Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Christina
? Sign-up for a sex education workshop
? Write an anti-Hilltop paper for my capstone course
“Don’t move don’t move don’t move don’t move,” Ally mutters as she finishes off the last stroke across my eyelid.
She triumphantly straightens where we’re facing each other on Danny’s couch, cross-legged with our tiny dresses hiked up. Squealing, she offers me a handheld mirror.
I gasp. “This is the most flawless winged eyeliner I’ve ever seen!” My makeup is stunning—somehow bold and subtle, a perfect match for my hair we’ve let wild with sea salt spray.
K bounces onto Ally’s other side. “Our Ally is an artist and I’m next.”
Laughing, Ally swivels and plops her massive makeup bag on her lap to finish off K’s look. They are already divinely chic in a black-sequined blazer and skinny red slacks.
The Sloppy Bitches are going all out to film Dance in a club tonight because—as of the paper I turned in six hours ago—we’ve officially completed our Hilltop education. Graduation is only a week away.
For the past month and a half, Danny and I have braided threads of the spectacular from our spring break into the everyday.
We alternate between my apartment and his house.
We always stay at his house on Fridays for family dinner night.
His parents are obsessed with me, and I may be a little obsessed with them too.
Trish and Charlie have both taken to texting me most days—memes and jokes and little stories about Danny as a kid.
I’ll be giggling at my phone, and Danny just rolls his eyes, clearly afraid to ask what we could be chatting about, but there’s a faint satisfaction on his face too.
The real kicker was when Danny’s parents showed up to our TJL filming of the sex workshop.
I found a highly rated workshop in the area for heterosexual couples to expand their repertoire of knowledge, connection, and techniques.
Apparently Jim and Trish Reeves, Esquires, heard about the workshop from Danny and decided they wanted to spice up their bedroom life too.
When I showed Charlie the footage later, we both fell out on the floor, crying laughing, because Danny clearly looked like he wanted to die. But I remembered enough from the workshop to more than make it up to him in bed that night, where he may have actually died.
We always stay at my apartment on Saturday nights to wake up to Movie Church.
I still have no idea what my next move is, but I’m already grieving that this part—the six of us together—will be over soon regardless.
Sometimes Danny catches me just looking at each of my friends instead of the movie.
He usually kisses my brow or cuddles me closer when that happens.
Our pre-bed routine is sacred regardless of where we stay. About a week in, I decided that Danny deserves to be read to in bed too, so now we take turns. Danny says my voice continues in his dreams on the nights that I read.
We spend a lot of time in his studio editing TJL.
Arranging seemingly random footage into a cohesive narrative is a high like I’ve never experienced before.
We can feel it in our bodies when something isn’t right—the pacing or a voiceover or a transition.
Danny’s eyebrows scrunch dramatically, and I end up treading circles around the studio until we finally break onto a solution.
It feels like winning the damn lottery, especially because Danny snaps his fingers with the biggest smile.
Every week, I sneak a new framed photo into the studio somewhere. One of Charlie and Danny as children. Another of their family at Charlie’s college graduation. One of Danny and me eating doughnuts. His expression whenever he spots a new photo is one of my all-time favorites: soft and touched.
I’ve even taken to filming Danny around the house to hone my camerawork.
I’ll record him cooking, or sweeping off the porch, or lounging in The Coze.
Danny doesn’t understand why I would keep all the footage, but I always carefully upload it into a folder titled Danny Boy.
I can’t comprehend losing one second of this man on camera.
I like playing with sound and image to create story so much that I turned the anti-Hilltop paper for my capstone course into a multimodal project, integrating images and videos into my paper that explores why Evangelicalism and academia are fundamentally incompatible: Academia asks questions and follows evidence to possible answers; Evangelicalism starts with answers and warps any “evidence” to retrofit.
My professor disagreed with my conclusion but admitted he could not deny how thoughtfully researched and designed the project was. I got an A–.
Thank you very much, Hilltop.
As soon as I hit submit on my final paper this afternoon, the gang essentially colonized Danny’s house and transformed it into a massive dressing room—I’ve caught Danny’s quiet smile over the loving chaos more than once.
He reluctantly peeled himself away a little bit ago so he could change upstairs while my friends made me over downstairs.
Runzhou, sexy and posh in a dark blue button-up with rolled-up sleeves, drags me over to the dozens of outfits and shoes we’ve scattered across the living area. “Now we can make an informed decision about heels.”
I try on a little strappy heel that pairs nicely with my silver, sparkling dress. Runzhou steps back to examine the full picture. “See how they feel to dance in.”
I move around a bit, and the slingback pops right off. Runzhou’s already on hands and knees, flinging heels in his wake to find a better option.
As he Cinderellas me, Ally and K leap off the couch to practice a dance routine from their middle school talent show for which they still know every single synchronized move.
Reese, handsome as ever in a jean jacket, is doubled over laughing in his chair. “Y’all are not going to do that on the dance floor!”
“Oh yes we are,” Ally says, hauling Reese up to join them.
As K and Ally try to teach Reese how to loosen his laughably stiff hips, I double-check the cameras we set up around the living room to make sure this joy is in frame.
As much as we work on the documentary together, Danny and I have avoided any explicit acknowledgment that Dance in a club is our last scheduled item.
After tonight, there are only two items left on TJL: March as an ally in a Pride parade and Tell my dad to fuck off.
Pride parades won’t take place until the end of June, and graduation stands as this massive, impenetrable barrier between the now and the inconceivable next.
I still can’t see past it, even though my nose is practically flat against it.
