ABRAM

THIS IS ONE OF THOSE ideas that’s going to start out being hers, but end up looking like mine. Because I should know better? I don’t think anyone would believe that. Because I’m the guy? Dude, that’s more like it.

Too many outside influences. Between the Janette encounter, the girl talk with Linda, the Adderall she probably took afterward to make herself feel back in control of the situation, and the creepy master-bedroom setting she’s using to unnecessarily torture herself, it’s too much about everything else, not enough about us.

That being said, for the first time in my life I can understand how my dad could lose his mind over a girl … over and over again. I don’t really want to relate to him in this particular way, especially in his bed, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to deny it. Doesn’t seem like as much of a choice when you’ve already started making the mistake. Nor does it help when your shorts are unzipped like mine are now.

41

ABRAM

JULIETTE’S LEFT LEG is no longer cooperating, and neither of us seems eager to climb into these particular bedsheets, so I’m able to convince her to go back downstairs to the moderate discomfort of our couch bed. When we reach the living room, she asks me to take off my shorts before joining her. I comply. And then we’re all the way underneath the covers, heads included.

“Okay,” Juliette whispers, “ready as I’ll ever be.” She shuts her eyes. “I mean, when you are.”

Juliette

I SQUEEZE MY LIDS TOGETHER as tightly as possible, the crow’s feet pecking away at my skin, preparing for the worst. And then I feel Abram’s lashes on my cheek. Um, aren’t these called butterfly kisses? Primarily given after bedtime prayer? Per the song that a creepy dad wrote for his little girl while putting little white flowers all up in her hair? I open my eyes, prepared to mention this to Abram, but he’s already humming the song. Our laughter breaks the tension just enough for reality—banished until now, thanks to me—to set in. And then he kisses me, draws me into his lips, brings back that warm, Abramy, heart-blanketing feeling I can’t push aside anymore.

“Did the Asian take your virginity?” I ask, unable to stop myself from killing the mood one last time. He removes his lips from the spot on my neck that makes me crazy (among other things), looking up at me like I’m about to kill him, too.

ABRAM

“DID SHE?” Juliette demands.

“Almost. Long story…”

“When has that ever stopped you?”

I tell her it happened a month after the accident, in the movie-screening room of the Asian girl’s basement, and it felt way too soon to be getting any action. Juliette’s not mad; she’s excited: “I knew there was a reason I hated her.” Then she laughs about how the Asian thought she could make my grief go away with some after-school ass, and I’m thinking, Perhaps, but she’s also kind of a sex freak. An accomplished one with great homework scores who knows what she wants (penis, Carnegie Hall). Time to change the subject.

“What about you?” I ask.

“You wouldn’t know him.”

She explains that he’s in college now, getting his B.A. in Nobody Cares. A few seconds later, she admits he doesn’t exist. Can’t say I’m disappointed this particular part of her sexual history is fictional, right before we change our stories for real. First, I need to tell her something that I don’t want lumped in with the physical side of things.

“Did you know … that … I love you?”

She looks at me curiously, wondering what I’m really trying to say. The “I love you” component was pretty much the gist, but I should’ve just said it outright, let it sink or swim on its own, without testing the waters first.

“I love you, Juliette. There’s nothing about you—no secret, no pill, no past relationship—that could make me stop trying to love you more every day. You don’t have to say it ba—”

“I love you, too.” She places her hand on my stomach, rests it there. “I didn’t recognize it at first … probably because it’s the truth … but I’m pretty sure I’ve loved you for a long time.”

“Like, CVS-at-first-sight long time?”

“Longer,” she says, grimacing. “Since back when we were whales.”

I squeeze her hand. “How could I forget?”

After that, we deduce that we’ve probably had sexual relations as whales already, so there’s no need to rush into anything as humans until we’re fully prepared to rush into it. Two seconds later, I think I’m ready.

42

Juliette

LYING HERE IN OUR COUCH BED, running my fingers through Abram’s wavy-thick hair and picking the occasional fuzz ball from it, is so much more relaxing than the irresponsible intercourse I’d hastily planned for us. I almost fell asleep a few minutes ago until a spider began crawling up my thigh … a pulse-pounder that turned out to be Abram’s leg hair performing its late-night tarantula impersonation.

“How can I help you relax?” he says groggily, turning over to face me.

“Not possible,” I say. “But you could try telling me a story if it makes you feel better.”

He furrows his brow, actually considering the request. “Genre?”

“Romance,” I answer. “Not too much love, though. And with us as the main characters, but me as a less-depressing version of myself. Or just do your own thing, sorry.”

“There once was a whale from Nantucket,” he begins. “She was a female whale named Angela Buckley who frowned her fair share. She was also pretty skinny by her species’ standards, although her absence of blubber didn’t take much, if anything, away from her sleek, intimidating beauty. It just made her cold all the time.”

He kisses me softly on my forehead, asks what I think so far. I curl up against his chest, molding my entire body into his, letting him know he has my interest. “Smart to abandon the ‘ucket’ rhyming scheme early on,” I say quietly. “Angela the whale sounds like a crazy B.”

“Funny you should mention Angela’s mental state,” Abram says. “She wanted her fellow whales to misread her as inaccessible, yes, and believe she had no interest in getting to know them. Not because Angela thought her whale poo didn’t stink—she just had a lot of rules and walls and self-restraining orders on top of being sad, scared, admittedly overmedicated, and, most of all, lost. But then, one day, she found a strapping male whale named Philip with the healthiest appetite she’d ever seen, filling up his convenience basket with food at her favorite twenty-four-hour whale pharmacy.”

He pauses so we can brainstorm a good name for a whale pharmacy. His entries: Rite Whale, Whale Pharm, Whalegreens. Mine: SeaVS, Pills & Krill … and then I forfeit because I swear on the Little Mermaid’s humanity I was going to say Whalegreens.

“Great, so Angela and Philip were both at Whalegreens,” Abram continues. “Philip the whale, who was a bit sad and lonely himself at the time, was waiting for the prescription that had contributed to his excessive sleeping and eating of great-tasting junk such as Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and pizza-on-a-bagel, but I digress.”

He digresses straight into the kitchen, microwaves our snack, and returns with a plate of pepperoni bagel bites. We eat and Abram tells the rest of his story, our story, in a way that makes me realize how in love we really are without making me uncomfortable. When I ask him if there will be anything close to a decent ending for Angela and Philip, he says it doesn’t matter, because at this very moment, they’re together, happy.

43

Juliette

“READY?” ABRAM ASKS ME, as we’re packing up the car Monday morning.

I give him the facial expression his question deserves.

“Me neither.”

I hate endings, especially after enjoying what happened beforehand. But it’s time to leave. I’ll miss you, non-barking dogs at the beach. Thanks for the memories, couch bed. You weren’t as creepy as I made you out to be, house. Each goodbye is like a death. And we all know how healthily I deal with that fact of life.