Part 1
We were riding in my car and it was late and we were both under the influence of something we shouldn’t have been and you said to me, right as we were about to hit your street, that you wanted to know if I wanted to take a detour.
And for the past month I had been waiting for you to drop me. Why me, I asked myself each night before I would go lay in the king-sized bed (built for two? For me and you?) we would always share when my parents were away each weekend at my sister’s lacrosse tournaments, what did I do to deserve you? Nothing, I thought. I was nothing special and you were something much bigger and much stronger but people wouldn’t know by simply looking at you. You looked like a kid. You were the size of a kid. We had shopped in Kids Gap in order to get you some sweaters once and the lady must have thought I was into kids by the way we walked around and I bated you to try on some of the more unslightly garb around the store.
And you said stop when we got to a beach. And my insides were tingling and I couldn’t really focus on the road and I kind of wanted to cry as I heard music that I wasn’t particularly interested in playing so softly on the radio. And I looked at you and said “Here?” and you nodded. Don’t let me lose you. Don’t let me lose you.
We slowly got out of my busted up Mercedes Benz (that I had never wanted and felt stupid driving) and hopped the fence to the beach. I was shaking. Don’t let me lose you.
“We’re going to get killed here. There is going to be a hobo and he is going to kill us for disturbing him” I said nervously. I wondered if you could tell I was nervous. Maybe, I think. You knew me so damn well. But you laughed and told me to calm down. That we were going to be fine. I looked at the beach. It was small and looked as if it had been made for the families living around the Baboosic Lake area to have somewhere to swim and play (in the daytime). I thought we were just asking for the cops to show up and arrest us both.
But you were happy somehow. I felt my sneakers crush against the grains of sand and watched as you gravitated towards the shoreline. There was a tall lifeguard chair in front of us and a great many houses obstructed by tall pine trees. But I could still the lights. The lights were on in many of them and their reflection glistened in the water and so did the stars and it was as if the sky lay before us, telling us that down was up and up was down. I felt like that as I waited for you to tell me that it wasn’t working out. That I was too emotional and that you wanted to see other people when you went back to school so far away from me.
We sat down near the shore and it was cold. I saw the tide slowly rolling in and out. It was maybe the most frigid night of the summer. The sand covered my pants. But it was dark and I didn’t care. I could only feel my high slipping away from me and the reality of the situation setting in. Don’t let me lose you.
“This is a great place. It really is”, you said. You were so close to me. I could practically feel you breathe. “I’m excited to go back. And at the same time. I’m not. I’m not ready”, you said, “Don’t worry. We’re safe here. You’re always so paranoid.” I know I am, I thought to myself.
And we spoke about our parents. And we told each other things we had already many times before. How they were. How they treated us. How they coped with the differences their children had to face. How everything was different now that were older and knew what we wanted. You were shaking from the cold. I took off my new, gray cardigan I got for eight dollars and gave it to you to wear. It was so big on you, I thought. “What about your dad”, I said “You never talk about him.”
You didn’t, though, other than the fact that he didn’t live with you anymore and you hadn’t spoken to him since you told him what you were all about. I was buying time, I was waiting for you to start saying “Listen, I’ve been thinking”. But you didn’t. You said “He was…I don’t know. We were not close.”
And I told you how, in third grade, I had decided that I didn’t like my dad either, and for very little reason, and told everyone. And you smiled and looked at me. You pulled your legs in and smiled. And you told me why you never spoke about him. And I wasn’t surprised. And I suddenly understood why you wouldn’t let me in. And I felt like shit but I muttered a “I knew something was up with you. I knew something bad had happened.” And you asked me why and I told you, and rather plainly, that I didn’t think you have been molested and I didn’t think your friends had abandoned you and just knew that something had happened to you…that there was a reason you were not letting me in. A reason for why you were telling me that I didn’t know you.
Now I did. And I put my arm around you and I waited for you to cry. But you didn’t. All you did was lay down in the sand and look at the stars. “Don’t put up a wall. Don’t put up any walls. I will never hurt you. I promise. I don’t have hurt in me and you are someone I would never, ever want to hurt. And I will never tell anyone what you just told me.”
