13. Aeron #2
The porch and pool are packed, but there’s a garden area near the back of the yard that looks empty.
I walk past the pool, getting splashed by someone who does a cannon ball, then I’m moving into a row of overgrown bushes.
I’m amazed this place is so huge. The garden has a small vegetable patch, about four orange trees, and a lot of greenery along a winding cobblestone path.
It’s darker here, with just a few ground solar lights.
I walk around behind the orange trees, and that’s where I find her.
Cinna is sitting on a bench half-hidden by the bushes, and the light from a hanging tree lantern falls across her knees and stops.
Everything above her waist is in shadow.
She’s hunched forward, elbows on her thighs, hands wrapped around a cup she doesn’t seem to be drinking from.
Her hair hangs loose around her face, blocking her expression, and the usual way she carries herself, with that open, warm posture that makes you feel like you’re the only person alive, is gone. She looks folded and compressed.
I know that posture. I invented that posture.
My heart is pounding, because we’ve never been alone together like this.
It’s just me and the woman I’ve never been able to stop thinking about.
“Hey.” I say it too softly and she doesn’t hear, so I try again louder. “Uh, hey.”
She looks up and some light catches her face. Her eyes are red and the amber of her irises looks darker than usual. The gold flecks that I normally can’t stop picturing are dim.
“Aeron.” Her eyes widen for a second, then she sits up straighter, trying to look like she hasn’t been crying. “Hey. It’s crazy to see you here.”
I sit beside her on the bench. Not too close, but close enough that our knees are a few inches apart. I stuff my hands in my pockets and try to pretend I’m not shaking apart on the inside; guess we’re both trying to hide something.
“Carter invited me.”
“Oh.” She sets her cup on the dirt, then folds her hands in her lap, but her thumbs keep rubbing the black fabric of her skirt.
We sit quietly for a bit, just staring up at the dark sky. Finally, I find the courage to ask, “You okay?”
She straightens her spine even more and puts on a smile that starts at the corners of her mouth and tries to spread but can’t quite make it to her eyes. “Oh, yeah. Totally. Just getting some air and dealing with allergies. They’re really bad this time of year.”
The lie is visible in the way the smile collapses the second she stops holding it. She draws circles in the dirt with her shoes.
I don’t want to push the topic. I’ve been on the other side of that push a thousand times, June asking “Are you okay” in a tone that means she’s already decided I’m not and she’s going to fix it, whether I want fixing or not.
I’m not going to be that way with Cinna.
I’m just going to sit here and give her company.
“I like this garden,” I say. “I like the orange smell.”
“Yeah,”
The party thumps on behind us, the bass vibrating through the ground. Cinna is close enough to the hanging lantern light that her knees glow. I’m just outside it, in the shadow of a bush. Above us, the night sky is endless.
“It makes me feel small,” I say.
“Huh?”
I point up. “The sky. It goes on forever and it makes my problems feel small in comparison.”
She follows my gaze and looks up. Then she stares down at her feet. We sit like this for maybe ten minutes, and each minute Cinna’s shoulders drop more until she’s looking wilted against the bench.
“My mom was annoying me this morning,” she says after a while, her voice small.
“I was supposed to go shopping with June, but Mom wouldn’t leave me alone so I cancelled to work on my studies.
I’m not behind in anything, but she thinks my life should only be about my education.
And showing some ‘talent’ for a change.”
I’m not trained in psychology, like my mom claims to be, but I know sometimes I just want to vent and have someone unbiased listen. I nod, so she knows I heard her, but I don’t speak.
“She was telling me about my sister’s grades.
My sister is older and already has her Bachelor’s.
She’s just absolutely perfect, and she’s making the family proud because she’s studying to be a neurosurgeon.
” She takes a breath and wraps her arms around her waist. “Like, how am I supposed to compete with that? And then just an hour ago, I got a text from Mom that my sister got selected for an internship at one of the top hospitals in the nation. She’s literally a golden child and even if I was like, I don’t know, a scientist at NASA I somehow still wouldn’t measure up. ”
Her fingers tighten into fists. “That’s just how Mom says hi. She sends me evidence of everything I’m not.”
I don’t say anything for a second. A soft breeze blows and the lantern sways above us. The circle of light sweeps back and forth over us.
