Buch lesen: «Another Day»

For my nephew, Matthew

(May you find happiness every day)

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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1

I watch his car as it pulls into the parking lot. I watch him get out of it. I am in the corner of his eye, moving toward its center – but he isn’t looking for me. He’s heading into school without noticing I’m right here. I could call out for him, but he doesn’t like that. He says it’s something needy girls do, always calling out to their boyfriends.

It hurts that I can be so full of him while he’s so empty of me.

I wonder if last night is the reason he isn’t looking for me. I wonder if our fight is still happening. Like most of our fights, it’s about something stupid, with other non-stupid things right underneath. All I did was ask him if he wanted to go to Steve’s party on Saturday. That was it. And he asked me why, on Sunday night, I was already asking him about Saturday. He said I’m always doing this, trying to pin him down, as if he won’t want to be with me if I don’t ask him about it months ahead of time. I told him it wasn’t my fault he’s always afraid of plans, afraid of figuring out what’s next.

Mistake. Calling him afraid was a big mistake. That’s probably the only word he heard.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.

“I was talking about a party at Steve’s house on Saturday,” I told him, my voice way too upset for either of us. “That’s all.”

But that’s not all. Justin loves me and hates me as much as I love him and hate him. I know that. We each have our triggers, and we should never reach in to pull them. But sometimes we can’t help ourselves. We know each other too well, but never well enough.

I am in love with someone who’s afraid of the future. And, like a fool, I keep bringing it up.

I follow him. Of course I do. Only a needy girl would be mad at her boyfriend because he didn’t notice her in a parking lot.

As I’m walking to his locker, I wonder which Justin I’ll find there. It probably won’t be Sweet Justin, because it’s rare for Sweet Justin to show up at school. And hopefully it won’t be Angry Justin, because I haven’t done anything that wrong, I don’t think. I’m hoping for Chill Justin, because I like Chill Justin. When he’s around, we can all calm down.

I stand there as he takes his books out of his locker. I look at the back of his neck because I am in love with the back of his neck. There is something so physical about it, something that makes me want to lean over and kiss it.

Finally he looks at me. I can’t read his expression, not right away. It’s like he’s trying to figure me out at the same time I’m trying to figure him out. I think maybe this is a good sign, because maybe it means he’s worried about me. Or it’s a bad sign, because he doesn’t understand why I’m here.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” I say back.

There’s something really intense about the way he’s looking at me. I’m sure he’s finding something wrong. There’s always something wrong for him to find.

But he doesn’t say anything. Which is weird. Then, even weirder, he asks me, “Are you okay?”

I must look really pathetic if he’s asking me that.

“Sure,” I tell him. Because I don’t know what the answer is supposed to be. I am not okay – that’s actually the answer. But it’s not the right answer to say to him. I know that much.

If this is some kind of trap, I don’t appreciate it. If this is payback for what I said last night, I want it over with.

“Are you mad at me?” I ask, not sure I want to know the answer.

And he goes, “No. I’m not mad at you at all.”

Liar.

When we have problems, I’m usually the one who sees them. I do the worrying for both of us. I just can’t tell him about it too often, because then it’s almost like I’m bragging that I understand what’s going on while he doesn’t.

Uncertainty. Do I ask about last night? Or do I pretend it never happened – that it never happens?

“Do you still want to get lunch today?” I ask. It’s only after I ask that I realize I’m trying to make plans again.

Maybe I am a needy girl after all.

“Absolutely,” Justin says. “Lunch would be great.”

Bullshit. He’s playing with me. He has to be.

“No big deal,” he adds.

I look at him, and it seems genuine. Maybe I’m wrong to assume the worst. And maybe I’ve managed to make him feel stupid by being so surprised.

I take his hand and hold it. If he’s willing to step back from last night, I am, too. This is what we do. When the stupid fights are over, we’re good.

“I’m glad you’re not mad at me,” I tell him. “I just want everything to be okay.”

