Chapter Twenty-Three
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
Jae
I hear my name and turn to see him, a shadow in the doorway of the yellow house.
His hands are stuffed into the pockets of dark slacks, and his baseball cap shades his eyes.
It’s strange how different, how new he looks, how darkness can shine.
He walks toward me and his eyes don’t leave mine.
He stops. Full mouth. Icy mint wafting from smiling lips.
His irises are gradients of lights and shadows.
He runs a cool hand down my bare arm until our fingers intertwine.
It’s the most breathtaking hello I’ve ever felt.
“You made it.” His smile crinkles the edge of his eyes.
“I made it.”
He runs his thumb along mine, slowly, stopping to rub my knuckles in gentle circles. I laugh to stop the shivers running bone-deep.
He clasps my hand tight now and leads me slowly toward the side of the house, past a friendly valet, under palms, to a small wooden bridge. The boards thump hollow as we walk over them, over a pond encased with leaves and flowers.
He suddenly stops and pulls me closer to him. “Careful. Alligator.”
I see it, mouth ajar, and I jump away from the railing, expecting it to lunge at us with its iron teeth. But it’s frozen. Lifeless. Statuesque.
I kiss my teeth and lightly push Derek’s shoulder.
He laughs, grabs my hand with both of his, and leads me across the bridge. We walk past tables of people eating eggs and French toast with sugary red berry sauce.
“We have time to kill before our table’s ready,” Derek says. “Let me give you the VIP tour first.”
We walk through one of the most beautiful botanical gardens I’ve ever seen. Tall bamboo shoots like wild spears. Trees spreading leaves like verdant wings and their canopies fluttering with the movement of chirping birds. I wonder if Derek feels how small we are.
“My mom and I used to visit gardens every Sunday,” I say. “We loved wisteria, looked for them everywhere, especially the purple ones. We stopped doing that some years ago, but … this is amazing.”
“Amazing enough for a poetry venue?”
“Definitely. It’s going to be a tough choice.”
He leads me to a large pool surrounded by trees, where small yellow fish glimmering like glass flit through the water. He steps out of his shoes and pulls his socks off.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Come on,” he says, sitting down at the pool’s edge. He pulls the bottoms of his pants up and sticks his feet into the water. The fish swarm his feet. “Try it.”
“No way.”
“Come on. You only live once. It’s not as cold as the ocean.”
I don’t blame him for coaxing me. He doesn’t know my history with fish, that I can hardly eat fish, let alone touch them when they’re alive.
He doesn’t know that I had nightmares of Dad’s mounted bass coming down from the wall and eating me.
He doesn’t know that I drowned and nearly died because I thought being an ugly fish was better than being me.
But Derek looks over his shoulder and reaches for my hand and I take it. I slowly sit down and lower my feet into the water next to his. Tan and dark brown, shimmering in liquid sunlight. Within seconds, I feel soft nibbling. My feet jerk out of the water.
He laughs. “Give in to it. It’s just a hundred tiny kisses, that’s all.”
I lower my feet again and close my eyes and try to feel the hundred tiny kisses and then all I can do is laugh. I laugh, and he laughs, and then we laugh because we can’t stop.
This feels good. It feels too good. He doesn’t know anything about me. What if he found out why I moved here? What would he say?
I push the intruding thoughts away. Today, I feel the sun. Today, the air is singing. There is no room to place my secrets.
Not here. Not today. This is good.
But Derek’s eyes are suddenly dark and he’s furrowing his thick brows.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, pulling my feet up to the warm stones.
He takes in a deep breath, looks at me sideways, dark eyes brooding, and then looks up at the canopy.
“My dad died right before freshman year. Car accident. I dunno. I just thought of him and … Things can be totally fine, and then I laugh, and then I remember his laugh, and then it suddenly becomes … too much.”
“I’m sorry” is what I say, even though those words are just two grains in a sandcastle of emotions. I’m sorry your dad’s gone. I’m sorry you’re sad. I’m sorry you know what it feels like to be left.
“Thanks.” He hunches over cross-legged on the wet stones, fiddles with his shoes and plucks the laces.
He presses his eyes hard like you’d press a wound to stop the bleeding.
Then he opens them again, lets more words out, but his voice is taut.
“Losing him was shitty enough. He was my best friend. Back then, things were good. There’s almost nothing left of that now. The good things.”
“How about your mom?”
His jaw tenses and he shakes his head. “Mom is Mom.” Then he snickers. “That’s not even true, but whatever.”
I don’t understand and I don’t push it. I know more than anyone that some doors are better left closed.
“Here,” he says, lifting up the tail of his button-up to show his poetry notebook rolled up in his pocket. He pulls it out, flips to a page, and passes it to me. “I wrote it for him. What do you think?”
So I sit quiet as the faint sounds of conversations from the brunch tables, and the birds, and the whispering water fountains all fade into the background. I only hear Derek’s words.
your song
here comes the sun
dancing in the moonlight,
boogie shoes
tangled up in blue
i’ll be there
summer nights
i’ve had the time of my life
don’t fear the reaper
kiss and say goodbye
go your own way
across the universe
the long and winding road
i’ll be there
summer nights
i’ve had the time of my life
“Every line is a song title,” he explains. “Dad loved seventies music.”
“Wow,” I say.
“We went on these long highway drives together, blasted Meat Loaf and Chicago on the radio like we were characters in some movie.” He closes his eyes and with the most dramatic face, starts singing, “You’re the Inspiration.”
I join in, both of us over-the-top vocalists for Chicago. “Holy cow, Derek. I mean, this is so creative. It’s … I don’t know. I can’t even …” I pass the notebook back to him. “He would love it.”
He grimaces and tucks the notebook back in his pocket. “Thanks.” He clears the rasp from this throat and asks, “Ready to eat?”
We put on our shoes, then he holds out his hands and pulls me to my feet. He places his hand on the small of my back. Warm.
I feel it. All over.