Peter messages me when he arrives, about twenty minutes later. My heart is thudding in my throat as I tiptoe downstairs and let him in, and then, as silently as possibly, lead him up to my room.
It’s only when I close the door and switch on a small bedside lamp that I see he’s a complete mess.
My Peter, falling apart.
He’s trembling, crying, making an effort to do it softly so my parents don’t hear him. He’s never been shy about crying in front of me, or about crying in general. Not when we were kids, and not now.
He follows me into my bed without me even asking him to join me there. I prop the pillows against the headboard so we can lean against them. He’s much taller than I am, but he feels limp, smaller than usual. And he is so cold. I run my hands over his ears and his cheeks, trying to warm him up. He’s still wearing a coat, and I’m in shorts and a tank top. His skin chills mine, and I help him out of the coat so we can be even closer.
“Can you—hold me for a while?” he whispers, and my heart breaks in half. It’s what I asked him to do for me earlier tonight.
It’s all I want to do, but I have to know. “What happened?”
He’s quiet for a few moments, making me think he’s not actually going to tell me. Then: “Chase. We’re . . . We broke up.”
My breath catches. “Peter. I’m so sorry.” But I don’t want the details. Not now. Only him.
He nods. I tighten my arms around him, though it’s the equivalent of a toddler hugging a tiger. He smells cold, if cold could be a smell.
“You’re the only one I could talk to,” he says, and I can’t pretend it doesn’t make me feel good. “You’ve never tried to make me be anything I wasn’t. I was always enough for you, and you liked me because of that.”
Loved you, I want to correct, but I don’t.
He scrapes a hand over his face. “Fuck, I didn’t even ask how you’re feeling.”
“I’m okay,” I say. “My parents are freaked, but what else is new?”
“They must be taking pointers from mine.” He holds my face in his hands, his eyes red and glassy. “Just us, right? That’s all we need?”
I think about Montana and Liz and Emi Miyoshi and the entire dance team, about the potential of the summer workshop.
I think about Peter lying next to me.
“Just us.” I touch my bracelet to his, metal to metal. I’d forgotten to take mine off.
He stares down at them. “God, why is this so hard? Why can’t one fucking thing in our lives be easy?”
“I wish it could be easy too,” I whisper.
He links his fingers with mine, brushing my knuckles. “Maybe you were right. About there being something between us.”
My heart is a kick drum in my chest, my mind unable to fully process what I am hearing. “Y-yeah? Because, Peter, I—” And then I finally get the courage to say it, because I cannot bear to keep it inside any longer. With him in my bed, I am so close to getting what I have wanted for so long. “I don’t know if I can be just your friend. I’ve tried. I’ve been trying . . . but it’s too hard.” He squeezes my hand, and I keep going: “I don’t want to lose you, but—do you have any idea how hard it is to be this close to you without being together? Without—without touching you the way I want to?” I’m crying now too, salty tears dripping past my lips and onto my chin.
“Who said you were going to lose me?” he manages to say, eyes wide. “That can’t happen.”
“It feels like I’ve been losing you this entire year.”
He shakes his head. He seems even smaller now, fragile. “Sophie. Sophie. You have me,” he says, his hands coming up to grasp my back. “You’ll always have me.”
I press my face into his neck, where the exposed skin is starting to warm up. Slowly I brush my lips against the dip between his ear and shoulder. One small kiss. A reassurance, if anything else, that we will be okay after tonight. A curiosity. One turns into two, three, four—
“Sophie,” he says again, my name a rumble in his throat.
I lift my face to look at him. There’s something in his eyes besides sadness, something I haven’t seen before. I feel so small in his arms. Like he could swallow me up, make me disappear. His face is still a little cold, the tip of his nose a tiny iceberg as it bumps mine.
“Please don’t cry.” He brings a thumb to my cheeks, erasing a tear. “We’re going to figure this out.”
