“You like Italian food and I looked at the ratings for like fifty places in a two-hour radius and this was the best one, plus I was able to get us in. What’s wrong?” He’s confused and I can’t blame him for it.
“Josh, there are like five hundred Italian restaurants at home. You could have taken me to any of them. Why did we drive two hours to have dinner?”
“I wanted to talk to you.”
I wanted to talk to you. He says it like it’s the most obvious answer in the world. He drove us two hours away for dinner, to a place where no one would know us, so that we could have a conversation. I want to laugh and cry and hug the living crap out of him. I kiss him instead. As soon as my lips are on his, his hand is at the back of my neck and he’s pulling me against his chest like he’s been waiting for this forever and he’s not going to let me get away. But I don’t want to get away; and if the steering wheel wasn’t there, I would climb into his lap just to be closer to him.
Then he shifts just slightly and I’m not kissing him anymore. He’s kissing me. And when he does, part of me is lost. But it’s the part that’s twisted and mangled and wrong, and for just that moment, with his hands in my hair and his lips on my mouth, I can pretend that it never existed.
“I thought you were pissed,” he says when I pull away. “Not that I’m complaining.”
“I am, but not at you.” My hands are still wrapped around his upper arms and I really don’t want to let go.
“At what, then?” he asks, brushing the hair that came loose out of my eyes.
“Everything else.”
He did all of this so that we would be able to go out and actually talk to one another and he brought me to the one place where we can’t do that. He’s just staring at me now like he doesn’t know what that means and he’s not sure where we go from here. I’d like to just go home and sit in his garage where everything is comfortable and I can sand down wood and watch piles of sawdust grow around my feet and feel like I’m okay for however long I stay there.
There’s something in the way he’s looking at me that freaks me out, but I can’t look away. He leans in again and I don’t move at all until I feel his lips on mine. There’s a reverence in the way he kisses me that frightens me, because it’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever felt.
“Sorry,” he says. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a really long time, I just wanted to do it again.”
“How long?”
“Since the first night you walked into my garage.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” I confess.
“Why?”
“I had just thrown up. I think it would have ruined the moment.”
“As opposed to this moment which is now full of romance.” He smiles and I let go of his arms and sit back, trying to figure out what to say.
“Do you want to go in?” he asks finally.
I shake my head. “We can’t stay here.”
“Why not?” he asks, and I feel terrible for taking this away from him. Just another thing that I can add to the list of disappointments I’ve leveled at people I care about. I don’t want Josh Bennett’s disappointment, too. I don’t think I can handle it. But I don’t have a choice right now. There’s no amount of disappointment that can get me in that restaurant. I look at Josh and wish I could just kiss him again instead of having to answer, but I know I’m not getting out of this one.
“Because it’s where I’m from.”
***
Our attempt at normalcy ends up being bad pizza at a hole-in-the-wall we found somewhere on the road between Brighton and home, and there’s nothing about it that’s normal. It’s not even extraordinary. It’s perfect and I want it to stay perfect, but nothing ever does. People like Josh Bennett and I don’t get perfect. Most of the time, we don’t even get remotely tolerable. And that’s why it scares me. Because, even if there was such a thing to begin with, perfect never lasts.
***
We pull in to Margot’s driveway just before eleven and I look at Josh because I don’t know why he brought me here instead of back to his house.
“I had a good time tonight,” he says.
“Shouldn’t I be saying that to you?”
“I don’t know. Is there a rule?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I concede. “I had a good time, too. It was fun. All things considered.” I still feel bad for ruining his plans.
“No things considered,” he says gently, lifting his hand to my cheek before leaning over to kiss me. Just once. And it isn’t perfect. It’s soft and warm and true and real. “It was fun. Nothing else matters.”
Nothing else matters. If I had a penny right now, I’d wish that were true; I want to believe it more than I’ve ever wanted to believe anything.
“Then why are you bringing me back here?” I ask.
He shrugs sheepishly. “I thought it would be kind of presumptuous to expect you to sleep with me on the first date.”
I yawn before he even finishes speaking. “If all you’re expecting is sleep, then I’m a sure thing.”
“Well,” he smiles, “far be it from me to turn down a sure thing.”
And with that, he backs his truck out of the driveway, and we go home.
CHAPTER 38
Nastya
My first therapist’s name was Maggie Reynolds. She talked to me like a kindergarten teacher would. Soft and patient and unthreatening. Coddling. It made me want to smack her in the face and I really wasn’t a smack someone in the face kind of person at that time. Not like I am now, when pretty much everybody makes me want to smack them in the face.
Every time I asked her why I couldn’t remember what happened, she told me it was natural. Because, isn’t everything? She said it was my brain’s way of protecting me from something I wasn’t ready to face yet. That my mind would never give me more stress than I could handle, and that when I was strong enough, I would remember. We just had to be patient. But it’s hard to be patient when no one else is.
Everyone might have agreed that it was natural to forget, but it didn’t mean they would stop asking. The question was always the same, from the police, from my family, from my therapists. Do you remember anything? The answer was always the same, too. No. I don’t remember anything. Not one single thing about what happened that day.
Then one day I guess my mind decided I was ready, because that was the day I remembered everything and then I stopped answering the questions altogether. I think maybe my brain made a mistake about how strong I was, but it didn’t let me send the memories back.