Free Real Live Boyfriends by E. Lockhart

yelling “They’re kissing! They’re kissing!” and I could feel his arms, warm around my back and then his hand on my cheek and I kissed him back.

    “Hey there,” Noel said finally.
    “Hey yourself,” I said. Drunk with the kissing. So surprised. I had been sure he was going to break up with me.
    “Sorry I’ve been hard to reach,” he said.
    “Oh, that’s okay,” I told him.
    It just popped out of my mouth on impulse—that lie.
    It wasn’t okay. “Sorry you arrived last night in the middle of my family drama,” I added.
    Noel kissed me again. “Forget it,” he said. “Do you want to go to the movies?”
    I nodded. He checked his iPhone for a schedule.
    “Lots of things will be starting around seven, seven-thirty. You want to just go to the Ave and see what’s playing?”
    “Okay.”
    He told Sydonie to tell his parents where he was and got into the Honda.
    I couldn’t quite believe it.
    I seemed to have a boyfriend, after all that.
    We went to the Ave and Noel put his hand on my leg while I drove. We got popcorn and saw a movie with a lot of car chases and gunshots. It felt so incredible to hold hands, pressing my forearm against his, rubbing my thumb against his palm. I leaned my head on his shoulder and just breathed in the moment.
    Noel was here.
    Noel still wanted me.
    I told myself I was utterly, completely happy.
    “And?” Doctor Z inquired the next day, looking at me over the rims of her red-framed glasses.
    “And what?”
    She was silent.

    I had never noticed it before, but Doctor Z had a photograph in a frame, facedown on her desk.
    Had the photo always been there?
    Had I really never noticed it until now?
    Was it always facedown?
    Like, so her clients couldn’t see her top-secret personal photo?
    I tried to think whether there had ever been a photograph on her desk.
    Did she have children? A dog?
    I knew she had a boyfriend named Jonah, because I’d seen them together once, at the Birkenstock store where I used to work.
    Maybe the photo was new. Maybe she got a pet, or got engaged to Jonah, or had a baby born in the family.
    Whatever it was, it had to be important enough to her that she wanted it up in her workspace even though it meant she had to turn it facedown whenever any of her clients were in there with her, which must be most of the time.
    Or maybe it was a gift from a client. Maybe some deranged neurotic thought: Oh, I’m going to give Doctor Z a photo of myself so that she can look at me always. And the client was pretty much loony, so Doctor Z had to display the photo whenever the client came for therapy because otherwise he would go berserk and have to be straightjacketed with maniacal grief. Then when he wasn’t there, she didn’t really want to look at it, so she turned it facedown.
    “Ruby!” Doctor Z startled me.
    “What?”
    “Is this subject difficult to talk about?”
    “I got distracted,” I said. “What were we discussing?”
    “Your relationship with Noel.”
    Oh.

    Yeah.
    Funny how I could forget that, even for a minute.
    Why is my brain like this? It just switches gears and starts obsessing about something completely unimportant.
    “I’m really happy he wants to be together,” I told Doctor Z. “It’s so great to have him back. I’m so relieved.”
    She stared at me.
    I wasn’t lying.
    I really felt that way.
    I just felt a whole lot of other stuff too.
    She stared at me some more. I could hear the clock ticking. I could hear myself breathing. I could hear someone out in the hallway talking.
    I twisted my hair. She knew what I was going to say.
    And she knew I knew she knew.
    “But I’m not,” I said. “Actually. Happy. Or relieved.”
    “Why not?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You don’t know?”
    “Why are people so crap at apologizing?” I said. “I know people feel bad about stuff they’ve done, but still they don’t apologize for it. My dad never apologizes to my mom. He just starts cuddling her or rubbing her shoulders until