Suddenly Peter’s mouth is on mine. He is kissing me, cold and then wet and then warm. He must taste the salt from my tears, because I taste it from his. There’s an urgency in the way his lips move against mine, one that I have been craving for years.
I feel a tug, and his hand is wrapped around my necklace like when we kissed at Montana’s party. I knew he felt it too—that connection we share—though I know it means something different to each of us.
It ignites a hunger in me. Suddenly, I need him closer. I roll myself on top of him, my legs on either side of his. I kiss his neck as I unbutton his shirt, wanting more, more, more. He slides down the thin straps of my tank top until we are skin to skin.
“God, I want you,” I say. In my effort to be quiet, everything comes out as a breathy, desperate whisper.
His hands land on my hips, and when I rock against him, I can feel that he wants this too, and the realness of it makes my head spin. A hiss escapes his lips.
“Is this really happening?” he asks, a dazed look on his face.
Panic flashes through me for an instant. “Do you—want to stop?”
He shakes his head.
So we don’t stop.
Soon we are in a puddle of sheets and clothing. In sixteen years of friendship, we have never been totally naked in front of each other, and tonight I drink him in. He’s still skinny, though he’s put on some weight since the transplant. And oh my God, he has hair everywhere.
His fingers go to my scar. “I did this to you. I can’t believe I did this to you.” His voice breaks.
I bring his hand to my mouth and kiss his fingertips. “You didn’t do anything to me. It was my choice. It was the easiest choice I’ve ever made.”
“Thank you,” he says, then lets his gaze flick over my body. He nods. “You’re so beautiful.”
You are too, I think, but what comes out is, “I love you.” I hope he knows how I mean it. A long time ago I love you like a friend turned into I love you like I need to be close to you in every way imaginable. “I love you so much.”
Peter has always gotten what he wants. But this time—this is what both of us want.
He kisses me everywhere—my neck, my breasts, my scar, my navel, my hips. Gently I run my fingertips over his scar too. Then his hand is between my legs. “Can I?” he asks, breathless, and I sigh out a yes. “Tell me what to do. I want this . . . to be good for you.”
Of course—if there is something Peter can get an A on, he won’t settle for a B-plus. But at first I don’t know how to verbalize it. How can you verbalize a need so deep it aches?
Somehow I find the words. It’s tentative, like all my firsts with him, but soon it’s deliberate, adventurous. Good. And then my body reaches that cliff so intensely that I can barely control myself as I shudder next to him, moaning into his shoulder.
“Did you—was that—”
“Uh-huh,” I say, breathless.
“Oh,” he says, but he’s sort of grinning, like he’s proud of himself. It is so fucking adorable that I pounce on him, pinning him down, kissing him with more ferocity than I ever have before.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asks, and it’s then that I realize this is actually about to happen.
I want it more than I’ve ever wanted anything.
“Yes, yes,” I say as I kiss him even harder, pressing myself against him in a way that conjures this magnificent groan. I can’t help smiling at that.
A six-pack of condoms has lived in the back of my underwear drawer since I learned Tabby was pregnant, and I slip out of bed to retri
eve it. It felt smart to have them. Just in case. When I bought them at the drugstore, I spent way too long debating whether to get a single condom or a three-pack or a twelve-pack or a thirty-six-pack. I couldn’t tell which size meant I was being too presumptuous. If he wonders why I picked a six-pack, he says nothing. He simply tears the foil packet, but then struggles with the condom.
“Do you want me to help?”
“I got it,” he says, and then it’s on, and he’s above me, my heart beating so hard he must be able to see it trying to crash through my chest.
There’s an awkward few seconds where he stabs the inside of my thigh instead of in me, but then we figure it out. I bite the inside of my cheek, bracing myself for what society has warned me will be painful—but it’s not. It’s different more than anything else. There’s a little discomfort as he pushes deeper, but then the discomfort is gone, and it starts to feel good. Odd and new, but good. The next time we do it, I’m sure it will feel even better.