And you smiled and gently closed your eyes.
And I have kept that promise.
Part 2
I left the bathroom and you were standing there, smiling, drunk, happy, and you held out your hand and I grabbed it. My hands were still wet from washing them in the sink and I apologized. And you took me to the room that I had said, earlier in the night, would be ours in this big house that wasn’t ours.
And we got into the room and I fell on the bed, on the floral comforter. And I could hear people downstairs yelling and jumping and the music was loud and I was in a daze. And I pulled you down next to me (you didn’t resist) and suddenly, you held on so tight to me that that I could feel you breathing. “How are you?” I said. “Good,” you replied, “A little drunk.”
And we were at the party and we had been walking around and talking with people but now, it seemed, you wanted to stay with me and talk in this room with a queen sized bed that looked like something out of an IKEA magazine and with paintings on the wall that looked like they had been placed there to say something like “You don’t live here, so here are things you are not familiar with.”
And we talked about nothing for a minute. About how you were happy my friends were so nice to you and so welcoming and how good of a time you were having and how it was weird going back to the city after you had been home for a few months. It was your first summer vacation since you had left for college. You had gone to the city for the weekend to get your apartment ready. I didn’t hear much from you while you were there and I was cautious not to make myself seem like I missed you too much. But truly, it was hard to sleep in my bed without you next to me.
And you were talking and I don’t remember about what and you said to me “I am going to say something and I don’t want you to interrupt me.” I always did when you were saying something important, because I always had the need to throw in my two cents because I always felt like it helped you to know what I was feeling.
You started.
“So when I was in Montreal, I was getting my apartment ready and suddenly I felt sad”, you said. And I asked why and you laughed and told me not to interrupt. I smiled and kissed your forehead ever so gently. You were tough as nails back then. You never put up with my shit. I had never experienced that before. Never experienced someone who would take my drink away and throw it down the sink or tell me not to smoke cigarettes because you hated the way my hair smelled after I did so.
And you continued.
“And my mom, she said to me ‘Are you okay?’ because I wasn’t acting like myself. And I said ‘Yeah’. But I wasn’t. Because in reality, I had realized that I was eventually going back without you. I was excited to come back and live there but that you were not going to be with me. And I was sad. And I missed you”, you said.
And I felt my eyes fill up with water because, for so long, I had been waiting for you. I grabbed you and pulled you closer (but we couldn’t get much closer) and kissed you again. “I missed you too.”
And you smiled in that way you do, when you already know what I am feeling/was feeling and you said, “I just realized that no one is going to love me like you do for a very long time. And I realized how perfect you are. And I realized that…” and suddenly I couldn’t take it anymore and just kissed you. I felt as if all the ice you had been purposefully keeping around was melting and I felt as if you and I, were, for the first time, looking at the same book on the same page on the same paragraph on the same sentence and I realized that letting you go without a fight (and your iciness had driven me to the conclusion many times that it would be best to leave you) would be the biggest mistake.
Perfect, I’d never been called anything even close to that before.
And so you were laying there, in my arms, and I held you so tight and I felt as if the whole world was you and the whole world was in my arms and I couldn’t let go. Not now, not now that you had shown me that you were here with me, for me. And you spoke “What is going to happen when we leave and go to school and we’re gone. You know how I am. I don’t talk to people unless they are with me. Right there with me” And I nodded. Because I understood that. Because I understood that you being so far away was going to be a struggle. But I knew (and I didn’t tell you) that I would not let you go without a fight.
I knew that, in spite of all your hiding and your barriers and your unwillingness to fight for us, to keep this thing going, that I could carry us both. All I needed was a push, a tiny push in the direction of where I was already headed.
And you guided me into that spare bedroom where we were laying so comfortably together, alone, while the rest of our tiny world remained downstairs taking shots and dancing to the music, that I was not letting you go without a fight.
And I let you go, as you told me that we were being antisocial and you laughed ever so gently, with the knowledge that in a couple of hours we would be here again and I would again be holding you in the darkness of this strange place where I had never slept before.
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