Chapter Four #3
“Theater.” Poppy was long gone, so Rose didn’t have to guard herself. “Not a club. I think—I mean, I’m starting to think about a double major. Theater and English.”
Landon’s eyes lit up. “Impressive.”
“I have a feeling that’s not what my mom is going to say. If I listen really closely, I think I can hear her yelling something about my diminishing earning potential all the way from small-town Massachusetts.” Rose shook her head. “Anyway, I’ve got to go.”
“Tell me one thing about me,” Landon said, blocking her way one more time in a move she would have found annoying if it hadn’t seemed so awkward, like a baby giraffe moving its legs for the first time.
“You wear sweater vests to parties.”
Landon laughed. “One thing that is not completely superficial.”
“You have a twin named Jess who looks absolutely nothing like me, or you.”
“One thing you couldn’t find out by googling my name.”
Rose thought back to their first meeting, the night of the black dress. “I can’t.”
“See? All but strangers. Consider me at your service.” He bowed a bit at the waist, legs buckling.
Rose rolled her eyes but couldn’t fight the way her face was lifting at the corners. “You don’t even want to know the ask? You trust me, a near stranger, all that much?”
“Trust you? No, not at all. Like you? Yes.” Her face heated, and she pulled a hand to her cheek, reflexively. Landon immediately backpedaled, though didn’t seem to be the least bit flustered by it. “I don’t like you like you. I just like you. Like, I think you’re a cool person. Probably.”
There was nothing she could do to stop the red from spreading beyond pretending he’d never said it, which she found she did not want to do. “Cool enough to jump in the lake behind the performing arts center with me?”
Landon blanched, then laughed. “Fucking theater majors.” He took a long sip of his beer, then placed it on the ground. “Right, then,” he said. “Which way’s the performing arts center?”
As they walked, Landon talked, mostly unprompted, about himself: what it was like growing up a twin, the toll it had taken on his budding swimming career when he’d grown a full foot taller in a year and his brain and body were no longer quite in alignment, how he wished he was closer to his dad but hadn’t done anything about it even as he’d aged and matured himself.
Rose was both taken aback and intrigued by his honesty.
There was something about the stars, or the wine, or his closeness that made her bold.
She told him that she’d been so painfully shy as a kid that her imaginary friends had followed her all the way to middle school, how she’d always known deep in her bones she was meant to have a sibling and resented her parents for not giving her one, that she played four instruments at her father’s request and not one of them brought her even a fraction of joy.
Things that were safe, but true. By the time they’d crisscrossed their way to the pond, Rose felt she knew Landon more than just superficially; that if called upon, she could recite intimate details about his life only a friend would know.
She hoped he felt the same. He’d given her so much already that it felt greedy to ask him to switch clothes with her, so she didn’t.
The moon hung high in the sky, a perfect orb, and Rose knew Landon would see everything—every stripe on her stretched skin, the curve of her breasts, the stubble on her legs she hadn’t thought to shave.
The Rose she had left behind in her childhood bedroom would have cowered from this, her fear of being perceived almost as powerful as her fear of being misunderstood.
But she could feel at her core all the ways she was nothing like that young girl anymore.
That girl was scared and alone. This Rose had closed her eyes and barreled into Poppy, who was teaching her every day how to live unapologetically.
This Rose had worn a lucky black dress and so stood out in a sea of sameness that Landon had glommed onto her as though she were the sun and he a planet caught in her orbit.
This Rose had flitted and flirted with denizens of the theater department and said yes to all they had asked.
She loved this new Rose. And she decided she was ready to meet this baptism head-on.
Wordlessly, she pulled the sweater up and over her head, pulled the jeans over her hips and down her legs, unclipped her bra, and slipped off her underwear.
Out of the corner of her eye, Landon mirrored her, slowly stripping off his layers.
Anticipating their jump, he held out his hand.
It was surprisingly smooth, comfortingly large, and Rose had a thought she would tell Landon, years later: that his smooth, large hand had been crafted for just this purpose, his fingers designed to fill the empty spaces between hers.
It was a trite thought, but she felt it with such ferocity she could convince herself it hadn’t even been hers; that it had been placed there by a crafty God with a quiver full of arrows.
Landon bent his long legs and Rose followed. Then, together, they jumped.