He knows I love him. I know he loves me. That is never the question. The question is always how we’ll deal with it.

Time. The bell rings. I have to remind myself that school is not a thing that exists solely to give us a place to be together.

“I’ll see you later,” he says.

I hold on to that. It’s the only thing that will get me through the empty space that follows.

I was watching one of my shows, and one of the housewives was like, “He’s a fuckup, but he’s my fuckup,” and I thought, Oh, shit, I really shouldn’t be relating to this, but I am, and so what? That has to be what love is – seeing what a mess he is and loving him anyway, because you know you’re a mess, too, maybe even worse.

We weren’t an hour into our first date before Justin was setting off the alarms.

“I’m warning you – I’m trouble,” he said over dinner at TGI Friday’s. “Total trouble.”

“And do you warn all the other girls?” I replied, flirting.

But what I got back wasn’t flirtation. It was real.

“No,” he said. “I don’t.”

This was his way of letting me know that I was someone he cared about. Even at the very beginning.

He hadn’t meant to tell me. But there it was.

And even though he’s forgotten a lot of other details about that first date, he’s never forgotten what he said.

I warned you! he’ll yell at me on nights when it’s really bad, really hard. You can’t say I didn’t warn you!

Sometimes this only makes me hold him tighter.

Sometimes I’ve already let go, feeling awful that there’s nothing I can do.

The only time our paths intersect in the morning is between first and second periods, so I look for him then. We only have a minute to share, sometimes less, but I’m always thankful. It’s like I’m taking attendance. Love? Here! Even if we’re tired (which is pretty much always) and even if we don’t have much to say, I know he won’t just pass me by.

Today I smile, because, all things considered, the morning went pretty well. And he smiles back at me.

Good signs. I am always looking for good signs.

I head to Justin’s class as soon as fourth period is over, but he hasn’t waited for me. So I go to the cafeteria, to where we usually sit. He’s not there, either. I ask Rebecca if she’s seen him. She says she hasn’t, and doesn’t seem too surprised that I’m looking. I decide to ignore that. I check my locker and he’s not there. I’m starting to think he’s forgotten, or was playing with me all along. I decide to check his locker, even though it’s about as far from the cafeteria as you can get. He never stops there before lunch. But I guess today he has, because there he is.

I’m happy to see him, but also exhausted. It’s just so much work. He looks worse than I feel, staring into his locker like there’s a window in there. In some people, this would mean daydreams. But Justin doesn’t daydream. When he’s gone, he’s really gone.

Now he’s back. Right when I get to him.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” I say back.

I’m hungry, but not that hungry. The most important thing is for us to be in the same place. I can do that anywhere.

He’s putting all of his books in his locker now, as if he’s done with the day. I hope nothing’s wrong. I hope he’s not giving up. If I’m going to be stuck here, I want him stuck here, too.

He stands up and puts his hand on my arm. Gentle. Way too gentle. It’s something I’d do to him, not something he’d do to me. I like it, but I also don’t like it.

“Let’s go somewhere,” he says. “Where do you want to go?”

Again, I think there has to be a right answer to this question, and that if I get it wrong, I will ruin everything. He wants something from me, but I’m not sure what.

“I don’t know,” I tell him.

He takes his hand off my arm and I think, okay, wrong answer. But then he takes my hand.

“Come on,” he says.

There’s an electricity in his eyes. Power. Light.

He closes the locker and pulls me forward. I don’t understand. We’re walking hand in hand through the almost-empty halls. We never do this. He gets this grin on his face and we go faster. It’s like we’re little kids at recess. Running, actually running down the halls. People look at us like we’re insane. It’s so ridiculous. He swings us by my locker and tells me to leave my books here, too. I don’t understand, but I go along with it – he’s in a great mood, and I don’t want to do anything that will break it.

