Now that I’m in the Cohen house, my whole idea feels stupid and trite. I stand in the guest room that is now Mel’s room and survey the bare walls, the hospital bed, the closet that is almost empty.
“What do you need me to do?” Luke asks, standing in the doorway. It’s evening but still bright out, so light spills into the room.
“I’ll need your muscles, if that’s okay,” I say.
He follows me back up the stairs to Mel’s real room, the master bedroom she used to sleep in. It’s a hundred times warmer than the guest room. The comforter is white, with splashes of colorful paint. There are pictures all over the room of Rowan, Luke, Sydney, Naomi, and even me. Pictures from Mel’s time in Hungary during college. There are clothes she doesn’t use anymore. A bunch of them are too big now, but I decide we’ll take them anyway. Sometimes the most important thing about certain clothes isn’t physically wearing them; it’s seeing them and remembering who you were in them, where you wore them, who you kissed.
I know I’m shameless now in the white skinny jeans that I love, the ones I was wearing when I kissed Luke that first night. I saw him notice them when he opened the door for me tonight, his eyes roaming the length of me and then trying to act like he hadn’t noticed. I didn’t wear them for his reaction; I wore them because this weekend has been crappy and I felt like putting on jeans that reminded me of something good.
“Okay, so I don’t know if this rug will fit in there,” I tell Luke.
He does some mental math and decides it’s worth a try. So we spend the next half hour shuffling this giant accent rug out from under Mel’s old king-size bed, rolling it up, transporting it down the stairs, and lifting everything off the floor in the guest room to see if it will fit.
“It takes up nearly the whole room,” I say, biting my lip as I try to figure out what to do. “Should we take it back upstairs?”
“Seriously? We could have made a trip to IKEA and been back by now,” Luke complains, but I can tell he doesn’t mind.
“The whole point is that it has to be stuff she owns that we bring in here,” I say. “I just wish it fit.”
He crouches down and starts to roll up the rug, when I change my mind again.
“Hold on, maybe we can make it work.”
He sighs. “I’m guessing we should cross interior decorator off your future careers list?”
“Rude,” I say as I lead the way back up the stairs to Mel’s old room.
I pile her clothes into some plastic storage containers while Luke collects pictures and knickknacks from around her room. We don’t take everything downstairs, but we try to take everything we know she likes or misses.
“Thanks for doing this,” Luke says as he hangs up a picture of the three of them plus Sydney.
I shrug. “She’d do the same for me.”
And it’s true. She did do the same for me.
The point of this is to take this sterile room that represents her sickness and make it into home for her. Make it a place she enjoys coming to, where she feels like herself, where she has good memories. Just like she did for me.
It takes a couple of hours, but soon we are standing in a room that doesn’t quite look like Mel’s old room—it’s certainly not as big—but isn’t quite a dying woman’s room either.
I take a moment to pretend to survey my handiwork, but really I’m saying goodbye to my memories of Mel. Her favorite brown sweater. Her purple house shoes. Her matching purple robe that is almost as ratty as the pajamas I was wearing when Luke came to visit me this morning.
After I come back tomorrow night to tell her the truth, Mel will never welcome me into this house again. I won’t have a right to these memories, to her hospitality, to her love.
Luke is watching me look at the room, and he rubs his neck once he’s caught. “We still have some cupcakes from last week,” he says. “If you’re up for it.”
“I should probably get going,” I say. Now that we’re done with the masquerade, he doesn’t have to pretend to be nice to me anymore. He doesn’t have to treat me like someone who matters. Not like his girlfriend or his ex-girlfriend or his sister or his brother’s best friend. I’m “a girl” as far as he is concerned. Or I should be, anyway.
“Mom’s not holding down her end of things, in terms of eating them. I’m only one man,” he says with a crooked smile.
“One,” I concede. “I’ll have one.”
“Coming right up.”
I follow him into the kitchen, my bag still on my shoulder, my keys in hand. I watch as he pulls out a full container of cupcakes.
“You weren’t lying,” I say as he offers me one, then pours us both glasses of lemonade.
He shakes his head and takes a bite. “It’s pretty sad when you have nearly a dozen cupcakes in a house and no one to eat them.”
I know it’s not intentional on his part, but sadness creeps into the space between us. Once, these cupcakes wouldn’t have lasted more than a day. Once, Ro and Mel and even Luke occupied space in this house. I occupied space in this house.
