Page 70 of A Brush with Love
“Good. On to the important things then.” Indira cleared her throat once more, working to keep a straight face. “Did y’all hump?”
Lizzie gave a weak snort of amusement from the couch, but Harper kept her eyes trained on her laptop.
“Like bunnies,” she deadpanned, scrolling through a class web page.
“Dammit, Harper!” Indira slapped her palms on the table, making Lizzie grab her head with a whimper.
“The evidence is overwhelming but you’re gonna play nonchalant? In all the time we’ve known you there’s been no dick. Now there’s dick and youdarewithhold details on said dick? Nuh-uh, not gonna happen.”
Thu even found the strength to whip off her sunglasses and glare at Harper in solidarity of Indira’s moving speech.
“First of all, there was no… dick,” Harper said, pointing at them. “And you want details? After having a full-on freak out in the bathroom, he brought me home, I ate a shit ton of pizza and blacked out from wine. Really classy night for me. How was yours?”
“Where’d you get the pizza from?” Lizzie asked, eyeing the box on the floor.
“Does it matter?” Harper said with a sigh.
Lizzie held up her hands in defense. “I was just wondering if there’s any left. I need a level of grease that a cinnamon roll won’t provide.”
“Not now, Lizzie,” Indira snapped, before turning back to Harper with a crestfallen look. “So that’s really it? No dick?”
“That’s it.” Harper turned back to her laptop in an attempt to end the line of questioning. “How was last night for you all?”
“It was fun. We danced, and drank, and missed you. Thu got freaky on that Alex kid.”
“Alex, huh?” Harper said, turning to Thu.
“Not a thing,” Thu said, waving her off when Harper opened her mouth to push for more. “But nothing else happened withDan? Nothing at all? Because I have a hard time believing that.”
Harper let out a sigh, blowing a puff of air that lifted her bangs off her forehead. They knew Harper was withholding and weren’t above beating it out of her if necessary.
“We may have had a moment,” she said quietly, guzzling down water to put off answering Indira’s imminent questions.
“Well, shit, Harper, try not to be so graphic,” Thu said, making Lizzie laugh while she scavenged through the abandoned pizza box on hands and knees. Harper shot them both the finger.
“What kind of moment?” Indira asked, a manic thrill animating her features. She’d found a thread and she was holding on for dear life.
Harper rolled her eyes, trying to downplay the swell of excitement she felt thinking about Dan.
“An intense kind of moment, okay? A kiss-in-the-rain, movie-level, electrocute-your-senses, rip-your-panties-off kind of moment. We kissed after we left the apartment, and it was amazing, and he opened up to me about stuff with his dad and… I don’t know. It was special. And then we got pizza and he ended up staying the night. On the couch,” Harper added quickly, raising a hand to Indira’s silent screech.
“I seriously can’t believe you guys didn’t bone,” Thu said, joining Lizzie at the pizza and sniffing a cup of garlic sauce.
“I’d certainly bone him,” Indira said. “He has that type of hair that looks like he just had the best sex of his life, then rolled out of bed to get you brunch.”
“I’ve thought about it a lot, and I’ve decided he could make a hole,” Lizzie added, chewing on discarded pizza crust.
“He’s so pretty, I bet he doesn’t even ‘make love,’” Thu said with finger quotes. “He makes art.” She gave a hip thrust to emphasize her point. Lizzie and Indira nodded in agreement, all with a faraway look in their eyes that lasted longer than it should.
Harper cleared her throat and they snapped out of their fantasies.
“So, you had a ‘moment,’” Indira said, adopting Thu’s finger quotes. “What does this mean? Are you guys dating? Are you opening up that door?”
“I don’t know,” Harper mumbled, running her thumb along the edge of her textbook.Wrong answer. “I mean, I do know, and the answer is no. We’renotdating and I’mnotopening that door,” she said more firmly, pressing the pad of her thumb into the sharp corner of the textbook’s cover. “I’m moving as soon as school’s done anyway.”
“Why does moving automatically mean it will end?”
Harper shot Indira an incredulous look. “Why does no one seem to get how serious that is? I’m not stupid enough to think that a five month… whatever… would be strong enough to survive long distance. It’s impossible to make something that new survive. And, more importantly, I don’t have time to give a relationship with him what it would need.”