Once my locker’s closed, we keep going. Right out the door. Simple as that. Escape. We’re always talking about how we want to leave, and this time we’re doing it. I figure he’ll take me out for pizza or something. Maybe be late to fifth period. We get to his car and I don’t even want to ask him what we’re doing. I just want to let him do it.

He turns and asks, “Where do you want to go? Tell me, truly, where you’d love to go.”

Strange. He’s asking me as if I’m the one who knows the right answer.

I really hope this isn’t a trick. I really hope I won’t regret this.

I say the first thing that comes to my mind.

“I want to go to the ocean. I want you to take me to the ocean.”

I figure he’ll laugh and say what he really meant was that we should go to his house while his parents are gone and spend the afternoon having sex and watching TV. Or that he’s trying to prove a point about not making plans, to prove that I like being spontaneous better. Or he’ll tell me to go have fun at the ocean while he gets lunch. All of these are possibilities, and they all play at the same time in my head.

The only thing I’m not expecting is for him to assume it’s a good idea.

“Okay,” he says, pulling out of the parking lot. I still think he’s joking, but then he’s asking me the best way to get there. I tell him which highways we should take – there’s a beach my family used to go to a lot in summer, and if we’re going to the ocean, we might as well go there.

As he steers, I can tell he’s enjoying himself. It should put me at ease, but it’s making me nervous. It would be just like Justin to take me somewhere really special in order to dump me. Make a big production of it. Maybe leave me stranded there. I don’t actually think this is going to happen – but it’s possible. As a way of proving to me that he’s able to make plans. As a way of showing he’s not as afraid of the future as I said he was.

You’re being crazy, Rhiannon, I tell myself. It’s something he says to me all the time. A lot of the time, he’s right.

Just enjoy it, I think. Because we’re not in school. We’re together.

He turns on the radio and tells me to take over. What? My car, my radio – how many times have I heard him say that? But it seems like his offer is real, so I slip from station to station, trying to find something he’ll be into. When I pause too long on a song I like, he says, “Why not that one?” And I’m thinking, Because you hate it. But I don’t say that out loud. I let the song play. I wait for him to make a joke about it, say the singer sounds like she’s having her period.

Instead, he starts to sing along.

Disbelief. Justin never sings along. He will yell at the radio. He will talk back to whatever the talk radio people are saying. Every now and then he might beat along on his steering wheel. But he does not sing.

I wonder if he’s on drugs. But I’ve seen him on drugs before, and it’s never been like this.

“What’s gotten into you?” I ask.

“Music,” he says.

“Ha.”

“No, really.”

He’s not joking. He’s not laughing at me somewhere inside. I am looking at him and I can see that. I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s not that.

I decide to see how far I can push it. Because that’s what a needy girl does.

“In that case . . .” I say. I flip stations until I find the least Justin song possible.

And there it is. Kelly Clarkson. Singing how what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

I turn it up. In my head, I dare him to sing along.

Surprise.

We are belting it out. I have no idea how he knows the words. But I don’t question it. I am singing with everything I’ve got, never knowing I could love this song as much as I do right now, because it is making everything okay – it is making us okay. I refuse to think about anything other than that. I want us to stay inside the song. Because this is something we’ve never done before and it feels great.

When it’s done, I roll down my window – I want to feel the wind in my hair. Without a word, Justin rolls down all the other windows, and it’s like we’re in a wind tunnel, like this is a ride in an amusement park when really it’s just a car driving down the highway. He looks so happy. It makes me realize how rare it is for me to see him happy, the kind of happy where there isn’t anything else on his mind besides the happiness. He’s usually so afraid to show it, as if it might be stolen away at any moment.

He takes my hand and starts to ask me questions. Personal questions.

He starts with, “How are your parents doing?”

“Um . . . I don’t know,” I say. He’s never really cared about my parents before. I know he wants them to like him, but because he’s not sure they will, he pretends it doesn’t matter. “I mean, you know. Mom is trying to hold it all together without actually doing anything. My dad has his moments, but he’s not exactly the most fun person to be around. The older he gets, the less he seems to give a damn about anything.”