“I get that.” I understand the parent who loves you but can’t see you clearly because someone else is standing in the way.
Cinna looks at me, and the false smile is gone. “You do, don’t you?” she says. “June and your mom.”
My lips part. Cinna has worked to make me feel included, but I never realized how much she secretly understood. My skin prickles along my forearms, because nobody has ever said it to me that directly.
“You actually noticed,” I say.
“Of course I noticed. I think it’s obvious to everyone that your mom favors June. Well, except to them.”
Suddenly, my soul feels lighter. “Thanks. For, you know. Noticing.”
She bumps my shoulder with hers and she’s already looking lighter herself.
“Growing up, I felt bad about it. Seeing your mom and June together and you just off to the side. I didn’t know what to do.
I was just a kid. But I saw it.” She tips her head back to look up at the starless sky.
“Wouldn’t it be nice to have a TV family?
Everyone is just there for you and always supportive.
Just so much love no matter what. I wished I could have a relationship with my mom like the one in Gilmore Girls. ”
I think about being twelve and standing in the kitchen holding an empty container, and Cinna appearing at my door with two cookies wrapped in a paper towel and a kind lie. I think about all the other times she showed me that someone—she—was thinking about me.
I bump her shoulder back. “You did the right thing. I always felt…” I take a breath because am I really going to admit this to her? “I was always happier when you were around. Fuck your neurosurgeon sister.”
She slaps a hand over her mouth to cover her explosive laugh. We smile together, and I think it’s going to last, but her mood dips again.
She pulls her knees up onto the bench and wraps her arms around them. In this position, she looks younger. She looks like the innocent girl who used to bring cookies upstairs.
“Dorien said something at the food truck thing yesterday,” she says. “He was joking, but he made it seem like—”
“I heard him. It was a joke, but he shouldn’t have said it. Pissed me off.”
She exhales. “I already know that about myself. I’m a fraud and everyone can tell because my art has no soul. It’s just something pretty you hang in a hotel to fill empty space.”
“I don’t think that.” I draw a circle next to hers in the dirt. “For what it’s worth, I think caring about whether your art has soul means it does. The people who are actually faking it don’t lose sleep over it.”
Her eyes find mine in the dim light. Even in the dimness, I can see the soft line of her mouth, and the tension in her jaw loosening. “When did you get so wise?” she asks.
I smirk. “I’m not wise. I just know what it’s like to feel like a fraud.
Honestly, I like your work way better than June’s.
Your pieces have a delicacy that really draws me in.
It’s confident just being there, delicate and pretty, because it really doesn’t care what the viewer wants or needs.
It doesn’t care about the viewer at all, and that’s why I think it’s so brilliant. ”
She unfolds her arms and lets her feet drop back to the ground. Her knee touches mine and she looks like she might cry again.
A jolt of guilt stabs me. “I’m sorry. Did I—”
“No.” She wipes her eyes and looks away. “No. What you said was really sweet. Thank you.”
I rub the back of my neck, not really sure what to say or do next, so she decides for me.
She stands and dusts the back of her skirt. “I’m not feeling great,” she says. “I’m not drunk or anything. I only had one shot. Just kind of… off.”
“You want to head out?”
She nods. “Do you have a car?”
I pull out my phone and text Carter: Emergency! Can I borrow the car?
The reply comes in thirty seconds: Yeah. I have a ride home. I’ll drop the keys in the planter by the door.
I want to ask why he thinks that’s safe, but Carter does whatever he wants and it usually turns out fine.
“Come on,” I say.
Cinna takes my hand and I almost have a panic attack.
Don’t freak out, don’t freak out.
Her fingers are cold and small as they wrap around mine, and the contact sends a current up my wrist, through my forearm, and into the base of my skull where it sits buzzing. I try to act chill as I lead her out of the garden and toward the house.
We walk through the party and out the front door. I have to check four planters before finding Carter’s keys. When we reach his car, I unlock her door first and open it.
“You’re so sweet,” she says softly.
I walk around to the driver’s side, forcing myself not to grin from being the happiest I’ve ever been in my life, then I climb inside. The engine turns over, the heater kicks on, and the interior fills with warm air and the smell of pine freshener and gym bags.
Cinna laughs into her hand. “Carter’s car smells like a locker room in a forest.”
I roll down the windows and she laughs more.
I love that laugh so much.