He laughs and puts his hands over his eyes, stretching like a freshly woken cat who likes to arch its back.
“What do you want for breakfast? I can run out and get something, or we can call in. Check-out isn’t until one.”
“There was a café I saw on my way in last night. Looked really swanky and smelled permanently like bacon. You should go there. While I sneak out the window.”
“I think we should go together.”
“But I like you so much more when you are a generally enormous distance away from me.”
He rolls over and sits on his elbows, playing with a strand of my purple hair.
“That’s an incredibly contradictory statement considering what you did last night.”
“I touched your back! Stop making it sound sexual!” I gasp. “Did I just say sexual? Out loud? Without stuttering? Praise Jesus. Wait, does Jesus like people having sex? I keep forgetting who likes what.”
“I like you,” Jack murmurs. I elegantly fall off the bed. There’s a silence, and then I peek my head over the mattress and raise my hand.
“Uh, hello? Me here. I would preferably not like to be given a heart attack before I reach legal drinking age.”
“Did that really surprise you that bad?” Jack smirks. He pauses. “I like you.”
“Ah!” I put my arms up to shield myself.
“I like you.”
“Stop!”
“Oh, this will be fun.”
“I will kill you slowly,” I retort, but he’s already up and pulling his pants on. I set my entire facial region on fire involuntarily when I realize he slept in boxers. Next to me. And in the split second before he pulled his pants on there was a distinct bulge and I am dying, this is what dying is, you burn up and then the ashes blow away and someone gets them in their eye and they walk around with a red eye all day and their co-workers think it’s pink eye when really it’s just your dead carbon –
“Isis. Shhh.”
“You shhhh!” I hiss. “I’m having a fifteenth-life crisis here upon seeing a man’s junk for the first time.”
He pulls his jacket on and grabs his wallet off the nightstand.
“I’ll wait for you downstairs.”
“I’ll eat your firstborn!”
He shuts the door, and I’m alone. Alone but with him waiting for me downstairs. In a fancy hotel. For breakfast at a café. I pinch my feet and yelp when I don’t wake up. There aren’t any hidden cameras I can see, but then again if I could see them they wouldn’t be very good hidden cameras now would they? I don’t think this is a set-up, at least. It’s an impossible little dream probably, cooked up by my waking subconscious, but for now I’ll let it slide. For now I’ll go along with it. Me, the fat ugly girl, slept in the same bed as Jack Hunter, my nemesis, my rival, and now apparently something a little more than my friend.
And I felt safe.
Over breakfast, Jack and I talk logistics. He’ll keep an eye on Nameless’ IP, and I’ll do a thorough cleansing of my computer. When we’re standing in the parking lot with bellies full of bacon and toast, we linger. I shuffle my feet. I have no idea what to do. What’s a girl supposed to do to say goodbye to a boy she slept with but didn’t really sleep with? Is there a handbook for this shit? Should I write one real quick and mail it to past self? Does publishing even work that fast?
Before I can agonize any longer, Jack reaches his hand out and pats my head.
“You’ll be okay driving home?”
“Duh,” I feel miffed that he’d pat me like a child, but also weird and glowy on the inside in places I don’t even wanna think about. “I’m like a NASCAR driver. Minus the millions of dollars.”
“Shame, really. Imagine how many more people you could annoy if you were a millionaire.”
“At least ten whole people. And their grandmas.”
“Ah yes, the time-honored Blake tradition of annoying grandmas.”
“All it takes is like, a dirty pan and a cat without a pink, furry sweater on it.”
“Say hi to your mother for me.”
“You too. Um. If she still remembers me. Actually, don’t, it’s fine, I didn’t exactly make the best impression when I went over there –”
“She remembers,” Jack insists. “She thinks you’re sweet.”
“Hah. Must’ve met my doppleganger. The one who doesn’t exist anywhere ever.”
Jack smiles. It’s not a bright smile, like the one I’d seen him give Sophia in the hospital once. But it’s warm and without ice, and that’s all I can ask for, really.
“You have my number,” He says.
“Yup. I’ll text if there’s issues. Tissues. Not tissues, tissues are disgusting and so are issues.”
He starts to walk away. I want to say a thousand dumb things at once – thank you, and I’m sorry you chose a shithead like me, and you deserve better, and drive safe, and be safe, and sleep well and eat well, but all the words and feelings come up in a jumbled mess and dissipate into the air as I open my mouth to say nothing at all and close it again.
***
“YOU WHAT?”
I hold the phone away from my ear to preserve my future hearing for eighty years to come.
“Slept. In the uh, same bed,” I whisper.
“YOU HAD SEX WITH JACK HUNTER?”
“Jesus Kayla, no, stop shouting, it’s indecent.”
“I’LL TELL YOU WHAT’S INDECENT – SLEEPING WITH JACK HUNTER!”
“We didn’t sleep together, idiot! Do I look stupid enough to ever touch that bag of germs?”
Kayla finally takes a breath. “That’s true. You can’t even say ‘dick’ without vomiting in your mouth a little. And sometimes, on desks. And small children.”
“That was one time, and that kid totally walked into the flight path of my vomit. It’s not my fault if he had no grasp of liquid physics.”
“But you totally slept in the same bed and, like, hello, isn’t that at least second base? Second and a half base?”
“Uh, like a second moon base?”
“Ugh, no! Nevermind, I’m not gonna explain really outdated sex terms to you.”
“For the last time! There was no sect…ional things going on, okay? I would never do that with your ex. Ever.”
“I would. With your ex. If you had one. If he was smoking hot. If you gave me your sure-as-hell approval, obviously. Which I totally give you, by the way, because, duh – it’s Jack Hunter! Someone in this school has to bed him before he gets to Hollywood or modelland or whatever and contracts a bunch of icky diseases!”
“You are insane.”
“Omigod! Did I tell you?”
“That you’re insane? Already figured it out, thanks.”
“No, dummy! Wren asked me out to Senior Prom!”
I feel my mouth drop open. “The one with glasses?”
“Uh, duh, what other Wren do you know?”
“Was he…was he drooling or shuffling or moaning about brains?”
“Ew, no! He was in his right mind and I’m like, 99% sure he wasn’t a zombie, okay? Is it so weird that someone would want to take me to Senior Prom?”