“J.J.—” Luke says, drawing me out of my thoughts. I startle, not just at the name, but at the way he says it. Like we are the old Luke and the old Jessi. He says it like it’s the summer he loved me again, the best part of it and not the worst.
I don’t know what he means to say, and I don’t know if he does either.
Instead, our bodies are drawn toward each other, magnets that should repel but are attracting. He touches my hair, and I back up, running right into a wall. Luke closes the distance between us again, his hand finding my waist.
In my head, I’m arguing with him. I’m telling him that I don’t belong here, in this house, with him. That I never did. I’m sliding away from his touch. I’m pulling my bag tighter over my shoulder and walking out of his house. In real life I am standing on my tiptoes, wrapping my arms around his neck, drawing him to me.
His lips are soft and gentle against mine. I kiss him back, unhurried and loving and sad. His lips taste like frosting and lemon, bittersweet, like the end of something.
We kiss and kiss against the kitchen wall for what feels like hours, and when we can’t possibly kiss anymore, we kiss harder. My tongue claims every spot in his mouth and his hands are starting to roam, starting to burn my skin. When the strap of my bag falls off my shoulder, I let it. In fact, I drop my keys next to it.
After that, it’s all over.
He presses me harder against the wall, and I let my feet leave the ground, let them wrap around his waist as he hoists me up. Then we’re walking. He’s kissing me and carrying me up the stairs.
I haven’t been in his room in a year.
It is still not neat, still covered in books, and his bed is unmade. He kicks the door shut with his foot and carries me to the bed. I reach for him, impatient, and pull him down with me. I dig my fingers into his hair and he starts undoing the buttons of my blouse.
Then I’m in my bra and he reaches for the button of my jeans.
“I fucking love these jeans,” he rasps.
I surprise him by going for his shorts first, unbuttoning, pulling down. He’s on top of me, kissing me again, and it’s unfair because his shirt is still on.
He laughs in the back of his throat at my frustration when I try and fail to get his shirt off.
“Want me to do it?”
“No,” I say, so he lifts his arms over his head like an obedient child and I yank it up over his head. As soon as it’s off, I paw at his chest, his abs, the happy trail going down from his bellybutton. As I’m doing that, he untangles his arms from me enough to reach into the drawer beside his bed for a small silver packet. Our hands and mouths are everywhere. It’s a far cry from “I won’t touch you” and the last time I was in this bed. I remember thinking that morning that I wanted to do everything with him, and tonight I do.
After, we lie there tangled up in each other. My head on his chest, his hands in my hair. I fall asleep to his heartbeat. Wake up again and he’s still there, and it’s dark out now, so we go back to the beginning and hold each other in the darkness.
I squint when he turns on the lamp, then shut my eyes against the light.
“Sorry.” He plants a kiss on my forehead and gets out of bed. When I hear his footsteps again, I force my lazy eyes open.
He smiles at me as he slips back under the sheets, and he’s wearing his glasses. I haven’t seen them in so many years, and I don’t know why it makes my eyes start to water. Maybe because it takes me back to a time when everything was simpler, when I thought we—Mel, Luke, Ro, and I—would have a happy ending.
“Are you okay?” he whispers as he pulls me to him again. I nod, but he must feel the tears on his bare chest.
In the morning, just enough light streams in through the crack in the curtain. Luke is fast asleep still, the sheets tangled up somewhere around his legs.
I get dressed quietly, make my way downstairs, and find my keys and bag in the kitchen.
I think about leaving a note, but I don’t know what else to say.
We said everything last night and yesterday morning when he came to see me.
It’s just after five when I step out the front door.
I walk out of Mel’s house, knowing that everything will be different the next time I’m here.
I’ve barely entered my house when a door shuts and then my mom is hurrying down the stairs.
“Jessi?” she says, as if she’s expecting someone else.
“Hey, Mom,” I say, not meeting her eyes. I don’t know how other kids feel when they’re doing the walk of shame, but I feel like she can see everything scrawled all over my skin.
“You cannot be serious,” she says, looking me up and down. I check my body for any inadvertent markings, any words, giveaways. As far as I can see, the only signs of where I’ve been are my bed-tousled hair, my swollen kissing lips, and yesterday’s clothes. “You told me you were going to see Luke last night, you don’t answer any of my calls, and you just never come home?”
