7
I spend a good amount of time examining the open wound on my left ass cheek in my bathroom mirror before I start to feel dizzy. It’s a deep cut, the kind that desperately needs Neosporin and a Band-Aid. I try to patch myself up once I dry off from my shower, but the placement of the cut makes it too hard to secure the Band-Aid properly. I shiver thinking about the fact that I’ll have to ask Jonathan for help once he gets back from work.
I’m not sure if it’s an anxious shiver or an anticipatory one.
After spending some time re-creating my Hinge profile and texting it to Jamie for approval, I open the third book in the FBI romance anthology I’ve been devouring. But for the first time since I started the series, I can’t focus.
All I can think about is Finn, and all I want to do is talk to someone about him, but Alex, Jonathan, and Nora are at work, and Meg is probably still asleep on the bathroom floor. So I decide to FaceTime Jamie.
She answers on the second ring.
“I was JUST about to call you!” she says, beaming.
I can hear the clack of her heels on the New York City pavement as she walks home from the office. She looks so adorably professional in her blazer.
“Look at you! New York City’s hottest new editor.”
“Editorial assistant,” she clarifies, and I brush her off.
While Jamie and I are polar opposites in almost every way, our shared love of reading has always connected us. The fact that she pokes fun at my taste in books is beside the point. Working in publishing is the perfect job for her, and I couldn’t be more proud.
“There’s a pretty serious problem with your Hinge profile,” she says matter-of-factly.
“What is it?” I can’t imagine what could be wrong. I answered the prompts with an expert mix of comedy and earnestness, and the pictures I chose show off all my best features without being too in-your-face.
“Go look at the photos again,” she urges. “And this time, try looking at them through the perspective of a guy swiping through the app.”
I pull up my profile and begin to scroll. The first photo, which I chose because I like the way my curls look when I’m fresh out of the ocean, is of me and Jonathan on the beach.
Next is a photo of me and Jonathan at the blackjack table in Vegas. This one shows that I’m not afraid to have a good time.
The next photo is of me and Jonathan at— “Oh.” Understanding strikes me as I scroll through the last three photos: me and Jonathan at the zoo, me and Jonathan Lady and the Tramp-ing a churro at the Orange County Fair, and me and Jonathan (and Alex!) splayed out on a picnic blanket.
“This is bad,” I admit. “It’s just that all of my best pictures happen to be with Jonathan.”
“Well then let’s make sure to get some good solo ones at the wedding.”
She pauses long enough to shake her head. “I still can’t believe you’re not bringing him.”
I sigh. Everyone back home is devastated that I’ve decided not to bring Jonathan as my plus-one, but I’d rather go alone than subject myself, and him, to countless questions about our relationship.
“We can’t keep having the same conversation. You don’t ge—”
“No.” She cuts me off. “If you’re gonna start up on the ‘Jonathan’s too hot to want to be with me’ bullshit, I’ll hang up. I don’t want to hear it. I really don’t, Phoebe.”
“Okay,” I tell her. “Let’s talk about something else, then. I’m picking up my dress on Friday.”
This will mark my third attempt at getting my bridesmaid dress altered.
The first seamstress I took it to hemmed it an inch too short, and the second one cinched it so tightly in the chest that my boobs were touching my chin. I
thanked them both incessantly, told them the dress was perfect, and waited
until I got in my car to start crying.
“You’re bringing Nora with you, right?”
I promised Jamie I would bring someone with a backbone to pick up my dress for the third (and hopefully final) time.
“Yes, I’m bringing Nora.”
“Good. I can’t wait to see you,” she says, and before I have a second to agree, she launches into a barrage of questions about school.
“How was your first day? How are the kids? Tell me everything!”
And so I do. I tell her about the list, my attempts at flirting with Teacher Rob, and my big future plans involving Finn.
Jamie’s reception becomes spotty as she walks through an underpass, but I can still make out a scrunched nose and a furrowed brow through the
pixelated screen.
“What’s that look for?” I ask.
As her features come back into focus, I can see her exhale clearly.
“I still don’t get it,” she says.
“Get what?”
“How you could have a crush on someone else when you basically already have a perfect live-in boyfriend.”
Ever since my family first met Jonathan, they’ve been fixated on the status of our relationship.
My sister on a daily basis: “Your kids would be so cute. Imagine the curls on them! And the eyes!”