In my fantasies, our bodies snapped together effortlessly, like this was the way we were always meant to fit. The reality is not at all like that. We don’t know what to do with our hands, and I’m slightly worried about the expressions I’m making. Peter’s socks are still on, and his stubble scratches my face, but I don’t care. I don’t care. None of that matters.
I’m so overwhelmed with how it feels to have Peter this way that I nearly start crying again.
Peter’s face is serious, but I want to see him completely lose himself in this. I wrap my arms around his neck, pull at his hair. Again and again I say his name, the vowels and consonants blending, like I am begging for something only he can give me. Finally his concentration breaks, and exactly how good this feels is painted in the squint of his eyes, the O of his mouth.
“I don’t know how much longer I can—” he says.
“It’s okay,” I reassure him, and then he lets himself go.
After he rolls off me, wiping the sweat from his brow, I curl my body into his and lay my head on his chest.
“I love you,” I say to his heartbeat. Suddenly I can’t stop saying it. The words waterfall off my tongue, splash in the bed around us. I burrow closer to him. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
PART IV
CHAPTER 30
PETER
WE LIE THERE FOR A while afterward. I Run my fingers through her hair, liking the murmurs of satisfaction this elicits from her. In return, she peppers kisses all over my chest. My chin. My neck.
“I should probably go,” I whisper, and she groans. “It’s late. I—I don’t want to wake anyone up.”
“Noooo. I like this too much.”
“Me too, but . . .” I glance down. “I don’t know what to do. With that.” I gesture to the condom, which I’m still wearing. Suddenly I want to throw a blanket over myself. My body looks too skinny, my legs like matchsticks.
“Oh,” she says, regarding it strangely. Like it’s no longer something sexual. Now it’s something to throw in the garbage. “Right. Don’t want my parents to . . .”
“Find it. Yeah.”
As quietly as I can, I get dressed and tiptoe into the bathroom. I clean myself up, and mummy-wrap the condom in a dozen layers of toilet paper before burying it in the trash. I’m a strange combination of exhausted and on edge. Jittery, I splash water on my face, try to cool down. Blink at my reflection a few times, not sure what I’m expecting to see, because all I see is the same person who’s always there.
When I get back into Sophie’s room, she’s sitting on the bed in a T-shirt and underwear, her legs bare. She smiles when she sees me. A kind of smile I haven’t seen before. A smile that knows things about me it didn’t know yesterday.
“Hey,” she says quietly. Smiles again. “Hi.”
“Hi.” And then I’m not sure what else to say. What happens now is a complete mystery. Was this a one-time thing? Are we together now?
Sophie stretches, her T-shirt riding up and exposing her scar.
All of a sudden, my logic, which I must have left at the Blaze, comes rushing back. Every reason I thought a relationship with Sophie was doomed threatens to choke me. I can’t feel like I constantly owe my girlfriend—if that’s what Sophie were to become—my life. Can’t have that debt between us. My body took over, asserting its independence, forgetting how easily this could lead to heartbreak for both of us.
No. Not just my body. I wanted to see what we had together, and what we had was frantic and sweet and maybe inevitable.
She had given me so much, and all I wanted was to make her—us—happy.
Slowly I sit back down on the bed next to her. She gets up on her knees to kiss me. “I love you,” she says again.
“I—I love you too,” I say, and at least right now, I must mean it in every possible way. You and your big brain, I want to add, to lighten this situation somehow. But I don’t.
I don’t want to break this girl.
And I don’t want this girl to break me.
My body’s heavy with exhaustion as I head across the street, my heart still calming down. Once I sneak inside my house and into my room, I shut the door and lean against it.
I’d never taken our pact seriously, mostly because I couldn’t ever think that far ahead. We were so young. Babies.
The light in my own bathroom illuminates everything I didn’t see in Sophie’s. What we’ve done is tattooed all over my body. In the half-moons her nails left on my chest and back. My swollen lips. The red mark beneath my ear.
I crawl into bed, certain I won’t be able to sleep.
