Page 46 of No Interest in Love

“Oh, hey…” she turned around and walked back, shaking her head at the floor. “In case I don’t see you again, even though we keep running into each other, thanks for getting me home…you know, last time.”

I’m not sure if she said it as a business tactic. But if she did, it didn’t matter. I let her get to the door before I chased after her.

Shay’s knee bumps into mine, and I blink my eyes open to the present.

“Whydidyou change it?” she asks.

“Huh?”

“Your name.”

Oh. “It’s stupid.”

“I assumed that.”

“Well, I love you too.”

She kicks her feet up, resting them on the edge of my seat. “So…?”

“I like…s’s.”

“The letter.”

“Yeah. I can write them better thanc’s.”

She nods, and I’m glad I don’t have to elaborate. She knows my handwriting is shit. She knows I had to get extra help when I was in grade school, and I refuse to get help now that I’m an adult. She knows I’ve always been a little self-conscious andextremelygrateful for the digital age, when you can type pretty much anything.

She knows, and for the first time I realize how huge that is. I can let a girl see me in the buff, do things with her and to her in any place imaginable, and while it feels great and it’s part of the Stinson dream, it’s not intimate at all. It’s nothing compared to being fully nude mentally. Maybe a little bit emotionally. And to be that way and have someone not hold it against you. Even understand it. Even more bizarre is that person is Miss Unlikely.

When I decided to use a stage name, I wanted something that would look good when I signed it. So I practiced “Jace Carver,” but even though that’s been my name my whole life, thec’s ended up backward six times out of ten. I’d always been better ats’s, especially cursives’s. So I fixed it. I get it right nine times out of ten now.

“I should just get a stamp made,” I say, trying to grin, but I swear the train runs over a mountain troll, shaking the entire room. I clutch at my stomach and start silently praying the train tucks in its wheels and takes off in flight, like inBack to the Future Part III.

“I’ve never seen anyone’s skin that color before.” Shay gives me a once-over, then stands. Her ass is in my face again, but I’m too sick to even ogle it. “I know you don’t want to, but I need you to get up.”

“Why?”

“I’m lowering the bed.”

I shove my butt from the seat, reach out and grab the unsteady wall, and then start praying.

Doc and Marty, you have a time machine. Get me the hell off this damn train.

A fewclinksand one very loudCLUNKlater, Shay lets out a long breath and turns to me.

“Okay, lie down.”

The bed isn’t lowered enough to make it possible to just plop down and take a snooze. Nah, I gotta climb up on the toilet, then take another step up on the inch-wide step next to the fold-out sink, andthenonto the bed. By the time my head hits the pillow, I’m ready to roll back off and stick my face in the crapper.

“Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth,” Shay says, leaning against the wall and playing with her fingernails. “My dad always told me to do that.”

“And it works?”

“I’m almost eight years barf-free.” She peeks out the privacy curtain. “I’m going to try to score you some water.”

“Don’t get caught.” I hear the door softly open and close, and I toss my arm over my eyes.

Doing the opposite of what Shay says is my normal instinct, but I inhale deeply and let it out, repeating until, surprisingly, my stomach decides to move back to where it belongs, in my gut and not in the back of my throat. Mr. Kwak is really onto something with this method.

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