Coda 01 - Promises

There was a tug, and I realized he had pulled the rubber band free. Then his fingers were pushing up against my scalp and into my hair. My breath caught in my throat, and my eyes closed. I don’t know how long we stood like that. It felt like forever. It felt like only a heartbeat.
    “Lizzy’s wrong. You definitely shouldn’t cut it.”
    His hand was gone, and when I opened my eyes, he was heading back to his bike. But he gave me his brilliant smile—would I ever get used to seeing it?—when he turned to look at me. “Last one down pays for dinner.”
“A LL right, Jared! Spill!”
    I turned to see Lizzy grinning at me, her blue eyes practically glowing with mischievous anticipation.

    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “Don’t give me that. You can’t wander around here all day with your head in the clouds and a perma-grin on your face and expect me to believe that there’s nothing going on. So—spill!”
    I knew she was right. I felt like I had been floating a foot above ground all day.
    “I’m just having a good day.”
“It’s Matt, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Well, no. Not exactly.”
“What is it then, exactly ?”
    I didn’t know what to say, but I knew my ridiculous grin was bigger than ever.

    “Please tell me he’s finally coming around?”

    “Well, I don’t want to get your hopes up too high”—or my own—“but I actually think there’s a ghost of chance.”
    She squealed and threw her arms around my neck. She had caught me a little off guard. One arm was pinned to my side by her round belly, and her hair was in my mouth. “That’s so great, Jared!”
    The bell over the door rang, and Matt walked in. “What are you two so happy about?”
    I knew my cheeks were bright red, but Lizzy was smooth as always. “Jared was just telling me that he plans to baby sit for us one night a week after the baby is born so that Brian and I can go out. Isn’t that nice of him?” Did I say smooth? I don’t think that quite covers it. She had managed to answer him without embarrassing me and had secured herself a weekly date night all in one stroke. You had to admire her. “So Matt, did Jared tell you about his birthday?”
    “No.” He looked at me expectantly.
“It’s still two weeks away,” I told him.
    “It’s September twenty-first,” Lizzy said. “I’m making dinner. You’ll come, right?”
    He looked right at me and said, “Wouldn’t miss it.”

    D URING the two weeks leading up to my birthday, my confusion continued to grow. Matt spent every single evening at my house. He slept on my couch as often as he went home, although he was always gone by the time I dragged my lazy ass out of bed in the morning. He even bought a toothbrush to keep at my house. I tried to tell myself it was only because he didn’t want to go home to his sterile, empty apartment. I mostly believed it. But was I imagining that he was watching me more, touching me when he didn’t need to? Many nights as we watched TV on my couch, I would feel that gentle tug on the back of my head. It was a form of torture, but one that I looked forward to every day.
    Matt worked on my birthday but was done at five. He picked me up, and we went to Lizzy’s house for dinner.
    It was a strange night. As the hours passed, he was moving closer, a heat burning in his eyes that I had seen before, in other men’s eyes, but not for a long time. It seemed like he couldn’t stop touching me. Taken individually, they were just casual touches on my arm, or my shoulder, or my back. He touched my hair a lot too. It was feeling less casual by the minute. With anybody else, I would have known exactly what it meant. With him, I had no idea.
    Even my family noticed. I saw Mom’s small, knowing smile and Brian’s uneasy bemusement. And how could I miss Lizzy’s earto-ear grin or the goofy thumbs-up she gave me behind his back? But he still seemed to be blind to what he was doing. I had been partially erect all night and hoping that nobody had noticed.
    At the end of the night, Lizzy declared us both unfit to drive and gave us a ride back to my house. By the time we pulled up in front of my house, my head was spinning. I had heard that term before but had never really understood it until now.
    I wasn’t sure what to expect. Probably he would just drink another beer and then crash on my couch. But part of me knew that we were on a precipice, looking down. We either had to turn around and walk away or take a deep