My mother in the middle of my cousin’s bar mitzvah service: “Do you
think he’d be willing to convert?”
“Who?” I had asked.
She’d stared back at me blankly, as if my question insulted her.
“Jonathan.”
My dad at my college graduation: “My firstborn daughter.” He dabbed at his eyes with a handkerchief. “I can’t believe I’m the father of a college graduate. And before you know it, I’ll be giving you away at your wedding.”
He dissolved into hysterics while turning around to grab Jonathan, who was in the middle of taking photos with his parents, and quite surprised to find himself in the arms of my father.
“You’ll take such good care of her.” And then, in between sniffles, “Get together, you two.”
He reached into his front shirt pocket to grab his phone, using it to take a photo in, of course, landscape mode.
“This one’s for the grandkids,” he said while snapping the photo, his finger covering the corner of the camera lens.
While I can’t defend my dad’s behavior, I do have that picture taped to our freezer. Half of it is obscured by a thumb, but in the other half, Jonathan and I are mid-laugh, our eyes crinkled and mouths wide open. All things considered, my dad was right. It will definitely be one that I show my grandkids.
Desperate to change the subject, I have a question about Jamie’s wedding playlist on the tip of my tongue when I hear Jonathan’s key turn in the lock.
“I gotta go,” I tell her. “I love you and I can’t wait to see you.”
“Twelve days!” she sings as I press the end call button.
The door swings open, and the smell of grease and cheese coming from the pizza box in Jonathan’s hands fills up the whole room. The sleeves of his light blue collared shirt are rolled halfway up his arms, and a few buttons toward the top are undone, revealing a patch of chest hair I can’t help but stare at.
My mouth starts to water as I walk over to greet him.
Because of the pizza.
“Hey!” I give him a quick hug hello. “How was work?”
“Oh, you know. The same as it was yesterday. And the day before that.
And all the days before that.”
Jonathan’s been working in medical device sales for the past five years in an effort to please his parents, even though he hates it and it makes him miserable. The Coopers had expected Jonathan to stay in their small West Virginia town to take over their family business, and could barely look him in the eye after he announced his decision to study film at UCLA. They pretty
much refuse to leave their Southern bubble (West Virginia is technically part of the South, right? I still don’t totally get it), with the exception of the one trip they made to LA for graduation, where they spent the whole weekend pointing out “druggies” (men in Birkenstocks) and “lesbians” (women in Birkenstocks). I know Jonathan feels guilty for defying his parents’ expectations, so he continues to work at what they consider a “real job” as a way to keep the peace.
“What about advertising?” I ask for the millionth time. “Or publishing?
You could talk to Jamie! Those are both jobs where you still get to be creative.”
I can’t stop myself from making suggestions every time he complains about work.
Over the summer, I made him a color-coded, alphabetized binder that includes a list of professions, their descriptions, and a detailed analysis of why they would be a good fit for him and please his parents. It’s sat unopened on his desk for months.
“I know,” he sighs, and because I know this conversation is going nowhere and I desperately need his assistance, I have no choice but to stop him before he gets too comfortable on the couch.
“Can you help me with something really quick?” I try to keep it vague, but my hand reflexively shoots to the back of my pajama pants.
Jonathan raises his eyebrows.
“Of course. What is it?” he asks. “I just reattached your mirror, by the way. You really need to start locking your car.”
“Oh!” In all the day’s excitement, I forgot about my detached side-view mirror resting in my passenger seat. “Thank you. You’re the best. I need help with something else, though.”
He waits for me to elaborate, but I begin making my way toward the stairs. “Follow me, please.”
He groans, but I hear his footsteps behind me.
“Is it another roach? We need to call the exterminator, Pheebs.”
We head up the stairs and into my room, where I hand him the Band-Aid that I already placed carefully on my nightstand.
“I need you to put this on for me. I can’t really reach.”
“Of course,” he says. “Where?”
“I’m sorry,” I mumble before turning around and lowering my pajama bottoms.
Jonathan gasps. “Jesus Christ, Phoebe, what did you do to yourself?!”
I sigh. “That is between me, Finn, and the laminator.”
I reach back and hand him a tube of Neosporin. “Here, would you mind putting some of this on the Band-Aid?”