“I’m home now,” I say sheepishly.
“No, you’re home the next day. At five in the morning. Jessi, this isn’t like you.”
Guilt spreads like fire over my body. “I’m really sor—” I start to say, but my mother speaks over me, her voice growing louder.
“Five a.m., Jessi,” she hisses.
I open my mouth to speak again, but she keeps talking. “You might be eighteen, but as long as you live under our roof, you do not get to stay out at all hours, doing God knows what with whoever you like.”
“I was with Luke—” I begin.
“I don’t care who you were with. I don’t know what other people’s rules are, but in this house we have a curfew.”
I realize there’s no point in trying to defend myself. She won’t let me speak. Her hands are on her hips as she scowls at me, and despite the fact that she has a point, my remorse begins to morph into frustration.
As she continues her speech, I try to push back the memories of Luke and what we did, how desperately I want to be back in my own bed, reliving each moment. Reliving the warmth and peace I felt in his arms, and the cold and vulnerable feeling that remains in its place. Does Luke feel the same way?
“Jessi,” Mom says, and my attention snaps back to her. “Your father and I raised you to be more responsible than this.”
I feel myself flinch. Did she just say that?
To be more responsible than what exactly?
And she raised me?
She raised me.
Something inside me snaps.
“I can’t do this right now,” I say, heading for the stairs.
“I’m talking to you!”
“And I’m walking away!” I shout back. “Because you know what? You do not get to show up on the scene eighteen years late and start telling me what to do. You do not get to decide when to start giving a fuck.”
Her eyes widen. “How dare you—”
“How dare I what? Tell the truth? Call you out for something you couldn’t control?” I seethe. “I’m not calling you out for being sick, Mom. I get it. I’m sorry having me made things so bad for you.”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“Well, let me make it more simple. You do not get to have a kid and then opt out of her life. And if there’s no opt-out, there sure as hell is no opt-in option.”
“What’s going on?” Dad’s voice comes from the top of the stairs.
“I tried my best,” Mom says, and she’s crying now.
“So did I. I found homes in other places, with other people.”
“Mel,” she says. Not a question, just one accusing word. It’s the first time I know for sure that it bothered her how much time I spent at the Cohen house. Somehow it still hadn’t been enough to wake my mother up to fight for me. She is here now, apparently; what pisses me off is that she’s acting like she never left.
“Yes, Mel,” I spit. My voice trembles like I’m about to cry, which just makes me angrier. “She’s been more of a mother to me than you ever were.”
“Jessi!” Dad calls sternly from halfway down the stairs. “Stop that right now.”
I laugh. “What is it with people who never gave a fuck about my life caring all of a sudden?”
“I always cared,” Mom says teary. “I loved you. You knew that.”
“Did I?” I ask. “What did you ever do to show me that? What did you ever do?”
I’m surprised at myself, the way my voice is rising, the way I’m spitting my words. I never thought we would talk about all of this. How do you condense eighteen years into one conversation?
“I kept going.” Mom’s voice is small. “I woke up every day, and I kept going.”
She shakes her head. “I know now that I should have gotten help sooner. I was so stubborn, and I hate myself for it every day, but my family . . . you have to understand that being depressed wasn’t considered a sickness, just a weakness. I thought I could fight it on my own.”
“That’s what you call fighting it?” I ask. “Being in bed for most of my life?”
Mom gives Dad a desperate look. “I made a lot of mistakes, Jessi. But I’m trying to right them now. I know you can see how far I’ve come the last few months. It’s a work in progress, but I’m doing better. Everything is going to be different now.”
“It’s too late.” I hear myself saying as I back up, starting up the stairs past my father.
“Can’t we talk about this?” Mom asks, her voice breaking.
But it’s too late for that, too. We didn’t talk for the past seventeen years. We didn’t talk one year ago, when Mom started treatment and tiny changes started happening. We didn’t talk when she was back in bed a few weeks ago. We never talk. Why start now?
I break into a run down the hall until I reach my room.
I slam my door and then bury myself in my bed.
Tears come unbidden, for everything I’ve lost and everything I never had. Two families. Two homes. Two brothers. My best friends.
Mel.
I’ve lost it all, and the saddest part is, I’m still not sure if they were ever mine to begin with.
I sniff my clothes, hoping they still have Luke’s scent that I love so much. But I smell nothing; it’s all me.