“Yeah, yeah, I’m moving them out. Don’t get your panties in a wad.”
I grin mockingly up at him. “Why not, when you make it look so appealing?”
We stare for two long seconds, mimicking each other’s frightening, lunatic smiles, until Drew’s eyes lower to my mouth. My stomach drops down to my feet, and I take a retreating step back.
Haven’t I scared him off yet?
I didn’t sleep at all last night. I’m a dead man walking, and I feel that metaphor in so many ways. All night my thoughts circled around Jessie, looking at our conversation from every angle and wondering what I should have done differently. I spooked her, jumped too many steps ahead at once. I felt a tinge of friendship and got greedy. I wanted it all—to know everything. I would have stayed up all night downloading as much information from her as she’d have allowed.
My own desire to know her sort of shocked me. I didn’t realize until the moment I was given a morsel of kindness how much I’ve been repressing my hope of…friendship…a relationship…a civil acquaintance with Jessie? I don’t know what to call it. Some mix of all of those.
Now, I’m in the kitchen making breakfast, and Jessie hasn’t come out of her room yet for the day. I heard her come down around 1 AM and watch TV, still struggling with insomnia. I listened to that entire episode of Seinfeld trying to get up the courage to go out and talk to her again or sit down beside her and finally watch together like we had planned.
If I had to guess, I’d say she’ll hide away all day. She’ll punish me for trying to push the line. Get back over there in the ‘I hate you’ zone. I don’t want to be in that zone anymore. I don’t want to fight so much. Those few minutes of real conversation were not enough, and it only scratched the surface of what I want from her. Now, I feel like digging, uncovering everything I can about Jessie. I’m an archeologist, and all I need is someone to get me a shovel and one of those little dust brushes.
I crack four eggs, whisk them, and pour them into the pan. They sizzle and pop, and their aroma fills the air. I scramble them around in the pan, and just as I’m dumping them out onto a plate, I hear footsteps behind me. It’s Jessie. My heart hammers, and for reasons I don’t fully understand yet, I feel like smiling at the sight of her here in the kitchen. She’s not punishing me.
She’s wearing a pair of jeans and a simple tight grey t-shirt, her bump sticking out like a little basketball. I look at her, and she looks at me. She blinks, I blink. Since she doesn’t make an attempt to say anything, I don’t dare speak either. I don’t know what I would say, honestly. I’m sorry? I’m not. I do want to know about Jessie’s mom, and her dad, and her family, and what her favorite color is, and if she had to have braces in high school, and if she stays all the way to the end of the movie credits or gets up and rushes out before the line builds up.
I watch Jessie’s eyes drop to the eggs on the plate I’m holding, and I see the desire in them. I grab another plate out of the cabinet and slide half of my portion onto it. She watches closely with a hesitant brow. Trying not to make any sudden movements, I set the plate down and slide it across the counter toward Jessie. Her lips press together as she surveys the scrambled eggs, like if she accepts them, she’s accepting more than just breakfast. She’s right. It’s a peace treaty in the form of squishy, delicious, yellow proteins.
Never has my kitchen felt so quiet and yet so loud at the same time. I can hear her breathing. I can hear my own heart beating in my ears. Something is different between us today, and every cell in my body is hyperaware of it. Neither of us is saying anything, but I don’t feel like we have to. This is our truce. We do nothing but bicker and fight, and this is us saying, Let’s not ruin anything with words today.
Jessie delicately picks up the plate and then lifts a bite of eggs to her full, soft pink lips. She grins around the fork, and I’m mesmerized as I allow myself to watch her with new eyes. I’ve always had a filter around Jessie, a yeah-she’s-cute-but-her-heart-is-cold-as-ice lens I viewed every encounter with her through. Now, I’m seeing her without it, and there’s vulnerability, and fear, and a painful childhood. There’s humor and strength, and playfulness. Now that I’ve taken off that filter, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to put it back on. Jessie is starting to make sense to me, and she’s only becoming more beautiful as she comes into focus.
