39
Sasha
I genuinely believe there doesn’t have to be anything sexual to cuddling, no matter the combination of bodies and identities and orientations involved. Friends can cuddle. Friends who are in categories of potentially being attracted to each other can cuddle.
I grew up socialized in a type of maleness where cuddling orbited sex. I’m happy to tear that all down any way I can, and if it’s a queer way, then that’s just another gift from queerness to everyone.
With Isabelle, I could hold her hand on the red carpet, snuggle up to take cute photos, and then when we put the cameras away and I took off the helmet, we could stay like that. It was safety, never anything else, but it wasn’t lesser.
Great, delightful, an excellent, articulate theory backed by an example.
The problem is that I’m very much attracted to Lillian. Not in a slight hmm-interesting sort of way that I guess I’ll ignore. I mean, I did try to ignore it. She said platonic and I agreed, so suggesting anything else would be unfair, right? And unwise and unkind.
I could hurt her, and I could lose her and these friends.
If I lose these friends, I slink back to the Channel and beg forgiveness. I’d like to believe otherwise, but if my heart’s broken, I’m going where I can pretend to fill the emptiness with stadiums of screaming adoration. Enough decibels to hide under.
Or what if Lillian likes me the same way, but the Channel still catches me someday? She won’t have tours, the endless running, available to her if I break her heart. Just showcases and gigs at Initialism on Sunday nights and a city full of places that remind her of hurt.
I walk home from Lillian’s house slowly, letting the coolness sink in and push away my desire. I kick up leaves, imagining I’m in a music video with my face in the open. A music video I direct where I decide how my body should be portrayed.
It isn’t distracting enough, not nearly. My skin remembers Lillian’s warmth soaking into me, how she moved near to me like she wanted as much of her touching me as possible. I think that’s the truth. I know I drew her close to me. We seemed synchronized, like our voices blending perfectly in some of the moments when we sang together.
I’m overcomplicating. It’s only desire. Probably only my desire. No one’s thinking about heartbreak, though Lillian’s heart already is broken. I could see it at the end of the tonight, like she’d poured herself out and realized it too late.
The next morning, I’m late to school because I take so long deciding what to wear.
I put on eyeliner and take it off and change the color and leave a pile of clothes on my floor. There’s a whole world of ways to present that’s wide open when I’m not trying to be anyone’s idea of an attractive boy.
I want to be more put together than the night before. Sexy, not snuggly.
Instead, I can only hope my rushed bike to school leaves me windswept and attractively flushed. But I’ve seen a team do that look to Isabelle, and it seems ambitious to have it happen to me naturally.
When I run into Lillian at the bike racks, she seems softer, like she’s slept properly for the first time since I met her. She says her family likes me and they’re being insufferable about it, which makes me happier than it probably should. Parent issues, et cetera.
Lillian says last night was exactly what she needed.
“Someone to make you snacks?”
I say. I fiddle with my hair, trying to repair the damage my bike helmet did.
“Someone to melt into,” she says.
She walks into the school before I have time to try to come up with a perfect response, leaving me to think about those words oh say a million times.
Her softness lasts until noon.
By then, Lillian’s fired up abou.
“recapturing the spark”
of music. I’ve lost that connection to sound for months at a time and been listless, hoping it’d wander home eventually. It takes Lillian less than twenty-four hours to need to revive it for herself and her friends.
She says she made a plan while she was taking notes, but when she shows us, the plan is written in the center of the page with a few lines of English notes in the margins. She’s done the title in big loopy letters with what I think are supposed to be ironic sparkles around them.