I Know It's Over (8 page)

Dani scowled at me. “Just help me make the bed, Nick. Then you’re free to go.”

So I did. I helped her tuck in the sheets, then walked out of Dani’s house and into the humidity, still in shock. Part of me was kicking myself. The other part was worried Sasha wouldn’t be interested in me, although the evidence suggested otherwise. On top of that I was starving and dinner would probably be on the minimalist side again.

I walked all the way home, feelings jumbled up inside me like a can of stew. The house was deserted when I got there and the first thing I did was stick a pizza in the microwave. I ate it in front of the TV with a can of ice-cold Coke, trying not to think about the implications of what I’d just done and the second thing I did, I picked up the phone and called Sasha Jasinski.

seven

Sasha’s parents had
endless rules when it came to guys. They made lies a necessity from the start. We spent the odd night at their house for dinner or watching TV in the room off the kitchen and even fewer nights at my house, my mom happily presiding over the events. The rest of the time we were at the mall, the movies, the beach, or up in my room for the afternoon with the door shut (alibis courtesy of Lindsay and Yasmin) and Holland swearing not to rat us out. Not much happened up there anyway. Sasha made it clear that there were a lot of things she wasn’t ready for. I told her I was okay with that and in some ways I was. I didn’t want to rush her.

Of course it wasn’t as simple as that. I really wanted her. I thought about her all the time. Sometimes I imagined us doing the stuff Dani and I had done. Other times I found myself speed-dialing Sasha’s cell phone to tell her the stupidest things. Like once I called just because a song reminded me of “Unsent,” Sasha’s favorite Alanis Morissette song. Another time we watched
CSI
together over the phone, talking through the commercials, and at the end of the show Sasha said, “I have to babysit Saturday. You want to come by?”

“I don’t know,” I said dryly. “What’s the rule book say on that?”

“Same thing it always says,” she replied, “but the Wilkinsons won’t be back until after midnight.” Two and a half hours after Sasha’s curfew. I liked the sound of that but was surprised she’d offered; she wasn’t wild about breaking her folks’ rules. “I’ve been thinking about the end of summer,” she continued. “Between hockey, school, and everything else we probably won’t have much time together.”

“Probably,” I agreed, not liking the thought of that. Keelor had been giving me shit for not spending more time on the ice lately. I’d only made two late-night hockey games so far that summer and my stickhandling had definitely gotten rusty. Weekly practices and a busy game schedule would take care of that in the fall, but usually I made more of an effort year-round.

“I’m thinking I’m going to miss you,” she said.

I smiled into the phone. “We’ll make time, right?”

For sure. There probably wouldn’t be time for
CSI
over the phone, but there’d definitely be time for her. I didn’t think I could go a week without spending time alone with Sasha. You spend months barely acknowledging someone’s existence and then BOOM, you’re emotionally addicted to her. Science would probably blame it on chemicals, genetics, or something equally logical, but it didn’t feel like anything logical.

Sometimes I’d catch Sasha kissing me with her eyes open. It was a weird feeling, someone watching you from that close, and it’d usually make me laugh and have to stop.

“You’re doing it again,” I’d say.

One time she’d put her hands on either side of my face and replied, “I like the way you look when you’re kissing—when I see your face, it’s like I know how you feel.”

I knew what she meant. I looked at her all the time too. The way she stared back at me made me feel like she was really seeing me. Because most people don’t actually see you. People aren’t very good at that generally. Most people can only recognize certain parts of someone else, not the whole picture. Maybe you’re lucky if one other person can really see you. Maybe you’re not meant to be able to see everybody; maybe that would be even more confusing. I don’t really have a clue how that works except that I thought Sasha could see me and that I could see her.

So of course I’d spend Saturday night with her. I didn’t feel bad about sneaking around like she did. Parents shouldn’t force you lie to them. I get that lots of parents have a no-bedroom rule when it comes to the opposite sex. I get that nobody wants their kid driving around under the influence. A nine-thirty curfew, on the other hand, is total insanity. When I worked nights, I didn’t even get home until nine-thirty.

