Page 85 of Someone Just Like You

I trailed behind him, immediately noticing his jeans were less snug in the butt than I remembered.Is he eating enough?Loss of appetite was a symptom of heartbreak. I hated the thought of Jude being heartbroken.

To his back, I said, “I’ve been thinking about you constantly, and when I received your text, I came straight here from Riverdale.”

He turned around. “Nani?”

I nodded. “Thanks for making the first move and apologizing. Consider it accepted. We’re much too good at hitting each other where it hurts. Lots of practice, I guess.”

Jude gave a barely-there smile. “Truth.”

I cocked my head. He was strangely placid under the circumstances. I cleared my throat. “Can we talk…” My words dropped off, and I did a double take as Jerry and Esther rounded the corner from Jerry’s bedroom behind the kitchen. I knew they’d slept together, but Esther hanging out at his place with his roommates was altogether different from hiding him away in hers.

I regarded her with alook, and with the nonverbal language known only to best friends, asked all the questions.

She shrugged sheepishly, color painting her cheeks, as Jerry tugged her toward the couch.

Fascinating. I returned her shrug with a “to be continued” expression of my own.

Jude said, “Should we go to my room?”

Turning toward him, I said, “Yes” before thinking better of it. “Actually, no.”

He jerked his head back. “No?”

“I didn’t plan to do this before a crowd, but I’m changing the plan.”

Jude blinked.

Ignoring the sweat building under my arms, I nodded. “You heard me right. This is Mollyplanachanging the plan!” I faced the couch where Alex, Jerry, and Esther were watching television. “Can I have your attention, please?”

Alex muted the TV. “The room is yours.”

I turned to Jude. “Can you sit with them?”

He squinted at me, clearly confused. “Okay?”

When he was settled, I said, “I have a few things I need to say to Jude, and I’d like you all to hear it.” I looked at Jude, and saw for a split second the four-year-old boy I played with in the sand at the Jersey Shore, followed by the thirteen-year-old teenager who wowed the audience at his bar mitzvah with the singing voice of an angel. (He later told me in no uncertain terms his parents forced him to invite me.) And finally, the seventeen-year-old almost-man, who lost his chance of becoming a professional athlete in no small part because of our antagonistic relationship.

“When I was five or six, I slighted Jude in front of the other girls in my class, and unbeknownst to me, the boy who had previously been my first and best friend decided then and there he hated me. So began a rivalry that lasted another twenty years. Now I want the world…er…the room…to know how I feel about him.” My voice was shaking, and I took a moment to regroup.

“When we were first thrown together to plan our parents’ party, I thought a forced partnership between Molly and Jude was the worst idea since the Yankees signed Jacoby Ellsbury.” I paused while Jerry chuckled. “I was right. We disagreed on everything and put more effort into our pranks than on planninganything.”

I licked my dry lips and talked directly to Jude. “But then we became friends. Sort of. And then I lusted you, even when I thought I was dying of the flu. And before I knew it and without my permission, I fell in love with you.”

I looked as deeply into his eyes as possible from ten feet away. “I love you, Jude.” I took a deep breath. The old Molly would have waited to declare love until Jude said it first, but this version-in-progress refused to regret the things she didn’t say.

“I wrote a poem outlining some of the reasons I love you and the way you make me feel.” I turned to the others. “I wrote it on the train in five minutes and it’s probably horrible, but I’m reading it anyway. I’m spontaneous like that.” I dared a knowing glance at Jude, who looked like a moose in headlights—an exceptionally sexy moose in black jeans and a red Henley rolled up to expose impressive forearms. I opened my phone to the notes and cleared my throat.

I love the way you make me laugh.

I love the history that we share.

I love the way you protect my friends.

I love the messiness of your hair.

I love your dog. Oh yes I do.

I love him so much it should count twice.

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