You Know Me Well

“I’m sorry about that night.”

  She shrugs.

  “Things happen,” she says. But she sounds hurt, so I go on.

  “I wanted to meet you so badly. And I got so nervous.”

  “What happens when you get nervous?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I want to know everything I can about you. I’ve been waiting and wondering for so long.”

  I try to think of a good answer, one worthy of so much patience. But all I can think of is the truth.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I guess I run away.”

  She locks eyes with me. A smile tugs at her mouth.

  “I hope you aren’t nervous now,” she says.

  * * *

  Back outside, the fog is coming in and it feels less like summer.

  “What now?” I ask her.

  “I have to go to work.”

  I pull out my phone. It’s almost seven.

  “Your work starts now?”

  “Yeah. Shelbie’s mom got me a job with this woman she knows. She’s divorced, has two kids, lives in a huge Pac Heights house. I go over after her kids finish dinner to help her do stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  “Organize her receipts, place online orders, that kind of thing. She does a lot of shopping.”

  “I could walk with you?” I offer.

  She smiles.

  “I’d like that,” she says.

  She takes off her scarf. It glitters in the lowering sun. When she puts it back on, she wraps it in this elaborate way that covers most of her hair and sticks out, messily, on one side. She looks elegant and fearless.

  “This way,” she says, and leads us up a couple blocks before turning right on Fillmore.

  “What are you going to do with all the paintings?” I ask her.

  “I’ll hang them up, of course! I have this tiny studio with bare walls.”

  “They aren’t even very good.”

  “Oh, please.”

  “No, really. I thought they were okay before. But seeing them on the table like that, and then listening to Audra and Brad—”

  “Fuck Audra and Brad. I’ve never encountered such ridiculous humans.”

  I laugh without thinking. Without meaning to. It comes out loud and sudden enough to make the people around us on the sidewalk glance in my direction. It feels so good, and Violet’s so joyful, and I find myself wishing I could keep this moment forever—never go home, never back to school, never have to think about Lehna or worry about the future—just stay on this posh street with this brilliant, ravishing girl.

  “Here’s the thing about art, though,” she says. “This may be an unpopular opinion, but it’s what I came to believe after traveling for years with incredible artists who risk their lives to perform for audiences who don’t care about who they are seeing, only that they are seeing a good show. True art is about creation. What’s left after the creating is over is secondary. I checked your Instagram on my phone all the time when we were on the road. I saw the circus scenes and the stars. And yes, they were skillful, and the colors were amazing. But I loved them because they proved you were thinking of me.”

  She stops mid-block and grabs my hand.

  “I didn’t buy them because they were paintings, even though they are beautiful paintings,” she says. “I bought them because, like Lars with his spray paint, you’ve been writing me love letters.”

  And then she is kissing me, right here on the sidewalk on a foggy summer night. Violet is kissing me, and everything is perfect. The kiss doesn’t end. We are not two girls on a polite first date, bestowing a customary goodnight peck.

  No.

  We are kissing like girls who have ached for each other for years. Who never even spoke but somehow exchanged I love yous anyway. Who pored over photographs and gazed into computer screens and dreamed, over and over again, of this moment.

  A clap begins; a whoop follows. More cheers, more applause.

  “Happy Pride!” a voice yells, and then more voices join in.

  If it were up to us, we’d keep kissing forever. But eventually, we have to let go. The strangers are kind; they don’t stick around to make us self-conscious when it’s over.

  “I’m so glad I’ll see you tomorrow night for the show,” she says.

  And I don’t trust myself to speak, so I just nod, certain that my face conveys more than enough of my own gladness.

  She says goodbye, and I lift my hand in a wave, and on the way back to my car I think of her kiss. I touch my fingers to my lips. I am tingling; I am love-drunk. On the road I hear her voice playing back all the incredible things she said tonight.

  I want to tell Mark what happened.

  I want to know what it would feel like to say the words, Violet kissed me.

  I want to tell Lehna, too, but I don’t know how I’d begin. And I don’t know why she felt she had to lie to us about each other when the real Violet is everything I could wish for. As I pull onto my street, dread creeps in. I’m going to have to talk to Lehna sometime. Soon. But not tonight.

  I turn into my driveway and cut off the Jeep’s engine.

  Just a few blocks away, Lehna is probably at her dinner table with her parents and her brother, oblivious to the fact that I’ve spent the evening with her cousin. Or maybe not. Maybe Violet is telling her right now. Maybe Lehna is checking to make sure she didn’t miss a text from me, wondering why I didn’t tell her first.

  The night is dark now, the windows shining bright. My mom is in the kitchen washing dishes. She waves at me. I pretend not to see her.

  I don’t want to walk into my house. I don’t want to walk into my room. I want to go back to Fillmore Street, to the sensation of Violet’s body pressed close, to the sounds of celebration.

  When I step out of the Jeep, the warmth of the night startles me. We said goodbye only an hour ago. We stood kissing only thirty miles from here. But now the air doesn’t even feel the same. The old anxieties rush back. I shouldn’t have gotten into UCLA’s art program. I shouldn’t have gotten into the AntlerThorn show. All of my Instagram followers are the result of one very strange and fleeting night, and when Violet finds out who I really am—how normal I am, how unexciting—she’ll be so disappointed.