“And what’s it like with Liza at college?”

When he asks this question, it’s as if he’s proud that he’s remembered my sister’s name. That sounds more like Justin.

“I don’t know,” I tell him. “You know we were more like sisters living under a truce than best friends. I don’t know if I miss her that much, although it was easier having her around, because then there were two of us, you know? She never calls home. Even when my mom calls her, she doesn’t call back. I don’t blame her for that – I’m sure she has better things to do. And really, I always knew that once she left, she’d be gone. So I’m not shocked or anything.”

I realize as I’m talking that I’m getting close to the nerve, talking about what happens when high school is over. But Justin doesn’t seem to be taking it personally. Instead, he asks me if I think school is much different this year than last year. Which is a weird question. Something my grandmother would ask. Not my boyfriend.

I tread carefully.

“I don’t know. School sucks. That’s not different. But, you know – while I really want it to be over, I’m also worried about everything that’s going to come after. Not that I have it planned out. I don’t. I know you think that I have all of these plans – but if you actually look at the things I’ve done to prepare myself for life after high school, all you’ll see is a huge blank. I’m just as unprepared as anyone else.”

Shut up, shut up, shut up, I’m telling myself. Why are you bringing this up?

But maybe I have a reason. Maybe I’m bringing it up to see what he’ll do. He tests me all the time, but I’m not exactly innocent in that department, either.

“What do you think?” I ask him.

And he says, “Honestly, I’m just trying to live day to day.”

I know. But I appreciate it more when it’s said like this, in a voice that acknowledges we’re on the same side. I wait for him to say more, to edge back into last night’s fight. But he lets it go. I am grateful.

It’s been over a year, and there’ve been at least a hundred times when I’ve told myself that this was it – this was the new start. Sometimes I was right. But not as much as I wanted to be.

I will not let myself think that things are suddenly better. I will not let myself think that we’ve somehow escaped the us we always end up being. But at the same time, I will not deny what’s happening. I will not deny this happiness. Because if happiness feels real, it almost doesn’t matter if it’s real or not.

Instead of plugging the destination into his phone, he’s asking me to keep giving him directions. I screw up and tell him to get off the highway one exit too soon, but when I realize this, he doesn’t freak out at all – he just gets back on the highway and goes one more exit. Now I’m no longer wondering if he’s on drugs – I’m wondering if he’s on medication. If so, it’s kicking in pretty quickly.

I do not say a word. I don’t want to jinx it.

“I should be in English class,” I say as we make the last turn before the beach.

“I should be in bio,” Justin says back.

But this is more important. I can make up my homework, but I can’t make up my life.

“Let’s just enjoy ourselves,” he says.

“Okay,” I tell him. “I like that. I spend so much time thinking about running away – it’s nice to actually do it. For a day. It’s good to be on the other side of the window. I don’t do this enough.”

Maybe this is what we’ve needed all along. Distance from everything else, and closeness to each other.

Something is working here – I can feel it working.

Memory. This is the beach my family would come to, on days when the house was too hot or my parents were sick of staying in the same place. When we came here, we’d be surrounded by other families. I liked to imagine that each of our blankets was a house, and that a certain number of blankets made a town. I’m sure there were a few kids I saw all the time, whose parents took them here, too, but I can’t remember any of them now. I can only remember my own family – my mother always under an umbrella, either not wanting to burn or not wanting to be seen; my sister taking out a book and staying inside it the whole time; my father talking to the other fathers about sports or stocks. When it got too hot, he would race me down into the water and ask me what kind of fish I wanted to be. I knew that the right answer was flying fish, because if I told him that, he would gather me in his arms and throw me into the air.

