Page 37 of The Way I Used to Be

“So, come on, tell me about your hot boyfriend. Please?” she asks, rather than acknowledging this great distance.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I correct her.

“He doesn’t want to be your boyfriend?” she asks, scrunching her face up. “What, he just wants to sleep with you and—”

“No. It’s me. I don’t want to be his girlfriend.”

“Are you insane?” she asks immediately.

“Maybe.” I laugh.

“Seriously, though. Are you totally insane?”

“I just—I don’t know. I don’t like the idea, I guess. I don’t wanna be tied down like that. Obligated. Stuck, you know?”

“That doesn’t make any sense at all. But okay. As long as he’s not trying to keep you guys a secret or anything scummy like that?”

“He’s not. I promise. And it’s not scummy to want a little privacy.”

“Whatever you say, Eeds. I wouldn’t know anything about it, I guess.” She relents, a hint of something like resentment there beneath the surface. But she quickly pushes it back down wherever it came from and grins. “So is it good? Or fun? Or whatever it’s supposed to be.” She laughs, embarrassed. “Is he, you know, nice to you, when you’re together, I mean?”

I nod yes.

She smiles. “He better be.”

“TELL ME AGAIN,”he says breathlessly, moving his fingers through my hair, “why you can’t just be my girlfriend?”

“Why?” I groan. God, even if he is nice, he can annoy me.

“Because,” he mumbles, with his mouth against my neck, “I don’t like thinking about you with other guys, you know....” His voice trails off, swallowed by his kisses.

“Then don’t.”

He stops and looks at me in that intense way he sometimes does that terrifies me. “It’s not that easy to just not think about.”

I don’t answer. I know I’m supposed to tell him he has nothing to worry about, that I’m all his, that there aren’t any other guys. But somehow, I can’t. Instead, I say, “When would I even have time to spend with anyone else? We’re together every night.”

He grins that grin of his, and I think, for just a moment, he’s going to let it go. But finally, after all these weeks, he begins the conversation I assume must have been on his mind ever since he realized my name was plastered all over the bathrooms.

“So, I’m just curious...,” he says, playing with a strand of my hair.

“About?”

“Who else did you, uh...” He trails off again.

“What?”

“Who else have you, you know, been with?” he finally finishes.

“Why?” I ask, and not in a nice way.

“I don’t know,” he mumbles.

“Does it matter?”

“I guess not.”

“Good.” Because I didn’t want to have to think about it, let alone talk about it. I didn’t want to even acknowledge the fact that there had been someone else.