“You better go move your car,” I told Sam. He cast an anxious look toward the ceiling, as if Mom could read his thoughts through the floor of her home studio. Then toward Rachel. And then toward me, his unasked question clear in his expression: Are you really telling her? I shrugged.
Rachel looked at me quizzically. I made a gesture like, Wait and I’ll explain, and Sam went to call up the stairs, “See you later, Mrs. Brisbane!”
There was a long pause. Then Mom said, not in a nice way, “Bye”.
Sam came back into the kitchen. He didn’t say that he felt guilty, but he didn’t have to. It was written all over his face. He said, a little hesitant, “If I’m not back by the time you go, Rach, see you later.”
“Back!” Rachel said in surprise as Sam went out the front door, car keys jingling. “What does he mean ‘back’? What’s he doing with his car? Wait—has The Boy been sleeping here?”
“Shhh!” I said hurriedly, with a glance toward the hallway. Taking Rachel by the elbow, I propelled her over toward the corner of the kitchen and released her quickly, looking at my fingers. “Whoa, Rachel, your skin is cold.”
“No, you’re hot,” she corrected. “So what’s going on here? Are you guys like—sleeping together?”
I felt my cheeks flush despite myself. “Not like that. Just like…”
Rachel didn’t wait for me to figure out how to finish my thought. “Holy freakin’ holy freakin’ holy…I can’t even think of what to say to that, Grace! Just like what? What do you guys do? No, wait, don’t tell me!”
“Shhh,” I said again, even though she wasn’t being that loud. “Just sleep. That’s it. Yeah, I know it sounds weird, but, I just…” I struggled for words to explain it. It wasn’t all about almost losing Sam and wanting to keep him near. It wasn’t all about lust. It was about falling asleep with Sam’s chest pressed against my back so I could feel his heart slow to match mine. It was about growing up and realizing that the feeling of his arms around me, the smell of him when he was sleeping, the sound of his breathing—that was home and everything I wanted at the end of the day. It wasn’t the same as being with him when we were awake. But I didn’t know how to say that to Rachel. I wondered why I’d wanted to tell her. “I don’t know if I can explain it. Sleeping feels different when he’s there.”
“I’ll sure bet it does,” Rachel said, her eyes wide.
“Rachel,” I said.
“Sorry, sorry. I’m trying to be reasonable here, but my best friend just told me that she’s been spending every night with her boyfriend without her parents knowing it. So he’s sneaking back in here? You’ve corrupted The Boy!”
“Do you think I’m doing the wrong thing?” I asked, wincing a little, because I thought maybe I had corrupted Sam.
Rachel considered. “I think it’s awfully romantic.”
I laughed, a little shakily, with something like giddiness and relief. “Rachel, I’m so in love with him.” But it didn’t sound real when I said it. It sounded corny, like a commercial, because I couldn’t quite invest my voice with the truth and depth of how I felt. “Swear not to tell?”
“Your secret is safe with me. Far be it from me to break up the young lovers. God! I can’t believe you really are young lovers.”
My heart was thumping with the confession, but it felt good, too—one less secret I was keeping from Rachel. By the time her mom arrived a few minutes later, we were both fairly giddy. Maybe it was time to tell her some of the other secrets, too.
• SAM •
It was eighteen degrees outside. In the bright light of the moon, a flat, pale disc behind a tangle of leafless branches, I folded my bare arms tightly across my chest and stared at my socks, waiting for Grace’s mother to vacate the kitchen. I softly cursed icy Minnesota springtimes, but the words swirled away in puffs of white in the darkness. It was strange to be standing in this cold, shaking with it, unable to feel my fingers or toes, my eyes burning with it, and to be no closer to being a wolf than I had been before.
Through the cracked sliding-glass door on the deck, Grace’s voice was just audible; she was talking with her mother about me. Her mother wondered gently if I would be coming over tomorrow night as well. Grace mused vaguely back that I probably would be, as that’s what boyfriends did. Her mother commented to no one in particular that some people might think that we were moving too fast. Grace asked her mother if she wanted any more chicken parmesan before she put it away in the fridge. I could hear the impatience in her voice, but her mother seemed oblivious, effectively holding me prisoner outside by her presence in the kitchen. Standing on the frigid wood of the deck in my jeans and thin Beatles T-shirt, I contemplated the possible wisdom of marrying Grace and living a young hippie life in the backseat of my Volkswagen, without parental constraints. It had never seemed like such a good idea as now, my teeth starting to chatter and my toes and ears going numb.
I heard Grace say, “Will you show me what you were working on upstairs?”
Her mom sounded vaguely suspicious as she said, “Okay.”
“Let me just get my sweater,” Grace said. She came over to the glass door of the deck, silently unlocking it as she got her sweater off the back of the kitchen table with her other hand. I saw her mouth Sorry to me. A little louder, she said, “It’s cold in here.”
I counted to twenty after they’d left the kitchen, and let myself in. I was shuddering uncontrollably with the cold, but I was still Sam.
I had all the evidence I needed that my cure was real, but I was still waiting for the punch line.
• GRACE •
Sam was still shaking so badly by the time I met him in my room that I completely forgot about my lingering headache. I shoved my bedroom door shut without turning on the light and followed the sound of his voice to the bed.
“M-m-maybe we need to rethink our lifestyle choices,” he whispered to me, teeth chattering, as I climbed into bed and wrapped my arms around him. My fingers brushed against the goose bumps that covered his arms; I could feel them even through the fabric of his shirt.
I tugged the blanket up to cover both of our heads and pressed my face against the frigid skin of his neck. It felt selfish to say it out loud. “I don’t want to sleep without you.”
He curled into a tiny ball—his feet, even through his socks, were freezing against my bare legs—and mumbled, “Me neither. B-but we have our whole—” His words piled up on top of one another; he had to stop and rub his hand over his lips to warm them before he went on. “Our whole lives ahead of us. To be together.”
“Our whole lives, starting now,” I said. Outside my bedroom door, I heard my dad’s voice—he must’ve gotten home just as I came into the room—and listened to my parents’ voices as they climbed up the stairs to their room, noisy and jostling against each other. For a brief moment, I envied their freedom to come and go as they pleased, no school, no parents, no rules. “I mean, you don’t have to stay here, if it makes you uncomfortable. If you don’t want to.” I paused. “I didn’t mean for that to sound so clingy.”