I don’t know why I’ve never brought Justin here before. Last summer, we stayed indoors, waiting for his parents to leave for work so we could have sex in every room of the house, including some of the closets. Then, when it was done, we’d watch TV or play video games. Sometimes we’d call around to see what everyone else was doing, and by the time his parents came home, we’d be off at someone’s house, drinking or watching TV or playing video games or some mix of the three. It was great, because it wasn’t school, and we were with each other. But it didn’t really get us anywhere.

I leave my shoes in the car, just like I did when I was a kid. There’s the awkward couple of steps when I’m still in the parking lot and the pavement hurts, but then there’s the sand and everything’s fine. The beach is completely empty today, and even though I didn’t expect there to be a lot of people here, it’s still surprising, like we’ve caught the beach napping.

I can’t help myself. I run right down into it, spin around. Mine, I think. The beach is mine. The time is mine. Justin is mine. Nobody – nothing – is going to interfere with that. I call out his name, and it’s like I’m still singing along to a song.

He looks at me for a moment, and I think, oh no, this is the part where he tells me I look like an idiot. But then he’s running down to me, grabbing hold of me, swinging me around. He’s heard the song, and now we’re dancing. We’re laughing and racing each other to the water. When we get there, we splash-war, feeling the tide against our legs. I reach down for some shells and Justin joins me, looking for colors that won’t be the same when they’re dry, looking for sea glass and spirals. The water feels so good, and standing still feels so good, because there’s a whole ocean pulling at me and I have the strength to stay where I am.

Justin’s face is completely unguarded. His body is entirely relaxed. I never see him like this. We are playing, but it’s not the kind of playing that boyfriends and girlfriends do, where there’s strategy and scorekeeping and secret moves. No, we have scissored ourselves away from all that.

I ask him to build a sand castle with me. I tell him how Lisa always had to have her own, next to mine. She would build a huge mountain with a deep moat around it, while I would make a small, detailed house with a front door and a garage. Basically, I was building the dollhouse I was never able to have, while Liza was creating the fortress she felt she needed. She would never touch my castle – she wasn’t the kind of older sister who needed to destroy the competition. But she wouldn’t let me touch hers, either. We’d leave them when we were done, for the tide to take away. Sometimes our parents would come over. To me, they’d say, How pretty! To Liza, it would be, How tall!

I want Justin to work on a sand castle with me. I want us to experience what it’s like to build something together. We don’t have any shovels or buckets. Everything has to be done with our hands. He takes the phrase sand castle literally – starting with the square foundation, creating a drawbridge with his finger. I work on the turrets and the towers – balconies are precarious, but spires are possible. At random moments, he compliments me – little words like nice and neat and sweet – and I feel like the beach is somehow unlocking this vocabulary from the dungeon where he’s kept it all these months. I always felt – maybe hoped – that the words were in there somewhere. And now I know they are.

It isn’t very warm out, but I can feel the sun on my cheeks and my neck. We could gather more shells and begin to decorate, but I am starting to tire of the building, and putting our focus there. When the last tower is complete, I suggest we wander for a little while.

“Are you pleased with our creation?” he asks.

And I say, “Very.”

We head to the water to wash off our hands. Justin stares back at the beach, back at our castle, and seems lost for a moment. Lost, but in a good place.

“What is it?” I ask.

He looks at me, eyes so kind, and says, “Thank you.”

I am sure he has said these two words to me before, but never like this, never in a way that would make me want to remember them.

“For what?” I ask. What I mean is: Why now? Why finally?

“For this,” he says. “For all of it.”

I want so much to trust it. I want so much to think we’ve finally shifted to the place I always thought we could get to. But it’s too simple. It feels too simple.

“It’s okay,” he tells me. “It’s okay to be happy.”

I have wanted this for so long. This is not how I pictured it, but nothing ever is. I am overwhelmed by how much I love him. I don’t hate him at all. There’s not a single part of me that hates him. There is only love. And it isn’t terrifying. It is the opposite of terrifying.

