Life by Committee (15 page)

BITTY:
I didn't know that was . . . an option.

People start responding right away, my page jammed with comments. This is what happens when an Assignment goes live. Suddenly everyone is on the site, ready to go. I can barely keep up. I turn toward my locker, open the door, and hide my head and phone inside. It's awkward, but at least no one will see what I'm seeing.

I nod, even though no one can see me. I do remember that from other people's entries, but I hadn't thought about it when I posted mine. Does that mean he can make all the decisions from here on out about Joe? Does that mean I'm basically required to let him run that whole relationship?

I try to get my heart to slow and my hands to still. I want to trust in the power of the group, but I've sort of jumped into all this without looking to see what it is. Deep-sea diving without asking about sharks.

I check behind me, squirrel my phone, and head away again. No rules. I like that. And I like Agnes. Her breathless bravery. She's almost cool. Dark and angsty and weird but cool.

I don't want someone else. I don't want him to think there's someone else. I only want him.

I want Star's happy love story and shiny red shoes and freckled knees and crazy talk of forever-ness.

I keep thinking about this one part of
The Secret Garden
. The Red Pen Margin Note Taker made an asterisk, a huge one, next to this bit of dialogue. Mary and her new friend Dickon are discussing the flowers Mary has planted in her newfound secret garden. Mary and Dickon are pondering what the garden will look like. “‘Don't let us make it tidy,' said Mary anxiously. ‘It wouldn't seem like a secret garden if it was tidy.'”

I don't know that I'd ever noticed that moment of dialogue before seeing it through the Red Pen Margin Note Taker's eyes. And I don't know that it would have mattered much to me if I didn't have LBC. But I get it now. It's good for things to be messy. It's not necessary to clean your life up all the time. You can let it grow wild.

“Tea Cozy?” Elise says, sneaking up behind me and grabbing my sides so that I drop my phone and have to scramble to pick it back up. “I could use some Elise-Tabby time.”

I swallow. I should not be saying no to the only person in school who doesn't hate me. But my forehead is a Slip 'n Slide of sweat and I am in the midst of about a hundred life-changing epiphanies right now.

“How about tomorrow?” I say. “Bookstore and Cozy and catch-up?” I make it sound breezy.

“How about
today
?” Elise counters. She's hopping
from foot to foot. “You look like you need sugar. And a pep talk. And, like, I don't even know. Ritalin? Where
are
you right now?” She taps my wrist with her thumb. I guess I've been twiddling my fingers and staring somewhere unfocused, not at her face. I shake my head awake.

“I think the word you are looking for is
nap
. I need a nap,” I say.

“You need to be taking better care of yourself,” Elise says. I know she's not talking about Assignments or anything, but she's right, of course she's right. I need to be doing better. I need to be more.

“Totally,” I say, and take a huge breath.

I know I have to do the new Joe Assignment. Zed's right. They're all right. I've been living with all these rules and ideas of how to do things. I've been keeping my little garden tidy. And all it's doing is holding me back from the life I want.

My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I bring it out. It's another LBC update, a picture from Star: bare legs hanging off what I assume is her guy's bed. Boys' slippers on her tiny feet. The caption:
No one in their right mind would leave something that feels this good. Don't worry, Bitty. It all works out for the best. Promise.
If there were a swell of music, this would be a movie, and I'd be trying to keep tears in by holding my forefingers under my
bottom lashes. Since it's not a movie, but actually my life, I take another lifesaving inhale.

“Um, hi?” Elise says. I'd completely forgotten she was even there. She cranes her neck to get a glance of what is distracting me on my phone, but I pull it away from her. “Keeping secrets?” She taps my wrist with her thumb again. She thinks it's Joe.

“We can hang tomorrow, I promise, okay?” I say. She musters a lame smile and walks me to my car.

And when I'm halfway through my drive home, I call him.

Joe almost never answers his phone, but this time there's a “Hello?” and the sound of his car, probably as it zips away from school to Sasha Cotton's sickbed or whatever.

There is nothing better than hearing someone grin over the phone. I try to convey that same warmth right back, hoping he gets an identical rush of warmth from the unlikely softness, the intimacy of dropping my voice and squinting my eyes and holding the speaker so close to my mouth that we are almost kissing, our lips meeting across channels. No one has ever wanted something so badly. If sheer will were enough, our lips would be touching.

“What if I came over?” I say.

Joe laughs low. It hurts. My spine feels that laugh, the sexiness of it.

“Well, what if?” he says, and I know that's a yes.

When I get to the door of his house, I can smell garlic simmering and a salty seafood scent. It hits me hard—I'm hungry.

Once I am safely inside his home, we hug and I feel the whole of his body against mine. I am so not over him. Every piece of me seems to line up with every piece of him: my thighs kiss his, my chest to his, our bellies and collarbones even find each other. He is only an inch or two taller than me, which some girls would hate but I find sexy. The meeting of our bodies feels good; the parallel body parts and the way they attach when we hug is a revelation every time.

“Hi,” I sigh out.

“Hi.”

“Hi.” It's hard not to kiss, since our mouths line up too, but we resist, letting our breath mingle but keeping an inch or two between our faces.

“Want early dinner?” he says.

“With . . . you?” I am stupider around him. Not always, but now.

“Mom made seafood pasta. It's really good. Her specialty.” I lick my lips nervously and he goes on. “I'm
normally starving right after school, so she lets me have dinner right away if I don't have practice. Weird, I know.”

“Oh wow.” I have not met Joe's family, since I am not his girlfriend. I've been to his house two times, but only when his parents were out to dinner and only in a group of people wanting to get drunk. Seafood pasta and early dinner with the family is a new level of our relationship, and I can't wait to tell Star about this leap.