Without taking the tube, he grabs me and spins me around so we’re face- to-face. I quickly reach for the waistband of my pajama bottoms to keep them from falling down entirely. He crouches down so I’m looking directly into his wide eyes. I want to laugh because of the ridiculousness of the situation, but the distressed look in his eyes stops me.
He places his hands gently on either side of my face.
“Phoebe. Is this a sex injury?”
“What!” I screech. “No, of course not. If that were the case, I would have posted a picture of it on Instagram. In feed.”
He exhales as his hands fall from my face and onto my shoulders.
“I stuck my laminated list down the back of my skort and cut myself,” I say with the same air of casualness I would use to tell him I fell off my bike and scraped my knee.
I turn back around and lower my pajama bottoms once more. I hear Jonathan let out an unsteady breath behind me.
Jonathan’s fingers shake as he presses the Band-Aid down, gently securing it to my skin. As we stand there, his fingers brushing against my bare ass, I’m hit with the striking realization that this is the most intimate I’ve ever been with a man. There have been more than a few drunken nights when I’ve had a pair of random hands groping inside the back of my jeans, but the feeling of Jonathan’s hands back there somehow feels more weighted, more intense, even if he’s only patching me up.
In a futile attempt to cover up the thick layer of goosebumps spreading across my lower back, I yank up my pants and turn sharply to make a break for the door.
“I owe you one.”
The pizza’s cold by the time I hand him a slice on a paper plate. We both settle into our respective corners of the couch to eat. Jonathan is practically horizontal as he stuffs himself with a second slice, and I wonder if this is the type of exhaustion that follows a busy day at the office, or if it’s a result of something that happened after he left Jeffery’s.
I try to pose my question as casually as possible. “How was last night?
Where did you end up?”
“Oh, you know.” He lowers his eyes and attempts to casually pick a piece of pepperoni off his slice. “Once Meg fell asleep at the table, we called it a night. I met up with Sydney from work and her friends at a bar down the street, and we ended the night at her place.” He swallows. “I just stayed
there.”
“That sounds fun,” I lie.
I don’t have to meet Sydney to know I can’t stand her. Jonathan’s mentioned her a few times in passing, but I never paid it any mind until a few months ago, when a comment on his most recent Instagram post caught my eye:
@sydney_joness: Looking hot, Johnny
Johnny?? Looking hot? No one besides his mom calls Jonathan Johnny, so the notion that @sydney_joness felt comfortable doing so was laughable.
Fueled by a fit of blind rage, I had called Alex, knowing he would find the comment equally disturbing. Together, we journeyed down the dark path of scrolling through her Instagram, all the way back to her first post in 2010, only to be met with countless photos of a tall, leggy blonde with perky boobs and an affinity for raising money for Alzheimer’s.
“This is disgusting,” Alex had said. And I agreed. It was gross.
“Do you have a thing for Sydney?” I ask. Jonathan shrugs while taking another bite of his pizza.
I put my plate down, having suddenly lost my appetite. “You do have a thing for Sydney.”
Bile rises to my throat at this revelation.
“How was your first day back?” he asks, pivoting the conversation
completely.
Ugh.
I guess I have been waiting all day to tell him about Finn, so I swallow my urge to puke up my pizza and allow the abrupt subject change.
“It was great, actually. The kids are great. Cheryl’s great. I’m in love.”
His eyebrows shoot up, and he takes longer than usual to chew and swallow his last bite of pizza. “And this is the new guy you’re talking about?
We’re already using the L-word?”
I nod. “Finn. And yes.”
Another prolonged chew and swallow from Jonathan.
“He kept calling me Phoebe,” I add excitedly.
Jonathan cocks his head to the side. “As opposed to…”
“It was the way he kept saying it. Like he was…so sure of it.”
“Okay…this is me encouraging you to look for more in a man than just his ability to call you by your government name.”
Could it be that Finn calling me by my name isn’t as romantically charged as I had initially perceived it to be?
“He also called me amazing. And said I was the best. And said I was the greatest teacher at the school.” I should have led with these.
“Start with that next time.” Noted. “Can I see him?”
“I don’t think he has any social media.”
I say this because I found his email address in the recipient section of the last faculty-wide email: [email protected]. What a great name: Finn Evans. I spent some time conducting a preliminary search of his online presence before I called Jamie earlier. I found nothing. Not to worry, though.
