17. Float
SEVENTEEN
FLOAT
Halle
It’s been an hour or two of trying to sleep and I keep coming back to the text I haven’t responded to yet.
Sleep tight, Valentine.
It feels too late to send a “sorry, just saw this” text. I don’t want him to think I’m ignoring him either. I’ll send something in the morning when I can think more clearly, I’m almost always awake before him anyway.
Lying awake, I replay the date in my head, all the way down to the kiss at the end. Sure, we had kissed before, but this one was different. Before, we were just kids, playing a game on Valentine’s Day, even though I wished for it to be so much more.
The kiss tonight had different energy, like I could feel the magnetic strength between us. It felt more fueled by tension and real feelings than any kiss I’ve had before. It made me feel wanted by him. Like this time, I’m allowed to let myself become consumed by the feelings I have for him instead of writing it off as a crush.
I’m scared to fall for him. Like really fall for him. The kind of falling that only happens as a result of being in a real relationship. The kind that can’t compare to a decade-long crush or two really great kisses. I cozy into his hoodie, soaking in the growing feeling of not being “just friends”.
Cade’s words come back to my mind— You look so much better in it than I do. Consider it yours .
I could melt all over again just thinking about that night when he took me to his secret spot. It does make me feel pretty special that he wanted to bring me there, although the insecurity does linger in the back of my mind, wondering if he’s ever brought any other girls there. Feeling insecure is one thing that has not gotten easier after all the years of on-and-off feelings for him. It’s not anything he does, well not really, it’s just the voice in my head telling me I’m nothing like the girls he dates, leaving me questioning if I’d ever compare or if he’d look at me the way I’ve seen him look at them.
Whitening my teeth until they ached, waking up an hour early to straighten my hair to a crisp, colored contacts, constantly begging my mom to take me shopping for new clothes—I did everything. Everything , and it never worked.
I finally gave up after a couple years of not being able to get his attention. My natural waves became my best friend, I discovered blue mascara makes my green eyes shine, and started wearing my band tees again. I found myself again after putting on a costume every day for so long, but I still could never figure out how to completely turn off my feelings for Cade.
My insecurities don’t stop at me playing the comparison game with any girl I see Cade with. They follow me everywhere, in every kind of relationship. I know I shouldn’t think this way, but I always feel like I’m never going to measure up to the success of people like Abbott and Mel. I find myself feeling like I’m not doing the right thing, especially when the people closest to me are achieving dreams that couldn’t be more different than mine. For the last two years, I’ve started feeling out of place when back to school season comes around.
Not continuing my education immediately after high school felt like the right move at the time because I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I didn’t want to waste time and money on something I wasn’t sure about. When everyone went back to school and I was sitting in my new apartment alone, I started feeling like I was behind and was looking up last-minute enrollment at Hemlock State, just so I could be doing something, anything. I had a big mental breakdown and called my mom and she talked me down and reminded me that it’s okay to not know, I was only 18, I had the rest of my life to figure things out. That’s when I started taking design a little more seriously.
Design has always been at the forefront of my mind, but I used to want to keep it all to myself, shutting down the possibility of a creative career anytime someone suggested it. Customizing clothes, making collages, doodling, it’s always brought me peace, and I didn’t want to lose that feeling. I always had my creativity to turn to if I was feeling down, or wanted to escape from reality. I thought if I made my creativity my whole life, I’d want to escape from it, not to it.
I thought I was only doing it for fun when I started making tour posters and graphics for some of my favorite bands, and kept hand-stitching embroidery on my clothes, but then one day I mixed the two and designed my own hoodie, and it immediately felt right. It felt like I could take my hobby and grow it into something bigger.
And the rest is history.
Now I’m doing merch design for my favorite thing—music. And I’ve learned there’s nothing I love more. Seriously, if merch was a love language, it would be mine. I feel like it could become a full-time real adult job within the next year, based on Tryhard’s trajectory right now.
I decide I want to make his sweatshirt feel more like it is actually mine—he did say to consider it mine after all. I take the hoodie off and pull out my sewing box—or my “tackle box” as the boys have called it ever since I started taking sewing classes at the local craft store in middle school. I pick out blue and green thread, thinking it will look good together on the black hoodie, and get to embroidering the left sleeve, just above the cuff.
I spend a lot of time making custom pieces for the guys to wear at their shows that standout from their regular merch—usually pieces I thrift and upcycle. If I’m not working on a piece for a Tryhard member, I’m probably working on something for myself. I don’t think I’ll ever stop adding small embroidery onto my hoodies.
When I’m finished cutting off the tail thread, I run my fingers over my final creation—the date 2.14, the numbers threaded in blue and outlined in green. I think about the Valentine’s Day of our first kiss again, how he had told me the song always makes him think of me and my green eyes. I think about how it looked to see him hand in hand with me at the carnival tonight, wearing the jacket he picked out for me that day three years ago.
I put my sewing box away and slip the hoodie back on, getting ready to try the whole sleep thing again. When I lay down and close my eyes, the last thing I think about is how I’m finally going to let go and let myself fall for the sweet boy who always calls me Valentine.