I’m disappointed in myself. Ashamed. Anyone else in my shoes wouldn’t have broken that tie.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” I say.
“Kissed me?”
“No. Backed away.”
“It’s all right,” he tells me.
Incredible sadness and frustration engulf me. “No, it’s really not. It’s not okay that I have never kissed anyone with a fraction of that urgency before. It’s not okay that I’m afraid of people and relationships and interaction. None of it is okay.”
Esben kneels next to me and tries to soothe my growing upset. “Look, I’m not a shrink, but . . . hell, you’ve kind of been through a lot, and if you ask me, it is okay that you’ve been in a shitty place. Just because that’s where you’ve been doesn’t mean you have to stay there if you don’t want to.”
I think for a few minutes.
“Play it again,” I say quietly. “Play it again.”
Three more times, I watch the video, and Esben stays right beside me. After, when I have memorized every second of our airtime, I turn in the chair. Esben is very calm, I notice. Very together.
Steffi was right, I admit. Maybe it’s my gin haze letting me acknowledge this, but he is gorgeous. Slowly, I lift a hand and place my fingertips on his cheek. Esben does not move while my touch grazes down his face, and I trace the line of his firm jaw and trail down to under his chin. The back of my hand moves inch by inch back up, the feel of his skin enough to keep me there forever. “You shaved,” I say.
He cracks a smile. “I did.”
“Esben?”
“Yeah, Allison?”
“Could I have some more macaroni and cheese? I’m still a little drunk and hungry.”
“Of course,” he answers with a laugh.
Just for a heartbeat, his hand goes over mine, and he gives me a little squeeze.
While the microwave hums in the background, I look through comments under the video. The sheer number of them is incomprehensible. There are over ten thousand. I keep scanning lines, scrolling down, reading a few more.
“What is instalove?” I dive into the second mac and cheese, and Esben lies on his side on the bed, his head propped in his hand.
“Oh . . .” An actual blush floods his cheeks, and I suspect this does not often happen. “Um . . . this is sort of awkward—”
“A lot of people are hashtagging us with instalove.” Now I’m the one blushing. “I mean, not hashtagging us. Hashtagging you. Your video.” I take a large bite and unceremoniously talk with my mouth full. “Why are people doing that?”
“Oh. Yeah. Well, it means, you know, instantaneous love. It’s often used as a derogatory phrase to say that two people fell for each other too quickly. That it is fictional and would never happen in real life. But there’s also a lot of cheering about us. About us and instalove. Because some people believe in that. They say they’ve lived it.”
A rush of humiliation tears through me. Again. I should be getting used to the feeling. But I also feel a teeny bit . . . I don’t know. A good kind of embarrassment.
“The kiss,” he tries to explain, “got to viewers. The video captured the . . . the pull between us. There are a lot of people who latched on to the idea that we should be together.”
“Together?”
“Allison,” he says rather bashfully. “They think we fell in love that day.”
I let this sink in. “How could that happen? That’s nonsensical. And why do they care?”
“That’s a good question. They saw something that reminded them of someone. Something they wanted. They projected their own emotion onto us. Or,” he says cautiously, “they saw something real take place.”
“But . . . I walked away.”
“You did. But people want to believe in love. They want to believe that you walked away for a reason. That maybe you’d come back.” Seeing Esben rattled is sort of cute. “Oh, and before you see it yourself, I should probably tell you that there’s another hashtag floating around.” He literally clears his throat, presumably to buy time. “It’s thiskissthiskiss, along with people wishing for thiskissthiskissparttwo.”
I have to control my voice. “Do you believe in this . . . this instalove?”
“Instalove. No, maybe not love. It’s called that, but it’s sort of obnoxious and thoughtless, if you ask me. It discounts that powerful things can happen in a matter of seconds. I’ve seen it over and over. Not quite what . . . um . . . what happened here, but I’ve been pretty stunned by how people’s raw feelings come out in only a few minutes.” He pauses. “It’s what you do after those moments that matters.”
My world seems to spin harder and faster, and I could slam it to a stop, but I don’t. I take a risk. “So, what are you going to do?” I ask.
Esben looks at me thoughtfully. “Wait. I’m going to wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“You.”
“Oh.”
He smiles lightly. “You’ve obviously not been having the best reaction to everything that’s gone down, so I’m just going to wait and see where you land. Or maybe you already know what you’re going to do?”
“I’m not sure. I thought I knew, but then you fed me macaroni and cheese and haven’t been at all the jerk I thought you were.”
His eyes sparkle. “I’m happy to hear that.”
“I’m sorry for being so rude earlier. Tonight and in class. That day . . .” I sigh at myself. “I’m kind of a mess.”
“You don’t need to apologize.”
“I’m not like you, Esben. I’m not social or happy or at ease with myself. With the world.”
He gives me a cocky smile. “Not yet.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself.” But I smile anyway.
I go back to the website and scroll all the way to the top. This page, I realize, is Esben’s home page, where everything he’s done is centralized. I click a past post that’s titled Saving Private Parrot and read for a minute. “You found someone’s parrot?” I ask.
“Yeah. It was pretty cool. Someone who lives a few towns away messaged me and asked if I would help get the word out about his escaped parrot. Cute little thing named Peep. Somehow, he got out of his cage, and his owner was really upset. So, I posted about it, and then someone shared it on Facebook and got a comment about seeing a parrot on a parking meter outside of a tattoo shop. So, I tagged the tattoo shop, and the owner went out to look for him, but before he could catch him, he flew away. However”—Esben is getting more and more animated as he talks—“he did see the bird fly to the top of the building across the street. There’s a dance studio on the third floor, and some ten-year-old ballerina commented that she was at the studio, and she has a pet parrot and knows all about catching them. So, the kid goes up to the roof.” He stops and gives me a reassuring look. “Don’t worry. Flat roof. And, sure as hell, she holds out her arm in some way the parrot must’ve liked, and he flew right to her. The tattoo guy got a picture of it. See?”
I glance back at the computer and scroll down. There she is, tutu and all, holding a parrot.