Page 29 of The Pass
The relief she feels is evident in the relaxing of her shoulders. Conversation is still stilted, though, as we eat and clean up the kitchen together.
I’m scanning texts from Jonah and Ollie about their plans for the night while she starts the dishwasher.
“Do you feel like going out tonight?” I ask.
“Am I totally boring if I say no?”
“Not at all. We’ve got an entire month. Movie night?”
Her eyes light up. “Yes, that sounds perfect.”
I let Sydney run the remote and pick what we watch. That nap earlier only served to make me more tired, and I have a sneaking suspicion I’m going to pass out five minutes in. She picks one of theMission Impossiblefilms—they’re all basically the same—and we lay together on the couch.
Now that I’ve had time to think about what she said earlier, there’s one piece that keeps bothering me. She said, we had our window. I don’t deny that part, but it’s the way she said it, like it wasn’t what she wanted.
That isn’t how I remember it. I kissed her and she shut it down. And, yeah, I thought something would happen eventually but the more we hung out the closer we became and I thought it was a mutual decision that neither of us wanted to risk our friendship for more. To think that we might have hooked up and then never spoke again, seriously makes me feel sick even now.
“Hey.” We’re laying at opposite ends of the couch and I nudge her elbow with my foot. “Remember our first kiss?”
She looks surprised I brought it up at first but then smiles. “Yeah, of course. We were in the pool at The White House.”
“What is it with us and water?”
We both laugh, and then it’s quiet, except for the suspenseful background music of the movie.
“What about it?” she asks.
“I was thinking back to that night and those first few weeks we hung out. I wanted to kiss you again so bad, but I was scared of freaking you out or pressuring you. You intimidated the hell out of me.”
“No way.” Her brown eyes stare back intensely.
“Yes way. I figured it was obvious.”
“Not to me. I thought I turned you off with my five-date thing.”
“What five-date thing?”
“My five-date rule,” she says again like that’s supposed to mean something to me. “I had a rule about not hooking up with anyone before five dates. Actually the rule died after you.”
“It did? Why did it start?”
“Remember the guy, Will, that I told you about?”
“The dickwad who ghosted you?”
She nods. “After him, I was determined to make sure I didn’t let anyone else take advantage of me like that, so I told you I had a five-date rule to keep myself from sleeping with you and then being hurt when you never called me again.”
“I wouldn’t have done that.”
“Which is why I gave up on the rule. It obviously didn’t work.”
“Well, it kept us from sleeping together.”
“The idea was that I would get to know a person before I jumped into bed with them. You and I hung out a ton, way more than five dates. I came over in my cutest dresses to play video games for crying out loud. I figured you thought I was too high maintenance or crazy.”
“I completely forgot about the five-date rule. I was waiting for you to give me the go-ahead that you were ready and then it felt like the moment had passed.” Five dates or five hundred, if I’d known that was what was stopping her, I’d have given them to her to prove how much I wanted her.
“Strange to think about how it might have been different if I’d kept my mouth shut that night.”
