedaling home. The streets are pretty empty, thank God, because I have mascara all over my dried-out face and a stream of snot running from my nose.
Why why why why whyyyyyy –
But I know why. I know exactly why. Such a huge part of me was hoping that I’d kiss him and feel the same way he does. That I’d realize it was right, and that Danny and I should be together, and that I love him too. If it worked out that way, it’d be so much easier than having to tell him no, having to let him down, having to hurt him in a way you never want to hurt your best friend. But instead I’ve made it so much worse. So, so much worse.