We Are Totally Normal - Rahul Kanakia Page 0,38

on the button of his jeans. My legs were splayed out on the trundle bed, rocking it back and forth. Now he sat down next to the bag, still searching through it for something, and I lay back, closing my eyes, listening to the sound of the lake.

Then his arm brushed mine, and I opened my eyes to see his face coming at me.

“Whoa, whoa,” I said. “What’s happening?”

“I, uhh,” he said. “I . . . Sorry. I’m sorry. I got too close.”

“Oh.” I nodded. “Oh, okay.”

“S-sorry.”

“N-n-no,” I said. “No problem.”

He gave me a smile. Dave was leaning over me, and I squirmed, which sent him shooting to his feet.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “Get changed. We’ll go down.”

I stood outside the closed door, waiting for him to be finished, and I suddenly had a weird thought. I knocked rapidly on the door. “Are you done?”

When he said yes I rushed in.

“Dude,” I said. “You were trying out Pothan’s advice, weren’t you?”

“Huh?”

“You did it just like he said. Plausible deniability. Maneuver me up here. Get me on the bed.”

The smell of sweat filled the room.

“Sorry, man,” he said. “I just— I’m so awkward—I’m terrible.”

“No, no, no, it was good. It’s just—”

“What?” he said. “What were you gonna say?”

Now I closed the door, and I sat on the bed with one leg wrapped underneath me. “All right, dude,” I said. “It’s like, here’s the thing. What you did? Totally fine. That’s great. It usually works. But . . . I don’t know. I really don’t. With you and Mari, I wanted something better. And that’s my fault, because I didn’t tell you. I just let Pothan say all that shit, and I never told you different. But it sucks to play all these games. I mean there’s nothing wrong with it—no—no—no—” Seeing the look on his face, I put out a hand. “There really is nothing wrong with it. At least most of the time. . . .”

He still hadn’t spoken, and now my eyes flashed. “Just—come on—just sit here.”

He took a seat on the other side of the bed, mirroring my position, and I said, “You know, Mari and you. I was picturing, like, you go for a walk by the lake. You hold hands. You say nice things to each other. Totally relaxed, you know. Maybe you don’t have sex. Or even get naked. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Now Dave rolled his eyes.

“What?” I said. “What’s this expression?”

“If that’s what you were thinking,” he said, “maybe you could’ve told me? You had this whole picture, and I had access to none of it.”

“No,” I said. “This all just came to me. I think what I wanted—literally more than anything—was for you to just—” My thumb and forefinger rubbed against each other. “For you to do it right. For everything to go right. For you to . . . I don’t know. You’re so amazing. And all that shit Pothan was talking about, it just makes you feel bad. That’s how a person’s soul dies.”

He coughed. “Well, whatever, I don’t need to worry about it now.”

“Oh, crap. I forgot Mari ran off. But you’ll get another chance. Or I don’t know, if not with her, then with another girl. It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter.”

“No.” Dave gulped. “I’m, uhh, I’m done chasing her.”

He said that so simply that my body opened up, and I put an arm around him before realizing what I was doing.

“It’s okay, Dave. It’s okay.”

“You know, I still can’t do it,” he said. “I screwed everything up. But it’s so hard to juggle every piece of it, and then to also pretend like it’s easy. And . . .” He murmured something I couldn’t hear.

“What was that?”

He spoke again, and again the words were too quiet.

“Dude, I really can’t hear you.”

“I said”—he gulped—“that I liked you so much. Still like you.”

Teardrops hung from his eyelashes, and the moment stretched to eternity. I put out a hand, put it under his chin, and, hating myself for how fake this all felt, I tilted up his head. Then I kissed him very softly.

His eyes went very wide.

And I thought he’d turn me down, say he didn’t want to hook up out of pity, but his hands went up, brushing across the hair of my arms, while mine ran down his sides.

12

AS WE TOUCHED, DAVE KEPT murmuring, “I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe you’re here.”

I had thought that with a guy I