Page 3 of Delayed Intention

Then, the vile memories from home that I’ve been trying to erase from my head start flashing like images from a horror movie in my mind.

No! I’m not in Maryland, I’m in Josh’s room, I’m with Josh.

If this is real, this is mine, and nothing bad can come here right now.

My hand on Josh’s arm squeezes a bit tighter.

“Joshua Cohen, I’m in Nebraska. In your room.”

He looks puzzled but amused.

“Yes, you are. So, what do you think?”

I nod my head and look him in the eye. “Yes, please. That was for the kissing.” Please, God, let me just have this kiss. Let me not freak out or overreact. His touch on my arm has been okay. I can do this. “Yes, please—I would like a kiss. The truth is, I’ve always wanted a kiss from you.”

Wow, just when I thought I could not be any more of a nerd. I shouldn’t drink. The bravery benefits seem greatly outweighed by my tendency to overshare.

Oh, right, Josh is here, in front of me, and he wants to kiss me.

I refocus on our eye contact. His face has transformed—he smiles with his eyes and mouth—so I lean forward to kiss him on the lips—just as he does the same.

It is too much momentum too fast, and we bump heads, and both start laughing.

He stops laughing, though, and so I stop, too, and we look at each other again. The room is spinning a bit, but he is my center, so I do not drop my gaze.

He says, “Let me try that again.”

“Okay,” I whisper back. This is real; what happened in Maryland is not.

He puts his hands on my shoulders and this time I hold still.

He leans in, not closing his eyes, and presses his lips to mine.

Then, closing his eyes, he cocks his head one way, and I naturally meet his movements with a turn of my head the opposite way.

The kiss is everything I’ve ever wanted.

It’s electric, and our intensity is increasing as it goes on, spreading warmth everywhere inside of me.

I don’t know if he’s ever done anything like this before, but he seems to be good at it, based on the fireworks going off inside me.

I realized right then that I didn’t want to know if he had done this before because the jealousy might ruin this for me. So, I close my eyes and lean into him.

After what seems too short a time, he pulls back from me, hands still on my shoulders, and smiles again.

“Thank you,” he says.

I want to say something cool, so I run through about five options in my head, and then I say, “Thank you.” Which is the same thing he said.

But because he’s Josh, he is still smiling at me. “Do you want to go outside?”

“I do.”

We go outside and, without a word, lie down on the grass in his yard.

There are a million stars. We hold hands and look at each other, and then at the sky.

I tell him how I feel as though I don’t fit in anywhere except when I’m here, with him, Nona, and his super cool mom.

I tell him how I don’t like people touching me, but that his hand feels so good. His kiss felt even better.

He smiles and says he’s glad.

He tells me how his father decided to move to Kansas City one day while Josh and his sister were at school.

He told me that his dad was not going to come back and that his parents were not going to live together anymore, but that they also would not get divorced.

They are more concerned about their image in the community than being free to move on.

I remind him that there are worse things, like parents who don’t separate but seem to hate each other. I won’t say more because all of this has been so perfect—I want this memory to be about Josh and me, not about how awful parents are sometimes.

We talk about everything and sometimes about nothing, just lying there, hand in hand. And we kiss a few more times, which is mind-blowing.

I love you, Joshua Cohen.

After a while, it’s too windy, and we go inside. I climb into his bed, and he lies on the floor next to me. Before he turns off the light, he sits back up and kisses me again. Leaning his forehead to mine, he says, “Goodnight, Lily Anna.”

“Goodnight, Josh.”

I wake up to Josh’s mom nudging me in the morning, telling me she needs to take me back to my grandmother’s house.

Josh is fast asleep when I leave his shirt and sweats behind.

I’m barely awake, and my family and I drive off to the airport within an hour.

When I took my seat on the flight, I realized I wouldn’t see Josh for almost a year.

I feel my heart shattering into a million pieces while I lean against the plane window and pretend to sleep.

A week has gone by back home.

I hate my life.

The thing is, I already had a giant hole inside me.

Now, my heart feels trampled on top of everything else, and I already don’t know how to handle it.

My fears had already built a wall between me and other people.

That was hard enough. Not to mention the disgusting secret I was trying to forget.

And I’ll be facing that situation again soon because my mom is sending me back to where it happened, and she won’t let me get out of it.

I function more like a zombie than a person.

A zombie that has no super strength, frightens no one and cries every time they’re alone.

