Page 44 of The Switched-Up Playbook
“Uh, you know, because you’re all serious and...nevermind, what’s up?”
“I...I just...I’m sorry.” I try to ignore the way my stomach lurches. What if I’m messing up big time by reminding him about last night? What if he really had forgotten or just written it off as a drunk mistake? And now here I am, dragging it back into the light of day.
“Oh, okay…what for?”
“For…last night?” I say slowly, then let out an annoyed huff, crossing my arms. “If you’re making fun of me, cut it out right now, I’m...I really mean it, Nate.”
“I’m not! I just have no idea what you’re talking about, Xan.”
“I’m talking about,” the words feel like a too-large bite, stuck painfully in my throat. I take a few steps up and down. It takes three paces before I manage to push what I need to say out of my mouth.
“I’m sorry that I kissed you.”
“You what?!” Finally, it seems like Nate is on the same page I am; his eyes go wide and he almost slips off the table. It doesn’t make me feel better, but at least he isn’t joking anymore.
The silence that’s settling between us feels both fitting and suffocating.
I hate that I can feel my cheeks heat up. I’m not embarrassed. Nate is important to me after all; he’s a great friend, calming and caring and handsome too. Not to mention that there were a lot of new sides of him coming out these past two weeks. Sides that I hadn’t known, but that I do find attractive.
Still, I don’t want to push my sudden attraction on my best, and very straight, friend. I have to believe that one kiss, no matter how spectacular or unexpectedly reciprocated, won’t break our friendship.
“I…” Nate shakes his head, starts again, gapes again.
I give him all the time he needs.
Finally, he raises a hand to brush his hair off of his forehead. For a second there’s a shadow around his left eye, but then his hair falls down and covers it. He takes a deep breath.
“You didn’t kiss me.”
“Oh, come on! Yeah, pretending it didn’t happen might make this easier, but we needto talk about it before we can just…” I make a gesture to signify sweeping the whole mess under a rug.
“No, you’re not hearing me.” Nate is looking everywhere except at me, plucking at a loose thread on his t-shirt. “You, uh...you didn’t kissme.”
I manage a short huff, bewildered.
“Uhm, if I didn’t kiss you, I kissed someone who–”looks exactly like you. I don’t finish the sentence, my mouth hanging half-open as I stare at my roommate.
My roommate, who has a twin brother.
I’m such an idiot.
I fumble for my desk chair and hold onto the backrest of it. My head is swirling with all those sudden changes that had seemed so weird and that I had quietly accepted or explained away: by Nate being ill; by thinking he just wanted to try something different with his hair, his glasses, his clothes; by assuming he’d been mad at me. The list goes on, unrolling in my head like one of those stupidly long grocery receipts.
It all falls into place now that I’ve been given the answer. Like shifting all the letters one space to the side and getting an entirely different word out of them.
It hadn’t beenNateat all.
“I kissedNicko?!” I hear myself say. I feel like the shittiest friend who can’t even tell that it hasn’t been his best friend he’s been living with for–
“You switched places? Sincewhen?!”
“Just since I had that stomach bug, I swear.”
“Jesus Christ Nate, that was two weeks ago!”
“I had to do something!” Nate insists with a fervor I didn’t expect, making me look at him in disbelief.
“Youhadtoswitch places with your twin? What the fuck for?”
