You Say It First

by Katie Cotugno

  She thought about taking a shower, but there was a hair that definitely did not belong to her stuck to the tile in the bathtub, so in the end she decided against it. Instead, she kicked the duvet cover onto the floor—she thought she remembered something about hotel duvets not getting washed that often—and curled up on the top sheet fully dressed.

  Are you okay?

  Meg dropped her phone on the mattress, like it had turned to a burning stone in her hand. She turned it over for good measure, facedown so she couldn’t see his message.

  Flipped it back over again.

  She thought about not texting him back, about turning her phone off and going to sleep and driving straight back to Philly in the morning. Nobody knew about him. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, their relationship didn’t exist. She could snip him right out of her life and literally nobody would know the difference except her, and the very thought of it made her want to burst into tears.

  I’m fine, she typed, then deleted it letter by letter. The whole point of Colby was that she didn’t have to lie to him. She wasn’t about to start now just because it turned out he was a dick in real life. I’m safe.

  Are you on the road?

  She tugged at her lip again, considering. She watched six minutes of an Office rerun on Comedy Central. She tugged at her lip some more.

  Meg, come on.

  Then, a moment later: Or I mean, don’t text if you’re driving I guess.

  Two minutes after that: Can we talk on the phone?

  The bubble appeared again, then disappeared. Then appeared one more time: Meg?

  Meg sighed. Garden Inn, she typed finally. 324.

  He showed up at her door half an hour later holding three different kinds of chips and a banana. “I didn’t know if you ate dinner after you left,” he said, shrugging a little bit helplessly. “Gas station was the only thing open. And then I had to go walk Tris, so the banana is from my house.”

  “Thanks,” Meg said, setting the food down on the dresser next to the complimentary eight-ounce bottle of water. She sat on the bed, wrapping her arms around her knees.

  Colby nodded. “I’m sorry we fought,” he said, leaning against the wall next to an ugly print of an autumn forest and jamming his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

  Meg shook her head, gaze flicking up at the popcorn ceiling. “That’s not an apology,” she said.

  “No,” Colby agreed evenly. “It’s kind of not, I guess.”

  “Then why are you here?” Meg exploded, flinging her arms out. “Like, if you don’t want to apologize to me, then—”

  “If I don’t want to apologize?” Colby’s dark eyes flashed. “Why would I apologize when you’re the one—”

  “What’s the deal with you and Joanna?”

  Colby didn’t answer for a moment, the silence hanging suspended between them. He leaned his head back against the plaster with a quiet thump.

  “Seriously,” Meg pressed. She hadn’t let herself think about it until she got here, not really, but as soon as Joanna had gotten out of the car it had felt like the numbingly obvious conclusion. Jesus Christ, she was going to feel so enormously dumb. “Is she your girlfriend?”

  “Do you care?”

  “Are you kidding me right now?” Meg barked a sharp, mean laugh. “You let me drive all the way to Nowheresville, Ohio, and you think I wouldn’t care if—”

  “First of all, that’s my fucking hometown you’re talking about, Meg. And second of all, I didn’t tell you to drive to Ohio!”

  “Oh my God.” Just like that, Meg was up off the mattress, halfway to the door in two quick steps. “Okay. You know what, Colby? You can just go. Thanks for the chips. This was an adventure.”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Colby said, holding his hands up; for the first time since he’d gotten here, the panic was visible on his face. “No. Stop. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that. Joanna isn’t my girlfriend. She wants to be, maybe. But she isn’t.”

  Well. Meg swallowed hard, crossing her arms. “Why not?” she managed to ask.

  Colby dropped his chin and gazed at her, steady. “Why do you think?”

  They faced off across the dingy carpet. Meg looked away first. She remembered a thing she’d read online once about liminal spaces, blurry boundary zones between two established areas. This hotel room felt like that. Their whole relationship felt like that, actually, now that she was thinking about it; like it only existed, like it only could exist, outside normal space and time.

  “You’re under my skin,” Colby said quietly, sitting down on the edge of the mattress. “And I don’t know why.”

  Meg laughed again, a sound like a door slamming. “Because I’m spectacular, obviously.”

