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“I don’t think your sister liked me very much,” Jean says. They’re curled together in Jeremy’s childhood bedroom, legs tangled together and pulled close to keep from dangling off the end; there are still Star Wars posters taped to his closet door from high school and books stacked against his mattress. The only light comes from the Christmas decorations outside and pinholes of stars peeking through the window, but it’s enough to make out the lines of Jean’s face.
“What? Why would you think that? I thought she really liked you,” says Jeremy. “Especially when you offered to help her set up the table. Elowen and I don’t do that anymore unless we’re dragged kicking and screaming.”
“She kept asking me questions.” He says this slowly, like a balloon flitting away, as if he’s not sure of the right way to explain. “And staring at me when she thought I wasn’t looking.”
Jeremy scoots closer under the covers, switching his head from his pillow to Jean’s. It’s one of the most intimate things Jeremy has ever done, one he doesn’t think he’s ever going to get entirely used to: faces inches away, bare skin on skin, breathing in the same air. He doesn’t think Jean ever will, either, not by the way his breathing pauses for a moment before they’re both settling into each other’s space. “She loved you, which is probably why she looked so upset. It would’ve been a lot easier to chase you away from me if she found something nasty about you.”
“Nothing could chase me away,” Jean says into the dark.
“Yeah,” says Jeremy. “I think my sister thought so, too.”
Later, as he slides his thumb across Jean’s cheekbone, Jean says, “Your sisters look a lot like you, you know. I could hardly tell the difference.”
Jeremy hums. “Really? What set me, your pretty, enthralling, almost maddeningly distracting boyfriend, apart from two teenage girls?”
“Jeremy, you are one of those things,” he drawls, but Jeremy can feel Jean’s smile stretch below his fingers.
“Witty,” he says in a voice that means he’s thinking the exact opposite.
“One of us has to be.”
Jeremy’s laugh has his body shaking, mouth open and pleased against the crook of Jean’s neck. He laughs for not the tenth, not the hundredth, not the millionth time that day, breathing in the smell of fresh soap and Jeremy’s shampoo on Jean’s clothes, the new sweater he gave him soft against Jeremy’s cheek. The rest of his gifts sit in their own neat pile by the dresser, carefully kept in their wrapping even though Jeremy insisted he just toss it out.
Hours ago, under the tree, Jean had thumbed through Dangerous Liaisons with a glitter in his eyes, reveling in every printed page.
(Jeremy had seen a lot of beautiful things in his life: his mother’s smile, his sisters on graduation day, and the look on his team’s face when they first won the championships, as if the court fell away from them and all that was left was tears and each other. But this one, as he watched Jean make his way through his gifts, dreamlike, with the ghost of a smile, was the prettiest.)
When Jean found the letter tucked in the back cover, Jeremy leaned in close and said, you might not want to read that here in the open.
Jean looked at him, then at the envelope, then at the book, then – with raised eyebrows – back at Jeremy. Your idea of a joke?
He shrugged. I can’t help what the book is about, Jean.
Hilarious, he said. Really. I think you broke my funny bone.
That unimpressed look had morphed into barely concealed delight when Jeremy unwrapped his own gift and very nearly fell out of his chair from surprise. In the back of his mind, Jeremy narrowly remembers telling Jean, after he took the liquor from their luggage for the fifth time, as they packed and scrambled around their apartment, Listen, Moreau, if I’m not wearing ridiculous clothes and senselessly drunk by the time we’re done opening presents, what’s the point of going to my mother’s for Christmas?
Now, in front of him sat possibly the ugliest Christmas sweater Jeremy had ever seen, antlers, and a bottle of spiked egg-nog.
Jeremy looked over at him and asked, grinning, your idea of a joke?
Actually, yes, he said. Personally, I thought it was rather clever.
Jeremy laughed, loudly, and congratulated him with a glass of egg-nog.
Now, under the sheets and distorted stars, Jean curls his fingers into the sweater. Without even looking, Jeremy can tell he’s scowling. “It really is the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Ugh. It’s wretched,” he agrees, sounding ridiculously pleased about it.
“I can’t even begin to understand why you like it so much.”
Jeremy says, “Same reason I like you, I suppose. Sentimentality.”
Jean’s thumb comes up to pull at the seam of Jeremy’s mouth, softening his grin into something warmer. “I’d like to kiss you.”
“Okay,” he says. “Yes.”
.
“I didn’t know that it could be like this,” Jean says in French, much, much later.
Both of them are drowsy, hovering in that space between falling sleep and being awake. They’re pressed together everywhere, as inseparable as oceans.
“What do you mean?” says Jeremy. He’s nearly asleep.
“This,” says Jean, quieter this time. “I didn’t know it could be a give and return. I didn’t know that love could just. . . be a glide down a pool. Does that make sense?”
“Uncomplicated?” There’s no more space between them but still Jeremy reaches and pulls closer, closer, closer. In the dark, all they can see of each other is shapes. A beam of moonlight catches across Jean’s spine. Jeremy thinks that, if he was an artist, he’d want to paint it on a canvas as big as these walls.
“Unresisting. Being able to see just enough but allowed to put your head above water if you need it,” he explains, tripping over himself looking for the right words. “I always thought it was like taking only just enough in your canteen to the desert. Or a sun hat.”
A confession: “I didn’t think love could be this easy.”
Jeremy whispers, “Neither did I.”