In my vanity table, there was a picture of me the night I met Ari: I went and retrieved it, still fixated on the idea of anyone, let alone Dad, seeing her as anything other than the fuzzy scalped, pink little ball of wrinkles she had been. There was only one thought I could hold onto to gain some grip on the situation: Ari could never know. It was one thing for me and mom to carry this burden, but I wasn’t going to let her blame herself if I could help it.
With my index finger, I stroked the still image of the tiny striped hat they’d put on her head in the hospital. I put the picture away and went to find Ari and ask her to sing me one of her songs.
In bed the night before, I hadn't been able to stop the thoughts about Dad and his illness. Like an internal tennis match, my own emotions gave me vertigo as I struggled to reconcile my sadness at what he’d been going through with my anger that he’d just disappeared and left me to draw my own conclusion. And it had been years, actual years since Ari was born. Even with issues finding the right therapist, the right meds, the right everything to manage his illness, he couldn’t have founds his way back to us by now? He couldn’t just try harder to get better?
Suddenly my life didn’t feel like a life so much as a road map, like if I could examine all the points where our family’s path had diverged the way it had, I’d be able to solve the mystery of how this had happened to us. There had to be some moment, some innocuous small little moment that carried more meaning than I’d assigned it. There had to be some warning sign that the daddy I’d known forever was going to disappear.
Eyes shut tight, I pictured the day Mom told me I was going to have a sister. They’d waited until they knew Ari was going to be a girl to mention her pregnancy at all, waiting for that 20 week ultrasound to protect me from any complications that could arise. Scanning that memory, it wasn’t my reaction to the news that I was looking for; that was right there in the forefront of my memory. How had Dad reacted? Had he seemed excited as we looked at the sonogram picture? Had he pointed out Ari’s little nose, the fuzzy part in the scan that indicated her heartbeat? Or had he sat there, somehow wilted in front of us, not knowing that his disease was already in the process of stealing him away?
All night on Christmas was the same; memories popped into my head and replayed in ways that betrayed every bit of happiness I’d always thought we’d had. Should I have seen it coming? Was every grumbly morning, every misplaced sigh, a sign that our lives were about to disintegrate? Had Dad been floundering and afraid without anyone even knowing?
Without another thought, I pushed myself out of my bed and began pacing around my room. My skin was crawling, and the silence was suffocating me. With a look at my clock, I saw the time and knew if mom found out she would murder me for wandering into the park in the middle of the night, but that wasn’t going to stop me tonight. I had to go somewhere that didn’t feel so overbearing.
Even as I headed towards the park, I knew I couldn’t risk going where I really wanted to go. Stars filled the sky and the lights just barely illuminated the path in front of me; in the woods, it would be impossible to see. A tiny voice argued that I’d be okay, that I had walked the path so many times that I knew where every root, every possible tripping point could possibly be. But I also knew I couldn’tbe prepared for who I might meet or what they might be doing.
Nestled up in my oversized coat, I sat curled up on a bench, staring at the sky above me. My breath came out in curls of steam and I wished I’d put on gloves before I’d taken off in a huff. There was no one nearby; it was too cold for the late-night joggers and the evening dog walkers had probably stayed on their own streets, forcing Fido to make do with a quick lap around the block. It was just me and my coat and the stars.
I wanted to see my dad. I had so many questions for him, questions so big they had eclipsed years’ worth of anger and resentment. Questions I didn’t even know if I could ask because I thought they’d be rude to ask someone who was basically a stranger. I wanted to know what kinds of thoughts he’d had and how they started. I wanted to know if they were in his own voice or if he felt like he had a stranger’s voice inside his head. And why Ari? Did he even know why? Then there was the question I wanted to ask, but was so, so scared to hear the answer to: had he ever wanted to hurt me?
My hands were numb when I finally trudged my way back home and I feared the continued spiral into my own thoughts that I’d face once I was back in bed. I didn’t need to worry about that, though, because as soon as my head hit the pillow, I was out.
I texted Lennox the next morning. We were still fighting, but I needed to talk to someone I could trust, someone who didn’t know my mom and didn’t like her as much as all my other friends. Someone who could objectively tell me how mad I should be and what I should do next.
I really need someone to talk to, I wrote. I know we are still fighting, but can I swing by?
I expected her to be silent for a while if she answered at all. What loyalty did she really have to me? What incentive did she have to put any work into repairing such a new friendship? I almost jumped when my phone chimed less than a minute later. She had been very to the point: come on over.
When I walked into the room, Lennox was sprawled across the bed, arms crossed behind her head. I expected that she would get up, but she didn’t, so I sat down beside her. Kicking off my shoes, I put my feet up on the bed and leaned back against her headboard so that I was upright but reclined next to her.
“I didn’t mean to get so mad at you,” she startsedslowly, and I could see her eyes narrow with effort as she tried to get her words out. I smiled as I noticed that as usual, she jumped right into the conversation without any greeting or preamble. “I know it’s not your fault that those punks were at the zoo and I know wanting an experience doesn’t mean you wanted us to be harassed like that.”
