Love and Other Foreign Words (9 page)

“Oh. Cool,” he says, and after
cool
, he withdraws for most of the evening into what I can only describe as quiet contemplation.

I like this side of him since I speak this language and know not to ask
What's on your mind? What's on your mind
—or, worse,
Penny for your thoughts
—breaks the flow of ideas that percolate in quiet contemplation until they either produce a plan of attack, a resolution, or the need to scream
how
and
why?!

• • •

At dinner Jen whispers to me, “Is Stefan okay?”

“He's fine.”

She widens her eyes at me and waits—hopes—for more, but all I can tell her is, “He's really fine.”

Later in the ladies' room, Emmy asks a little too enthusiastically to suit me, “So, did you and Stefan get in a fight on the way here?”

“No. He's just thinking.”

“About what?”

“I don't know yet. He'll tell me when he's ready.”

She looks at me the way Jen earlier looked at me—as if she knows something I do not.

At the prom, Stefan and I chitchat comfortably, and he even laughs a little when I tell him how I grilled my mother about the sanitary standards of the Breathalyzer test required for entry here. Several years ago, the chaperones
finally
noticed that couples were showing up to the prom bombed, so the administration implemented the test at the doorway. I needed to know from my mother that I'd have my own plastic tube to blow into, or I'd have to refuse the test—I who have never had a drop of alcohol in my life outside of church. And part of me actually worried a little about taking the test. What if I didn't blow hard enough? What if I blew too hard? Or for too long a time? Or not long enough? It's a test, after all, and I wanted to get it right on the first try.

“Only you would want to get an A on a Breathalyzer,” Stefan says with a goofy smile, and it embarrasses me into the admission that, yes, I would.

We dance, and he asks me, “What do you call people who have something weighing really heavy on their minds?”

“Do you?” I ask, tilting my head to the left to look at him.

“Maybe not weighing on it. But what's a good word for just thinking?”

“Contemplative,” I say. “Or meditative. Pensive. Reflective.”

“Geez, where were you last semester? You could have tutored me all through College Comp.” Then some seconds pass and we're nearing the end of this song when he says, “You know I really like you, Josie.”

“I really like you too.”

“Yeah?” he asks. “Good.”

But this seems an unusual admission to me. I took it as a given in our relationship. If Person A agrees to go to the prom with Person B, who asked Person A in the first place, Persons A and B can be reasonably understood to like each other.

I am about to say this to Stefan, but in his language, not mine, when I am distracted to the point of giggling—well, suppressed snickering, anyway—at the sight of Stu's face, pained with boredom as he dances with a clinging Sarah Selman. She's like an enormous pink dryer sheet stuck via static electricity to the front of Stu's tux.

I bury my face in Stefan's neck to keep from laughing, and he startles me by tipping his head against mine. We finish the song this way and smile at each other when the music ends. I can't interpret his smile, and I know he can't interpret mine. It's the one I reserve for Emmy when I have to speed-translate one of her snarkier remarks. It's the one I use when I'm trying to figure out what she means.

• • •

I do not want to attend the after-prom party but agree since it's included in the price of the tickets. But I can only reasonably handle thirty minutes of the thing before I begin to fray at my mental health edges.

Long before now I have had my fill of:

loud music

flashing lights

constant motion

constant noise

shouting to talk

straining to hear

speaking Ohmig*d

translating Ohmig*d

I have overloaded my nervous system to its breaking point and now must go find peace, solitude, stillness, darkness, and quiet. And I need the entire world to stop touching me—friends grabbing my arm to talk, all of us squeezing past one another in crowds, even Stefan and I dancing. It is all too jarring.

Stefan knew this about me beforehand. I even offered, when I explained my sensory limitations, to have my parents come pick me up so he could stay at the party, and I make the offer again tonight.

“No, it's cool. I'm ready to go too,” he says, and for several long, luxurious moments, we soak in silence in his car. I could ride the whole way home like this. In fact, I do ride the whole way home like this, feeling some disappointment when Stefan pulls into my driveway that the soothing car trip is over.

“So,” he says as if it is a complete sentence.

“I'd invite you in, but I'm so tired, I'm just going to fall asleep.”

“Well, don't before I tell you something. Or ask you something.” He thinks a second, moving his big, gold eyes up and to the right. “Or both.”

“Okay,” I say, and wait.

He inhales. Lets it out. Squirms a little. Inhales again.

“It's—you said neither of us—it's just that—well, what would you say if I told you I like you a lot?”

“You said that,” I say, smiling because he actually grows cuter when he's nervous.

“No, I mean a lot,” he says very seriously. “A lot.”