Morning comes too soon. Winter sunlight peeks in through my blinds, and I groan, throwing an arm over my face. I let Mark run around my room for a while, but I don’t leave my room until ten thirty.
My mom’s at the kitchen table, frowning at her laptop behind her huge reading glasses.
“Where’s Dad?” I ask, pouring myself a bowl of cereal.
“He got called in. Kid fell off his bike and chipped his entire front row of teeth.”
“Ouch.”
She types something on her computer, then deletes it. Then retypes it. “What are you up to today?”
“Probably homework.”
“No plans with Sophie or with Chase?” She glances up, as though suddenly remembering. “Oh! How was your show last night? We must have been asleep when you got home.”
I want to relish that my parents didn’t wait up for me, that they trusted nothing horrible would happen to me. What they didn’t bargain for: me doing something horrible to someone else.
“It was good,” I say flatly. Desperate to change the subject, I slip into a chair across from her and point at her laptop with my spoon. “You must be getting close to ‘the end’ at this point, right?”
My mom barks out an unexpected laugh. “I wish. If only I weren’t such a perfectionist.”
“I’m not even sure I know what it’s about at this point.”
“Really? I must have told you years ago. . . .” She takes a deep breath before launching into an explanation: three generations of women, a family secret, a natural disaster . . . I can tell how much she loves it, despite the frustration it brings her.
This moment with my mom is oddly nice. It distracts me from the reality pounding against the inside of my brain: that I have no idea how to handle the aftermath of last night between Sophie and me. I’m terrified of doing the wrong thing, saying the wrong thing. Sophie’s typically the one I’d ask for advice, and I definitely can’t tell my mom, so I’m forced to deal with it alone.
In the past when our friendship flirted with romance, we were able to bounce back. But this time we went so far beyond friendship. I need more time to process it before I talk to her.
“Anyway,” my mom says, “I’m sure you have better things to do than listen to me blather on about it!”
I shrug, and there must be something in the shrug that clues her in to the chaos in my mind.
“Baby,” she says, dark bro
ws furrowing. “You’re okay, right?”
My heart leaps into my throat. There’s something about your mom calling you “baby,” even when you’re seventeen, that’s absolutely gutting.
“Just—a lot going on. The band, homework . . .” I trail off, realizing it’s not “a lot” at all.
“We liked meeting Chase. You should invite him over for dinner.”
I stiffen. “Maybe. Yeah.” I get up, pushing in my chair. Another subject change. The two most important people in my life are off-limits. “You know, you could come to temple with us sometime. Dad and me.”
“That’s very sweet, Peter.” She gives me a tight smile. “I’ll . . . I’ll think about it, okay?”
“Okay,” I say as I finish my cereal. “I’ll let you get back to it.”
She returns to her book and I return to my room. Next to my bed, my phone flashes with a message from Chase.
I’m sorry about everything, it says.
CHAPTER 31
SOPHIE
MY EMOTIONS ARE TOO BIG for my body. After Peter leaves, I can’t sleep. I am a live wire, pulsating and electric. Simply being in my bed is too much, the thoughts in my head too loud.
I snap on the small lamp near my bed and spring to my feet. There has to be a perfect song for these emotions. But when I scroll through my playlists, I land on Rufus Wainwright, Peter’s all-time favorite, and so that’s what I select.
I imagine Peter’s hands on the piano keys and then on my skin.
I could make a dance to this song. One that’s both vulnerable and joyful, full of longing and ending with satisfaction.
Just for Peter and me, the way we used to do.
By morning I feel well rested despite having barely slept. I’m a contradiction: desperate to see him, terrified of seeing him. A hundred thoughts race through my mind. For anniversaries, will we celebrate our first kiss, or the first that happened on Saturday? Valentine’s Day is next week. I imagine we’ll have to make plans for that, maybe at one of the nicer restaurants in Capitol Hill. And I definitely want us to start playing as the Terrible Twosome again.
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