  She was kidding, but Colby didn’t smile. “You kind of are,” he said.

  Something about the way he was looking at her felt like trying to hold her hand against a hot stove. “Your friends didn’t think so,” she pointed out.

  Colby blew a breath out, flopping back onto the mattress. “Yeah, well,” he said, “Micah is an idiot.”

  “I know,” Meg said immediately. “Which is why it’s so fucked up that you wouldn’t just—”

  Colby struggled upright. “I don’t want to have that argument with you again,” he said flatly. “Don’t you ever get tired of taking everything so personally?”

  “Don’t you ever get tired of being too cool to care?”

  “I’m not too cool for anything,” Colby countered, making a face like the word was somehow offensive.

  “Too scared, then,” Meg said immediately. “They can’t pull the rug out from under you if you decide there’s no rug to begin with, right?”

  Colby startled at that, eyes widening almost imperceptibly. Then he set his jaw. They were silent for a minute, just the hum of the AC underneath the window and somebody else’s TV down the hall.

  “Can I ask you something?” Meg continued finally, perching on the greasy-looking desk and gazing at him across the hotel room. “If I hadn’t texted the day after you first called me, you would never have texted me, either, right?”

  Colby didn’t have to think about it. “No,” he admitted. “Probably not.”

  “Yeah.” Meg crossed her arms, feeling meanly satisfied. “That’s what I thought.”

  “Well, congratulations,” he said, shrugging a little. “You were right about me, I guess.”

  Meg looked at him for another long moment. “Do you think we’re too different?” she finally asked.

  Colby raised his eyebrows, lifted his chin. “Too different for what?” he asked.

  Meg shrugged. “Anything, I guess.”

  “Too different for me to kiss you?”

  It was so out of left field she didn’t know how to answer; she could tell he’d surprised himself, too, by the expression on his face. Still, he didn’t look away from her, his gaze like a weighted blanket. Right away, she wanted it like she’d never wanted anything in her entire life. She’d wanted it for a long time, if she was being honest with herself: since that very first night on the phone, maybe, the low, private sound of his laugh in her ear.

  “Well,” she said, pushing off the desk and taking a step closer, wiping her suddenly sweaty hands on the seat of her jeans. “Only one way to find out, I guess.”

  Colby smiled.

  It was awkward at first: standing up, he was a lot taller than her, so the angle was funny, and then he came in kind of a lot with his tongue, but she put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him gently back to sitting, and after a moment it got better, their mouths getting used to each other and his palms warm and damp on her waist.

  They kissed for a long time, Colby’s fingertips creeping up underneath her T-shirt. Meg crawled into his lap on the bed. “Is that okay?” he asked, and she unzipped his hoodie to answer, sliding her palms along his back and stomach and rib cage. The skin on his chest was very warm.

  Eventually he nudged her onto her back on the mattress, the weig
ht of his body half-suffocating and half-thrilling and his thigh warm and heavy between hers. Meg could feel her heart scrabbling around inside her chest. Being the kind of person who’d drive to Ohio without telling anyone was one thing, but being the kind of person who’d have sex in a hotel room with someone she’d technically just met felt like something else altogether. As Colby rubbed his thumb over the seam of her jeans, she wondered if it would actually be so bad to be that kind of person, but in the end she pushed him gently away.

  “Okay,” she said, gasping a little. She wanted to so bad, was the truth. “We can’t—”

  “No, I know,” he said, sitting up right away and shaking his head like he was trying to clear it, breathing through his nose like a bull. “I know, that’s—”

  “Have you ever?” she asked, before she could lose her courage. It seemed weird that out of all the things they’d talked about, they’d never talked about this. “I mean . . .”

  She watched him think about lying to her, but in the end he shook his head. “No, actually. Have you?”

  Meg nodded. “With Mason.”

  She wasn’t sure how Colby was going to react to that—not, she reminded herself, that it was any of his business to react to either way—but in the end he just nodded back like he’d figured as much. “Makes sense,” he said. “That’s what people do, right?”