“I'm starving too,” I say, and a smile finds its way onto my face. Then it grows into a grin. I'm screwed.

If I thought the smell of garlic and Italian cooking was tempting before, it is nothing compared to the way it hits me once I'm actually in the kitchen. The
onion-garlic-tomato-butter deliciousness practically knocks me over.

His mom is standing over a few pots: pasta, sauce, spitting simmering minced garlic. She's heavy and her hair is the same color as Joe's; just as thick, but wiry and knotted. She reminds me of a book Cate used to read me when I was little,
Strega Nona
, about an Italian pasta-making witch. Joe's mom is totally Strega Nona. Her apron is paisley and covered with tomato remnants and oil splotches.

“Hi, Mrs. Donavetti,” I squeak out.

“Mom, this is Tabitha. My friend,” Joe says. He puts a hand on my back and pushes me toward her. I stick my hand out, and she smiles and nods to the huge wooden spoons she has—one in each hand.

“Lovely to meet you, Tabitha,” she says. “You'll be joining us for dinner, I hope?”

“Smells amazing,” I say, nodding. She glows and exchanges an indecipherable look with Joe.

An hour later I know exactly what that look meant. Mrs. Donavetti
hates
Sasha Cotton. I know this because she talks about Sasha through the entire meal, wringing her hands and chomping so hard on her mussels and clams and al dente pasta that I think she's going to chip a tooth.

“Joe just shouldn't be with a girl that troubled,” she
says, spinning long strands of linguini over her fork with expert ease. “You know her well?”

“Not too well,” I say.

“Not too close with her?”

“Oh, no,” I say. She smiles and nods. Right answer.

“You're a good friend to Joe,” she says. “He needs someone like you. Grounded. Smart. Good girl.” I nod and don't look in Joe's direction. The conversation has gotten strange and I don't feel able to really participate in it.

“Mom, chill,” Joe says at last, and Mrs. Donavetti shrugs and smiles my way. Like I am the girl she's been waiting for.

“Want a little more, Tabitha?” she asks. I'm not really hungry after devouring a whole bowl of her stupendous seafood pasta, but the sauce is so spectacular and the noodles so comforting that I can't say no.

“Yes, please.”

“Good girl,” she says, and again looks to Joe with that
I told you so
look. I guess Sasha never asks for seconds.

I am in Joe's house. I am smiling at his mother. I have found the one person in the universe who prefers me to Sasha Cotton, the one person immune to her long legs and dim smile and breathy lullaby voice. I am touching elbows with Joe because we can't hold hands, but
touching elbows might be even better. My funny bone tingles with recognition:
This is love
.

Halfway through my seconds I duck into the bathroom and post to Life by Committee. I'm a pot boiling over, and I can't tell Elise. I can't tell Cate and Paul. No one I love would approve of this or give me the response I'm looking for. I want a squeal of delight and encouragement and stories about @sshole's parents, who got married after their shady start.

I want LBC.

I wish I could speak out loud to them, because capitalized words and emoticons and exclamation points aren't enough to convey what it feels like to be in this house playing Girlfriend and knowing that I never could have done this alone. Alone I would chicken out and stay home eating scones and texting Elise and watching Cate's belly grow and my life vanish.

Mrs. Donavetti eventually leaves us alone, when she is sure we are stuffed full of pasta and shellfish and garlic. Joe and I stay at the kitchen table and she busies herself upstairs, and I want it to be this way forever.

“Your mom likes me,” I say. I scoot my chair a little
closer to his, and he doesn't protest.

“She does.”

“She's not so into Sasha.”

“Come on, Tabby,” he says. He fidgets in his seat.

“Just saying.”

“I don't want to talk about Sasha,” he says. I scoot my chair in a little more. Fine by me.

“I just— Don't you want us to be . . . more?” I can't believe I'm actually saying it to his face, not hiding behind the computer screen or my phone or anything.

“Don't get like that. You already know how I feel.” The words Joe says don't match up with the things his body is doing. For instance: he sounds like he is annoyed with me, but his hand has found its way to my thigh, and his face is now close enough that I can feel his breath travel across that sweet line from my ear to my neck.

“Sort of . . .”

“This is all really hard,” he says. “Having feelings for two people at once.” He keeps pressing his lips together and rubbing my thigh. I'm not even moving, but I'm out of breath from sitting near him.

“Yeah . . .” Even though I know he's with Sasha and I guess kind of loves Sasha, or at least likes sleeping with her, it hurts to hear him say he has feelings for “two people.” It slips out of his mouth so easily, but it
thuds
in my head, the worst reality, the thing I don't want to believe.

That stupid kitchen clock almost sounds like it's speeding up, but I know it's actually my anxiety that's getting higher and faster. This is my chance.

“I like you for different reasons, you know?” Joe's musing. I don't want to hear him muse about his feelings. I get the sense a pro-con list could be coming, and I don't need to be lined up against the messy-sexy neediness that is Sasha Cotton, so I cut him off with the first and only thing I can think of that will shut him up. And the last thing I actually want to do.

“Yeah, I totally know,” I say. “About liking two people.”

My phone buzzes. I can hear it going crazy in my purse, but I know it's Cate and Paul calling to see where I am. I forgot to tell them about my impromptu after-school trip.

“You . . . do?” Joe says. His hand moves to the place between my shirt and the back of my jeans. It finds that little patch of skin and tortures me.

“I really, really do, actually,” I say. “I know all about it.”
Assignment completed?
the voice in my head asks. I could go further. I could push even more against all my impulses. His hand is rubbing my back. Tracing circles around the discs of my spine, and I am dizzy from the wonderfulness of it all.