Maybe that’s why I’ve been ignoring Josh’s messages.

If I’m being honest, I’m not sure why I can’t respond. Just today, Josh was calling me for the seventh time this week, and I declined the call. I can’t pick up, and I don’t call back. He wrote me some emails which I deleted without reading.

I want to answer; I want to reach out—he’s my best friend.

Every time I start to think about talking to him, I panic.

I just can’t do it. All I can think about is my secrets, and I don’t know what to say or do.

My heart races, and I can’t breathe. My stomach has this stabbing pain, and I feel like I’m going to die.

I don’t die, but when it passes, I wish I had because Josh is out there, trying to keep us together, and I’m messing all of this up.

I thought about taking a few drinks of wine from my parents’ cellar.

I felt it might give me the courage to call him or answer the phone.

In the end, I decided not to do it—it turns out that the idea of me getting in trouble if I got caught scared me more than Josh being upset with me.

The thing is, Josh will be okay. He has a great sister and mom, and he lives in the best place in the world.

He couldn’t possibly have the type of feelings for me that I have for him, and I know he’ll move on.

My heart, however, feels like it will be broken forever.

Part of me knows that I feel that way because I am still young, and this is my first love.

But part of me is terrified that this is my only chance at happiness, and I am destroying it.

A text from Josh pops up on my phone.

Josh

I don’t know what I did, but I’m sorry. Please call me.

With tears streaming down my face, I delete the message.

I had no idea that this loss would feel so much worse than my usual crap.

The pain is too much. I need to protect myself from ever feeling like this again, and I need to avoid Josh for both of our sakes.

In a few months, I’ll call him or send him a Hannukah card.

By then, he’ll have forgotten, and we can just go back to the way we were.

So that is what I set out to do.

Josh, Lincoln, September 2005

Rage .

My feelings are down to tired, hungry, or rage. Right now,

I’m in a rage. Everyone leaves me because I am not good enough. Hot tears burn behind my eyelids as I try to forget. Erase them both.

Dad is gone.

I’ve gone over and over everything I could’ve done better. If I had better grades, if I kept my room cleaner, and if I’d made the soccer team instead of the football team.

I’m not an idiot. Part of me knows there’s nothing I could’ve done. But I can’t stop thinking this way.

And Lily. How could she stop talking to me?

If only I hadn’t kissed her.

I have friends, but Lily was the one person I could tell anything to. And now she’s gone.

People leave.

They don’t care if it hurts me. I now understand that I don’t matter to them. Since I had no idea Dad was leaving and I was wrong about Lily, I’ve learned I can’t trust my feelings. I thought she wanted more. I close my eyes, angrily swiping a tear away with the back of my hand.

I know when it changed for me. Lily was like another one of my friends—almost like a family member—until she wasn’t.

Last year, it started with dreams—that’s what got the idea in my head.

Then, at the end of summer a year ago, we’d be doing something together, and a thought would pop into my head.

Like, I wondered what it would feel like to kiss her, to hold her body against mine.

I found it would take everything I had not to stare at her boobs all the time.

This summer, as soon as I saw her, I knew it was more than a passing thought or two.

I had heard of crushes. Of course, I have seen them in movies and TV shows.

But feeling pulled toward her, physically, was one thing.

The feelings I started to have this year seemed like something more.

And now that I’d been to second base with a girl at camp in June, it was worse.

Now that I’d had that experience, all I could think about when I was trying to sleep was how large my hands would have to become to handle Lily the way I’d wanted to.

Last year, I could recite over and over, she’s your friend, don’t ruin things with your friend.

But this year, the need to kiss her was too strong.

It kicked all common sense out of my head and became all I could think about.

How do I get her alone? How do I ask her to give me a chance?

Clearly, I don’t know shit about anything because now she won’t even text me.

I haven’t heard from Dad since June. He doesn’t return my calls. Neither has Lily for the last three weeks.

Fuck this.

I should have learned from my parents. Love does not exist. I know that’s not the only thing that hurts, though.

Beyond whatever the hell compelled me to throw myself at Lily, I thought our friendship would stand up to any test. No matter what, I thought we would stay friends.

I have told her things I’ve never told anyone else, let alone a girl.

I must be so unimportant to her that she can’t be bothered to write me a stupid text message.

Lesson learned.

A girl can be a friend or someone I make out with—but not both. Liking someone this much is bullshit, and I will never put myself out there like this again. Ever.