Pulp. Robin Talley
Friday, September 15, 2017
It took all of Abby’s willpower not to kiss her.
She’d gotten pretty good lately at staring at Linh without making it obvious. Most of the time, at least. Some days were harder than others, though, and today might be the hardest yet.
They’d just gotten back from a Starbucks run, and Abby kept darting looks at Linh out of the corner of her eye. They were sitting only inches apart on the lumpy old couch in the senior lounge, and as Linh sipped her drink and scribbled in her notebook, Abby couldn’t shake the memory of precisely how the echo of iced coffee tasted on Linh’s lips.
She knew she should stop thinking about this. Or at the very least, she should pretend to stop. She and Linh were officially “just friends” now, for reasons Abby was still trying to forget, and she was supposed to be doing her very best to act like that arrangement was perfectly fine with her.
So as she sat next to Linh, her feet tucked under her, Abby really did try to focus on the laptop screen balanced on her knees. Even though it was basically impossible to tear her eyes away from the spot where Linh’s soft brown hair curled into the nape of her perfectly sloped neck.
The senior lounge was nothing special—just a tiny room in a far-off corner of the fourth floor, with a few couches and a dusty TV that had probably last worked in the nineties—and everyone at school except Abby and Linh seemed to have forgotten it existed. Which made it the perfect place for Abby to secretly pine after her ex-girlfriend, since no one else was around to notice and make fun of her for it.
“I can’t believe Mr. Knight already wants my first lab done by Monday.” Linh wrinkled her nose down at her notes. Abby didn’t know if it was good or bad that Linh was so oblivious to her silent yearning. “Don’t the teachers know fall of senior year is supposed to be about college applications? We shouldn’t have to start our projects until next semester.”
Abby didn’t want to talk about college applications or senior projects, but she did like it when Linh made that cute wrinkly-nose face. “Yeah, you’re totally right.”
“Do you have something due next week, too? What did you pick for your topic anyway?”
Abby scooted over to peer down at what Linh was writing. It was a blatant and probably pathetic attempt to get close to her, but Linh didn’t seem to mind. She glanced up at Abby with a smile and went back to jotting notes about molecular techniques.
When they were this close, it was so easy to remember how it used to feel. Kissing her. Being encircled in a pair of arms that had no intention of letting her go.
Kissing was Abby’s favorite activity in the entire world. It was pure sensation. When you were kissing someone, all you had to do was follow your instincts. There was no point stopping to worry about what came next.
That was the best part of being in love. The way it set the rest of the world on mute.
“So for real, what are you going to write? Poetry?” Linh finally met her eyes, and Abby blushed. Ugh, as if she wasn’t transparent enough already.
Not that Linh seemed to mind that, either.
“Nah, I’ve decided my poetry sucks.” Abby tried to arrange her face into a casual smile. They were halfway through their free period, and she was determined to get through the rest without giving herself away. “In eighth grade I had to write a love poem for French, and the best I could do was Je t’aime, ma puce, je t’aime tellement.”
Linh took Chinese, not French, so she asked, “What does puce mean?”
“Flea.” They both laughed.
It would be so easy to close the space between them. Last year, that was exactly what Abby would’ve done. Linh would’ve leaned in, too, and they would’ve kissed, and everything would’ve been perfect. No need for pining or pretending.
But this wasn’t last year, so Abby forced herself to keep talking instead. “No, but in France calling someone your flea is the same as calling them, like, sweetie or something.”
“You wrote a poem about how much you adore your sweet pet flea?” Linh grinned.
“Basically.”
Their faces were still only inches apart, but Linh had made no effort to move away. Was Abby imagining it, or was there some decidedly nonplatonic tension in the air this afternoon?
When they’d broken up, back in June, Abby had been sure it was temporary. They were both going out of town for the summer, Linh to visit family in Vietnam and Abby to creative writing camp in Massachusetts, but once they were back home in DC she was positive they’d put their summer-of-breakup behind them.
So far, though, there had been no definitive progress in that direction. Sometimes the two of them still acted mildly flirty with each other, and sometimes they acted like friends. But since Linh never gave any clear signals of what she wanted, they seemed stuck in this constant awkward limbo.
And so, once again, Abby kept talking.
“It was the only term of endearment I could find that was always female.” Abby tried to sound breezy. “You know how I was back then—all about the gay.”
“Oh, as opposed to now.” Linh smiled again.
Okay, this really, really felt like flirting. And more than just the mild kind.
Abby loved flirting almost as much as she loved kissing. She loved all the trappings of romance. Sending flowers on Valentine’s Day. Picking each other up for dances. Posing for couple-y selfies and going for long walks in the park hand in hand on sunny afternoons.
And being held. Abby loved being held most of all.
She should know better than to get her hopes up. It had been months since there was anything romantic between her and Linh. Still...
“Well, I have a more nuanced understanding of gendered nouns these days.” Abby held her gaze. She remembered how to flirt, too. “I’m still all about the gay, though.”
“Obviously.” Linh laughed again. “So when’s your project plan due anyway?”
Oh, who cared about the stupid project plan?
Abby broke eye contact. She flopped back against the couch, and the moment between them evaporated in an instant.
Everything had been going so well. Why did Linh have to keep asking about her project? Sometimes Abby wished she went to one of those schools you saw in shows, where everyone cut class and no one cared about homework.
“I keep forgetting.” Abby turned away. “I just need to pick my genre.”
“What? You don’t even know when it’s due?” Linh’s tone shifted from flirty to concerned. “Do you seriously not have any ideas at all?”
Abby squirmed, but this time she didn’t laugh.
Fawcett was a magnet school, and all the seniors had to do a yearlong thesis project. Linh was doing a big, complicated experiment Abby didn’t understand for her Molecular Techniques and Neuroscience Research class, and Abby had chosen to do hers in Advanced Creative Writing. She was supposed to write a novel, or a collection of short stories or poems that was long enough to be a novel.
Usually, for Abby, coming up with creative writing ideas meant choosing from the dozens of possibilities that had already been circling through her mind. This time, though, she was at a loss. The creative part of her brain had fizzled sometime around the day she and Linh broke up.
Or maybe her entire brain had fizzled. That would explain a lot, come to think of it. Lately, Abby seemed incapable of remembering