“Oh my god.”
Oh my god, I just said that out loud. Loudly. Eli shoots me an are you serious? look, pressing his hand over my mouth.
“Georgia?” Jamie calls. “Are you okay?”
I lean back, injecting my voice with the delight I would genuinely feel if I didn’t currently have a hand around my ex-boyfriend’s dick. “Yes! I’m great! I’m naked!”
“What are you doing?” Eli whispers, eyes wide.
“Uh, I—I just got out of the shower.” I nearly tip backward scrambling off Eli’s lap. “I’m putting on a shirt. I’ll be right there!”
“Okay,” Jamie says, dragging out the word.
“Get up,” I hiss at Eli, sprawl-kneed on the couch, and gesture to his very obvious erection. “You have to get yourself together before I answer the door.”
“You can’t answer the door right now,” he whispers back incredulously. “I have to! Jamie’s going to know something’s up.”
He stands, catching me around the waist. “Something is up. I’m hard from a hand job you were giving me ten seconds ago and you’re wearing my Denver Nuggets shirt, which very clearly displays the beard burn on your thighs from riding my face last night.”
My brain is busy tripping over forty different thoughts, so what comes out of my mouth is a defensive, “She won’t know the position.”
Eli stares at me, then grins. “I forgot how bad you are under this specific kind of pressure.”
I shoot him an incendiary glare. This isn’t the time to bring up when his college roommates came home early and found us on the couch, and I blurted out that Eli was inspecting a potentially cancerous mole on my boob.
Jamie knocks again. “Seriously, are you okay?”
I turn wide, pleading eyes on Eli. “What do I do?”
His eyes bounce back and forth between mine. “If you don’t want her to know, I can climb out a window.”
“Oh god, that’s so dramatic.” I bend over, resting my hands on my knees with a groan. We’re trapped. “It won’t matter anyway. She’ll know.”
He gives me a bitten-off grin. “Even if I climb out the window?” “Yes,” I whisper. “She’s gonna know.”
“How’s she gonna know?”
“Because she knows me.” I wave a panicked hand over my face. “She’s going to read it all over this and my face-riding thighs!”
“I thought you said she wouldn’t know the position.”
“Eli.”
His laugh is nearly soundless. “It’s fine, I’ll go. We’ll figure something out when we’re not panicking.”
I stop him with a hand to his chest, my mind racing.
The truth is, Jamie already knows more about my history with Eli than anyone. She’ll be shocked it happened, but it won’t cause the ripple effects it would if it were Adam at the door. If anything, her sudden presence feels like a lifeline. Maybe I can try to untangle my complicated thoughts with someone other than myself.
“No,” I say. “I can handle it now. I’d rather be honest than have you fall out a window.”
Warmth passes through his expression, and after a beat, he pushes his shorts down his hips. “Take these. I’ll go get dressed and—”
“Good idea.” I grab his shorts, yanking them on. “Let me take care of it so we can prevent a jump scare.”
“I was going to say I’ll be back in a second. You’re not doing this alone.”
“I can,” I insist.
“You’re not,” he insists back, and my heart squeezes. He pushes at my hip. “Go. I’ll be right there.”
I start to make my way to the front door, but then his hand is around my wrist with a startled “Wait.” When I turn, there’s a flash of fear in his eyes
before it turns searching.
“Our agreement…” He trails off and at first I don’t understand. “The terms were until everyone shows up.”
It hits me then, that with Jamie here unannounced and a day early, we’re no longer alone. Everything could end right now. I’m unprepared for how that feels, like getting hit in the chest and having the air pulled all the way out of my lungs.
“I—” I can practically hear Jamie breathing on the other side of the door. My throat tightens with panic and an absolute, unwavering unwillingness to let Eli go just yet. “I’m not…”
“I’m not ready,” he says. My heart dive-bombs into his hands.
“We could extend the terms,” I say quickly, glancing at the door. “Until the wedding’s over. We just have to be chill about it. We can’t be a distraction.”
Eli stares at me, his exhaled “yes” kissing my cheek. My heart takes off. “Yes?”
“I do not remember it taking you this long to put clothes on when we lived together,” Jamie calls.
I turn back to Eli, and I know I look wild, probably desperate, but I am. I don’t want our time to be up. I know what’s on the other side and can’t face it yet.
“I’ve never been good at stopping when it comes to you,” he whispers, his eyes moving over my face, a tiny pinch between his brows. He pushes at my hip again. “So, yes. Go.”
It takes me a few deep breaths after he’s disappeared into the bedroom to get myself together. I’m shaky with relief and leftover adrenaline and the knowledge that I have Eli for a little bit longer. And when I finally make my way to the door and open it to find my best friend there, the relief increases tenfold.
Jamie’s contemplative look turns to sunshine as she leaps into my arms. “Helloooo, gorgeous.”
“Hi,” I say into her hair. “What’s with the surprise visit? I thought you were coming up tomorrow.”
“Didn’t you get my texts? I sent a few this morning letting you know I was on my way.”
I think back to my bleary notifications and bite back a groan. “Nope, missed those.”
“Oh, I—” Her eyes slip past me. “Oh my god.”