I looked down at her and noticed that she was still wearing her pajamas: a tank top and low-slung pants that exposed her jutting hipbones. A flush ran through my blood as I silently prayed Lennox couldn’t hear the loud swallow that I couldn't suppress. I reminded myself not to stare a minute too late because suddenly Lennox looked up at me and I could tell she saw me staring at her like a piece of meat. For a second, I thought she would lose her temper and she would have been justified, but instead, she sat up on the bed so that we were about an inch away. Her hand reached up and tangled though my thick, curly hair and I leaned into her so our foreheads touched. Then suddenly she was kissing me, her mouth like warm cinnamon against mine, and it was absolutely everything.
Don’t pull away again, I willed her silently, and even though I wanted the kissing to last forever, I didn’t mean just physically. We had fallen together so naturally, like we were supposed to be sitting on her bed making out. Like it was pre-destined. I wanted this moment between us, this feeling that she would finally be with me, to last and last.
Her mouth got hungrier and her tongue ran across my own. The fingers that had previously been content to rest in the soft tangles of my hair were more searching, tugging at the individual strands like she was trying to hold us together. She didn’t need to bother; whenever this spell broke, whenever we stopped, it wouldn’t be by my choice.
I had never been kissed like this, the kind of kiss where you find yourself horizontal across someone else’s bed with no idea how you’d ended up that way. She wasn’t quite on top of me so much as above me, but there was a danger in the switch from upright to reclining. Her hand was starting to find its way under the hem of my shirt, and I was in no real hurry to stop it, except that there was this huge subject we hadn’t talked about that was tainting the whole experience.
Five more minutes, I thought. I’ll just let this go for five more minutes and then I’ll be the practical one.
Twenty minutes later I was shirtless, and we were under her quilt. I had just barely forced myself to stop her from unbuttoning my jeans. My lips were so raw that they tingled as I told her that we were going to have to talk before things went a
ny farther and then she was lying next to me, her hand on my hip as she waited to hear what I was going to say.
The problem was that I was lying next to her topless and out of breath with her hand so heavy on my hip, and the tingling that was buzzing through every part of my body had pretty much disabled my ability to think, let alone speak. Hey eyes were like honey, so sticky sweet and full, and I would have done anything if I could just push my hesitations away and kiss her again. If I could just forget what everything meant and just enjoy the feeling of finally knowing that no matter what happened next, at least she wanted me as much as I wanted her. And even if I could get my thoughts straight, which was becoming even more unlikely now that her fingers were swirling light circles across my bare flesh, what was I going to say to her? Gee, Lennox, does this mean you are ready to be gay after all? Can I be your girlfriend?
Closing the gap between us, she kissed the corner of my mouth before nuzzling into my shoulder and wrapping her arm around my chest. I could feel her skin against my bare breasts and I suddenly felt how naked I really was.
“What does this mean?” I asked, the words coming out of me so quickly that they were almost a buzz.
Her pause broke my heart. The silence of it told me there wasn’t going to be a happy ending and I reached over to grab my shirt. Not feeling like I had the strength to commit to getting dressed, I draped the flannel over myself to try to lessen the vulnerability.
“Nothing has really changed,” Lennox answered, but the huskiness of her voice confirmed that everything had. “I want you and I like being with you, but I can’t give you much more than this. I can’t be gay.”
Fog clouded my vision and for a split second, I was so angry that my brain actually felt like it was fizzing. It was like the inside of my mind was a Coke that had been shaken up.
“What does that even mean?” I asked. “Your tongue was just inside my mouth. Your hands were freaking everywhere,” I stammered, not able to go on as the tears welled up in my eyes. With a hard swallow, I got out that one important question: “What do you mean you can’t be gay?”
A strand of her dark hair fell across her eyes and she didn’t bother brushing it away as she looked down. I could feel her eyes settling on me as she thought about how to form her words. I wanted to kiss her then, wanted to let her know that I understood how hard it was for her, but when she reached up to place her hand on my face, I pushed it away.
“Answer me,” I pleaded.
When she looked up at me, when our eyes met, that thick, blanketing warmth was gone from her eyes and defeat had settled in its place. “It means that I could do this. Here,” she said gesturing to the two of us first and then to the confines of her bedroom. “I could be with you in some secret way that wouldn’t be fair to you, but I can’t be your girlfriend. I don’t want to be out. Not to anyone.”
Would that be so bad? I wondered, heart jumping at the thought of nights like this with she and I wrapped up in each other’s arms. Would it really matter if anyone knew? I could picture us making eyes at each other when no one was looking and letting our hands brush against each other’s under the lunch table. And what was the difference, really, between a date and two friends hanging out? We could still be together.
This time it was me who reached out, my hand resting along Lennox’s angled jawline, my forehead against hers. “I don’t care if anyone knows as long as we know,” I said and I parted my lips to seal the deal with another kiss, but she pulled back.