I hung around with Keelor on Saturday afternoon. He’d hooked up with this girl named Karyn a few days after Dani’s party and was no longer engaging in Vix-related activities. That put us in a similar position, but I knew that he didn’t understand what I saw in Sasha. We’d spent all of one evening with him and Karyn during the last month, a polite but strained evening that made it obvious Keelor and Sasha weren’t interested in getting to know each other any better than they already did.

When I’d asked Sasha about it later, she said, “He was in my math class last year, okay? I know what he’s like. All those stupid sexual jokes. Everything is about sex with him. It’s like he has no other way of relating to girls. He was totally like that with Karyn.”

“He’s not like that with you, though,” I pointed out.

“He would be if I let him.”

“You know, sometimes you take things too seriously,” I told her. “She obviously likes him. What makes you think you can decide what’s okay between other people?” I didn’t tear down her incredibly boring friends. Never mind that Lindsay was obsessed with everything that was happening between Sasha and me because she had no life outside the educational system or that Yasmin believed dropping twenty pounds would solve all her problems when her attitude was the real issue.

“I’m not deciding for other people,” Sasha said. “I know you’ve been friends a long time. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be or anything. I’m just saying I don’t like him. That’s all.”

“Well, I do, so maybe you could lay off him,” I said defensively. It didn’t matter whether she was right or not—only that she was bad-mouthing him.

Sasha got all serious on me, saying I shouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want the truth. I told her she’d never given Keelor a chance and the conversation circled around with no good place to go. It bothered me that she and Keelor hadn’t hit it off, but I can’t say that it surprised me; after all, I was their only common denominator. So we argued about it, yeah, but that didn’t change either of our feelings and we got smart about it quick.

The solution was limited social crossover between Sasha and most of my friends and a little creativity when it came to scheduling, which was how I came to be over at Keelor’s on Saturday afternoon. I brought my in-line skates and Keelor and I bladed over to Gavin’s and played video games until his mom called the three of us up to the kitchen to stuff us with homemade lasagna. Gavin always seemed a little embarrassed by his mom. She would’ve made a perfect 1950s housewife—forever cooking, cleaning, decorating, and fussing over Gavin and his dad, with no career to distract her. Gavin’s dad was a throwback too. He said things like “pardon me” and “that’s the darnedest thing.” He’d probably have a heart attack if he saw the photos stored on Gavin’s computer. I have to say both his parents were nice, though. The worst thing you could say about them was that they tried too hard. His dad insisted on driving Keelor and me home later that night and even ended up taking me over to the Wilkinsons after he overheard me mentioning my plans to Keelor. I thanked him, saying that my girlfriend got nervous when she had to babysit late.

“It’s a scary world out there,” he agreed.

It was almost ten o’clock when we pulled into the driveway. I watched Gavin’s dad reverse and then tapped softly on the door, scared I’d wake the kids. Sasha opened the door and smiled at me. “The coast is clear,” she said, taking my hand. “Come in.” I followed her down the hall and into the TV room. Some British detective show was on and Sasha grabbed the remote and turned the volume down.

We sat on the couch, the two of us occupying one seat. “So what’d you do today?” Sasha asked, throwing one of her legs over mine and burying her head in the crook of my neck.

I told her about Gavin and Keelor and she hummed in response. “What’d you do?” I asked, squeezing her thigh. My hands traced slowly over her top and she hummed into my ear, licking at it and making me crazy. I slid her under me, our bodies extended along the length of the couch, and slipped my hands under her top. Her
clothes-on
rule killed me at times. The fact that my hands could touch what I couldn’t see made the experience frustratingly secretive. Touching her like that turned me on more than sharing a bed with Dani.

We did what we always did, we moved against each other until I came. Sasha’s hands stroked my back under my T-shirt. She bit her lip and continued pushing up against me. “You can’t get off like that, can you?” I asked, stroking her hair. We’d never talked about it, but I could tell.

She turned her head so that her expression was half hidden. “It feels good. But no.”

“So.” I put my hand between her legs. “What about like this?”

She closed her eyes and let me do it, still pushing against me. I would’ve done anything she asked me to. It was only her rules that stopped me from making further suggestions. I had this little conversation about it in my head, wondering what was okay to say, as I touched her. You’d think doing something like that would use up all your focus, but it doesn’t always. At that point I was thinking about how I wanted her to enjoy what we were doing as much as I did.