  The truth settles, heavy in my stomach.

  Violet kissed me.

  But my life is still my life.

  11

  MARK

  I take the train back from the city and walk from the station to Ryan’s house. Exactly what we’d planned to do on Saturday night, before it got hijacked.

  I’ve tried to text him to get some sense of what he wants. But he’s not saying. I wonder if it’s possible that my message actually got through. I wonder if it’s possible that we’re really going to have this conversation. I’ve gotten so used to being on the edge of it that I forgot there might be another side.

  The closest I ever came was after we watched Milk about a month ago. He smuggled it onto his computer like it was porn. We had to wait until a night when his parents were out in order to watch it. Which was laughable—I really don’t think they would care. But he did. He does.

  We had done so many things together by that point, but we’d never wept. Not like that. Not for all the things that could go wrong. Not for all of the good things that could come out of it anyway. When the movie was done, I wanted to take on the world. And there was a strong voice in my head saying, How can you take on the world if you can’t tell him how you feel?

  The words were right there. The words are always right there, only an inch away from being said. But he was at a slightly further distance than usual, lost in his reaction to the movie. So instead of talking about us, we talked about history, and about how this year we would get to Pride one way or another.

  Now that week is here, and not in the way I thought it would be. I get to his front door and ring the bell even though I don’t have to—I’ve walked in plenty of times without ringing first. But at this moment I want to be announce
d.

  When Ryan opens the door, he’s beaming. Openly giddy.

  “Took you long enough!” he says. Then, without another word, he bounds off to his room. I call out a hello to his mom. She doesn’t answer, so I guess she’s not home.

  We have the place to ourselves.

  Still, Ryan closes the bedroom door behind me. He puts some indie band on the speakers and makes sure the song is wrapping around us. I kick off my shoes and sit on his bed, because that’s what I always do.

  “I have so much to tell you,” he says. “So so much.”

  He can’t stand still. He’s changing the song. He’s lining up my shoes. He’s fiddling with a tennis racket that for some reason is on his desk.

  “Okay,” he says. “Where do I start?”

  I see how happy he is. I see how eager he is to talk to me. And I realize with a painful clarity that comes from years of studying his face: This has nothing to do with my message. This has nothing at all to do with us.

  He doesn’t sit down next to me. He stays by the desk, fiddling with the racket.

  “So the thing is, Taylor is throwing a party tonight and he really, really, really wants me to come. It’s not like a rager or anything—it’s just a Pride thing his friends do. Watching movies and hanging out. It sounds so awesome. I mean, we’ve been texting so much it’s like I already know most of the people who are going to be there. He’s friends with so many artists—there’s this one girl who’s a puppeteer. Like, that’s her life’s work. How cool is that? And Taylor’s cooking—did I tell you he cooks? He’s not braggy about it or anything, but I have this sense that he’s awesome at it, too. I mean, you don’t make the food for your own party unless you’re good, right?”

  I don’t even buy the potato chips for my own parties, so I can’t begin to answer that question.

  But Ryan’s not looking for an answer. He just wants me to listen.

  “I know it’s last-minute, but I would love it if you could come with me. Taylor’s really excited to meet you, and honestly I’m not sure I’m ready to go back and forth from the city solo. Taylor would’ve come and picked me up, but it’s his party, so he has to do all the pre-party things. And like I said, some of his friends sound really cool, so who knows—maybe you’ll hit it off with one of them. And even if you don’t, we’ll just be watching movies, so it’s not like you’ll be forced to have awkward conversations if you don’t want to.”

  He is so blithely happy and I can’t stand it. I honestly can’t stand it.

  He keeps talking. “I know it’s not as exciting as the party you were at on Saturday night—which you still need to tell me all about, by the way. But yeah. It’ll be fun. Really.”

  “So let me make sure I’ve got this right,” I say. “You made me come back here from the city just so I could go back into the city with you?”

  “I didn’t know you were in the city until you told me you were on the train! I thought you were at home. Maybe working on your Plath project.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Why don’t you tell me? I think you’re the one with the secrets here.”

  He says it playfully, not meanly. He’s in a good mood. He’s having a ball. The world is his oyster, Taylor is his pearl, and I’m somewhere on the other side of the shell.

  I want to play along. I want to be his friend here. I want to be able to smile and laugh and slap him on the back and go along with whatever he says.

  But I can’t. I just can’t.

  “No,” I say.

  Ryan looks at me strangely. “No?”

  “Yeah. No.”

  “What do you mean, no?”

  “I mean I can’t do this. I really, truly can’t do this.”

  My heart is in full panic mode. Of all the things I’ve imagined saying to him, why is this the one that’s coming out? I’m already figuring out how to backpedal, how to pretend I’m only kidding. It’s not too late.

  Then he asks, “You can’t do what?” And it’s too late.

  “Are you serious?” I say. “Can you possibly be serious?”

