was right. She was solid and secure and never needed anyone. But Xavier wasn’t like that.
And besides, Sasha hadn’t heard Ivy apologizing in the woods, and hadn’t seen the look on Ivy’s face this morning when she’d kissed him. Ivy had done some not-so-great stuff, but Xavier didn’t blame her, and maybe it was dumb and naïve not to, but he just didn’t. Life messes us up in so many ways, messes all of us right the hell up. And when we fumble and bumble around, crashing into one another, stepping on toes and hearts, it’s not on purpose. Being a person is nearly impossible.
He heard the toilet flush and Ivy’s bare feet padding back across the shiny wood floors. And then she was back in the room and Xavier forgot everything else. She stood by the door, watching him, one arm raised up against the frame, dark hair sticking straight up.
Xavier started to get out of bed. She sprang forward and then her hands were over his eyes and her mouth was against his ear again.
“Not yet,” she said.
For the next hour, Xavier was just a body. Lips. Hands. Skin. A beating heart. And when they were done, they were wrapped together in her sheets, and Xavier was full of all the chemicals, those love ones or the post-sex ones that are impossible to distinguish between. She grabbed her hairbrush, which she hardly ever used herself, and started pulling it through his hair with long, smooth strokes. She did this all the time when they were dating. “You’re like the doll I always wanted as a kid,” she had said once. Xavier took it as a compliment at first. He was the thing she’d always wanted. After they broke up, Xavier told Sasha the story and she had raised one eyebrow in that wary way she didn’t know she did.
“It’s kind of fucked she said that to you,” Sasha said. “As though you are just a thing.”
That’s not how she meant it, Xavier had wanted to tell her. He wanted Sasha to understand, but he was so tired back then, he could barely speak at all.
Now, that morning in Ivy’s bed, Xavier was trying not to think of anything at all as she brushed and brushed. But then Ivy’s phone vibrated, and she reached for it, and the corner of her mouth twitched up into a special kind of smirk. His stomach was immediately tight. Xavier knew that smirk. But Xavier also knew it was ridiculous to be jealous. He and Ivy weren’t actually together. They weren’t going to be. This was just for today.
But Xavier was wrong about the smirk and what it was, because she turned her phone toward him. On the screen was a guy’s Instagram account, locked. The guy was maybe a couple of years older than they were, though it was hard to say, because the picture was cropped so you could only really see half of him, half a handsome face, one muscular arm.
“Look,” she said. “An arm followed me.” She stuck her tongue through her teeth, then tossed her phone onto the nightstand. She slid close to him. A second later her phone buzzed again. This time, after she looked at it, she frowned and pulled away.
“My parents are on their way back. You have to go now.” Her tone was totally different then, all business. It was something he’d almost let himself forget about her, how quickly she flipped from one thing to another. “This was fun. It was good to see you.”
Xavier stood, gathered up his T-shirt, jeans, the one sock he wasn’t wearing. Adrenaline was coursing through him. This was fun. It was good to see you. Those were ending words – those were the words of this being done again. Of course, he told himself. That was the plan all along, one night and that’s it. He knew it was for the best, but in that moment it really, really did not feel that way.
Suddenly Xavier was filled with dread at the idea of going home with this finished again, returning to the hard work of getting over her, made all the harder now that Xavier remembered so clearly what being with her was like. Because what is getting over someone if not a slow, excruciating forgetting? Ivy was very, very hard to forget.
He started getting dressed, putting his clothes on in reverse of the order Ivy had taken them off him – underwear, T-shirt, jeans. Xavier imagined himself in a video playing backward, the love Xavier poured out at her being funneled back into his chest, the taste of her lips leaving his, walking backward out of that room, shutting closed his heart.
He walked toward the door. He turned to wave.
“Wait,” Ivy said. “You forgot something.” She ran toward him, then jumped up, wrapped her legs around his waist. “This isn’t over,” she whispered. “I won’t fuck it up this time. I mean it.”
A good girl would have played it different.
Good Girls do not scheme or plot. Good Girls do not twist and sneak. When their best friend calls them on his birthday and says in this shy, squirrelly, embarrassed way, I know this is going to sound stupid, but I think we’re kind of seeing each other again, maybe, I don’t know, Good Girls say, Xavier, listen and Xavier, I’m concerned. And when their best friend says, We’re going to take things slow, and I promise to be careful, but they can hear in his voice that he is already long gone and is only trying his best to sound reasonable, but he is far past reasonable, like someone who has newly been recruited into a cult, Good Girls calmly say their piece, and step back, as he does not listen, does not listen, does not listen, and makes the same mistakes, only worse this time. Good Girls say, Well, I tried my best and it is not up to me and you have to let people make their own choices, and then they watch as his once-ex-now-current-girlfriend wraps herself around his neck and chokes him until he’s dead.
But Bad Girls know it’s never that simple.
Bad Girls know everything is gray. Everything is messy and complicated. And sometimes you have to do some fucked-up stuff to make things okay.
Bad Girls sink in their teeth.
Bad Girls use every weapon they have.
Bad Girls know there is no right and wrong. There is just what you’re willing to do. What you need to do.
Here is what I did.
July 21 11:24 p.m.
JakeJones1717:
Well, having scrolled through your Instagram photos, I’ve come to the conclusion that if there’s an infinite number of parallel worlds, there’s at least one in which you and I are already best friends
JakeJones1717:
oops, sorry. That was a typo
JakeJones1717:
I meant fucking
July 21 11:35 p.m.
TwistedTree16:
In how many of the infinite worlds do you think I just punched you in the balls?
JakeJones1717:
92300329 where I deserved it. 3 where I didn’t
TwistedTree16:
TWO WHERE YOU DIDN’T
JakeJones1717:
Fair.
TwistedTree16:
But in those 2 you probably liked it, I can tell your type. Perv
JakeJones1717:
Okay, but seriously I’m not actually a creepy perv. Just messing around on here and I guess if we’re being totally honest, looking for cute girls to talk to because everyone I know in actual life is boring as hell
JakeJones1717:
I like your pics, your dog is really fluffy. What’s her name?
TwistedTree16: