How often does that happen, where words you say to me become a song? You’ll play this one for me when you get home:
I wish I could slip inside your skin
Be as close to you as I can
Live inside your heart
Own it like a home.
We kiss a bit more and then you pull away, your hand lingering just under my shirt, gripping the spaces between my ribs. I love that your room is already familiar to me: the guitars on their stands, the amps, the little aquarium with two goldfish in it.
“You’re going to fall in love with an Australian girl in a string bikini,” I say. “I just know it.”
No girl can resist the power of the black fedora or that voice of yours. You’re bringing your acoustic. She’ll hear you playing and it will be like in those stories with fairies, where they lure humans in with their otherworldly music. Oh my god, you’ll write songs about her but later tell me they were about me.
“Why Australian?” you say, trying not to smile. “P.S. You’re being very silly right now, you know that?”
I shrug. “That’s just what my intuition tells me—Australian. String bikini. Yellow string bikini.”
“Come here.”
You wrap your arms around me and I sink into you. You rock me back and forth, call me sweetheart, my love. I like how you get old-fashioned when you’re most affectionate. There’s another honk outside—that’s your cue to go. I pull away and your shirt is off in an instant.
“Sleep in this every night,” you say, handing it to me. “Promise me.”
“Gav, I can’t take your Nirvana shirt.”
You smile. “It’ll be safe with you.”
You reach for a small box that has been hiding behind one of your amps and hand it to me as you grab another shirt at random from the pile of clothes on the floor.
“And wear this every day,” you say, nodding at the box in my hand.
“Gav—”
Another honk.
“Hurry.” Your eyes sparkle in that way they do when you know something I don’t. “I want to see it on you before I go.”
Inside the box is a small silver star dangling from a chain.
“It reminded me of our shooting star,” you say.
“It’s beautiful.” I reach my arms around you and hug you tight. You put it on me and we head toward the front door, hand in hand.
Just before you get to the airport shuttle you turn and grab my chin—not hard, but the way you do with a child when you want them to focus on you. It feels strange, being touched this way by you. Parental.
A siren goes off in the back of my mind, but I ignore it. (Oh god, Gavin, why did I ignore it? Why couldn’t I see through you?)
“I trust you, Grace. Even though I’ll be an ocean away and every guy in town is going to be buying cookies from you at the Honey Pot, I know you’d never screw around on me.”
I suddenly feel nervous, even though I have no reason to be.
I nod. “Promise you won’t make out with Yellow String Bikini Girl.”
You laugh softly. “I promise.” You lean in for a kiss, wait for me to meet you in the middle. “Call me every night,” you say.
“I will.”
And then you’re gone.
I watch the van turn the corner, then start walking home. I’m not crying anymore. I’m not even sad. Just confused.
Why does it feel like a weight has suddenly lifted?
NINETEEN
There’s this rule in the theatre that if you show a gun in the first act, it has to go off by the second or third, the idea being that there’s no way the audience will see that gun and forget about it. Something has to happen with it. After a whole summer of being grounded from you, I start to realize that you are that gun, that you’re going to go off and I’m not sure which one of us will be left standing in the end. Maybe a part of me has always been waiting for the other shoe to drop. You’re too good; this is all too good. It’s not my narrative—I was never supposed to be the girl who got the guy everyone wants. So I wait for you to end it, to come to your senses. In the meantime, I try to be there for you.
You’re sad. You say it’s like a black wave that drowns you and the only time you rise to the surface is when we’re together. I am your oxygen, your breath of fresh air.
But I’m not enough.
You’re angry. At yourself, at the emotions that spin inside you. They won’t leave you alone until you write a song and when you sing it to me I feel every inch of your pain. Sometimes you punch walls, doors, anything to break the skin that’s holding in the demons.
“I need to see you, Grace. This is insane!”
We’re on the phone when normal teens would be on a date, at the newest action movie, making out in a car. We’re only halfway through this miserable summer—there are thirty more days until I’m officially allowed to see you again.
“I know,” I whisper. “I’m sorry they’re so crazy.”
There’s a long pause and then you say it: “This isn’t working.”
First: shock. A punch to the chest. We’re so close already. To untangle me from you would be like tearing out pieces of my flesh. I’d bleed everywhere. Mom would be furious. It’d be such a mess.
But in my gut: relief. I can stop feeling so bad about how strict my parents are. I can stop feeling like I’m holding you back. This whole summer I’ve been waiting for you to break up with me. Seen it coming. Every time we’ve talked, you’ve been upset by the end of our conversation. I’m already starting to see how different our worlds are. My life is all rules and your life is none. I live my life in black and white. You live yours in color. You stay out however late you want, come and go as you please. There are literally no rules in your life except maybe don’t kill people or steal. I can’t go to any of the shows you play, any of the parties you’re invited to. I can’t swim in your pool or watch movies on your couch or sit next to you in a restaurant.
“If … if you want to break up I … um … I understand,” I whisper.
It was too much to expect, that someone would love me like this for very long.
I’m dead weight.
The future lies out before me, lonely and bleak. No more dancing in grocery aisles. No more being serenaded. No more surprises around every corner. No more being saved from The Giant. We’ve been loving at warp speed, not caring about anything or anyone else. We’ve made each other everything. Our own little universe.
It isn’t enough. Not for you.
“Why did I have to fall in love with you?” This is a growl. It comes from somewhere deep inside you, as if you’ve been asking yourself this question for a very long time.
“I’m sorry,” I say, quiet.
What am I sorry for, exactly? Existing? I don’t know. But these are the words that always jump out of my mouth whenever you’re upset, because I assume it’s my fault. I’m not fully aware yet that there doesn’t have to be a reason for you to be unhappy. The sad swims through your veins, dives right into the middle of your chest with no help at all from me.
“I’m a legal adult,” you say. “I mean, what am I supposed to tell people at school? Oh, sorry, you can’t meet my girlfriend because her curfew is before the party even starts. Oh, my girlfriend can’t come to my shows because she’s a minor. I mean, Jesus Christ. What are we doing?”
“I’m holding you back,” I say.
You’re quiet. Which means you agree. A Muse album playing in the background abruptly turns off, like someone ripped Matt Bellamy’s voice away from him.
I take a breath. “I’m sorry—”
“Stop fucking saying that!”
I’m sorry.
I cower. If I had a tail, it would be between my legs.
There’s a bang and then you curse under your breath. You’ve hit something and now the bruise on your knuckles will be my fault. You’ll think about me every time you see it.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” I whisper. “I love you.”
Nothin
g.
“Gav…” My voice shatters and I bite my tongue, hard, to keep from crying, but a sob slips out.
Your voice immediately goes soft. You can’t stand it when I cry. You say it breaks your heart.
“Baby, don’t cry. I’m sorry. I just … fuck. I’m really sorry. I feel like I’m losing it. God, I’m such a dick.”
Now the tears fall fast and hard. You tell me you love me, that you’re taking out your anger at my mom and The Giant on me.
“I don’t deserve you,” you say.
“No, I don’t deserve you.” It’s true. You’re too good for me. It was an accident, me getting you for these past five months.
“Baby, no. Listen.” You sigh. “God, I just … I want to be with you. You’re crying and I can’t even come over and give you a hug and it’s killing me.”
“I thought you wanted to break up,” I say.
I have no idea what’s happening right now.
“It would end me, not being with you.”
And I melt. There I go, all over the kitchen floor.
In the silence that follows I can feel us get closer, as though all the bits of you you’ve given to me and all the bits of me I’ve given to you are tightening their grip. But then:
“I’m thinking about it again,” you say, soft.
“What are you—”
And then I understand. It. Suicide.
“I’m coming over,” I say.
“You’re grounded!”
“I don’t care. I’m coming over.”
I throw on exercise clothes, then lie to my mom, tell her I’m going on a run to burn off some calories from all the cookies I’ve been eating from the Honey Pot. My mom’s always dieting, so she doesn’t think twice about it.
I get to your house in record time—five minutes.
When you open the door, I throw my arms around you.
“I love you,” I say, over and over.
“I’m fucked up. I’m sorry,” you say.
“No, no, you’re perfect.”
Your parents aren’t home. We don’t know when they’re coming back. We don’t care. You pull me inside, kiss me until I’m dizzy, then practically drag me to your room.
“Baby, maybe we should talk about this,” I say. “This is really ser—”
“I need you,” you say. “I need to be as close to you as possible. You’re the only thing that makes me feel real.”
You slide your hands underneath my shirt. “As close as possible,” you repeat.
“I don’t know if I’m ready,” I whisper, suddenly scared.
“I need you, Grace,” you repeat. You bring your lips to my ear. “Please.”
You’ve had to put up with so much shit from my family. I owe you this. And I want to give myself to you, I do. I’m not sure what’s holding me back. I look into your eyes, fall into those blue pools and get lost in them.
“Okay,” I whisper.
This isn’t happening in slow motion, like a movie where the girl and the boy decide that tonight’s the night and he’s filled his room with candles and tries to clumsily set the mood. No. This is rash and now now now. In seconds there are no layers between us. Dusk settles over our skin and I shiver because you are beautiful and you are mine, one of those forlorn boys with pouting lips in an oil painting. An angel wrapped in colorful swaths of fabric, a young prince lounging in his palace.
I press my lips to the scars on your wrists and you inhale sharply.
“I love you,” I say again, like the words are medicine, like they’ll keep you here on Earth for the next hundred years.
You lay me down on the bed and climb on top of me.
You pull a condom out of the box next to the bed.
I close my eyes, take a deep breath.
“Are you okay?” you whisper, just before.
I run the tips of my fingers over your face; they shake a little because I’m thrilled and scared and full of a want that is threatening to crush me.
“I’m okay.”
You push into me and it hurts. I bite my lip to keep from crying out and you bring your forehead down, rest it against mine.
“God, I love when you do that,” you whisper, kissing my lips.
You are gentle, checking in with me every few seconds, whispering poetry in my ear. Your fingers move across me like I’m the strings of your guitar, the music, the everything. When it starts to feel good I wrap my arms and legs around you, tight, and we are a ship at sea, alone and surrounded by nothing but moonlight.
After, we lie side by side, staring at each other.
“Forever,” you whisper as you take my hand and kiss my palm.
“Forever,” I agree.
* * *
THE GIANT IS being nice to me, which I swear is a sign of the apocalypse. Up next is, like, a plague of locusts. He caught me crying while I was sweeping the back porch and now we’re sitting out on the patio and he’s giving me one of his Klondike bars, which is The Giant’s equivalent of signing the Treaty of Versailles.
“So what’s up?” he says. “Boy trouble?”
Boy trouble? Since when does he care? He doesn’t say this in a mean way, but I’m not seriously going to discuss our relationship with him … am I?
I swallow. “Sort of.”
I glance at The Giant as he takes the wrapper off his ice-cream sandwich. He’s wearing his usual polo shirt and khakis, his eyes squinting at the sun. I know I can’t trust him. But at the same time, I do need to talk to someone. There aren’t a lot of opportunities for heart-to-hearts around here.
“Lay it on me, kid,” he says.
I get the echo of a warm fuzzy feeling and suddenly I just feel unbearably sad because is this what it’s like to have a dad?
“Gavin and I got in a stupid fight about a totally hypothetical situation and now he’s saying he doesn’t believe that I really love him.… It’s so dumb.”
“What was the fight about?”
It’s been weeks since anyone in our house has really talked to me beyond the usual orders and yelling and threatening. It’s nice. It’s really, really fucking nice, and so I decide to pretend that The Giant actually cares, that he’s suddenly seen the light and realized he’s been a shit excuse for a dad. Look how I beg for scraps, Gavin. Look how goddamned grateful I am.
“He was talking about how someday, like when the band blows up and they’re on tour, we’re going to have so much fun on the road and I was like, well, that would be cool but I’ll probably be in rehearsals for something—I mean, this is the hypothetical future, so I’m assuming I’m directing and everything—and then he’s all Wait, you wouldn’t come on tour with me? And I was like, Well, of course I’d go if I wasn’t doing a show but, like, Taylor Swift was on tour for seven months this year and, like, I need to do my art, you know? and then he was upset and said I wasn’t being supportive and like how could I be cool with him being surrounded by groupies and then I was like, That’s pretty egotistical and then, and then he said he has groupies now and like I guess there are all these girls who have been coming to the shows Evergreen plays and it’s just like, what am I supposed to say about that?”
It’s ironic, talking to The Giant about this stuff because part of the problem is that he won’t let me go to any of your shows. All I can think about are these fucking bitches in short skirts trying to fuck my boyfriend and I am going insane. And you’re punishing me because after you say the groupie thing I look on Evergreen’s concert blog and it’s all these pictures of you and hot girls. I mean that’s not all the pictures, but there are a lot like that, them screaming in the audience and posing for pictures with you. And they’re all posting stuff online when they’re at the show and saying all this shit about how they want you and all I can do is sit at home and do NOTHING. You’re pissed because I won’t sneak out of the house anymore and you say you’re the only one making sacrifices in our relationship and so your new strategy is to let me know just what I’m missing.
“Sounds to me
like he’s trying to make you jealous,” The Giant says.
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
“Yeah, well, it’s working.”
The Giant lifts his legs and rests his feet on the patio chair across from him.
“Gavin’s a nice kid,” he says, “but I’ll tell you something: a guy like him—the kind who wants you to follow him around like a puppy dog—they’re the ones you have to watch out for.”
“Why?”
He frowns as he takes another bite of ice cream.“My sister and I used to be really close,” he says. I know he has a sister, but we’ve never met her. “Then she married a controlling sonofabitch. Jeff. At first it was small stuff, like what Gavin’s doing with you. He wanted to be with her all the time, expected her to drop everything for him. He hated if she went out with her friends, stuff like that. Then he wanted her to quit her job—stay at home, even though they didn’t have kids. She loved her job, but she said she wanted to make him happy. He beat her up one night and I kicked his ass for it. She wouldn’t leave him, though, and he wouldn’t let her talk to me after that. It’s been five years since I’ve heard from her. My aunt says they’ve got a couple kids now.”
“Jesus,” I say. How can his sister not see how bad this dude is for her?
He nods. “Do what you want, Grace, but I’m telling you—guys like Gavin, they’re real snakes in the grass.”
He stands as he finishes his ice-cream sandwich and crumples the wrapper. Mom opens the sliding glass door and pokes her head out. She frowns when she sees me.
“There you are,” she says, annoyed. “I need you to watch your brother. I have to run to the store.”
“I’ll come with you,” The Giant says. “I need to pick up more propane for the grill.”
Bonding time is over and Sam runs out and wraps his arms around my legs. I suddenly feel guilty for selling you out to The Giant. This is the guy who has kept us apart all summer and I just let him in, all for the price of an unexpected Klondike bar.
“Thanks,” I say to The Giant as he turns to follow my mom inside. “But Gavin—he really is a good guy. I don’t think he means anything by … I mean, he loves me.”