Chapter Seven #2
It’s true that I’m behind, but not so true that I intend to work on it tonight. I just don’t have it in me to listen to any more prattle about how I should be putting myself out there. I like it in the hole of despair I’ve dug for myself. It’s closed-in and safe, if a little dim.
Liam sees right through me, of course, but doesn’t argue. I give him a grateful hug before he makes his way out the door.
The night hangs heavy and silent over the empty hotel room.
I putter around it in silence, flipping aimlessly through my notebook and paging through one of books I brought with me until I crack and head down to the hotel lobby.
At least there I can overhear snatches of conversations in Greek from my fellow hotel guests and watch the fountain in the courtyard splash onto the cobblestones around it.
I’ve just taken a seat in one of the big armchairs by the windows when I hear someone clear their throat behind me.
“My favorite fellow insomniac,” Melanie says. “We meet again.”
I grin at her. “Can’t sleep?”
“Never,” Melanie says with a groan. “You didn’t want to go out with your group?”
“Needed a break,” I admit. Self-consciously, I realize that she might’ve wanted to, though. “I’m sure you could’ve joined them if you wanted to. I can help find—”
“Lucy invited me,” Melanie says, waving off my concern. “I felt a little too awkward to say yes. You’re all so close, and I feel a bit like an intruder.”
I wince sympathetically. “I’m sorry. We don’t get out much outside of each other.”
She laughs. “It’s okay. My awkwardness in big groups is my burden to bear—not your fault.
I was…” She trails off, staring into my eyes, and I try my best not to shrink under her gaze.
It feels like she’s trying to read me again.
“I was thinking of sneaking off to this little beach nearby. It’s unfathomably cute there. Do you…?”
The end of her sentence falters, but I’m already nodding in spite of myself.
“Yes,” I say. “Yeah, I’d love to. Sounds perfect.”
“Okay,” Melanie says, her shoulders relaxing. “Let’s go.”
Keeping Lucy’s wisdom in mind, we slip out of a side entrance so that we don’t invite the hotel staff to debate whether they should report our escape to our chaperones.
Melanie promises that the beach is only a short walk away, and I follow her down the side of the dark road, flip-flops clapping with every step.
There’s enough traffic that we can’t walk side by side without risking our lives, so we stay single file as we make our way down.
It gives me just enough time to wonder what I’m doing here.
To mull over why I can’t get myself together and pick a side.
Do I want to run away from Melanie or toward her?
The two warring parts of my heart cannot agree about this girl with the dangerously deep eyes and the laugh that lights up her whole face.
Eventually, Melanie veers off the road and onto a narrow dirt path that cuts through a wild patch of tallgrass.
We scramble down a steep ledge, large rocks offering themselves as footholds.
I find myself on smooth sand stretching across a small crescent-shaped cove of a beach.
Hidden from the road by the tallgrasses that line the upper ledge, we might as well be the only two people in the only place on earth.
Before us, the sea glitters as each wave catches the starlight.
The rhythmic crash of water against land thrums with the peace of the world.
The moon hangs above it all among more stars than I’ve ever seen in my life.
The summer constellations wink down at us, the Milky Way a hazy band of light making its way across the sky.
I exchange a wide-eyed look with Melanie.
“It’s gorgeous here,” I whisper, afraid that my voice will break the tranquil spell this place has cast on me.
“The best,” Melanie agrees.
She makes her way to where the water meets the sand, and I join her. We let the waves rush over our feet. The water is clear and warm, and I wish I’d brought a bathing suit.
Melanie, I soon realize, has no such qualms. She peels off her shirt and shorts and slips right into the water. My embarrassingly frayed sports bra is a lot less put-together than the matching green situation she has going on, so I stay put.
Even in the crescent moon’s light, I can see her eye roll.
“Just get in,” she says, splashing water at me.
It’s unbelievably warm, even at night, and the spray leaves me wanting more. Looking everywhere but Melanie, I slip out of my sundress and throw myself immediately into the next wave before she can take in any of what I—or my tattered bra—look like.
We swim out until our feet can’t touch the sandy bottom anymore, legs kicking to keep us afloat. The little waves lap at our shoulders.
“This might be the most beautiful place on earth,” I tell her.
She smiles. “I knew you’d like it.”
