Chapter Twenty-Eight
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
Derek
That day she wore the yellow dress, I wondered what she felt like, all those curves and arches.
But now she moves over me as close and as soft as water and I almost can’t take it.
I’m straining to keep myself together. Is this real?
Our lips memorize each other. My fingers memorize the way her limbs flow.
How soft and careful she is. How sure she is in her quiet.
Everything she does is another star in her constellation and I could look at her forever.
I want to keep her with me, my own moon.
At the thought, I gently lift her off me.
She giggles at first, and then she grabs my face, worried. “Did I hurt you?”
I take her hand and place it on my chest, like somehow this will stop the feelings from moving around so hard and so fast. “Jae. Everything in my life gets screwed up. Okay? I don’t want this to … Everything breaks. Everything breaks.”
She leans in and kisses me right underneath my lip.
Soft. Then rolls onto her back with her arms open.
I let myself in, rest my head against her shoulder, my mouth against her chest. I feel her breath in my hair, and I almost cry because the last time I felt that, it was Dad hugging me.
You beautiful boy. I miss him. I miss him.
I don’t cry. My tears knot up in my throat. But soon, the knot is gone. And I settle into something that feels like rest.
The house is quiet. The room is dark, except for the sliver of moonlight cutting through the parted curtains.
“Jae. What time is it?”
She leaps off the bed and grabs her phone. “He should definitely be home by now.”
The house creaks and our eyes flick to the door. Nothing.
She hurries to her closet and pulls out a couple of blankets from the top shelf. She lays them out on the floor in the space between her bed and the window. “It’s time to hide now, little frog,” she says.
I lie down on the floor and sit up on my elbows so I can see her move around the room. A pillow comes flying at me. I catch it, lie down. I cross my arms behind my head and stare at the ceiling.
“Stars. You need stars,” I whisper as she pushes a laundry basket to block the blankets from view.
“Stars for what?”
“To count. To make wishes on.”
“I don’t think wishing on plastic stars counts.”
“You never know.”
I hear the creak of her bed and then her head suddenly peeks over the edge. Her hair hangs over and hovers above my face. She smiles as I reach for it and wrap it slowly around my finger. She is moonlight and dimples.
“So, you never told me what happened,” she whispers.
“When?” I whisper back.
“When you left. Brunch.”
I close my eyes. How do I talk about this and where do I stop?
“I’m sorry,” I say. “My mom was having a panic attack. It happens sometimes. She thinks she’s dying but …
” I shake my head. “I wonder sometimes if it’s her way of keeping me close, you know?
But I’m sorry. I’m sorry I ran out and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you why.
I felt …” But I’m not sure which word to pull out of this alphabet soup of emotions.
“What?” she asks.
“Hopeless?” I pause. “Ashamed? I mean, that’s what I’m scared of with you. I feel like I’ll always be apologizing for something. ’Cause things are just … not good.”
She reaches for my hand. I drop her hair and get entwined in her fingers instead.
“You could have told me,” she says. “I would have understood. I promise. I want you to tell me things.”
I’m getting choked up again. I blink away tears.
Tell her things? Like my mom’s an addict?
“Yeah,” I say. If anything could put out the light between us, it’s those words.
There’s no redemption in them. And now I’m crying for real, the only words that make sense to her and me.
Jae’s not scared of my tears. But the truth? I don’t know.
“Hey.” She squeezes my hand. “You okay?”
I finally meet her eyes. I finally tell her what’s true. “No.”
She climbs down from the bed, throws her arm across my chest, and nuzzles against my neck. I wrap my other arm around her. She fills up the empty space that’s been here for so long, but she is weightless, and I could hold her forever.
“I can’t wait to move out,” I say. “Start over.”
“Yeah …” she says. Her voice is full of unsaid things, like her poems.
“Your turn,” I say. “I want you to tell me things too.”
Her breath stops blowing on my neck. One. Two. Three. Four. Her breath rushes out.
“My mom and I aren’t really talking right now. It’s one of the reasons I came here.”
“What happened?”
She’s quiet for a long time. “She … it feels like … she’s never there for me when I need her the most. Like when my dad left, she kind of disappeared.
She just couldn’t see past her own hurt, you know?
And I was hurting too, but it was like that didn’t matter.
I had to patch myself up, take care of myself. ”
“That sounds familiar.”
“Yeah? Maybe our moms loved our dads so much they couldn’t see us,” she says.
“I see you.” Her breath tickles my skin. I lift her chin up, touch her lips to mine. I let my tongue taste her a little, just to get away from the sadness, to feel my insides spark up with light. We go deeper, and then, softer. “I see you,” I say again.
“And I see you,” she says.
I smile and she suddenly looks bashful.
“I think my parents were soul mates,” I say.
“That’s beautiful,” she sighs. “Hm. I wonder if my dad left us because that woman was his soul mate. I never thought of that before. Hm. Then again, maybe soul mates don’t exist. Maybe we just make choices. Maybe that’s even more romantic.”
“Maybe. Have you seen him since? Talked to him?”
She shakes her head. “No. He hasn’t tried and I don’t think I’d talk to him anyway. He railed against absent fathers and then he became one. He made me a statistic.”
“There’s more to you than that,” I say.
She looks up at me, gives me a weak smile, then wiggles out from under my arm. She hops up onto the bed and this time I can’t see her. She says nothing.
“There’s more to you than that, Jae,” I say again, because I know she needs to hear it.
She shifts on her bed. A sniffle. A quiet Thanks. Then, after a long pause, she says, “I know.”
“What?” I ask.
“There’s more to me than that.”
“That’s a good thing.”
“Yeah,” she whispers.
Then, like we’re a pair of lungs in a giant aching chest, we breathe out loudly at the same time. And then we laugh.
“Thanks for letting me stay,” I say.
“Yeah. Yeah, of course. Um … we should sleep. You’ll have to leave before Uncle Rowan wakes up tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll wake you up at five.”
“Okay. Night, Jae.”
“Good night.”
I know I won’t sleep. Not here. Not where every touch of space is filled up with her.
My mind sees her walking toward the closet, sitting back against her bed, nuzzling against my chest. I smell her body spritz, still, clinging to every molecule of air, and I know I’ll never forget that scent, like flowers in rain, or something that beautiful.
When I think she’s asleep I tiptoe to my bag and pull out my poetry notebook. I lower myself slowly into her desk chair and turn on a small reading light. She stirs, then settles into her blankets again. I write.
Destiny
Don’t tell me what you see in the stars
I can read the sky and tell my own story
She is radically beautiful
Cosmically impossible
The wonder in everything
Like a single drop of water
That reflects the whole rainbow
She is my destiny
There’s no way I’m wrong
I’ve seen the universe in her smile
I tiptoe across the room. I open the window and look up at the moon. A waxing gibbous. Almost full. Almost complete.
The view from Jae’s bedroom feels familiar. The moon, the ocean. A slender boat cutting into the moonlit reflection. Sand and reeds. A man.
A man.
He stops walking. Looks up at the window. We stare at each other. He points at me, holding me beneath his finger. He walks away, opens a door, and slams it.
The house shakes.