I quickly think, trying to decipher—to translate—
a lot
into a language I can understand because, at the moment, I don't know what it means in Stefan. A lot is a lot, a great deal, very much. But why the gravity? And just when I think I begin to comprehend, he says, “Josie, I think I could fall in love with you.”

“Really?” I ask, stunned. Genuinely stunned. “Why?”

“Why?” he nearly laughs.

“Yeah. I don't mean why me. I mean why do you think you could? Fall in love, that is. And that would, necessarily, imply with me, so maybe I do mean why me, but more
why
than
me
.”

“Well,” he says, and puffs out a laugh. “That's part of the reason right there. I mean, the way you talk. It's like I never know what to expect, and it's all good. Though sometimes, you know, I have to take a minute to figure it out.”

“Translating,” I say. “I do it all the time.”

“Exactly. I hardly have to talk sometimes, you know. It's like you know what to say when I don't. You're great. You're fun. You're interesting. You're smart. And . . .” He leans in, reaches for my glasses, which makes me flinch. “. . . Sorry,” he says as he slips them off.

“You realize I can't . . .”

He kisses me.

“ . . . see without them,” I say.

“Then close your eyes,” he says, and kisses me again, and this time I think about the kiss, his kiss, his lips, his tongue, his teeth when ours bump, and all of it is sweet. Soft and smoother than I imagined. So soft and so smooth that it has the very opposite effect on my nervous system than it should. It doesn't overload me. It soothes.

Eventually, he leans just a few inches back and says, “Now would be a good time for you to tell me how you feel about me.”

Now
would
be a good time for that,
I nearly say. It's an excellent idea with perfect timing. He waits, eyes bright with anticipation, as I ponder this whole moment.

“Do you, um, do you think you could, maybe, fall in love with me?” he asks.

“Can I think about it?” I ask. “Because I actually want to get it just right.”

I could not be more serious, and Stefan smiles his contagious smile at me and says, “Yes. I mean, if anyone else had said that, I might be upset, but you . . . See, this is why I really think I could fall in love with you.”

And he kisses me again, which initially I like, but I admit that now I'm paying more attention to the question and its potential answer than to his lips. Which is too bad since I'm probably missing a really nice kiss.

I wake at 7:10 a.m. to a handful of texts resembling this one from Jen Auerbach:

Text from Jen, 12:53 a.m.

U R missing such a fun after-party call me when you get this unless its b4 2 pm which it will B so call me after 2

As I scroll through the rest of them, I find this one from Stefan sent just after he got home last night from dropping me off:

gnite Josie. I had a really great time. Thx

I smile as I continue scrolling.

Text from Stu, 7:03 a.m.

Sarah broke up with me last night.

Text to Stu, 7:13 a.m.

Stefan told me he thinks he could fall in love with me.

Text from Stu, 7:14 a.m.

What did U say?

Text to Stu, 7:14 a.m.

I need time to consider this.

Text from Stu, 7:15 a.m.

Sarah cried.

Text to Stu, 7:15 a.m.

Stefan didn't.

Text from Stu, 7:16 a.m.

Neither did I.

Text to Stu, 7:16 a.m.

I need to hear this story. Tell Auntie Pat I'm coming over for breakfast and meet me in your kitchen in 15 min.

I'm sitting at the granite-topped breakfast bar in the Wagemakers' kitchen, nibbling on buttered toast, when Moses the cat jumps up on the stool next to me—Stu's stool if he were down here. Stu's a pseudo morning person—awake and cogent early but not ready to move for hours, if he has the choice. I dip the tip of my finger in a bit of unmelted butter and allow Moses to lick it off before Auntie Pat notices.

When I hear Stu thudding down the back stairs, I quickly scratch Moses' head and pick him up with the intention of safely depositing him on the floor. But he squirms, and I slide. He jumps. I topple right off the stool and end up as Swiss Army Josie on the floor—legs and arms folded at all sorts of odd angles at Stu's feet.

“Good morning,” I manage, looking up and untwisting myself.

“Impressive,” he says, taking his seat. “Even for you.”

“Stu—Josie,” Auntie Pat says, hurrying to help me up.

“That cat is never going to come near me again,” I say, straightening my ponytail once I'm vertical.

“
I
barely want to,” Stu says, exaggerating a look of wild-eyed bewilderment.

Within a couple of minutes, we are settled again at the breakfast bar. Stu's eating cereal out of a mixing bowl and answering me between and during bites, which doesn't really bother me. I speak Stu Chewing.

“So dinner was boring,” I say, recapping his story so far. “Prom was okay. What happened at after-prom?”