There’s no need to look at what’s snagged her attention, but I do anyway, simply because my eyes love to trace the shape of Eli. He’s walking through the living room, a bashful but resolved tilt to his mouth.
I clear my throat, facing my best friend, who is now staring loudly at me. “That’s the sentiment of the day.”
“Morning, James.” Eli’s hand finds my lower back, fingers notching against my spine. It’s a gesture that feels so easy, like breathing. God, I’ll miss it.
“Well, I guess that answers the question of whether you’re okay,” Jamie says, raising an eyebrow. “But I have about a million more.”
 |
“How many times?” she screeches. “Four.” I recalculate. “Wait, no. Five.” “Since when?”
I cover my face, groaning. “Tuesday.”
We’re sitting on the patio of a strip mall café nestled between a Jamba and a nail salon, downing iced lattes the size of our forearms. After a quick conversation with Eli, we left him at Blue Yonder so I could tell Jamie the real stuff: about Eli’s behavior the past six days, how well we’ve been working together, how we slowly circled each other until finally giving in, and the terms of our agreement. I also told her about Eli’s job situation, information that felt acceptable to divulge. She’s my Person, not Eli’s, and can keep a secret. Plus, it lends important context to the conversation.
Namely, that there’s an end date. I sandwiched that in before all the sex confessions, though, a detail she’s thankfully fully distracted by.
“Five times in two days,” Jamie marvels. “You’ve had time to plan the wedding in between all that banging?”
At the next table, an older woman peeks over the top of her Beverly Jenkins book.
I kick Jamie in the ankle. “Yes, loudmouth. It’s going to be perfect.”
She grins mischievously, then leans forward in her seat, her expression straightening. “And it’s not just sex. There are feelings.”
My sigh is despairing. “Yes.”
“First of all, that’s to be expected, so stop acting like you’ve committed a crime. You two have history a mile long. Second of all, you’re not exactly giving me late-breaking news. I always knew that there was still something between you two.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“The things you care about most are what you talk about least.” Her observation is quiet but hits hard. “And you never talk about him. Not before today, anyway.”
It’s impossible to argue against that, so I don’t even try.
“Let’s circle back to what happens after the wedding is over,” she says, crossing her arms.
So much for the distraction. “When it ends, you mean.” “Right, when it ends. Tell me why it should.”
I give her a look. “You know why it should.” She gives me one back. “Humor me.”
“Well,” I draw out, “beyond the obvious reasons of not wanting to get my heart obliterated again if it doesn’t work out—again—or worrying about the impact to our friendship with Adam if we try and it goes to shit”—I raise an eyebrow—“ag—”
She rolls her eyes with a smile. “Again, yes, I see the pattern.”
“He’s leaving for LA on Sunday,” I continue. And then maybe I’ll be making my way up to the top of the West Coast. Eight hundred miles from you.
There’s too much going on already to drop that news now. But it’s strange to recognize that if we were still living together, Jamie would
already know about Seattle. She would’ve seen it on my face as soon as I walked in the door. She would’ve brainstormed with me, scrolled through LinkedIn by my side. Maybe she’d already have tickets for some future visit.
I push that thought aside. “The point is, I’m not looking to repeat history with the same outcome.”
“You said he was acting different, though,” she says, swirling the ice in her cup.
“Yeah,” I admit. “He’s been amazing up here.”
Actually, he’s been exactly what I needed and never would’ve asked for. I wanted him out of my way at first, but now I’m grateful he refused, that he fought for the teamwork I now don’t know how I’ll live without. Because I will have to live without it.
“This week is a bubble with an end date, Jamie. He needs a job, and he’s clearly going to do whatever he needs to in order to make LA happen.” I squint up at the sky. It’s blue, endless. So pretty it hurts. “He’s changed, I can see it. I mean, god, he quit the job that was his entire life and he’s in therapy. But that part of him that hurt me before…” My gaze rebounds to my hands clenched in my lap. “It’s still there. I get why it is, but I can’t put myself in the same position.”
“And that’s okay,” Jamie says. “God knows it takes courage to give your heart to someone once, never mind again after they’ve broken it. You don’t owe him a do-over.” She tilts her head. “What about that reckoning you said he wanted, though?”
“Ugh.” I mentioned it in a drive-by; I should’ve known she’d latch on to
it.
Jamie cups a hand around my knee, her voice quiet. “Why don’t you
want that, too? A conversation just to get everything out in the open once and for all so you have some closure, at the very least?”
My throat grows too tight to speak. I don’t want it because reckonings never do any good. I have solid evidence of that: how I overheard my dad on the phone once, mentioning that he and my mom had had so many angry conversations in the six months before she left, talking in circles about how
to make things better. How it still makes me question sometimes if he wishes he’d been the one to walk away, even though I know he loves me, that I made his life as easy as I could.
How Eli’s parents had arguments that were endlessly rehashed, but never led to anywhere but the end.
How, even if Eli and I had talked ourselves hoarse when we lived together, even if I had begged him every night to take better care of himself, of me, he would’ve chosen his job. How I would’ve had to hear that out loud instead of living it silently. It wouldn’t have made things better. It would’ve hurt more.
Jamie’s fingers tighten around my leg, holding me in place. “What you’ve been doing the past five years hasn’t brought you any peace, but six days together has pushed you two into some other space. What if what Eli wants does, too?”
“No,” I say thickly. “It’ll ruin everything.”
“What if it doesn’t?” she presses. “What if you get some answers that I
know you’ve been craving?”
His job. Why he quit. Why I wasn’t enough to make that same decision for.
Fear crawls up my throat. “I don’t want to feel the bad things anymore, Jamie, and talking about everything we did wrong will hurt and be pointless. I don’t need closure, I need to move forward, and I think when this is over we can be friends. I don’t want to make things unnecessarily messy.”
“And you probably didn’t when you were together, but it did anyway, didn’t it?” She lets that sink in before her tone softens. “It’s not about not being messy, it’s about being honest with your mess.”
Yeah, that’s rarely worked in my favor.
I don’t have to say it. Jamie reads it all over my face and sighs. “Listen, I came up here because it seemed like you needed me, and I knew you wouldn’t ask. But it’s also because Blake and I are at each other’s throats right now.”
“What?” My eyes run over her face, looking for signs of misery, but she grins widely instead.
“Oh, yeah. She’s an unholy disaster with her upcoming trial, and our financial planning meeting? Comically bad. We have such different ideas about money. I love her more than anything, but she’s so stubbornly set in her ways and my tornado ass moving in with her upended all her little systems and processes.”
“Well, I love your tornado ass.”
“Don’t worry, she loves my tornado ass, too. She’s just a Capricorn.” Jamie dips her chin, dark eyes pinning me in place. “Relationships are messy, but that’s how you know they’re real. Blake and I have shown each other every ugly piece of ourselves and she still loves me. She loves me more for it, in fact. Sometimes you have to cut yourself open, Georgia, and you hold yourself so tightly.”
“I have to.” I hate the way my voice breaks.
“You think so, and I understand it,” she says. “You were shown that you weren’t allowed to need things that inconvenienced people, and you learned to make yourself smaller. But why can everyone else be messy and you can’t?”
I look at the blurred shape of her, blinking as a tear rolls down my cheek. “Because then I’m alone.”
Jamie’s hand envelops mine. Her skin is warm, the squeeze of her fingers the only thing keeping me from spiraling away.
“I know you’re scared. I mean, fuck if that’s not the human experience,” she says quietly. “But you deserve to let yourself feel whatever you need to. You can be messy. A disaster, if you need to. The people who love you will accept every single piece of it, I promise you.”
I think about how hungry Eli’s seemed for that this week, and I know it’s real, that he wants it. But it’s also just right now. We’re cocooned in timelessness here, some belonging we left behind, and that’ll end. I don’t want to be left with nothing when it’s over.
“I’ll think about it,” I tell her, focusing on a toddler running by on shaky legs. He doesn’t even cry when he falls.
Jamie’s assessing gaze is heavy on me. She leans forward, then brushes her fingers along my wet cheeks, cleaning up the mess. “I love you, Georgia, you silly girl.”
“I love you, too,” I say around my tight throat. I can’t talk about this anymore. “God, how long’s it been since we’ve had a marathon talk like that?”
She grins, one soft with remembering. “We used to have them on that little gray couch of ours all the time. I’d braid your hair and tell you about my latest terrible date, since you never had any.”
“I never had any terrible dates?” I echo dubiously.
“You never had any dates, period.” Her mouth purses in mock confusion. “Hmm, wonder why.”
I pinch the back of her arm where it’s most tender, and she lets out a laughing yelp. “I dated Julian.”
“Oh, one guy in five years and it was Trader Joe’s Beef Jerky Boy. What a record.”
I roll my eyes. She was in the checkout line with me when I met Julian, who did have an ungodly amount of beef jerky in his basket. He never graduated to first-name status with her.
Jamie lets out a honking laugh. “Remember how we’d watch movies that would make us cry afterward? Usually because you didn’t want me to cry alone?”
“Little Women,” I sigh. “God, please,” she wails.
Our laughter twines, then fades away with the ease that’s kept us bound to each other for five years. She rests her head on my shoulder, threading her arm through mine.
I want to tell her that missing her hurts, that I wish we had more time together. That I’ll need her more than ever if I go to Seattle, even though it’s going to be fifty times the distance between Oakland and San Francisco, a span we already can’t seem to cross with regularity. But like all my most important words, they get stuck in my throat.
But then my eye catches on the storefront down the way and every troubled thought in my head disappears. It’s a party supply store, and the window display shows an elaborate pink bachelorette party setup: streamers, a holographic banner, and an abundance of penis-shaped paraphernalia.
I straighten. “Jamie.” “Hmm?”
“Can we go to that store?”
She twists in her seat, squinting. “Party Depot? Why do we need to go there?”
An idea is forming so quickly that it makes my body feel like it’s tipping over the peak of a roller coaster: dizzy and breathless, heart high in my chest, holding on for dear life.
Maybe I can’t give myself a do-over with Eli, but I can give him one of his own.