If there’s even a trace of him on the internet, I will find it.
With a mouth full of pizza, Jonathan asks, “What about Matthew? Did he respond?”
I shake my head. “No. And I don’t care. I’m telling you…something’s gonna happen with Finn. I’ve never felt so sure of anything.”
Jonathan pauses, scratching his stubble in a way that makes me think he’s choosing his words carefully.
“It can’t hurt to pursue a date with Matthew, too,” he says. “Like you were saying, the more things you can cross off your list, the higher your chances are of having sex.”
“I kept it on my list,” I tell him, hoping that fact serves as enough effort on my part to get him to drop it. “But right now, every task that doesn’t involve Finn is secondary. And Matthew didn’t even answer, so it’s a
nonissue.”
Jonathan sighs, resigned. “Finn it is.”
We inhale the rest of our pizza.
In keeping with our usual evening routine, it’s time for me to do the New York Times crossword while Jonathan watches and offers words of encouragement from the sidelines. Occasionally, in a moment that delights us both, he’ll come up with an answer. I screen mirror my phone to the TV so we can both see the grid in front of us.
Sometimes I’ll let myself fantasize about Matthew sitting next to me on the couch, evenly matching my passion for the crossword. Together, I imagine we’d be able to solve one in record time. But those fantasies are a thing of the past. I’ll have to ask Finn how he feels about word games.
I’m in the middle of trying to figure out thirty-one across, the main ingredient of hollandaise sauce, when a text comes through. From Matthew. I
do my best to swipe it away quickly.
I wasn’t fast enough.
“What was that?” Jonathan asks, a slight taunting edge in his voice.
I keep my eyes on the screen. “An iMessage notification.”
“An iMessage notification from whoooo?” he sings.
“My mom.”
Jonathan puts out his hand expectantly. “Give me the phone.”
“Why?”
I can feel myself starting to get worked up. I know why he wants my phone, and I know he’s right. I need to answer Matthew.
“Because you need to respond, and I know you’re not going to.”
I start to hand over my phone, slowly, but jerk my hand back
immediately.
“YOLK!” I scream.
“What?” He still has his hand out.
I start typing frantically. “Thirty-one across. Hollandaise sauce. The main
ingredient is yolk.”
It fits perfectly.
“Brilliant,” he says, but his flattery falls flat. “Phone, please.”
I slam my phone into his outstretched hand a little too hard. If he notices, he doesn’t say anything. I watch the TV, which is still displaying the contents of my phone, with my arms crossed as he opens the text from Matthew.
Matthew:
Phoebe!
I’m so sorry, I left my phone
in an Uber this weekend
and just this second got it back.
I would love nothing more than to finally take you out.
When will you be here?
I can feel Jonathan’s eyes burning into me while I keep my eyes focused on the screen in front of me. When I finally turn my head to meet his gaze,
he’s staring at me with a narrow-eyed expression I can’t quite place.
“What?” I ask. “Why are you looking at me like that?” A small part of me begins to wonder if he’s jealous, but I swat the thought away before it has the chance to fully take shape.
Don’t be ridiculous. Of course he’s not jealous.
Another text pops up on the screen from Matthew, asking me how my first day was and if I’ve talked to Dan about taking the interview for the assistant principal position. A flash of confusion crosses Jonathan’s face at this. And then another text. A Wordle score. Jonathan points to the TV as if using this string of text messages as evidence in a court case.
“All you’ve ever wanted is for a guy to sweep you off your feet without having to experience the anxiety of putting yourself out there…. That’s exactly what’s happening right now. He’s already obsessed with you. All you have to do is show up.”
Oh. Of course he’s not jealous. He’s annoyed. Well, two can play that game. I’m annoyed by the annoyance of the one person I thought understood me the most.
“You don’t get it,” I tell him. “If I was too anxious to go on a date with Matthew last year when I barely knew him, then I definitely can’t go on a date with him now. Not when I’ve spent a year thinking about him while I fall asleep. The stakes are too high. Finn is a fresh start. I think that’s what I
need.”
He furrows his brow.
“But Finn isn’t asking you on a date. Matthew is asking you on a date.”
The pitch of my voice gets slightly higher as I find myself becoming increasingly frustrated.
“What do you have against Finn? Why are you so sure he won’t ask me out?”
“Phoebe, it’s great that you have a work crush. Those are always fun.”
