36
Lillian
Best-case scenario, maybe Sasha thinks I blew the showcase because I was obsessing about how to enact some form of justice, or at least revenge, on that human dumpster fire that harassed Quinn and them earlier. Though it isn’t my place to be the angry one.
But that’s not the main thing that threw me off. Fucking yesterday did.
I know, at the very least, that Cyprus and Quinn want Emelia and I to be friends again. Or just make up already and get back together. They’re both too kind to put pressure on me or Emelia. I split into fluctuating thirds on this. I draw pros and cons lists of identical lengths.
I want her back, I just want to be friends, I want nothing to do with her.
It changes minute to minute. Sometimes having Sasha around makes it better, sometimes worse.
That whole confusion is coming up again as Sasha and I slip into my house through the back door. To watch a movie. Movies are long. Physical contact has a way of gradually building. I’m very drawn to Sasha. They’re not to me.
Stay friends, don’t screw it up. You’ve got this.
In my head, it sounds sarcastic. Pep talks aren’t my strongest suit.
It’s all frustrating and confusing and Emelia never did send me a list. Which is sort of what started everything yesterday. In a particularly weak moment, I slipped a note into Emelia’s locker. Written impulsively, yet in my prettiest handwriting rather than my usual scrawl because Emelia likes pretty things.
Pathetic, my brain said to me as soon as I did it. Be tough, move on, aloof is sexy, aloof is powerful.
Not that I could get the note back.
Dear Emelia,
Meet me after school today at the birch trees? I’m ready to talk now.
Lil
It was the “dear”
that really haunted me. I shouldn’t have written that. It felt too formal and yet too warm. And the nickname. No one else calls me Lil. Emelia started doing it early on and I hated it and I told her so and she said.
“If you want the name back, you’ll have to steal it from my mouth.”
So I loved the nickname from her and only her, along with countless other words.
I almost didn’t go to the trees. Quinn had rambled on about how he’s a gelati connoisseur, so him and Sasha were leaving to get gelati from this adorable place with a red-and-white tile floor, but I stayed.
By the birch trees, the wind was cold and blunt. I could have worn a warmer jacket, but I wanted to look a certain way. Tough, moving on, aloof. Aloof doesn’t dress warm, and I know this is basically toxic masculinity and emotional repression. Still, maybe Emelia would think I looked attractive.
I don’t know. I never saw her.
I’d been there for longer than I should have waited, bolstering my continually thinning hope by attaching some love story to it. Using some of my need to make it seem possible, to convince myself that if I walked away to see if her bike was already gone, that would be the precise moment she showed up.
My phone vibrated and most of me sank. Slow to check it. I told myself it was probably Cyprus or Quinn. Maybe I’d forgotten something, or I was supposed to be somewhere else.
I’m only punctual if I’m waiting beside a tree for a girl I adore who almost definitely isn’t showing up.
Emelia
Please please don’t do that again
It wasn’t cute
I am not charmed
There was a minute where I could see that she was writing, but I stayed there. I’d already waited so long. What was a little more?
Emelia
I know you remember asking me out for the first time by leaving a note in my locker. Don’t pretend you forgot, because that would be worse. All you’ve done today is make me cry. I told you I’m not ready to talk in person yet. Just because you suddenly are doesn’t cancel out how I feel, Lillian. I’ve dropped your things off at your house. Please leave my stuff on my back deck. I’ll send you a list
At least I didn’t punch the tree, because I’m not a shitty person who hates trees.
At least I didn’t tell anyone.
There’s nothing as vulnerable as showing people your foolish hopes. It’s really best to keep them to yourself.
She’s right that I remember the note from three years ago. She used to have it pinned up alongside concert tickets and Polaroids.
Emelia + Lillian + a quirky coffee shop tomorrow?
We already talked in class, since I negotiated, aka paid, for a seat beside her. It wasn’t exactly asking her out, but I hoped it was.
That’s why you hope. Sometimes you get years with a beautiful person. Sometimes you hope and people say yes.
I put my phone away when we got to the showcase. The hundred times I read Emelia’s messages yesterday were enough to have them echoing around. I tried to focus when we went onstage, home in. Then I gave a tiny miscue that made Cyprus screw up more noticeably, and there was this thought that I couldn’t get rid of.
I wondered if Emelia told Cyprus about the note yesterday. It’d be fair if she did. It’s not Emelia’s role to keep my secrets now. Cyprus could be sad at me too. Or disappointed. Like how she’s disappointed we’re blowing this showcase, I thought, how I’m blowing it.
I went adrift. No one onstage pulled me back to shore.
Somewhere on the drive away from the showcase, I started feeling a little better. Not somewhere — exactly when I asked Sasha if they wanted to come over to watch a movie and they said yes. Not everything is the band or Emelia. There’s this too, this uncertain thing, and I’m excited for it, however it may be.
Now we’re inside my house. Sasha’s curious, going through a little too slowly and looking around as we head through the kitchen and up the stairs. I’m deeply wishing I lived alone and that there was no possibility of running into anyone in my family. I texted my mom to say the showcase was not great, so she’ll know I don’t want to talk about it, but I didn’t mention Sasha was coming over.
Luckily, it seems like no one’s around. But at my bedroom door, I realize there’s an entire box of Emelia’s things on my bed. I was going to do like she said and drop them off tonight, be respectful. But now Sasha’s here. I’ll do it another time.
She returned my stuff in a backpack that I left there. It’s still got dried grass stuck to it from the festival we were at. I started emptying it before I left for the showcase, and it’s spilled out all over my bed.
“Can I just … put away a couple things?” I say.
I managed to make that sound like I’ve left sex toys lying all over my room. Should probably check that they’re all stowed away in their very inconspicuous and boring-looking shoebox under my bed, though.
“Of course,”
says Sasha.
“We can watch somewhere else if you’d rather.”
“I would not rather. My mom and brother manage to be everywhere else all the time, so, anyway, one second.”
I take my gear into my room, which is respectably tidy.
Representatively untidy.
I’m not going to go way out there and pretend to be someone like Jasper who makes his bed every day.
I put the box of Emelia’s things in my closet, push everything back into my backpack, put it on top of the box, and close the closet.
I open the door to let Sasha in.
“Welcome to my humble abode.”