For a few seconds neither of us says anything, then he lifts my chin with his right hand. "Is everything all right?"
"Sure. I just… would feel weird if anyone saw us. You being a speaker and all." What I meant to say is You not being my boyfriend and all, but he wouldn't take that too well. The idea of having to explain to anyone, Abby or whoever knew Michael and me as a couple, what's between James and me panics me almost as much as telling Mum about it. Abby spent the better half of the week after the breakup calling Michael every profanity in the book (and inventing some of her own) for leaving a decent girl like me and hooking up with a ho. I'm not sure how she'd assign those labels now. And I don't plan to find out soon.
He lets go of my chin, and takes a step back, looking at me. "You look hot in this dress."
"Don't mock me."
"I'm serious. Makes me even sorrier that I have to go in for that speech. What are you doing tonight?"
"I'm busy," I stutter.
"Sending another batch of CVs?" he muses. “I thought you said you almost exhausted your list of banks.”
“I actually added a few dozen more to the list last night.”
He grins. “Because 112 applications are not enough?”
“I'm doing something else tonight," I say, avoiding his gaze.
"What?" He's suddenly inches away from me, clutching my arms in his hands.
"It's nothing, just… a thing I do sometimes." Sometimes meaning every Wednesday.
"Which is?" His grip on my arms tightens. I raise my eyebrows and he removes his hands.
"Are you seeing someone?" he asks in a strained voice. There's a glint in his eyes I never saw before. Sharp. Dark. It makes the hair at the nape of my neck stand on end.
"I never took you for the jealous type,” I challenge.
He flinches visibly, his eyes widening.
"No, of course I‘m not," he says, but his body has that same strange rigidity it had at the airport, when the lark brought up boarding school. "You're free to date whoever you want."
"For the record, I'm not seeing anyone but you."
To my intense misery, he looks even unhappier than before. But the glint is gone.
I take a deep breath. "I'm dressing up as a clown for a few hours in a show at the local hospital for kids with leukemia."
His glower melts into a surprised smile. "That's very admirable of you," he says and kisses my forehead.
"I started doing this after… you know."
After Kate's last whim, the one that sent her to the hospital, never to get out of it alive again. When the wait next to her bed became unbearable, I started wandering around. That's how I stumbled on the ward where leukemia kids were housed. I don't know why but I started returning every week, whether to read stories to them, watch movies, or dress up as a clown, like today. After I moved to the U.S., I continued to volunteer at a local hospital.
He frowns. "It helps you?"
"Sort of. It helps them a lot which… helps me."
A loud beep makes us both jump. It comes from inside—the sign that the first speech has begun.
He kisses my forehead again and murmurs, "Call me after you finish." Then his lips move to my ear and he says playfully, "I missed your coffee."
I give a nervous giggle. I woke up with the firm determination we both needed a strong dose of caffeine on Sunday morning, after only having had about four hours of sleep the whole weekend. So I left a sleeping James and went to the nearest Starbucks, but instead of buying two cups of steaming hot liquid, I returned with a bag of ground coffee. What followed reminded me why I never do things spontaneously. Especially things I suck at. James woke up to the disgusting smell of burnt coffee and a filthy-beyond-imagination stove. Yet for all the warning signs, he still insisted on tasting my coffee. I never saw anyone spit anything with such desperation.
"One kiss before we go in?" he whispers, trailing his lips from my ear down the base of my neck.
"Please let me do this," Jess pleads for the fifth time.