To Be Alone With You

“John!” I cried, standing at his bedroom door – roommate gone as always, so it could just be us. He sat at his desk, a large set of headphones over his ears and entirely dead to the world. I was all dressed up with nowhere to go, a belle apparently early to her own ball. John was supposed to take me out that night but had apparently been distracted by work instead.

Not even by work. No, I bitterly told myself. He was distracted by his music again, putting off the stacks and stacks of work that had amassed his desks for weeks on end all year. He bobbed his head as he sat in boxers and a sweater, blissfully unaware that I stood on the edge of tears in his doorway.

He couldn’t hear me when I cried out again. “John!”

In a swift swoop, I crossed the room and pulled his headphones off his ears. Fearful and caught off guard, he glanced up at me with wide eyes, only to be met with water-stained cheeks and a trembling lower lip. It had been like this for a long time, then.

“Oh, Jesus, I forgot,” he muttered shaking his head into the palm of his guitar-callused hand. “Just give me a second to get ready, I’ll be right there in just a second.”

“I wish you’d been ready when I’d gotten here,” I mumbled, wiping the tears from my lower lash line. It was stupid of me to cry.

“Well, I wasn’t,” he mumbled back, crossing the room to his closet. “I just got caught up in my music, that’s all. You get caught up in your writing sometimes too, right?”

“Right,” I sniffed. We were quiet for a moment, the silence between us deafening as he slipped into a plaid button up suitable for a dinner out. He looked just as good as he always did, regardless of how furious I was with him. Regardless of how well we were doing. Or how un-well we were doing.
“I just want to be sure you’re giving all you have to this relationship.”

John stepped into a pair of jeans, buttoning them while giving me a funny look. “Well, then I just ask the same of you, then.”

And he pressed a kiss to my temple and everything was okay again.



I woke up next to Kennedy on a Saturday, feeling like I’d been allowed to separate into two different parts, like I hadn’t been properly shaken and I’d finally divided at a seam.

Kennedy. John.

Slowly, I snaked my way out of bed, the crisp white sheets slinking down around Kennedy’s immobile body. He was breathing heavily, still deep in sleep. But I’d hardly been able to sleep at all. The same way I’d hardly been able to sleep at all ever since I met with John to reconcile.

I had yet to tell Kennedy of our rendezvous. I decided defiantly that it was my life, my secrets to keep, and again – I was nobody’s girl. I could do what I wanted. But God, it felt as good as sin to curl up next to him at the end of a long day. The kisses he pressed to my temples sweet as could be. But again – I was nobody’s girl.

I padded across the living room floor to the kitchen to brew him some coffee for when he would wake up. It was nice, sharing a kitchen with someone. Sharing a home with someone. Sharing groceries and a Netflix account and a bed. Kind of half-way being someone’s girl, in that way. Kind of half-way being Kennedy’s girl, in that way.

Flicking on the kitchen radio, I selected a bag of dark roast from the cupboard. That Neko Case song was playing, the way it always seemed to be playing.

“I’m so tired / I wish I was the moon tonight…”

I rolled my eyes and poured a handful of the grounds into a filter at the top of the coffee maker and placed a pot of warm water beneath it. Wondering what kind of radio station played such sad music at eleven on a beautiful Saturday morning, I went and flicked it to a more cheery tune on a different station. Some cheery pop thing came on instead.

The Arizona was beginning to get to me, with swingy tank tops and flip flops and all the things I’d long forgotten. The only heat we got in New York was that radiating off the pavement in the heat of the afternoon, the blacktop absorbing all the suns rays and scorching your feet with them instead. The sun was tanning my skin again, the way it was in high school. My step felt a little lighter with the weather.

Some days I almost forgot why I left. And then I remembered and resolved to leave again. Some days, it was hard being in the places I once haunted when things were suddenly so different. Everything was so much bigger than John and I, what happened between us, than the way he saw it. But it was impossible to tell him that. I doubted I ever could.

I pulled some aging bread from the breadbox and made a mixture of eggs, milk, sugar, and cinnamon. Each dipped slice sizzled in the pan on the stove, the coffee dripping steadily, the radio playing music that made the world bright again.

Some days I almost thought I could be Kennedy’s little housewife. He sure would love to have it that way.

But thinking that way was unlike me, and I needed to stick to my guns. I kept telling myself over and over as I made breakfasts and bagged lunches, ate pizzas for dinner and watched countless movies on end. I told myself that when he made me his specialty popcorn and drove me to his favorite places around Tempe in his car, sang me songs and played his guitar.

