Life by Committee (16 page)

“I don't want to share you,” he says. And he comes in
for a kiss, right there in his kitchen with his mom humming along with the TV commercials upstairs. The kitchen is still warm from all the cooking and Joe himself is warm, and nothing has ever felt this damn good.

It works. Doing something brave and strange and unexpected. Because the aftermath, too, is strange and unexpected and brand fucking new. I am on cloud nine.

Until: Joe comments on the buzzing of my phone, in between kisses, and I go to shut it off. I can't stop myself from checking LBC for updates, while the phone is in my hand anyway. I want to find a way to type in
Assignment completed, update soon
, but I know Joe will ask what in the world I am doing. He's watching me from his chair. I open up the website and let my eyes linger long enough on the page to see the red exclamation point on my profile page. Zed has come up with the other Assignment for me.

I click the link and look, bend over my phone at a strange angle so that he can't see.

I gasp. I don't know that I've ever gasped in real life, but I do it now and it's loud. “Kinda insulting when your
phone is more interesting than, you know,
this
,” Joe says. I look his way, but my heart's pounding from the seriousness of this new Assignment. I almost give in to the terror of what I have to do.

But.

But.

But Joe's right there and his lips are still wet from the kissing and his mother calls out to say she is going to go out for groceries. And I'm going to do something terrifying and life-altering in the next twenty-four hours, so I might as well do something ecstatic and ridiculous right now.

I rush at him. Forget about my chair. Climb onto his lap. And dive at his mouth.

I keep one hand wrapped around my phone. I can't let it go. I can't let go. I want to be only in this moment, but right outside this moment, visible even from the gooey, sweet center of it, are Sasha Cotton and my Assignment and the fact that everyone hates me and that my parents both have hoarse voices from all the yelling. It's a crowded view, and impossible to ignore. The kissing is beautiful, but everything else we have to contend with is neon and unrelenting and loud.

“Tell me about this other guy,” Joe says, when the kissing has subsided and my shirt is half off and my bra strap's pulled down nearly to my elbows. He is distracted
too.

“Other guy?” I say. My mind is a black hole. I couldn't come up with the capital of our own state if it killed me, let alone grasp what Joe's getting at.

“You said you get having feelings for two people. . . .” He's rubbing my bare back, and his eyes are huge and maybe even brimming with real live
feelings
.

“Oh. Right.” I'd momentarily forgotten that I was still in the middle of building a whole other lie. I'm not the best liar anyway. I shrug and lower my eyes and try to go in for a kiss.

“I need to know,” he says. “It's only fair.”

“He's a little older,” I start, going nowhere. “Skinny. Sarcastic. Not like you at all. Likes weird music and, you know, readings at the bookstore. He reads a lot.” I ramble on for a moment before realizing what I'm doing.

I am describing Devon.

It makes sense. He appeared. He's cute. I have a crush on him the way you have a crush on a musician or an actor. Not in a real way. He's convenient. He's on my mind because of this morning. I like that he flirts with me. And I miss being around him all the time. But that's not the same thing as having real feelings for him.

It's not like I'm considering completing the second part of that Assignment. The part where I actually start dating someone else, to make Joe jealous. That would be too
far.

But there I am anyway, talking about the buckles on his boots and the fact that I've known him since I was six. Acting like I have feelings for him. Acting like he is my Sasha Cotton.

Joe nods and nods.

By the time we have finished kissing, it's dark outside and both of our phones keep buzzing and beeping and singing and blinking.

He's even ignored a call or two from Sasha. I can't contain the bliss I feel at that knowledge. I want to spend our last five minutes together staring into each other's eyes and making promises about What Happens Now. But Joe's hands are nudging their way under the waistband of my pants.

It makes me miss our conversations online. It is the thing I have been wanting: him close to me, him tugging at me, choosing me, wanting me most of all. But here I am, sweater discarded, top button of jeans popped open. And all I can think of is how sweet it was to hear the
ping
of his chats, and see the words as they appeared onscreen: halting, erratic, unpredictable. I didn't know where we were going.

Now, I think I know.

“I wish the drive home were longer,” I say to Joe after he
walks me out to my car and kisses me through the open window once I'm inside.

“Hm?”

“Never mind,” I say.

What I meant was: everything changes after tonight, and I'm not sure I'm ready.

What I meant was: this is the last perfect moment before I do more terrifying things.

I am trying to be agreeable. But I am already so worked up about having to do
drugs
with my
father
that I'm not sure I can handle anything else. I don't want to say as much. I want to be steely and strong and spontaneous. I want to be an LBC-er. I want to be like Star, telling a million secrets and getting the world's biggest Assignment.

I mean, a proposal. Shit.

Star doesn't reply.

I wonder what smoking weed will feel like. If it will make me giggly or dizzy or sick. I wonder if Paul will coach me through it or, like, ground me for life or start wanting to smoke up together all the time.

Maybe I don't know him well enough to even guess what his response will be. Or maybe I don't know myself
well enough to know what my own response will be either.

Paul's at the kitchen table with coffee and clear eyes when I wander down Saturday morning before I head to Tea Cozy.