We both finish our breakfast in silence, practically staring at each other the entire time, and it’s oddly the most comfortable I’ve been in forever. She has to get closer to me to put her plate in the sink after she finishes her eggs. My back is leaning against the portion of counter just beside it, and I’m not going to move. Jessie comes forward slowly, one foot in front of the other like she can sense this thing humming between us and is scared to get too close. I watch her every step of the way, and she watches me. Without words to distract us, we’re each highly aware of the other.
The hairs on my arms stand on end when she sets her plate in the sink and her arm brushes against mine. She pauses beside me, both of us facing different directions, and slowly her eyes rise to mine. I hold my breath. What now? her gaze asks.
I shrug lightly and smile.
She smiles too, and it’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s lig
ht filtering into a desolate, damp cave. It’s the first taste of watermelon in summer. It’s a monarch butterfly landing on your finger.
And just like those things, it’s fleeting.
I’m staring at her mouth when her smile fades. She backs up, nods briefly, grabs her keys off the counter, and leaves the house. All I can do is frown at the front door and spend the rest of the day obsessing over this silent interaction. I’ll replay it a hundred and two times in my head, trying to decipher if it meant something, but the truth is, it was probably nothing. Maybe I’ll wake up later and realize it was an odd dream. Either way, I know I won’t be able to look at Jessie the same after this.
“Shhhh, I think I hear the garage!” I tell Lucy, my not-so-willing partner in crime. You would think a friend would help another friend prank Drew out of the goodness of her heart, but no. I had to barter with a night of babysitting. Joke’s on her though, because I would have watched Levi regardless.
We both stop talking, registering the sound of a car pulling in, and we jump into position.
“This is not a drill! I repeat—not a drill!”
“Who are you yelling at like that? It’s only me!”
“I’m sorry! I’m just nervous. I really want to pull this off.”
Today, I’m trading my babysitting services for Lucy to play along and pretend to be my midwife. Here’s the trick: she’s not going to be a regular midwife. Oh no. She’s going to be my “birth guru”. Aka something we completely made up and intend to freak Drew out with.
Drew and I haven’t spoken to each other since the fight the other night. We have seen each other, though, and it’s been super unnerving. I don’t know if this is another one of our strange battles or something different, but we don’t talk to each other anymore. Literally. We interact, but only silently.
The morning after the fight, we had eggs together, and it felt like so much more. Can eating breakfast be sensual? Part of me thinks I’m losing my mind in this house and maybe he is too. It’s like a vortex that’s sucked us both in and is spitting us out slightly demented. Two days ago, one of Drew’s patients went into labor, so he didn’t get home until one in the morning. I wasn’t waiting up for him or anything, I just couldn’t sleep because of this crazy insomnia. But when he got home, he took one look at me on the couch, his eyes swept to the empty cushion beside me, and his brows rose in question. I nodded and he sat down. We never touched, never spoke, only watched TV side by side until we both fell asleep watching Seinfeld reruns.
In the morning, he wasn’t there when I woke up, but there was a steaming cup of hot coffee on the coffee table and a note that said, It’s half-caff, go crazy. We had one more brief silent stare-down last night after work while we both did laundry. I carried my hamper into the laundry room, but Drew was already in there and had just thrown his clothes in. He saw me, and then he hitched his head toward the washer, telling me to put mine in with his. It was honestly the most erotic experience of my life doing laundry together. Geez, the close quarters! The mixing of colors when I know it drives him insane! That moment when he leaned behind me to shut the lid on the washer and his chest brushed against my back—COME ON!! I’m dying over here.
And did I mention Drew unpacked all my stuff again? The BFF salt and pepper shakers are back on the kitchen countertop. My fuzzy throw blankets are draped across his charcoal couch. My stuff kisses Drew’s stuff everywhere I look, and it’s his doing. This is a metaphor for something—I can feel it in my bones.