She looks unerringly beautiful, salt water dripping off her eyelashes and dark wet hair slicked against her shoulders. Her tan skin absorbs the moonlight, and her eyes reflect the skyful of stars.
I want to kiss her.
The thought comes unbidden and extremely unwelcome.
It’s just the moment, I tell myself. The moonlight and the ocean and the two of us here, tiny dots in all this beauty. Kissing feels like it could belong in a moment like this. But me kissing Melanie belongs nowhere.
Or does it? a little part of me whispers. The war in my fast-beating heart rages on.
“I’m glad you’re here.” Melanie tips herself back so she can float on the water’s surface.
“Thank you for bringing me,” I tell her. “This really is the most beautiful…”
“I mean, here for the summer,” Melanie says, staring up at the sky as she speaks.
“Me too,” I say quietly.
I meet her eyes, as rich and dark as the night around us, and realize how much I mean it. Not just glad to be here, in Greece for the summer, but here, on this beach on this night, with her.
“I needed something good after this year,” I mutter.
“What happened?” Melanie asks.
I kick the water around me to stay afloat, spreading my arms wide. They sway with the movement of the waves.
“My oldest sister got engaged in January, and my entire family lost the plot immediately,” I tell her. “She used to be one of my favorite people. Now all she can talk about is wedding stuff.”
This is factually true. It’s not exactly what made this year so hard, though.
That has more to do with my breakdown during midterms and my parents forcing me to start seeing Paige.
The OCD label she slapped on me, which my parents clung to like a life raft keeping them afloat in the storm of my emotions, so tempestuous that not even they could handle it.
“Exhausting,” Melanie says, shaking her head. “Wedding stuff is so hard to keep up with.”
“It just completely swallowed her whole,” I say.
“I get what that feels like,” Melanie says softly. Her gaze shifts slightly so that it feels like she’s looking past me at the rocky outpost toward the far end of the beach. “I had a breakup this year. I mean, it was because we both realized we were gay. So that really took the sting out of it.”
I laugh. “That’s sort of amazing, actually. Are you still friends?”
“The best.”
“That’s the most important thing,” I say.
She surprises me by nodding. “Always.”
No one ever agrees with my take on this.
Everything about the way our society talks about romance says it should be the pinnacle of existence.
Even the way Liam and I have to explain that we’re not dating—“We’re just friends!
”—pisses me off. Just friends. As if friendship is automatically diminutive.
As if our friendships are always supposed to play second fiddle.
“What’s he like?” I ask her.
“Dimos?” She smiles. “He’s impossibly kind. We’ve been friends for a few years, and dated for a few months. Mostly because it felt like everyone expected us to, you know?”
I nod, my chin dipping into the salt water.
I’m no stranger to the constant lingering expectation that lifelong male and female friends are destined to date.
It took Liam coming out for all our parents to finally let it go.
(Even though I came out a full four months before him.
Because men’s desire is all that matters, right?)
“I know exactly,” I assure her.
She nods. “You and Liam get the same thing?”
I roll my eyes, and she laughs.
“So fun to be a lesbian.” I sigh.
She raises an eyebrow, a teasing grin playing at the corners of her mouth. “Isn’t it?”
Her words cut through me, and my breath catches on my lips. With the moonlight in her dark hair, her eyes bright as they meet mine—yes, god. Yes, it’s fun to be a lesbian.
“But before the breakup was hard,” Melanie goes on. “Relationships are hard.”
“Tell me about it,” I say. Maybe she’d understand the goings-on inside my brain better than I’ve been giving her credit for.
“I just get so anxious, you know?”
I nod. I do know exactly what she means. How it feels to be consumed, constantly, by the anxiety that I’m with the wrong person, pursuing the wrong thing. How much easier it feels to just shut myself off from all of it.
“I’m a recovering people pleaser,” Melanie confesses.
“I always found myself worrying about what he thought of me when we were dating. If I was enough, if he was going to leave me. At the time, that felt like it’d be the worst thing in the world.
I did so much to try to keep him close. It’s honestly embarrassing to think about. ”
Ah. So anxiety can come in different flavors, after all. I can’t imagine responding to my fears by clinging closer to someone. All they make me want to do is run far in the opposite direction, as fast as my track-trained legs can take me.
“That sounds tough,” I murmur. “I know how all-consuming anxiety can be.”
That much, at least, I can understand.