Chapter 29 Bird
BIRD
We fall asleep in Charlie’s tiny twin bed, holding each other. I might have thought earlier in my planning process that this would be a perfect opportunity to explore each other some more, but as we lie here in each other’s arms, it’s already perfect.
We wake up early. It’s just starting to get light out.
Jessa must have woken a few minutes before me, because when I open my eyes, she touches my face and smiles so softly.
I know I’ve never been happier in my life.
I don’t think I’ve ever imagined I could be so comfortable, so free.
I feel more myself when I’m with her, like this, just existing, than I’ve ever felt with anyone, not even when I’m alone.
I don’t know how long we lie there, snuggled up, just savoring these minutes of being close.
“Hi,” I whisper.
“Morning,” she whispers back.
“I love you,” I tell her.
“I love you too, Elizabeth Iris Nardino.”
“Oh god, that’s right,” I groan, burying my face in her neck. “Charlie middle-named me in front of you.”
“Hey, I love your middle name. And your first name and your last name and your nickname. Basically all your names are my favorite names.”
I nestle into her more closely and whisper, “I love all your names too.”
“Why do they call you Birdie, anyway?” she asks, bringing our hands up into the pale light like she’s studying the way they look with our fingers entwined.
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “That’s just what they’ve always called me.”
“You never asked why?”
“I guess it’s an old-time nickname for Elizabeth. I looked it up once. But I think…” I pause and close my eyes to try to remember but can’t quite make the fragments of my memories stitch themselves together. “I think it was my dad, maybe, who started calling me that.”
“Well…” She lets go of my hand and pulls me closer, locking her leg around mine. “It suits you.”
I don’t remember falling back asleep, but we wake up to loud knocking on the door. Jessa practically jumps out of my arms and scrambles across the room to get to the other bed just as Charlie’s opening the door.
I honestly wouldn’t have cared if he’d seen us. But I know how she feels and I’m not going to argue about it anymore.
“Wakey, wakey,” he says, poking his head in.
Jessa’s sitting on the edge of the other bed. “Morning,” she tells him.
“Hey, I was gonna head over for breakfast, if you wanna join. I’ve gotta hit the library after, so I might not see you again before you head out.”
I sit up now too. “Yeah, let’s get breakfast, then.”
“Cool. Meet you downstairs,” he’s saying while already pulling the door shut behind him.
We throw clothes on, and she lets me kiss her quickly before I open the door.
He brings us to a different cafeteria for breakfast than the big dining hall the night before.
This place reminds me of the kind of free continental breakfasts they have at hotel chains.
We get some good coffee and bagels and sit with Charlie in a little corner booth, and as we talk, I have a hard time concentrating because all I want to do is tell him how happy I am.
That Jessa’s my girlfriend. I can barely think of anything else to say, so much that I start to worry it’s just going to slip out like “honey” did last night.
“So, Jessa,” he says. “What did you think about Birdie’s surprise?”
She shakes her head and smiles. “It was awesome. Such an amazing badass night! I was totally surprised.”
“She really was,” I agree.
Charlie extends his hand across the table for a fist bump. “I suck at keeping secrets,” he says. “Did you notice how I almost let it slip last night at dinner?”
I nod, but there’s some kind of sadness building up inside me as I realize I’m getting pretty good at keeping secrets.
“Hey, Charlie, any news about Boston?”
His eyes dart to Jessa for a moment, and it occurs to me that he’s probably better at keeping secrets than he thinks.
“Jessa knows all about it.”
“Oh,” he murmurs, seeming taken aback. “Um, well nothing much, really. The restaurant—our dad’s restaurant that we found out about,” he adds for Jessa’s sake, “doesn’t have any kind of online presence. I’m gonna do some digging, I promise. Probably even today, after I finish this term paper.”
“Nice. Good,” I say. “That’d be awesome, Charlie. Thank you.”
“Yeah, of course. I want to find him as much as you do.”
Jessa says, “I keep telling Bird we should just go there. Drive up one weekend.”
