The Difference Between You and Me(61)
Wyatt is so familiar to her, like a family member. Like her own face in the mirror. The sight of him fills her with warmth, recognition, and guilt.
She crosses to the table where he is and sits down opposite him. He looks up sharply, but his eyes widen with surprise when he sees Jesse.
“Oh. Hi.”
“Hi,” Jesse says.
“I can’t really talk right now. Howard’s gonna show up any second.”
“I know, that’s why I’m here.”
“I assumed you weren’t coming.”
“I said I would. I promised.”
“And then you disappeared.”
Jesse nods. “Yeah. I’m really sorry,” she offers. “I know I’ve been weird.”
Wyatt nods back and waits for more. Jesse swallows, mustering her courage.
“It’s just that I’ve been, like, distracted by something and feeling guilty about it, and wanting to tell you about it but feeling like I couldn’t tell you. But I want to tell you now.”
“Let me guess: you’re in love.”
There’s an unmistakable note of sarcasm in Wyatt’s voice. Jesse waits a moment before she says, “Actually, yeah. Or I was.”
“Oh, it’s over already? That was quick. What’s her name again? Myrtle? Hortense?”
“Esther? It’s not Esther, why does everyone think I’m with Esther?”
“Maybe because the two of you keep cuddling up like lovers while you walk around town?”
“I don’t—I never cuddled up to her, and she’s not—I only like Esther as a friend!”
“Too bad, you guys are clearly the perfect couple. You can spend the rest of your lives bringing student councils to their knees together.”
Jesse breathes.
“Can you maybe not be mean to me right now, while I’m trying to, like, tell you something that’s really hard for me to talk about?”
“I’m sorry, I guess I’m not in the perfect mood to hear a big confession from you while I’m sitting here waiting for Howard. You’ve been ignoring me for, like, weeks, and this is not the first time you’ve done this to me. You keep disappearing into wormholes where I can’t find you. It’s like you’re here one second and gone the next. Frankly, it’s getting tiresome.”
“Well, honestly? To be honest? I sort of feel like you’ve been doing that, too.”
“I’m right here,” Wyatt says curtly.
“I know, but like… the Denmark thing?”
“I don’t even know if I’m going to do that, it’s just an idea!”
“And you’re not in school anymore.”
“You know why that is.”
“I know and I’m sorry, but you’re sort of completely gone. So many parts of my life you don’t know about anymore.”
“Because you’re keeping them from me!” Wyatt raises his voice now, his cheeks flushed. The students at the table across the room lift their heads to look at them, and Wyatt hunches over, quiets down again. “It’s been totally obvious that you’ve been hiding some huge secret from me for months, and I let you not talk about it because I know what that can be like. But if you’re not even going to call me back? Seriously, I’m over it.”
“You knew?”
“Give me a little credit, will you? This is me.” Wyatt points to his chest. “So who is it? Is it Carol Bernstein?” he asks.
“Carol Bernstein, the reference librarian? Wy, she’s, like, sixty!”
“I know, but you’re always at your weirdest in the library. I thought maybe Carol Bernstein had cast some magical reference spell over you and made you into her secret boy-toy.”
“Gross. Seriously, gross. It’s Emily Miller.”
Wyatt gives her a blank look, then shakes his head. “Don’t know her.”
“No, you don’t. She’s a junior. She’s student council vice president.”
“Did you bring her to her knees in the meeting?”
“Shut up,” Jesse says, mortified.
But Wyatt laughs at his own joke. “God, that’s it? That’s the big secret? I thought it was going to be, like, a married woman or something.”
“She has a boyfriend,” Jesse says.
“Oh.”
“And she made me swear not to tell anyone we were hooking up.”
“That’s no fun.”
“God, Wy, I felt so awful being with her. I mean, I felt, like, amazing? But I felt like such a bad queer.”
“Well, you are a bad queer.”
“I know, right?”
“But you’re not the first queer to go bad like that. By any means. You remember Rob Strong?”