And telling my dad to fuck off? Telling anyone to fuck off requires windswept gusto and urgency, so I guess I’ve been waiting for inspiration to strike on that one. It’s the item that most needs to feel right. And it just … hasn’t.
“This boy is a lost cause!” K throws their hands up.
Ally kisses Reese’s cheek. “It’s okay, sweetie,” she croons, adjusting her little green dress that makes her red hair pop. “I still love you even though you’re a derp on the dance floor.”
Runzhou inspects each of us. “Alright, loves. It’s about that time. Is Danny still getting dressed?”
Danny has indeed been upstairs for a while. “He only owns one leather jacket,” I say quizzically. “I’m not sure what the holdup is.”
Reese snorts. “Chris, why is your boyfriend so high maintenance?”
I laugh.
It’s not until a full minute later, when the group is chatting and laughing about something else, that my brain registers the word boyfriend.
Implying I am a girlfriend.
Reese wasn’t out of line to use the word. I haven’t slept alone in over a month. Danny is the last person I see at night and the first person I see in the morning. My favorite face in the entire world.
And yet the label “girlfriend” is folding the walls of a box around me and setting that box on a conveyor belt with one speed and one destination.
I try to steady my breathing and recognize this for what it is. It’s the grief again, fueling fears about roles and expectations and one-lane paths.
Because if I’m being honest with myself, I have been Danny’s girlfriend for a long while now.
Not prescriptively, but descriptively. No one is dictating the role or making me perform.
Danny and I are living openly and honestly with one another, and I think “girlfriend” is the closest term in our human language to describe the actions I’m already choosing.
I look at each of my friends, utterly gorgeous in their club getups. I used to see the joy and the safety of their romantic partnerships and believe it would never apply to me. But I am in a romantic partnership, with all the joy and safety it brings, whether I call it that or not.
Maybe I don’t have to bear this fear alone. Maybe I can lean on my friends to help me process this grief. Because I don’t want to be afraid anymore. This thing between Danny and me is too beautiful to be marred by fear.
“I have a question for y’all.”
“Yes, you can project a slideshow of me in this outfit on my tombstone,” K says.
I snort a laugh. “That wasn’t my question.”
“What is it, love?” Runzhou asks.
I take a deep breath. “Have your romantic relationships ever made you feel … limited?”
Ally cocks her head. “Limited?” she echoes.
Runzhou’s eyebrows dip. “K and I consider one another. We make decisions together. I don’t only carry my own emotions or dreams or successes or failures, but I carry theirs too.”
K jumps in. “We’ll need to squeeze at least a queen-size bed into one of those tiny New York studios, which is going to be a lot more challenging than the twin I might have had on my own.”
Runzhou smiles at them. “But I wouldn’t describe any of that as limiting.”
Reese studies me, analytical mind whirring. “Does being with Danny make you feel limited, Chris?”
The truth rings out before my conscious acknowledgment of it: “The opposite.”
My friends wait patiently as I try to understand my own instinctive answer.
“Being with Danny makes me feel …” I close my eyes to try to capture the sensation. The complexity. The layers.
“Present,” Ally supplies. I open my eyes.
“Deserving,” Reese adds, wrapping his arms around Ally from behind.
K takes Runzhou’s hand. “Expansive,” they say.
Runzhou laces their fingers together. “Complete.”
Some new energy wraps around my existing fears, something fragile and wonderful and life-changing. “Yes, all of that.”
The silence swells as my friends smile knowingly at me.
Runzhou finally sighs. “I’m gonna go see if the lucky bastard needs help.”
He hustles up the stairs, and I dazedly let Ally and K teach me a few moves of their dance routine as that new energy inside stretches and expands and rearranges me.
After another ten minutes, Runzhou bounds down the stairs and looks back up in anticipation of Danny’s grand entrance. “It was touch-and-go for a minute, but this Sloppy Bitch of the evening is finally ready for the ball.”
My man jogs down the stairs like I’ve seen him do a thousand times, but this time my jaw drops.
Danny is a vision in his trademark black: He’s wearing a slim-cut black blazer with a black button-up underneath, the collar of which is open and teasing, over skinny black jeans and black Converses.
My mouth fucking waters as this dark, sleekly dangerous creature approaches me at the bottom of the stairs.
Runzhou tousled Danny’s beautiful brown hair similarly to mine—and he’s also added just a pop of black eyeliner.
This man is the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.
I guess I now owe my life to Runzhou. I think my friends are whooping and hollering, but I’m too busy marveling and panting at the perfect blend of sophistication and grunge, my fingers already twitching to sink into those wild locks.
The guyliner sends me tumbling into the flame and ash of his big eyes as he slowly appraises me.
“This feels unfair, Christina,” he says thickly.
I can barely form a thought as my stomach tightens. “What’s unfair?”
He rakes blazing eyes down my body. “We already checked off the mini dress item. You could have at least warned me, sweetheart.”
It takes a moment for his words to register, and when they do, my smile stretches wide enough to hurt.
But as Runzhou attempts to herd everyone out the door, I suck in air through my teeth. “Oh no, I forgot to pack a snack! I’ll starve if we’re out too late!”
Danny crooks his finger for me to lean in all secretly. With thumb and forefinger, he cracks open the little pocket by his lapel.
I peer in to find it’s filled with loose almonds.
“For protein boosts throughout the night.” His voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper. “But don’t tell Runzhou—he won’t approve of the slight bump in my jacket.”
This man is the most wonderful person I’ve ever known.
I throw my arms around his neck with nothing but absolute assurance that my inner voice was right in whatever choices led me to this moment, girlfriend and all.