After a solid minute, the door swings open, more lights streaming onto the stoop. And my mouth falls and my face scrunches. Lo stands before me, but he’s…
“What are you wearing?” we both say at the same time.
What am I wearing?! He has on black slacks and a white button-down, looking nearly twenty-two. His light brown hair is still a little messy, but it’s systematically disheveled. He’s clean-shaven, and his cheeks sharpen, pouting his lips as he stares from my toes to my head.
“What the fuck?” he says lightly, shrugging at me like I’ve turned into an intergalactic alien. I am exactly the same. He is the one who’s different.
“I didn’t know there was a dress code tonight,” I refute.
He crosses his arms and cocks his head to the side.
“Don’t give me that look,” I snap back, pushing my way through the door since he has rudely not invited me in yet. The living room awaits to the right of us, the vaulted ceiling and crystal chandelier shining a great deal of light onto leather furniture and expensive animal-skin rugs. I try not to think about what animals I may be stepping on when I’m at his house.
He locks the door, and I throw my backpack on the nearest couch. When I turn back to face him, he still wears that same crazy look. “What?” I say.
“You’re wearing dinosaur slippers and long johns,” he says like I’ve gone crazy.
I glance down at my nightly wardrobe. My baggy long johns sag at the crotch, and my green dinosaur slippers make my feet look huge. I also wear one of Lo’s long-sleeve shirts that he left at my house the other day—the Philadelphia 76ers logo printed on the front. I shrug. “I wear this all the time when I spend the night here.”
“That was before,” he tells me.
I hear his unspoken words: that was before, when we weren’t dating and in a fake relationship. Two weeks ago, Lo was suspended from school, and his father went apeshit, threatening to ship Lo off to military academy, actually showing him the forms. I spent the whole day anxiously pacing my room as we tried to find solutions on how to pacify his father.
And this was it. Make his father believe that Lo is a changed man by dating a girl he thought he’d never be worthy of. Me. A Calloway. When in fact, I’m just as fucked up as his son. Go figure.
When we made the announcement of our new relationship status, his father hadn’t really believed it. Which is why I’m in Lo’s living room tonight instead of his bedroom where we usually pour over comics and I watch him drink himself to sleep. Tonight, we’re supposed to prove how in love we are.
And then everything will be okay again. Lo will stay here. He’ll be a “changed man” and we’ll both continue to go on as normal. Except for the fake relationship part.
I shift anxiously. “Sorry,” I mutter, all of a sudden self-conscious. He dressed nice for me, and here I am, in baggy long johns and his oversized tee. The slippers are still cool.
“You’re right,” he tells me, his amber eyes grazing my whole body. “It doesn’t matter.” He undoes the top three buttons of his shirt.
My breath sticks to my throat.
“You look cute,” he says. A smile plays at his lips, and he laughs at my long johns again. “Are those mine?”
I’m still frozen on the you look cute part. I can’t tell if that was all show or not. I mean, no one is here to witness the performance of our romantic rendezvous, but at the same time, we are supposed to be practicing before his father walks through the door.
“Yeah,” I manage to say. “I stole them after the camping trip in October.” Almost a full year ago. He didn’t notice then, so I’m surprised that he does now. Or maybe he just never mentioned it before.
“That’s my shirt too,” he says, pushing through his last button. My eyes rake his lean muscles, and I realize that I’m going to be given permission to touch them for the first time since we had sex. And that was a long, long time ago. Well, almost three years to be exact.
“Good eye,” I whisper as he nears me. Usually I’m in complete control during sex. I know how it will end and how it will start, but with Lo and this new arrangement, I am at a total loss for where this will go.
I take a few steps back, down a couple stairs into the living room. He follows, as though he is the hunter and I’m the little doe he wishes to ensnare. My breathing deepens, not used to the way he’s staring at me. As though I am his and he’s mine.
This has to be pretend, right? Of course it is, I remind myself. The deal, don’t ever forget. It’s all pretend. But that doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to enjoy it.