“Little Bitty,” he says with a sober smile. My heart rate spikes. Hearing my LBC name out loud makes my hands shake. I should not have used a name that Paul calls me all the time. He gets up to pour me a coffee and make me some toast. I love when Paul makes me breakfast, even when it's only toast or cereal. I like that sometimes he's in charge. I don't commit to sitting down. I don't think I can sit across the table from him and act like a normal person right now.

“Big ole Paul,” I say, and do my impression of a person with a boring day ahead, smiling at her father.

“You feeling better today?” he says. It's a strange question, because it's not the question he actually wants to ask. I assume he wants to know if I'm still mad at him, if we can move forward without actually acknowledging the terrible things we said to each other.

“Are you?” I say.

“We gotta do better than this, Tabs,” he says. He looks sheepish. He hasn't shaved still, and he shrugs and gives me big puppy-dog eyes.

“I know. Now that the baby's coming and stuff,” I say. I crunch through the toast and crumbs fly everywhere. Paul doesn't make me sit down or use a plate or use margarine instead of butter or anything.

“Nope. We gotta do better than this because I am still going for Family of the Year, and we're not going to pull it off if we're yelling at each other in public.”

I can't help laughing. Paul has long joked about our ability to win Family of the Year. Over the years it's become a thing we reference as totally real, like the Olympics. Like any day now they're going to show up with a trophy.

“Germany could pull ahead of us?” I say.

“I think the real competition is going to be from Australia this year. They're contenders,” Paul says. He goes to put more toast in the toaster for me, but I shake my head and pour some of the coffee from his full mug into my empty one.

“We can't let the Australians win!” I say, and give him a little half hug before heading out the door.

Eleven hours to complete my Assignment.

By the middle of the day, I have a perma-mustache of stress sweat happening above my lip. I don't want to do drugs with my dad. But I also don't want to get high,
period. I don't like the way Paul's eyes change when he smokes. I want my eyes to stay the same.

I want us to win Family of the Year and crush the Australians, and I'm scared.

But things are going to change either way. That's what I remind myself when I almost want to give up. Everything is changing whether I like it or not. I might as well take charge of the changes.

I have so much trouble focusing while making lattes that I check my phone behind the counter, even though Cate hates it.

Midmorning, Joe comes in with Sasha, but he stays by the door, actively avoiding me, and she is too busy texting and making moony eyes at him to chat with me. Joe's almost too much to take right now anyway. He's in a collared white shirt and a thick blue sweater and it's so handsome and unlikely on him, I have to wonder if maybe it's for me.

I focus on my countdown, the way the hours have moved all the way down to single digits. Five hours to go. I also want to see Star accept her Assignment. I want to know she's bought a ring. Or whatever it is girls do when they're proposing to boys.

I can't help it—I look at Joe again on his way out the door. He takes Sasha's hand and an essential part of my
heart cracks. I can't imagine keeping up with the charade that I am interested in someone else.

I scroll through responses under my desk, loving the romantic way Agnes writes and the way she pushes us all. I try to keep my head facing the line of customers. It's quite an impressive feat.

He doesn't waste any time reminding me, at the end of the day, that even when I'm on a break, I have a lot of work ahead of me.

When I sit down, Cate brings me chamomile tea. She says I look sick and I have been staying up too late and we're all going to get healthy and responsible together. Paul is cleaning tables nearby, so he overhears and sighs.

I sigh too. Because I hate chamomile tea.

I want it to be the moment
after
I complete the Assignment. I want the glowing skin and wink in my eyes, the glamorous red high heels and the pride in who I am, and to report back on the ways my life is changing. I want the same rush of feeling in my gut and all the way down through my legs as when I took that half step forward and kissed Joe in the gym. I want that flicker of power that came from being the one who leaned toward him instead of being the one who was leaned on.

Elise breezes in moments later.

Our date to hang out at the bookstore and eat scones and catch up. Shit.

It's one of the few times she's been more dressed up than me. Worn-in jeans hang off her hips, but she's got orange cashmere on top, and a vat of gel worked into her hair. I wore leggings and a gray sweatshirt for my big day.

“Let's go,” Elise says.

“I'm sort of not in the mood,” I say. There's a wrinkle of annoyance between her eyebrows. I try to avoid looking at it, because I don't really have a choice about this right now. I need to get my Assignment over with.

“Come on. You promised the bookstore. I'm bored. And you're wearing your cranky outfit. So let's fix all the
things.”

“Yes!” Cate says. “She's been the crankiest. I can't take it. I have enough of my own hormones.”

“The girl wanted coffee,” Paul says, because he apparently has some kind of death wish. “You gave her the saddest drink imaginable. And called it good parenting. Come on, Cate. That's not the woman I married.” He says it with a wry smile and a wink, but man, it comes out rougher than anything he's ever said to her. Elise swallows so loudly, it sounds like a dead bolt clinking into place. This is literally the worst possible day for me to smoke up with my dad, but I can't imagine being the girl on LBC who fails. I don't want to be Lucky15, alone and sad and looked down on. I can't let the idea in my head of who I could be fade away already.