SAM.
He couldn’t wait to go to sleep.
The drive took three hours round-trip and when he turned onto Penny’s street, she touched the back of his hand.
“Can we go to your house?” she asked.
Sam looked at her questioningly.
“Jude,” she reminded him.
He nodded and headed for House. They only had a few hours before Sam had to get up for work.
The two of them trudged up the porch stairs at a glacial pace. Sam turned on his lamp and sat on his mattress. He undid the laces of his left boot and then his right, feeling as though he were performing a slow, tame striptease.
Penny yawned as she sat beside him and took off her high-tops. She was wearing frilly white socks with embroidered strawberries on them and cartoon squirrels on the heels.
They both stared down at them.
“I forgot,” she said. “These are secret socks.”
Sam thought about the secret sides of girls and how much he loved them.
“Do you want the bed and I can take the floor?” He’d have to give her his only pillow.
“I don’t want to kick you off your own bed.”
“Do you want a glass of water or anything?” he asked her.
She nodded. Sam figured she could sort out where she wanted to sleep while he fetched it.
When he returned, she was under the covers on the side closest to the wall. She’d left him his pillow on the outer side.
“Is this okay?” she asked, sitting up to drink the water.
He nodded and got under the covers. Since she was fully dressed he kept his clothes on too.
He turned off the lamp. “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said groggily.
“Hmm?”
“How do you think I should decorate?”
“Good question,” she murmured. “I know how disappointed I was that there wasn’t a giant black-light swastika above your bed. I thought I knew you.”
Sam smiled. They were quiet for a while and he drifted.
“Maybe a velvet painting of Juggalos,” she said, waking him up.
They both lay there with their eyes closed, smiling into the dark.
“Is your mom okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “Except that she’s dumb.”
“Everything’s such a mess,” he said.
“Yeah,” and then, “we should have told Jude.”
“Oh, completely. It’s so stupid but I didn’t want her to know how wrecked my life was,” he said. “I wanted her to think I was a grown-up with his shit together.”
Sam felt Penny’s hand shift under the blanket so it was a few inches away from his. He nudged his over to where the backs of their hands touched.
Penny’s fingers wrapped around his protectively. “Nobody thinks you’ve got your shit together,” she said, squeezing.
Her hand felt hot and soft. The entire right side of his body became agonizingly aware of how close the entire left side of her body was to it.
“You know her dad is this big-shot lawyer.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
He thought about it.
“I don’t know. It’s just a hang-up but he was the first person I knew who’d gone to grad school.”
Sam thought about the eighty bucks Jude’s dad had left on his bed. That he’d left him for services rendered. Like a babysitter.
“His law firm had this scholarship every year, and one time Mr. Lange, Jude’s grandfather, said I’d be a shoo-in. I never believed anything that bastard ever told me but for some reason I held on to that one. I thought maybe he’d put in a good word,” he said. “Like out of guilt or something. For the way he treated us.”
Sam remembered the humiliation. He’d filled out the paperwork and written a cover letter about his plans and goals and sent it off. He’d never heard back. It was a need-based grant, and Drew of all people knew how much Sam needed it.
“Anyway, they never responded and that was fine, but then Jude shows up out of nowhere saying she wants to come to UT.”
Sam felt Penny shift toward him.
“Why did you bail on her so much?”
“That’s a good question,” he said.
“I mean, your resentment toward her family had to have gotten shrapnel on her, right?”
“No way,” he said, knowing he was lying as he said it. There was no way of divorcing his feelings about Jude’s dad and grandfather entirely. Plain fact was Sam wished he’d never met them. Them or their worthless gifts. Once he’d tried to pawn the DVD player Mr. Lange had bought to get their gas turned back on. Only Brandi Rose had slapped him across the face, threatening to call the cops on him for stealing.
As Brandi Rose fell apart Sam had to grow up. Fast. It would have been easier to forget if it hadn’t been for Jude and her constant entreaties for friendship. She’d cheerfully muscled into his life before he’d had a chance to sort out his feelings. Except he’d articulated none of this to her. There was no way she could have known.
“I should have told her I felt weird about her coming here,” he said. “But it felt stupid to make a big deal out of it. And it’s not as if I don’t like her. We’re friends.”
“Well, at least part of you is holding a grudge.”
It was true. When she’d actually shown up, Sam’s instinct was to retreat.
“Smart,” he professed.
He tilted his head so he could get a look at Penny. There was just enough light from the window that he could make out the sheen of her open eyes. She blinked. Sam held his breath.