  “Some people,” Meg said. It had been fine with Mason; they’d waited until they’d been dating for six months and he’d been extremely respectful, but it hadn’t rocked her world or anything. It hadn’t, she thought suddenly, felt anything like this. “Not everybody.” She looked at him another moment. “Girlfriends?”

  “Some, kind of.” Then he shook his head again, glancing up at the ceiling. “Not really. I’m stupid with girls. I don’t know.”

  “Not that stupid,” Meg teased, slipping a finger into his belt loop and yanking once.

  “Pretty stupid.” Colby sat back against the headboard, crossing his ankles. Both of them were still wearing their shoes. “I came close a couple times, I guess. This girl Brooklyn I knew in high school, and this other girl who worked the registers at the store for a while.”

  “Joanna,” Meg reminded him pointedly.

  “Joanna, maybe. I don’t know.” Colby shrugged into the pillows. “It’s like that whole cost-benefit-analysis thing again, I guess. It just never felt like it was worth it to potentially, like, humiliate myself to try and get over the—the—”

  “Hump?” Meg supplied, and Colby laughed.

  “Yeah.”

  She was quiet for a moment, tucking her legs up underneath her. “It feels worth it with me, though, right?” she couldn’t help but ask.

  Colby smiled crookedly. “I mean, I’m not planning to humiliate myself any more than I already have, if I can help it.”

  “Well, sure.” Meg didn’t smile back. “But still.”

  Colby took a breath. “Yeah,” he said, looking at her across the mattress. “It feels worth it with you.”

  Meg didn’t know if she believed him, not entirely; still, she nodded in reply. “Good,” she said, stretching out beside him and resting her cheek against his shoulder. “It feels worth it to me, too.”

  Colby reached over and turned off the lamp on the nightstand, leaving the others blazing. The sound of his heartbeat was the last thing she heard before she fell asleep.

  Nineteen

  Colby

  Colby woke up with a gasp from a nightmare—fisting his hands in the sheets for a moment, not entirely sure where he was. Then he blinked and looked around the hotel room—the lights still on, the dawn dripping up outside the open window, the girl sacked out beside him with her T-shirt rucked up just enough to expose the dimples on either side of her backbone—and remembered.

  Meg was sleeping so deeply it felt like a shame to wake her up, but he didn’t want her to think he’d bailed without saying goodbye. “Hey,” he said, laying a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I gotta go let the dog out before work.”

  Meg blinked awake, her eyes huge and dark and deep as caverns. “Oh,” she said, a moment of her own confusion before she blinked again, sitting up. “Okay.” He could see that she was wanting to ask if she was going to see him again. He wanted to ask it, too, and didn’t.

  Instead, he took a deep breath, reaching out and tucking her hair behind her ear. “Can I kiss you goodbye?” he asked.

  “Colby . . .” Meg wrinkled her nose. “I’ve got morning breath.”

  Colby smiled; he couldn’t help it. “I don’t care about your morning breath.”

  “Well, I do.” Meg gamboled upright and darted into the bathroom, returning a minute later smelling like Colgate Total and face wash. He could see where she’d tried to rub the smudges of mascara from under her eyes. She wasn’t the prettiest girl he’d ever met—he thought Jo was probably prettier, if you put them side by side—but there was something about Meg that made him feel like his heart was on fire when he looked at her. There was something about her that made him feel like he could build a staircase to the sky.

  She scooped his hoodie off the floor and held it out in his direction, but Colby shook his head. “Keep it,” he said, aware that he wanted her to have something of his and embarrassed about it in equal amounts.

  Meg smiled. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, I don’t know. Come here.”

  Colby put both hands on her face and kissed her, tasting toothpaste and something like hope. She fisted her hands in his T-shirt, her short nails zipping against the cotton. “Bye,” she muttered into his mouth.

  “Bye.”

  He kissed her one more time before he went, the lock clicking softly shut behind him. He spent his whole shift trying not to smile.

  She called that night as he was getting ready for bed. “What are you doing?” she wanted to know.

  Colby stuck his toothbrush in the holder and wandered down the hall to his room, Tris bumping against his shins before trotting off toward the kitchen. “Just heading to bed.”