In the end I dropped my mouth close to her ear and said, “Is this how you do it when you’re alone?” We’d never talked about that either. Maybe I was assuming too much, but how else was I supposed to know?

“Not exactly.” A shy smile skipped across her lips. She reached down and unzipped her pants. I got hard again watching her do it. “Don’t take anything off, okay?”

I nodded and slipped my hand down into her underwear. They felt like plain cotton and I thought I’d come again before she did if I didn’t start concentrating. “You can show me how you like it,” I whispered.

Sasha slipped her hand over mine and showed me and I concentrated. Or tried to. I concentrated as best I could considering both our hands were jammed down her pants.

Then all of a sudden this little kid was standing next to the couch in his pajamas, drinking the whole scenario in. “Elijah!” Sasha cried. She zipped up her pants and leapt up from the couch in one swift motion. “What is it?”

The roof-climbing kid. I should’ve known he’d be a problem and he was. He bent over and threw up on the floor. Not a little. I mean, every single thing this kid had eaten for dinner was on that living room carpet—mounds of macaroni noodles swimming in orange goo and sprinkled with the remnants of an undeterminable green vegetable.

Some of the vomit was on his pajama top too and the kid stared down at it and the puddle in front of him, his eyes glassy from the effort of it all. “It’s okay,” Sasha soothed, taking his hand. “Let’s get you into some new pajamas.” She guided him out of the room and I stared over at that same British detective program continuing to unfold on the muted screen, my brain processing everything that had just happened.

The vomit puddle definitely put a spin on the situation. I cleaned myself up first. Then I went into the kitchen and rummaged around in the cupboards, searching for paper towels. A few minutes later I was busy blotting at Elijah’s vomit, which smelled almost as rank as Keelor’s hockey bag. I squirted stain remover onto the Wilkinsons’ beige carpet and visualized the impeccable walls in Dani’s house. Sometimes I still couldn’t believe I’d broken it off with Dani to attach myself to Sasha Jasinski. Not that I regretted it, more that it surprised me that I didn’t.

Sasha stepped back into the room about twenty minutes later, a blanket and pillow in her arms and Elijah two steps behind her. The kid was in fresh pajamas and his hair was sticking out in thirteen different directions—like mine when I rolled out of bed in the morning. “Hey, thanks,” Sasha said, studying the damp spot on the carpet. “You can hardly see it.”

She set the pillow and blanket down next to me on the couch and put her hand on Elijah’s shoulder. “He doesn’t want to be in his room. I told him he could lie down here for a while.” I nodded and vacated the couch. Elijah sat down, his bony knees pressed together, and stared straight ahead with hazy eyes. “My brother’s clingy like that when he gets sick too,” Sasha continued. “He doesn’t like to be alone.” Sasha’s brother was seven and a half and crazy about her. He would never think of picking up a saw without permission. He and Sasha were about as far from problem children as you could get.

I sat down in an armchair and eyed Elijah. “So what do you want to watch?”

Sasha covered him with the blanket as he lay back. Then I heard the kid speak for the first time.
“Spider-Man 3,”
he said clearly, pointing to the entertainment unit.

“That’s a good movie,” I said as Sasha slid the DVD into the machine. She sat in the other armchair and smiled over at me. I smiled back, although I was more restless than happy. The kid’s eyes were glued to
Spider-Man 3
and I thought he was probably having a better night than I was by that point. I kept hoping he’d make a fast recovery or that Sasha would tell him it was time to go back to bed.

Instead the movie played on. About halfway through I gave up and said, “I better go. It’s almost midnight.” Elijah mumbled a goodbye in my direction. I said goodbye back and felt a bit sorry that I’d met the pale imitation instead of the Cocoa-Puffs-crunching, roof-climbing kid.

Sasha walked me to the door and flung her arms around my waist. “I missed you tonight,” she said wistfully. “I really wanted to be alone for a while.”

“I wanted to finish what we were doing.” Saying it made the feeling stronger, and I leaned down and kissed her hard.