He would know.
“You can have a crush on Finn and go on this date with Matthew,”
Jonathan continues. “I know that’s scary for you. And I’m not saying that
Finn won’t ask you out eventually; I just want you to respond to the guy who already did.”
“I don’t think I can.” My voice sounds small, and I taste the salt of tears rolling down my cheeks before I register that I’m crying.
I’ve done this before. This thing where, in a moment of courage like the one I had last night, I overestimate myself. But I always run in the other direction the moment it becomes real. And Matthew’s response has made this real.
Jonathan’s voice gets softer to match mine. “What changed between yesterday and today? You agreed: no backing out.”
“I’ll have a panic attack.”
“So?” Jonathan asks. “Is that really the worst thing?”
“Yes,” I tell him. “It’s one thing if it happens when I’m alone, or in front of you, but to totally lose it like that in front of someone else…” I shiver at the memory of Lucas’s horrified, vomit-covered face before he sprinted for the doors. “I can’t go through that again. Especially in front of Matthew.
He’d never talk to me after that.”
I take a deep breath, willing the tears to stop. I think back to the first time I thought, There’s something really wrong with me. It’s hard to believe there was a time before that day when that thought was foreign to me. Because now, especially on days like this one, it feels like the only thing on my mind.
“There’s something wrong with me.” I echo my thoughts, turning back toward the TV screen, desperate to avoid eye contact with Jonathan.
He moves over to my side of the couch and puts his hand on my knee.
“Look at me,” he says, and I turn to him even though the last thing I need right now is for him to get a good look at my crying face.
It’s completely hideous.
“Did you know that the Greg McDaniels incident is one of my favorite memories of you?”
I cringe thinking back to sophomore year, when I dragged Jonathan along with me to the improv show of my latest crush, Greg from Writing 101. Greg was weird. He was obsessed with model trains and Archie comics, but I thought he was the perfect level of nerdy to put my anxiety at ease. Maybe
being the cool one would give me the confidence I needed. After his improv show, which was so painful that Jonathan hid his face in his sweatshirt for the entire two hours, the three of us went out for drinks. Which is when Greg told me that he thought he was in love with me and asked if he could kiss me.
It was exactly what I had dreamed of.
“Excuse me for a second,” I had told him, and locked myself in the bar’s bathroom. Jonathan came knocking on the door ten minutes later, only to find me drenched in sweat, lying on the bathroom floor with a wet paper towel draped across my forehead, and “soothing ocean sounds” blasting from my iPhone speaker. I sent him back out to Greg, where I had him make up an elaborate family emergency, and then snuck out the back exit of the bar. The next morning, I switched out of Writing 101.
I never saw Greg again.
“That’s one of your favorite memories? Why?”
He smiles. “Because the fact that you could get yourself so worked up over a guy you just watched bomb his improv set while wearing a bald cap… it was endearing, Phoebe. I love how hard you feel your feelings.”
That’s one way to put it, I guess.
“And there’s nothing wrong with you. You just get anxious sometimes.”
There’s nothing wrong with you.
I wish I believed him.
I bury my face deep into the part of his neck that meets his shoulder and try not to think about all the snot I’m getting on his T-shirt as he holds me.
Even after he’s showered, I can still smell his cologne. Musk and sandalwood. I take a deep breath in through my clogged nose. After a few minutes pass, my breathing starts to even out, and Jonathan’s grip on me loosens as I lift my head from his shoulder. I’ve made a decision.
I walk over to the other side of the couch to grab my phone. I hand it to Jonathan. He begins to type. “The wedding is next Friday, right? That means you’ll be free on Saturday?”
“Yes,” I offer hesitantly. “But don’t tell him that! Just say…” I pause while I weigh my options. “Say I’ll be free sometime next weekend and that I don’t know my exact schedule yet.”
Jonathan protests. “But that’s giving yourself a chance to back out.”
I nod in agreement. “Yeah, but this makes it harder to. Meet me halfway.”
He smiles softly and gets to work on crafting a message.
I look away as he presses send.
—
After I tuck myself into bed and before I put my phone away for the night, I send Matthew my Wordle score.
Matthew:
I’ll beat you one of these days, Phoebe Berman
Phoebe:
I’m sure you will, Matthew Baxter
But it might be a while
Matthew:
I have a while.