God, did I like Kennedy. And Kennedy liked me for who I was. Kennedy didn’t feel any need to unravel me. Kennedy held no expectations of me. Kennedy was great. Maybe I could be Kennedy’s girl. Maybe I could be happy being Kennedy’s girl.

“What are you doing in here?” he asked like he was surprised, appearing around the corner into the kitchen. He rubbed at the corners of his eyes to get the sleep from them, yawning unabashedly. I couldn’t help but glaze over him with wanting eyes – he was only in his boxers, revealing his surprisingly chiseled frame. I wondered what exercise he was getting when I wasn’t looking.

“French toast and coffee, just how the master likes it,” I teased, sending him a wink. His sleepy lips turned into a grin, crossing the room to kiss me. His hands skimmed over my bathrobe as he wrapped me up in his arms, lips softly pressing against mine.

“I don’t think you’ve ever made French toast before,” he hummed.

“You’re in for a treat,” I promised, plating the completed pieces and jerking my head towards the table. Kennedy followed suit, grabbing a hoodie from the counter and sitting at the table. I poured some of the coffee in a cup and brought him both, following with toppings.

“I don’t know what I did to deserve this,” he whistled, digging in immediately. The bright Tempe sun filtered through the windows, casting a chink of light right across his tanned face. I couldn’t help but smile at the sight.

“You were just you,” I replied.

He laughed. “Well, I guess I’ll just be me more often.”

“But Kennedy, you’re you all the time.”

“Well, then I just ask the same of you then.”

Though his tone was joking, I froze in my steps. So many things about that sentence struck a cord within me, shaking my bones to the core. Someone had said something like that to me once, a long time ago under difference circumstances.

We ate in peaceful silence that morning, simply enjoying each other’s company. Kennedy kept sending me quick glances across the table, wondering if he’d said something wrong to make me so quiet. But I felt as though I hadn’t let on anything, carefully dissecting my breakfast and placing it in my mouth bite after bite. This wasn’t a time to be thinking about the past. I was with Kennedy and that was what mattered.

Kennedy stood up from his spot and took our plates over to the sink, rinsing them before putting them in the dishwasher. I liked that about Kennedy. Always so responsible.

“I really ought to thank you for the delicious breakfast,” he hummed, voice low. He made his way across the kitchen in the silence and then pressed his lips boldly against mine. The kiss caught me off guard at first, but then I slowly melted into it instead.

“Oh yeah? And how do you expect to do that?”

He took my hands and pulled me up from the chair, grinning mischievously. His lips then proceeded to crash against mine, leading me backwards across the rooms that lay between our spot at the table and his bedroom. We were an awkward mess of stumbling limbs and lips, his arms around my waist and pushing me forwards.

Kennedy had been patient, I had to admit. Anyone else would say I’d been holding out on him. But really, I just wasn’t sure.

We hadn’t had sex yet. Until that moment, I didn’t think I was ready to take that step with him. It all seemed too new, too unsure, to unlikely. It all seemed like it wasn’t supposed to happen, the way John insisted that it wasn’t supposed to happen. Kennedy and I were much too improbable to crawl into bed together. But he was doing an awfully good job of convincing me otherwise.

“Ken,” I moaned against the place where his shoulder curved as he placed kisses all down my neck, leading me back onto the bed. We had only just gotten out of it and somehow we were making our way back between the sheets, Kennedy peeling off our clothes as we went along our way.

I kissed back. I kissed back because I wanted it. I kissed back because I wanted him. His hands felt like a dream as they glided against my now bare skin. His eyes then flicked across my body, taking it in for everything he hadn’t had all that time he’d been waiting.

But suddenly, as I gazed back at him while he hovered over me, I saw John. I saw his bright hazel eyes and curling thin lips, freckles and smiles ready to be wished on. John wasn’t the last man I’d slept with but he was definitely the first.

He’d been on my mind day and night since we talked. Since I didn’t give him all the answers and he finally accepted it – one way or another, I hadn’t heard from him since. And even if I wanted things with Kennedy to be just right, John was right there. He was always right there.

Kennedy lay next to me on his side, cupping my cheek and turning my face to press my lips to his. Unassumingly, he twisted his arm around waist, thinking it was the right thing to do. But when I closed my eyes to pray and get the thought of John out of my head, his arms may as well have been John’s. Everything that was happening between us may have been happening between me and John. I just didn’t know.

And that was the problem. I just didn’t know.

So I sat up in bed, pulling myself from his arms. “I think I left the coffee pot on.”
And I left.