“You think you really will?” he asks, sounding surprised.
“No,” I scoff.
Jessa looks down at her half-eaten bagel.
“Well.” Charlie glances at his watch. “I really should get a move on.”
I stand up to give Charlie a hug, and I suddenly feel like I could cry. This went by too fast. Our goodbye hug is much more sedate and somber than our hello hug was yesterday.
“You’ll be home for Thanksgiving?” I ask him as we pull away from each other.
“I will, promise,” he tells me, and I believe him, even if I can’t get used to his I-wanna-be-a-rock-star hairstyle.
“And Jessa…” He opens his arms to offer a hug to her as well, and it warms my gooey sentimental insides that she actually accepts.
“It was a real pleasure. I hope I’ll see you again soon. Maybe around Thanksgiving?”
“Yeah, that’d be nice. It was great to meet you, too—and thanks for letting us crash.”
“Anytime.” He takes a breath and sighs like maybe this goodbye is hard for him, too. “Birdie. You be safe driving home, all right? I’ll see you in a couple weeks.”
We sit back down after he walks away, this time on the same side of the booth, close to each other.
Jessa tucks my hair back behind my shoulder and studies my face. “Are you okay?”
I nod, but I’m not.
“You look like you’re about to cry.”
“I don’t know. I just sometimes forget how much I miss him. Is that weird?”
“No,” she says. “That makes more sense to me than I can even explain.”
“Yeah, I know it does.” I rest my head on her shoulder and she puts her arm around me for a few seconds. “You wanna get some coffee for the road and head out? Take our time driving back?”
“Sounds good.”
We’re walking through campus with our to-go cups and our bags. I loop my arm with hers and she smiles. “Is this still okay?” I ask her, and she nods.
“This is really nice.” She unlatches my arm and reaches for my hand instead. “This whole weekend has felt so good. Just being able to be out—well, mostly, anyway.”
“Yeah,” I agree.
As we continue toward the student housing where Daniel’s car is parked, someone jogs up next to us.
“Hey, hey, excuse me?” this guy says. Jessa lets go of my hand and as we slow down, I can see two other guys are hanging back a few feet, watching.
They all have the same kind of coffee cups as us, and I think I remember seeing at least one of them at breakfast.
“Yeah?” Jessa says sharply, cranking up her attitude meter to the nth degree.
“I gotta ask…” He’s grinning as he looks back and forth between us. “Which one of you is the guy and which one is the girl here?”
“Come on,” Jessa says to me, taking my hand again, but this time she’s pulling me away.
“No, really, I’m just asking.” When I look back at him, he says, “You… you’re the girl, right?”
“Wh-what?” I manage to say. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about when you two are getting it on in bed, who’s the man and who’s the chick?” He glances over his shoulder at the other two guys, who are cackling.
“What did you just say to us?” I shout.
“Come on!” Jessa whispers. “Don’t talk to him.”
“Hey, it’s a free country. She can talk to me if she wants. You don’t have to get defensive. I was just thinking you two probably haven’t had the right—”
“Just fuck off, dude, seriously,” Jessa says, cutting him off. But I’m getting the picture; pretty sure I know what he was going to say. “Not interested, all right?”
We walk faster, but he’s keeping up with us, laughing, his friends lagging behind.
“No, I’m just curious, how do you even have sex without a dick?”
I stop walking and turn around to face him, feeling all the blood in my body rushing to my head, making me dizzy, fearless. “I don’t know, how do you have sex without a dick?”
His friends start howling, keeling over with laughter now.
And before I have a chance to silently congratulate myself for getting that out without stuttering, Jessa’s shouting at me, pulling me away again. “Bird, come on!”
“Oh please, you couldn’t handle this,” he yells, and I glance back to see him grabbing himself, then giving me the finger.
“I seriously doubt that,” I say, but I let Jessa lead me down the sidewalk anyway.
“Fuck you, you fuckin’ bitch!”
“Fuck you!” I scream back at him.