“She gah ma a mih,” he says.

She got mad at me.

“Why?”

He swallows that mouthful, and I put my hand on his wrist to prevent another bite. I speak Stu Chewing, but I want to hear this loud and clear.

He pushes the bowl aside and looks directly at me to say, “She told me she loves me.”

“And you didn't say it back!” I nearly shout, happily and quickly, before he can finish the story.

“Yeah. Okay. I didn't.”

“I knew it,” I say under my breath.

“So she goes running out of the place, and I follow her, and we can't get back in once we leave, so I drive her home, which gives her the opportunity to vent her vitriol against me about eleven inches from my ear, listing, among my other faults, that I don't listen, don't care about her feelings, don't love her—ignoring me every time I told her how much I
like
her”—he sighs—“and ruined what was supposed to be the best night of her life.”

“And you said?”

He raises his shoulders high as he grudgingly admits, “I told her I was sorry and hoped senior prom would be better for her.”

“Oh, geez.”

“Yeah, she wasn't happy with that response either. She started crying.”

Stu hates it when girls cry. He says no guy knows how to react to that, and he's always afraid, in that moment, he's going to offer her his car or one of his kidneys just to make her stop, and calls that a verbal contract he wouldn't want to keep.

So I ask him about cars and kidneys, and he says, “My name remains on the titles to all three.”

“All
three
?” I ask as he slides his bowl closer. “You're assuming you don't have a rare third kidney.”

“Yah, I shu geh tha che ow.”

Yeah, I should get that checked out.

• • •

“I like him,” I tell Kate the following Saturday. We are lying on her bed, heads tipped together, looking at the long, curvy shadows the streetlights and her curtains create on her walls and ceiling.

“This is great, Josie,” she says. “But do you think it could turn into love?”

“I don't know.” I have just told her about Stefan. “How can you predict something like that? Did you start off liking Geoff and then discover, some moment, that it had turned into love?”

“I don't know how to explain it, other than . . . no, I just knew I did. I mean, of course I liked him first, but then, yeah, pretty quickly, I guess, I felt something more.”

“Why? How? How did you know? And while we're on this topic, you actually liked Geoff when you first met him?”

“Josie, we agreed. No Geoff tonight.”

“No Geoff live and in person tonight,” I clarify.

“You said ‘no Geoff' when I invited you over, and I promised you no Geoff tonight. So I'm extending that even to our conversation.”

“I'm just trying to understand why you're going to marry him.”

“No, you're not. You're trying to pick a fight with me about him. I know you don't like him.”

I prop myself up on my elbows.

“I just don't think that he's right for you,” I say.

“Oh?” She sits up. “And who do you think is right for me?”

“Someone other than Geoff.”

“Such as?”

“Well, go pick someone. I'll vet him, and then I'll let you know. Better yet, let
me
pick someone this time.”

“Josie,” she says, raising one hand toward me as if I'm traffic she's stopping. “I'm not going to argue with you, and I'm not going to defend Geoff.”

“Because you'll lose the argument since there is no defense.”

She pushes her traffic cop hand at me a second time, which is new, and I dislike it. Then she repeats herself —
I'm not going to argue with you
—which I dislike even more.

“Now. Tell me about Stefan,” she says, and after a tense couple of seconds spent in standoff, I flop back down on her bed. She does the same, copying my sigh but trying to cajole me with a shoulder nudge.

“I know you're trying to redirect me,” I say.

“It is impossible to redirect you. But I still love you.”

“I know,” I say, and nudge her shoulder back. “I love you too.”

We talk about Stefan and all the things I like about him until somewhere between his smile and the way he kisses, we both fall asleep.

• • •

In the morning I overhear Kate on the phone to Geoff.

“We had a great time,” she says, “and it worked perfectly. I said exactly what you suggested and even did the hand gesture exactly like you showed me.”

What?!

“It was fabulous.” She giggles as she adds, “I think for the first time in Josie's life, she really has met her match.”

• • •

My parents pick me up from Kate's at nine forty for church, and in lieu of hello, I say to them, “I want you to know that I am not putting up with Geoffrey Stephen Brill much longer. I have no intention of attending their wedding, nor will I ever speak to Geoff again if Kate goes through with it. Please pause to imagine how much fun holidays will be. And if you dread the thought as much as I do, then you should side with me in opposing this wedding. His very presence will disrupt the perfect harmony that is our family. Now, shall I redirect us with an uplifting account of last night's events?”

“If you wouldn't mind, my dear,” my mother says, and I oblige, omitting the part about Kate's new job as traffic cop.