When I opened my eyes suddenly, I was surprised to find him turned in his seat completely toward me. I had assumed he was looking straight ahead with his eyes closed, like I was. Instead, he was just staring at me, and I seemed to have caught him in the act. Was he doing that the entire time our thumbs were making out?
His breathing was rapid, and he was looking at me like he was struggling to say something, like he definitely wanted to kiss me, like he wanted inside my soul, but something was holding him back.
He took his hand from mine and used it to push my hair behind my ears, sat up and then said, “You better put on your seatbelt. The light just came on.”
We said nothing else for the rest of the flight. My heart was pounding, but this time, it wasn’t because of my fear of flying. It was for fear of Jake. Because I had really thought that something was about to happen between us in that moment, yet in typical Jake fashion, he stopped at the tipping point. And those butterflies in my stomach? They were dead from exhaustion.
***
When I returned from the shower to my bedroom that night, in place of a paper bat on my nightstand, was a pair of plastic gold pilot’s wings that I had apparently earned as a brave flier. So, once again, Jake managed to make me feel like a child.
I was damn proud of myself, though. The feeling was bittersweet because even though our trip rocked, it created more confusion. After today, I was absolutely sure he felt something for me.
The next day, I’d leave for almost two weeks to go home for Christmas break. What I didn’t know was, once I returned to Brooklyn after the holidays, nothing would ever be the same there again.
CHAPTER 16
I was back at my parents’ house all of one day, and I was already itching to see Jake again. It was the weekend, so he would have been in Boston anyway, but it was psychological because I knew I’d be here for several days. It would be the first whole week since I had known him that we would be apart.
I felt empty and hopeless, and it was my first realization that I was truly becoming addicted to him. It was snowing heavily, and while I should have appreciated the beautiful white landscape outside the window, it just made me feel more trapped here.
I sat on the red suede couch, mindlessly flicking through cable channels, while really focused on thoughts of Jake’s thumb brushing against mine.
Then, my mind wandered to that night in his room when he basically kicked me out. I tried really hard in general not to think about that night, those words that came out of his mouth that were so brutally raw. I nearly had an orgasm from just replaying them alone and believed that he meant what he said about the things he wanted to do to me. He was trying hard to stay away. The thought both turned me on immensely and angered me.
At dinner, my parents grilled me about life in New York. They were pretty conservative, and if they thought I was shacking up with someone I wanted to have sex with, they would flip. So, I chose to continue to keep my feelings for my roommate a secret.
“So, honey, have you met any nice young men yet in the city?” my mother asked.
“No one special.”
Someone amazing.
“Do you think you need to get out more? Maybe join a college club or something? I bet you would meet a nice guy if you joined some kind of group.”
Unless he has piercings, a dragon tattoo, wants to make me come until I scream in every way possible and his name is Jake Green…not interested.
“Yeah, maybe,” I said with absolutely no feeling whatsoever.
My mother, Sheryl, always tried to offer up advice on ways I could meet men. Unfortunately, her judgment could not be trusted. Aside from the fact that she thought Spencer was the best thing that ever happened to me, she once tried to set me up with a co-worker’s son who, at first, sounded interesting on paper. He supposedly worked in “makeup” and resembled a famous actor. Very “Hollywood,” right?” It turned out to be a different story once I met the guy. He was a funeral embalmer, which although it weirded me out, I could have lived with, had the celebrity he actually resembled not been Pee Wee Herman. So, I kept my mother out of my love life.
After dinner, I went to my bedroom to daydream in private, while looking out the window at our neighbor’s holiday lights. We had stopped putting lights up after Jimmy died, but our neighbors, the Hardimans, had always put up the same exact decorations every year since I was a kid. Looking out at their front yard was nostalgic because despite everything that we lost when Jimmy died, seeing the same old pair of lit up reindeers and the same inflatable Santa was a glimpse back to the way things were in happier times.
The next night was Christmas Eve. It used to be a huge deal in my house growing up, with lots of presents under the tree and a huge nativity display outside. After Jimmy died, my mother scaled back significantly. All we had this year was a modest tree and two stockings—Jimmy’s and mine—over the fireplace.