Page 16 of The Way I Am Now
“Teddy bears are still bears,” I say, but she doesn’t seem to give my statement much thought as she leans forward to wipe the mascara smudges from under her eyes. I’ll have to remember that one for my therapist; she’s great about making me feel smart and insightful.
Mara meets my eyes in the mirror. “So, Joshua Miller,” she says—a question, a statement, a command, an exclamation.
“So.” I inhale deeply, suddenly unable to catch my breath. “Him. Yeah.”
“Joshhhh.” She draws out the word, torturing me, and then she smiles in this mischievous way. “Apparently he just keeps getting more and more attractive, huh?”
“Oh, really?” I ask her, though I can’t seem to wipe the smirk off my face. “Jesus, don’t tell Steve that. Speaking of, I thought you were Team Steve all the way.”
“I am, but . . .damn.” She fans herself with her hand like one of those Southern belles in black-and-white movies. “Who knew he could rock the scruffy look?”
I shake my head, ignoring her eternal fake lusting after Josh, and examine myself in the mirror, thankful I’d at least taken a shower today. “It was weird seeing him.”
“Makes sense,” she mumbles as she presses her ruby lipstick to her upper lip. “It’s been a while since you saw him.” And then her bottom lip. “A lot’s happened.”
“No, but that’s the thing. It was weird that itwasn’tweird. Like, after the initial awkwardness, we just kind of picked up where we left off and . . .” I stop myself before I say something too true. Like how I’ve been on pause these past months while my life has just been moving on without me, and tonight, with him, it was like being unpaused, feeling what it’s like to be alive again, even if only for a little while.
Mara turns around to face me now. “And what?”
I unscrew the top of her tiny expensive pot of lip gloss and dip my ring finger in, dab it against my lips instead of answering, admitting that I’ve been thinking about him way too much ever since I started seeing Steve, comparing everything he does—and doesn’t do—to Josh.
“You wanna go there again, don’t you? And by there, I mean the whole Josh . . .thing.”
“The whole Josh thing?” I ask, almost laughing. “What’s that?”
“You know, the whole steamy-secret-Joshua-Miller-yumminess-passion thing?” she adds, with an exaggerated shiver through her whole body.
“Okay, one: you’re ridiculous. And two: even if I did, it doesn’t matter.” I shrug and toss her lip gloss back into her purse. “Josh has a girlfriend.”
Mara laughs with her head thrown back and then says, “And Steve has a girlfriend, too, don’t forget!”
A waitress comes into the bathroom, probably checking to make sure we’re not doing lines in here or something. “Shut up,” I mutter under my breath. “Obviously, that too.”
As we move toward the door, Mara stops short and turns around to face me again. “I’m Team Edy, by the way,” she says. And she looks at me more seriously than she has in a while—she’s avoided too much seriousness with me ever since I told her what happened. I think she’s trying to keep my spirits up, but sometimes I miss this look.
She gives my hand a little shake. “You know that, right?”
JOSH
I can feel Dominic staring at me the whole car ride. “Do we need a code word or something?” he finally asks as he parks next to the other cars in the lot behind the football field.
“Code word? What are you talking about?”
“If you need to leave.”
“Why would I need to leave?”
“The whole seeing-your-ex thing,” he says, as if that should be obvious.
“I told you I’m fine.”
“Yeah, and I know you too well to believe that.”
I go to open my door, and he locks it. “Do I need a code word for you to let me out of this car?”
“It’s me you’re talking to,” he says. He gives me that look he’s given me so many times this semester when I’m on the verge of screwing something up. “Can you at least admit you’re not fine?”
“Okay,” I relent. “Did it suck seeing her with that dickhead guy? Sure. But we’re friends; it’s not like we made some kind of promise to each other or anything.”
