I told myself the moment wasn’t right, that I should bide my time. And I both agreed and hated myself for my reasonableness. I wish I could be more unreasonable. Why must I be cursed with such good sense?
I chastised myself internally, entered her room and followed her, a few steps behind. The room was lit only by the glow of her laptop screen. It was mid-afternoon, but it might as well have been midnight. We were neighbors in a New York suburb, but we might as well have been secret lovers stealing away at a hotel we’d pay for by the hour. I’d bet even then I’d come up with a reason to bide my time and wait for a better moment.
When she reached the curtains, she turned and faced me. I was right in front of her, my lips inches from her forehead. She brushed her hair back from her eyes and tucked it behind her ear. Without hesitation, I put my hand on her shoulder and gripped it tight. I leaned in to kiss her. I didn’t try to stop myself. For once, I was free of thought, acting only on impulse and desire.
Just as I leaned in, she bowed her head, wrapped her arms around me and gave me a hug. It was not the kind of contact I was craving. It was a hug like the many hugs she had given me in the past: akin to a sibling hug. My lips brushed her hair, and I kissed her on the head.
“My film wasn’t accepted,” she said. Her voice betrayed her feelings of dejection. And the moment was gone, and I, too, felt dejected.
My hand loosened its grip on her shoulder, and I rubbed her arm. The strong desire I’d felt to possess her, to dominate her, to pleasure her, instantly transformed into another desire, one equally as strong—to comfort and console her.
We stayed in our embrace for I didn’t know how long, long enough for our heartbeats to synchronize and our chests to expand and retract in the same rhythm.
I’d often dreamt of holding her. In my dreams, it never felt quite this good: the heat from her body, her hair lightly tickling my cheek, the scent of her, her warm breath on my neck.
Eventually, she pulled away and walked to her desk, where she opened the message and read it out loud.
“I know I’m not supposed to say, ‘better luck next time,’” I said.
She glared playfully at me. “You’d better not.”
I waved a casual hand in the air. “Luck is a superstition, anyway. And I’m not superstitious.”
“Neither am I. Luck is for the lazy. I don’t need luck. I need to work.” She closed the message. In its place, the screen filled with a picture of three college-aged girls standing in a row in front of what looked like a university building.
“What’s the picture of?” I asked.
“My latest obsession.” She motioned to the picture. “What do you think?”
I shrugged.
“Can you tell which girl I’m obsessed with?”
The girl in the center was tall, like Bonita. But her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and her shirt was tucked in. Too rigid and conventional to interest Bonita. The girl to her right was slightly shorter, blond hair, full body. Her smile was the widest, but her arms hung tight at her sides as if she’d rehearsed the pose but wasn’t yet comfortable enough in her own skin to pull it off. That was more like Bonita.
The girl on the left was the shortest. She stood about a half-step behind the other girls, and her demeanor was slightly more serious. She wore a black skirt, unlike the other girls who’d chosen bright colors, and it was the longest of the three. Had I not been asked to pick one of the three, I might not have even noticed her.
“I can’t tell. You’re difficult to predict.” I smiled at her, and she smiled back. “Not the one in the middle, though,” I said.
Bonita perked up. “So it’s a fifty-fifty guess then.”
The girls had an innocent look to them, early twenties like us. “I’d say the one on the left.”
“This one?” She put her finger on the full-bodied girl with a wide smile.
“Yeah, that one. But it’s just a guess.”
“Hmm. Interesting.”
“Am I right?”
“Maybe.”
“What? You’re not going to tell me if I’m right?”
Bonita looked at the picture then at me with an excited yet devious expression on her face. “Fuck, marry, kill.”
“Well, I’m not going to kill the girl you’re obsessed with. That would be rude.”
“And fucking her? Would that be rude?”
The way I’d fuck her, probably.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Why? Would you be jealous?”
“Of her or of you?”
I cocked my head to the side. “Interesting.”
“Go on. Fuck, marry, kill.”
As much as I looked forward to possibly having a conversation with Bonita about fucking, this was not the kind of game I enjoyed playing—not generally. But I was not in the habit of refusing Bonita anything. Plus, her excitement was contagious.