Talking to her like this felt similar to the interface. Except now the proximity felt like a dream. His heart jackhammered like crazy.
“Even so,” she said. “You’re the best person I’ve ever met. And my favorite.”
“And you’re mine,” he said.
Penny leaned over and hugged him. Sam knew this was it. If he’d ever had a shot at kissing her, it was now. Even with their horrible night. And their friendship pact. Sam was her favorite person. Not that kid from her class or her stupid ex-boyfriend. Nobody else. Penny pressed her cheek against his chest and sighed. He knew that if he turned his body to the side and scooched down a little, his mouth would be in the neighborhood of hers. Sam felt her head get heavy. Her breathing slowed. One of her feet made little circles on the surface of the mattress similar to when cats make biscuits with their claws, and then it stilled. She was out. Sam shifted his waist away from her slightly, carefully, so nothing horrifying would happen, like getting a boner in the middle of the night. He listened to Penny breathe. Within moments he crashed too.
He heard the garbage trucks first. Some mornings it was like the trash guys were hurling them at each other. When he opened his eyes, he caught Penny staring at him.
Sam covered his mouth with the back of his hand to best conceal his morning breath.
“What time is it?”
“Five,” she said. Her breath smelled suspiciously of toothpaste.
“Did you brush your teeth?”
She nodded.
“Did you bring a toothbrush?”
She shook her head.
“Did you use my toothbrush?”
“Correct,” said Penny. So the girl who generally abhorred human contact and loathed hugs was not above using someone’s toothbrush without permission. Talk about inconsistent boundary issues.
Sam got up and walked over to the bathroom.
He checked his toothbrush. It was indeed wet. Sam brushed his teeth, washed his face, and ran some water through his hair. He observed his reflection in the mirror. In the early morning he resembled a drug addict on the tail end of a weeklong bender. He was sallow with eye bags. Puffy yet skinny. He lifted his shirt. Yep, still sickly. Sam shrugged and took a leak.
He thought about doing some silent push-ups in the bathroom to look swollen and changed his mind. Instead he did two squats and held for about three seconds each.
When he returned, Penny was looking up at his ceiling.
“Don’t you want to take a broom handle to it and scrape it off?” She nodded at the popcorn stucco.
“Sometimes.”
“Do you know what trypophobia is?”
“Nope,” he said.
“It’s this condition where you get grossed out or scared of irregular or regular holes or circular patterns. I have that. Your ceiling’s freaking me out. Don’t do an image search if you think you have it. It’s too disgusting.”
“Do you know what knot is the one that’s impossible to untie?” he asked, recalling his last conversation with Lorraine.
“Are you talking about trefoil knots?”
“No, the myth one.”
“Gordian Knot. The one that Alexander the Great had to cut with his sword?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why are you asking me this?”
He smiled stupidly at her. “I have no idea.”
“What time do you have to be at work?” she asked.
“You mean downstairs?”
She nodded.
“I have about an hour,” he lied. They were going to have to buy their baked goods for the day.
“Okay, cool. So we can still hang out.” She got back into bed and pulled the comforter up. “You know constrictor knots are hard to untie too, especially once tightened.”
Sam got back into bed with her, this time taking off his sweatshirt and keeping his T-shirt on.
She stared at him intently while lying on her side. “I can’t deal with your ceiling,” she explained.
Sam smiled. It gave him a better view anyway.
“You know what I love about you?” she asked.
“My enormous muscles and my sun-kissed glow?”
“Yes,” she said. “The second thing I like about you”—Sam noticed that she’d switched “love” to “like”—“is that your brain goes as fast as mine,” she said.
“So you like that I remind you of you basically,” he said.
They both laughed.
“Exactly.”
“Cool.”
“No,” she tried again. “Most people don’t ever know what I’m talking about. Not ever. I don’t necessarily know why.”
“Well, you start your stories from the epilogue. Plus, none of your questions have anything to do with what’s being discussed.”
“Neither do yours.”
Sam smiled.
“But you know what I’m talking about,” she said. “You’ve known from the day we met. Even on text, where there are no inflections or nuance or tone for non sequiturs. You’ve always spoken fluent me.”
She slugged him on the arm. A meaty little thwock. Sam didn’t know what to read into it.
“I’m glad you didn’t talk about yourself in the third person just then, like ‘speaking fluent Penny,’ ” he said. “That would have been so gnar. What if all I did was—”
Before he could continue, Penny kissed him square on the mouth.
He didn’t have time to close his eyes, so he knew that she hadn’t closed hers.
Sam stared at her for a moment. Then he went for it.