Page 9 of Lovesick
He had kissed me. He had totally kissed me. As in, he started it - and I went with it so enthusiastically I was still surprised.
I caught myself. Actually, I shouldn’t have been surprised. I had been secretly hoping throughout lunch that Marty would kiss me and wondering if I could dare to go for one myself. He had read me just right like he always had when we dated that summer. Even after all these years - and an entire different relationship that ended in divorce - Marty still felt something for me.
I thought nothing had changed, and I was way too right about that. Something still sparked between Marty and me, and we still had to bury whatever was between us and live our very separate lives.
Dejected, I flipped over onto my stomach, leaning on my elbows and holding my phone. Why were the hot ones who weren’t totally insensitive or superficial always unattainable?
Except…maybe Marty wasn’t so unattainable. Spring break was just the week after next, and I had already decided to go home that week and spend it with my family. That meant a whole week of chances to spend time with Marty.
But what would that time accomplish? Two short months, and I would graduate. If I continued to impress during my rotations and pass my boards, I would hopefully be invited to stay on at the Tulane University Cancer Center full-time - as a nurse, not a student. I’d move out of the sorority house, of course, but I would keep living in New Orleans. I couldn’t sacrifice all the time I had put into building connections and building a path to employment at my dream job to move back to Lafayette - especially not for a man.
I shook my head at myself and reached up to rub my eyes.What am I doing?I might as well start naming kids and planning my wedding if I was going to overthink things this hard. One week with a man - even if that man was Marty - was not going to convince me to abandon my entire future and nullify all the work I had put into success.
Zoe had something going on - she had told us she had hooked up with someone at the party last night, but she had shut us down when we asked for details. Abigail had run into some famous guy at her job, of all places. Why shouldn’t it be my turn? If Abigail could loosen up and have some fun, I could too. Nothing earth-shattering and future-detonating would happen if I just spent a few days getting to know Marty again.
“Ugh.” I dragged out the word into a groan and plopped onto my stomach, burying my face in the soft blankets. Kissing Marty was exciting, exhilarating, heavenly and it had left me completely speechless. I hadn’t managed a single word after Marty kissed me. He had drawn away so slowly I could feel every centimeter of afternoon air as it slipped between our lips, kept me in his arms for a second longer, and said, “Bye, Maggie.”
The English language had taken cover somewhere while my mind hunted it down and only come out when he started to walk away. By then, what was I supposed to say? See you later? There was no guarantee of that.
So, instead, I just smiled and waved when he looked back.Real smooth, Maggie.
Wait… There had been something else. A breath of air against my ear, just the tiniest stirring of a whisper. It had come right after the kiss broke when I was at that did-that-really-just-happen stage, and in my struggle to process, I hadn’t paid it any attention.
“Text me when you get home safe, okay?”
I shot back up onto my elbows and saved my phone from its entrapment between my tummy and the bed. “Hey, just wanted to let you know I made it home safe.”I paused.Should I add anything? Like a “thanks for lunch” or something?I wondered.
I ended up just hitting send. The message status went to sent, then delivered, and I settled down onto my back, hugging my softest pillow in preparation for a long, agonizing wait.
The agony lasted ten seconds. My phone vibrated, and I snapped it up above my head so I could see the message. I got a much closer look than intended when I dropped it on my face. More irritated at the delay than the dull ache in the bridge of my nose, I snatched it back up and opened it eagerly.
“Hey! Glad you got home. I had fun today.”
This one was easy to reply to. “Me too! I wish we could have talked longer tho.”
“Yeah. Our moms needed us.”
I let out an amused huff. “Who’s gonna lift all the heavy flowers if you’re not at the shop?”
Since Marty wasn’t here, I took the liberty of imagining a chuckle with his reply. “Irises can be pretty hefty lol.”
We didn’t talk about anything deep as we both chilled in our rooms, texting back and forth. Everything built on something that had been said before and was entirely innocent, just normal conversation anyone might have.
But it was more than that to me, even if we never brought up the kiss at all. It felt so good to hold my phone and know that Marty was on the other end, hanging onto my words and knowing I couldn’t wait for his next message. We had always been good friends, and I’d never managed to have this kind of back and forth banter with anyone but Zoe and Abigail since Marty and I had gone our separate ways.
I didn’t know if he felt the same, but to me, it became a battle of wills after 2 AM. Who would end the texting and send us both to bed?
Neither of us did until 3 AM when I actually heard the birds outside my window start singing and thought about what staying up this late would do to me tomorrow when I started my busy Thursday. I took a quick picture of the silhouette of a bird against one of the streetlamps and sent it to him. “Hey, I wish I could keep talking, but these guys are telling me that I have to get up in four hours. Talk to you tomorrow?”
“Sure. Goodnight”
Not a lot, but I didn’t know what I was expecting from a goodnight message after we had just talked about everything and nothing at the same time for hours. Maybe a soulful proclamation that he wouldn’t sleep until I awoke and texted him I had survived my slumber?
I snorted, plugged my phone into its charger and sneaked out of the room past Abigail and Zoe’s beds. They had gotten home a while ago, trickling in one by one. Both had seemed pretty tired and not done much except watch Netflix in their beds for a while before going to sleep. I had just laid there quietly, headphones on while I listened to music and texted.
Maybe I would talk to Zoe and Maggie tomorrow. I hadn’t told Marty about spring break yet. It hadn’t come up, and I had wanted a little more time to think about things.
Now, I knew at least one thing - I needed to see Marty again. Somewhere during the hours of classes and rotations, I had forgotten all those things, big and little, that had attracted me to him in the first place. I didn’t want to forget again, even if we could only be friends.