I am crying because I’m happy and I’m crying because I don’t think I ever realized how much I was expecting to be unhappy. I am crying because for the first time in a long time, life makes sense.

He sees me crying and doesn’t make fun of it. He doesn’t get defensive, asking what he did this time. He doesn’t tell me he warned me. He doesn’t tell me to stop. No, he wraps his arms around me and holds me and takes these things that are only words and makes them into something more than words. Comfort. He gives me something I can actually feel – his presence, his hold.

“I’m happy,” I say, afraid he thinks I’m crying for a reason besides that. “Really, I am.”

The wind, the beach, the sun – everything else wraps around us, but our embrace is the one that matters. I am holding on to him now as much as he is holding on to me. We have reached that perfect balance, where each of us is strong and each of us is weak, each taking, each giving.

“What’s happening?” I ask.

“Shhh,” he says. “Don’t question it.”

I don’t feel any questions – only answers. No fear, only fullness. I kiss him and continue our perfect balance there, let our separate breaths become one breath. I close my eyes and feel the familiar press of his lips, the familiar taste of his mouth. But something is different now. We are not just kissing with our whole bodies, but with something that is bigger than our bodies, that is who we are and who we will be. We are kissing from a deeper part of our selves, and we are finding a deeper part of each other. It feels like electricity hitting water, fire reaching paper, the brightest light finding our eyes. I run my hands down his back, down his front, as if I need to know that he’s really here, that this is really happening. I linger on the back of his neck. He lingers on the side of my hip. I slip below his belt, but he leads me back up, kissing my neck. I kiss beneath his ear. I kiss his smile. He traces my laugh.

Enjoying this. We are enjoying this.

I have no idea what time it is, what day it is. I have nothing but now. Nothing but here. And it is more than enough.

Eventually my hand slides down his arm and holds his hand. We stand there for a few seconds, or maybe a few minutes, hand in hand, forehead on forehand, lips gently on lips, drained entirely of longing, because everything’s been found.

Then we pull away, keeping our hands together. We begin to walk down the beach, like couples do. Time comes back, but not in a scary way.

“This is amazing,” I say. And then I cringe despite myself, because this is what Justin would usually call an obvious statement. But of course, on this day, in this place, all he does is nod in agreement. He looks at the sun, which is coming closer to the horizon. I think I can see a boat offshore, but it could just be driftwood, or a mirage.

I want every day to be like this. I don’t understand why it can’t be.

“We should do this every Monday,” I say. “And Tuesday. And Wednesday. And Thursday. And Friday.”

I’m joking. But not really.

“We’d only get tired of it,” Justin says. “It’s best to have it just once.”

Once? I don’t know what he means. I don’t know how he could say that.

“Never again?” I ask. I don’t want to be wrong here. I really don’t want to be wrong.

He smiles. “Well, never say never.”

“I’d never say never,” I promise him.

Company. There are other couples on the beach now. Only a few, all of them older than us. Nobody asks us why we aren’t in school. Nobody asks us what we’re doing here. Instead, they seem happy to see us. It makes me feel like we belong here, that we are right to be doing what we’re doing.

This is how it’s going to be, I tell myself. And then I look at Justin and think, Tell me this is how it’s going to be.

I don’t want to ask him. I don’t want to have to ask. Too often, it’s my questions that push things off course.

I don’t want this to be fragile, but I still treat it like it is.

I’m starting to get a little cold. I have to remind myself that it isn’t summer. When I shiver, Justin puts his arm around me. I suggest we go back to the car and get the make-out blanket he keeps in his trunk. So we turn around, head back to where we started. Our castle is still there, still standing, even as the ocean comes closer.

Once we have the blanket, we bring it back to the beach. Instead of wrapping it around our shoulders, we put it on the sand and press ourselves beside each other. We are lying down, staring up at the sky. Clouds push by us. Every now and then a bird appears.