“That would be great,” she said, “Until you wanted to hold hands in public or talk about your relationship to the people that mattered to you.” Her eyes clouded over and I let her words sink in. I thought about loving someone the way I was starting to love Lennox, wanting someone the way I wanted her, and never being able to share my feelings with Marley. Never being able to whisper or giggle as we gossiped about the date night I’d had the night before. Never being able to dance together at prom or cuddle before school.
“Trust me,” she said, and I noticed the bottom rim of her eyelid was turning red. “This never works.”
Her words hit me so hard that they knocked the air from my chest, and it felt like an inflated balloon was keeping me from pulling air into my lungs. She’d done this before and hadn’t told me.
It wasn’t that she’d had experiences before me that bothered me; what had happened before me was none of my business. It was that she’d left me so desperate in my own wondering, so lost trying to figure out if I was imagining a connection between us. She had known she was attracted to girls, known she wanted me, known I was pining for her like some sort of idiot, and had just let me flounder alone in my feelings like something out of a Drake song. There was nothing left to say. She was right; it could never work. Without a word, even as she asked me not to leave, I got dressed. Gathering my bag, I left her house, crying the whole way home.
Chapter Twelve
Lennox
The minute Hannah left my room, every muscle in my body was tense, urging me to rush after her. Was I really going to let her leave? Why? Because of some boys that lived three hours away? Because I was scared of what might happen if I admitted out loud that I was attracted to girls? Even as I stood there, not moving, I felt like I was doing what could end up being one the stupidest things I’d ever done.
It was like something out of a bad movie; I literally rested my head against the door, my palms flat against the wood, as I talked myself out of, then back into, then finally out of chasing down her car and professing my love.
I knew I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t just Dalton and Nick. They weren’t the only homophobes in the world. I lived with two other ones, two that I depended on for a roof over my head and clothes on my back. Two that might never speak to me again if I went chasing after some girl. Two whom I’d promised I would keep my hormones in check as long as I was around to humiliate them so that they wouldn’t have to start over again because they didn’t want people to know their daughter was an abomination.
In that moment, I was so jealous of Hannah I could scream. So jealous that I wanted to be her even more than I wanted to be with her. What must it be like to live in a house where you could just be gay and talk to your mom about girls? To go to school and not care if people knew you were a lesbian? What would it be like to be able to just be yourself without any fear of what other people would think? I didn’t think I would ever know the answer to that.
I had always told myself that the lie only really had to last until I went away to college. That once I was away from my parents’ home, there wouldn’t be any reason to keep it a secret. I wouldn’t need their money, their support, their approval. I could live my life the way I wanted. I still told myself that, but that didn’t mean that I would have what Hannah had. My life wasn’t going to be magically transformed. When I fell in love and found someone to marry, living away from home wasn’t going to change my dad into the kind of guy who would walk me down the aisle and give me away to another girl. My parents wouldn’t dance at my wedding. When I left home, when I came out, I would still be doing it without them, without a family, alone.
I collapsed onto my bed, my body so tense and tight I thought it might shatter into pieces from the contact. As I rolled over onto my pillow, I could smell Hannah’s hair in the fabric. She smelled like something baking; something so sweet and warm that the scent always made me imagine what it must feel like to have a place that felt like home. I had the fleeting thought that she could be my home if I would just let her, but I groaned into my pillow, releasing that thought back into the wind. It was too dangerous to entertain ideas like that. No matter how much you want to love them, a human being could never be reliable as an anchor.
That didn’t stop me from sniffing my pillow, from replaying the scenes of just moments before. The way her body had been so soft and her mouth so needy. The little gasps she made every time my fingers moved across the soft surface of her ivory skin. The goosebumps that sprung up like a trail of bread
crumbs, highlighting all the beautiful destinations I had explored. It had been heaven.
It had been Heaven, but what would happen when school started, and I saw her in the hall after touching her that way? Would I be able to make my face a mask and hide away the heat I knew would fight to rise in my cheeks? Would I be able to shove it all down and pretend there was nothing there? Hiding was the problem after all. Hiding feelings, hiding pain. Making everything seem simple when it wasn’t. Lying to my parents over and over again about where I was going, who I was going with. If I didn’t have to hide, maybe she and I could find a way to work.
If.
I might as well tell myself that if everyone else disappeared, we could work. There were a million impossible things that could happen that could fix everything, but only a possible one would make any difference.
I needed to clear my head. The space was getting that heavy feel to it, like I could hear the buzzing of the air. Like it was thick and vibrating around me, abuzz with the movement of the molecules. I kept catching myself breath holding, then forcing myself to take long, thirsty gulps of the air that wouldn’t quite fill my lungs. If I didn’t get out of that room, I was going to faint.
I made my way down the stairs hoping that neither of my parents showed up. I didn’t think I could keep it together with dad hammering me about where I was headed, his eyes ripping me open to find some truth I wasn’t hiding. I would crumble under that weight, become a tiny pool of Lennox on the hallway carpet. I was as quiet as I could be as I crept out.
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