“Shut up!” Jessa hisses at me, then yells over her shoulder, “We’re leaving!”
“Yeah, listen to your little girlfriend. Get the fuck outta here, dykes!”
I try to stop again, but Jessa yanks me forward so hard I stumble.
“Keep walking, Bird,” she says under her breath.
“Shit! Don’t say anything else. Where are the keys?
Get them out now,” she demands. My hands are shaking with rage, but I find the keys.
Jessa snatches them from me when we get to the lot, looking behind us every other step.
“Hurry up,” she says. “They’re fucking following us. ”
She unlocks the passenger door first and practically shoves me in, locks it from the inside, then slams it shut.
Then she’s racing to the driver’s side. I lean over to unlock it for her, because, yes, they are following us.
One of them throws a full cup of coffee, and Jessa slams the door just as it explodes all over the side of the car.
One second earlier that hot coffee would’ve landed in her face.
“What the fuck?” she yells through the window at them. She grabs her hand and shakes it out quickly, pressing it against her jeans for a moment. I see the wet spot, and then that red welt already rising to the surface of her skin. They burned her.
“Oh my god, are you okay?”
It takes her a couple of tries to start the car, but she gets it going and even though they’re standing right at the front bumper, yelling unintelligibly, she taps the gas and the car lurches forward, making me scream and making them pound on the hood of the car before they scatter.
She peels out of the parking spot and keeps looking in the rearview until we’re all the way off campus.
“Jessa?”
She’s gripping the steering wheel, staring straight ahead.
“Jessa?” I say, louder.
She turns onto the main road and we drive down the street we walked along last night, past the stores and the beautiful theater, marquee now blank.
“Jessa!”
“Bird, just give me a damn minute to get us out of here, all right?” she yells at me.
Neither of us says anything until she pulls into a gas station several blocks away. She parks at a pump and lets her head fall against the steering wheel for a second before looking at me.
“Are you okay?” I ask her again.
“No, are you?”
“No.” I’m not okay. I’m mad and scared and can’t stop shaking.
“Bird, that could’ve gone so fucking bad. You can’t do that.”
“I was trying to stand up for us! I mean, did you hear what that asshole was saying?”
“Yes! And I wanted to punch him in the face, but not when there are three guys and just us. Okay? You have got to use your head!”
“I was.”
“No, you weren’t. He went from being a maggoty little douchebag saying some dumb shit to being a big angry fucking guy with something to prove because you antagonized him.”
“He was antagonizing us!”
“I know, but that doesn’t matter. Wrong and right don’t matter.
Do you even realize you were seconds away from getting this scalding coffee right in your face?
” She holds up her hand so I can see the burn mark, raw and pink.
“Or worse. Okay?” she adds, and I can tell she’s holding back tears.
“Sometimes you have to just walk away, Bird. When it’s three guys and just us, you have to walk away. You get that, right?”
I think it’s the first time I’ve seen real fear in her face, and it’s cold and sobering and scary, because I thought in so many ways Jessa was so fierce and tough that she could stand up to anything, defeat anyone, but she’s right. We both could have gotten really hurt.
“Yeah. I—I—I get it. I’m s-sorry.”
We fill up the tank and I get a cup of ice for Jessa’s hand. We switch spots so I’m driving again. We’re quiet for a long time. Jessa doesn’t use the ice. She doesn’t even soundtrack us.
“This morning started out so beautiful,” I say out loud, looking at the country road sprawling open in front of us. “This weekend was the best. Just us. Together. It was perfect. And I feel like they just ruined it all.”
She places her hand on my knee, and when I glance over at her, she’s turned all the way toward me in her seat, her eyes so soft and calm now. “Those guys are fucking nobodies. We’re not letting them ruin anything. They don’t get to ruin this amazing, special, wonderful weekend you planned for us.”
“Really?”
“No fucking way.” She brings my hand to her mouth and kisses it. “Think you can get us lost on the way home?”
“I can try,” I tell her.
“Good.” She smiles. “I’ll queue up some getting-lost music.”