  He puts down the tennis racket, as if doing this suddenly makes him serious. He’s looking at me like I’m a pet that’s gone feral.

  And, fuck it, maybe I am.

  “Look,” he says, “I’m sorry I yanked you back here to go into the city again. Had I known you were there, I would’ve just met you. You understand, right?”

  “No,” I say. “No no no no no no no. This isn’t about that. You can’t possibly think this is about that.”

  This is where he should ask, Then what’s it about? But he doesn’t. Because he knows. And asking that question will take us one step closer to the answer.

  I give it to him anyway.

  “When I say I can’t do this anymore, I mean I can’t continue to trample over my own feelings just to keep things okay with you. I can’t. And that means I can’t sit here on your bed and tell you that, sure, I would love to go with you to your new boyfriend’s party. The fact that you could ask me to do that means you’ve done a much better job separating yourself than I have. But there’s only one me, Ryan. And he’s so fucking in love with you it’s scary.”

  I’m starting to shake. I can’t believe this is happening.

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” Ryan says.

  “That’s not my point!” I shout.

  “I know.” Ryan’s voice is quieter now. “I know that’s not your point.”

  There. I’ve done it. I’ve defeated his good mood. And it doesn’t make me feel any better.

  “We talked about this,” he says gently. “We knew what we were doing.”

  “We were lying!” I tell him. “The whole time, we were lying.”

  He shakes his head. “I never lied to you.”

  “No, but you lied to yourself. If you actually feel there isn’t anything more to what we’re doing than friendship, or if you really don’t think that fooling around affects what we are—then you’re lying to yourself. But have you ever really believed it? Do you really have no idea how much I love you? How much I want this to work out?”

  Ryan looks horrified, and I understand that both of us have been afraid of this conversation, for different reasons.

  “Why are you doing this?” he asks.

  “Because you are the best thing in my life and I know I’m the best thing in your life. Because it’s one thing for me to think you aren’t ready to be with anyone and it’s totally another for you to want to be with someone besides me. Because I know how it feels when we kiss each other. Because I feel like I have spent my whole life waiting to tell you the truth, and if I hold it in any longer, it is going to make me hate both of us. Because I don’t want to be your wingman—I want to be your goddamn copilot.”

  “But what if I don’t want that?” Ryan is adamant. “What if I want Taylor?”

  I can’t look at him. I am falling apart. I wrap my arms around myself. I stare at the carpet under my feet.

  “I mean,” Ryan continues, “what if Taylor’s the one I want to date? That doesn’t mean I don’t want you as my best friend. I want you as my best friend. Always. Doesn’t that matter more than dating?”

  I don’t look up. “I know. I know all that. And maybe I’m being selfish, but I want everything. I want all of you. Because I’m in love with all of you.”

  I say this and I realize—there’s nothing else I can say. I can repeat it a million different ways—but there’s nothing more I can add, nothing stronger than this.

  I am trying not to think about kissing on this bed. I am trying not to think about being naked on this carpet. I am trying not to remember all the times we closed that door and became those people and made everything feel possible.

  He walks over and sits next to me. I feel the weight of him against the mattress. The dip and the slight lift.

  He puts a hand on my shoulder. Not romantic. Consoling.

  “Look,” he tells me, “I can say it over and over again. You are my
best friend. You are my best friend. You are my best friend. I love you like that, which is huge. I don’t want to hurt that, and I don’t want to hurt you. I know you’re making it seem like it’s obvious that you’d react this way to Taylor, but honestly, it feels out of the blue to me. I know it isn’t—I know that now. But you have to understand, to me it is. I never thought what we did was … that. I am very, very sorry if you did. But I didn’t do anything to make you think that. I didn’t. It’s always been clear to me. And that doesn’t make you any less awesome to me. You are completely awesome to me. You’re just not my boyfriend. You’re my best friend.”

  “But do those have to be two different things?” I ask, barely keeping the sob from engulfing my voice.

  “In our case, yes.”

  This is so much worse than I feared it would be.

  We sit there for a minute or two. I have nothing left to say. He has nothing left to say.

  Finally, it’s Ryan who breaks the silence.

  “Look, I saw you dancing on that bar. And I read about your adventures on Saturday night. Man, that made me jealous. But I’m glad for it, because it shows that you’re going to have plenty of opportunities—you’re going to find someone as awesome as you, and I’m really hoping that when you do, you’ll tell me all about it. Because that’s what best friends do. And even though right now it’s so totally awkward, I know it’ll pass, and I know it’ll be fine, and I know we’ll get through this. Okay?”

  I don’t want someone else. I want you, I think. Even now.

  But I’m back to keeping it inside. Before it was because I feared it wouldn’t work. Now it’s because I know it won’t work.

  I can’t tell him it’s all okay, either. I can’t lie like that.

  I just look at him and think all of the old things one more time.

  You are so beautiful.

  I understand you.

  You understand me.

  I know you well.

  We’re in this together.

  We can be together.

  We can cut through all the bullshit, and what we’ll find underneath is love.

  I know I should let go of all of these things—but you can’t let go of something that’s inside you. You’re not holding it like that.