  “Oh yeah?” she asked, a lilt in her voice he’d never heard before. “How about that; me too.”

  “Oh,” he said dumbly, sitting down on the edge of the mattress. They’d talked on the phone when they were both in bed plenty of times, but it felt different now that they’d actually been in a bed together, even if nothing had technically happened. Especially since nothing technically had. He sat back against the pillows, then scooted down until he was on his back, holding the phone with one hand and resting the other on his stomach. “How was your day?” he finally asked.

  “It was okay,” she said. “I mean, I spent most of it driving.”

  “Oh.” He nodded. “That makes sense, yeah.”

  Neither of them said anything for a moment. It felt awkward, suddenly, like it hadn’t on the phone before she’d come to visit; then they both spoke at once. “So I was listening to this podcast,” Meg started at the same time Colby blurted, “I texted Keith today.”

  It was true, though he hadn’t exactly planned on mentioning it to her. “I told him I’d meet with that guy he wanted to set me up with, the construction dude.”

  “You did?” Meg’s voice was eager. “Colby, that’s amazing!”

  “Relax,” he said. “It’s just a breakfast.”

  “Yeah,” Meg said, “but still. Look at you, going after what you want. I’m very pleased with myself over here, I’m not going to lie to you. Next thing you know I’ll have you knocking on doors for Annie Hernandez.”

  Colby made a face. “This is all your doing, huh?”

  “I’m taking partial credit.”

  “Uh-huh. You can Venmo me for part of my breakfast, then.”

  “I will,” Meg said immediately. “Seriously, though, I’m proud of you.”

  “Okay, okay, enough.” It made him squirm a little, and not in a good way. He didn’t know why she cared so much. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  “Like what?”

  Colby consi
dered that for a moment, picturing her back at home in Philadelphia. He wanted to know what her bedroom looked like, but it felt creepy to ask. “What are you wearing?” he blurted instead.

  “Seriously?” Meg laughed, and Colby felt like an idiot, only then she actually answered. “A T-shirt.”

  “With a feminist slogan on it?”

  “Shut up,” Meg replied. “No. Just plain gray.”

  “What else?”

  Meg didn’t answer for a moment. “I mean, underwear,” she said finally. “But that’s it.”

  Colby swallowed hard. “That’s it, huh?”

  “That is it,” Meg echoed, a hint of a tease in her voice. “What are you wearing?”

  “Just basketball shorts.”

  “Is that always how you sleep?”

  “When I’m not in hotel rooms with random girls, pretty much, yeah.”

  “Rude,” Meg said. Then, more quietly: “I’m not random.”

  “No,” Colby agreed, then cleared his throat a little. He thought of how soft her body was, how warm and smooth the skin of her rib cage had been, and moved his hand off his stomach so he didn’t get any ideas. “You’re not random at all.”

  He wanted to tell her other stuff: that he was afraid of how he felt about her, that nothing about this seemed easy or smart. That there was a tiny part of him that hadn’t wanted to text her at all today, that had wanted to end things right now so that last night in the hotel room could be hermetically sealed, un-fuck-uppable. Nobody can pull the rug out from under you if you decide there isn’t a rug to begin with.

  But that was ridiculous.

  Right?

  “I should go to sleep,” she said finally, yawning into the receiver; Colby thought of her wet, pink tongue before he could help himself, and balled his free hand into a fist.

  “Okay,” he managed, and to his credit his voice was only the slightest bit strangled. “Have a good sleep.”

  “Night, Colby.”

  Colby hit end and set his phone on the nightstand, then rolled over and groaned once into the pillows before he turned out the light.

  Doug Robard was already sitting in a booth at Bob Evans when Colby got there early the next morning, drinking coffee and reading the paper in cargo pants and a polo shirt. Colby didn’t know what he’d expected—it wasn’t like he thought the guy was going to show up wearing a feather boa—but he still kind of felt like a piece of shit for thinking . . . whatever it was he’d thought. He didn’t even know how he knew Doug was gay, other than off-color jokes Rick and Matt had made about him. He cringed to think what Meg would have said if she’d heard.