by Leah Johnson
“Toni, I didn’t—”
“Hear me out, okay?” She shakes her head briefly. I can hear the crowd murmuring behind her, and I try to block out all the noise. I try to direct my focus entirely on the girl in front of me. “Just look at me the whole time. Forget them. Just look right at me. Be the person you have been when it’s just the two of us, alright? They won’t be able to help but feel the way I do when I’m with you.”
SATURDAY AFTERNOON
I haven’t played in front of anyone but Olivia in eight months. Three days ago, I was still halfway convinced I would never play again. But when I sit back on my stool and start strumming, I follow the advice I gave Olivia and look directly at her.
Right now, there is no audience, no Davey Mack or Bonnie Harrison judging our every move. There are no massive life decisions to be made soon, no contest to win or scavenger hunt to complete. There’s just Olivia. There is just the girl who’s made me feel more alive in the past twenty-four hours than I have in my entire life, made me want to take more chances than I ever have before, singing along with me.
I knew her voice was good before from our brief rehearsals, but right now it sounds perfect—so clear and silvery. This is more than a song. How I feel? This is music. This is everything.
Everything feels so natural, and with Olivia in front of me, returning to my music feels just like riding a bike. I’m in the basement with my dad as he taught me to play “Seven Nation Army” on his Gibson SG. I’m in the car with him listening to Sonny Blue demos through the truck’s old speakers. I’m on his shoulders at my first Farmland. And for the first time in a long time, the thought of my dad doesn’t threaten to drown me, it buoys me. We might not have gotten all the time I wanted, but we’ll always have this, these chords that bind us.
And before I know it, I’m playing the final notes of the song, and Olivia is standing up from her stool, and I’m turning to wave at the audience, and watching the panel of judges—Davey Mack, Pop Top, and Bonnie Harrison—grin in my direction, and then I’m trailing Olivia offstage.
The rush of the magnitude of what just happened hits me the minute we get back in the wings. We did it. This is real.
I barely stop to set my guitar back down in its case, in such a rush to get to Olivia. When I finally do, I grab her hand and turn her to face me, because at this point it would require some almost-Herculean restraint to make it possible to stop wanting to be close to her and I’m just not sure I have it in me anymore.
“We did it. You—how are you even real?”
I don’t know who kissed whom, but suddenly my lips are pressed to hers with no finesse whatsoever and I can’t imagine stopping. This one is different than the kiss before we went on stage, all reserved and soft. I feel like I could explode from this.
Kissing Olivia is like a revelation. I don’t know how I had a life before I kissed her. I don’t know how I’ll have a life without kissing her, once this is all over. I want to do it again and again. And then I realize: I can.
I’m dizzy at the thought of it. I can kiss her. I can wrap my arms around her and pull her to me and press so close that we’re practically sharing breath and it’s not just tolerated, but welcomed.
So I do it again. And again. And then I’m a little light-headed because, truth be told, this is something that I never thought to study. It’s not like learning a new song, where I can tell you what notes belong where and why and what they mean in what order. Kissing may be a science, may have some elements of strategy, sure, but they’re so far outside my wheelhouse that I can’t pin any of it down. I might be doing all of this wrong.
“Stop thinking so much.” Olivia taps my temple with her index and middle finger and smiles like she knows me. I realize that it’s because she does. She really does. “This is good. We’re good.” She stops for a moment, and a look of what can only be described as fear flashes across her face. “Right? We’re good?”
I nod so vigorously it feels like I’m about to separate my head from my body.
“We’re good.”
When her smile comes back it’s easily the best thing I’ve ever seen. I’m so gone on this girl it would be embarrassing if the way her entire body leans into mine like she can’t let go tells me that she’s in this just as deep as I am right now.
“Okay,” she says. “Good.”
I grab my guitar and the open case from where they sit on the ground backstage, and we mutter giggled apologies as we rush past the last remaining contestants and outside. I lean against the side of the barn and pull Olivia to me by her waist and she presses another kiss to my lips. My hat is tilted slightly to the side and I’m sighing like some romance-novel heroine as Olivia straightens it for me. Who even am I?
“Let’s go somewhere,” she says, her eyes glittering and locked on mine.
“Where are we gonna go?” I ask. But it doesn’t matter. I don’t care where we go, not really.
I think about the miles and miles that this festival stretches, the way the land unfurls beneath us, seemingly endless. We’ve done so much this weekend already, covered so much ground. I wonder what else there is to do that we haven’t already done. Whatever adventure there is to be had though, I trust that Olivia will find it. She always does.
That’s how she found me.
Her hands cup my face. She looks back at the stage door of the barn, checking for I don’t know what. I watch her as she does, watch the way her throat works as she swallows and her eyes close for just a second. She takes a deep breath and my heart goes syncopated, the rhythm all out of whack.
When she looks back at me, I want to kiss her again. I don’t lean in for a peck right away, but she closes the gap between us, stopping right before she reaches my lips.
“I haven’t decided yet.” I can feel more than hear her words as she adds, “But we have the rest of the weekend to figure it out.”
SATURDAY AFTERNOON
Toni is a good kisser. Wait, no. Let me be more specific.
Toni is an incredible kisser. Like, Olympic-qualifying, should land her a full-ride scholarship to any college, Academy Award–worthy, cinematically incredible kisser. When she pulled back when we were standing backstage, after she kissed me so fast it felt like it might have been an accident, I was sure she wouldn’t do it again. It had been so quick, and her face had looked so shocked afterward, I just knew I’d never get to do it again. But I had. I freaking am.
We’re standing outside the performance barn pressed up against the side, and not making any moves to go inside to meet up with Imani and Peter. We were supposed to go find them after our performance fifteen minutes ago, but. Well. Here we are.
We can’t stop. I can’t stop. I feel feverish and excited and out-of-control in the best way. Her hands slide up my sides and I can’t think. Nothing else matters to me in this moment. It’s something more than the temporary relief from restlessness that I used to feel with my other dates. This is something deeper.
This is like running a marathon and finally crossing the finish line. This is like jumping off the ledge and being caught before you hit the bottom.
I don’t know what my life’s purpose is or anything like that, but I know I want to feel the way that I feel right now for as many days as possible until I can’t anymore. This warmth that starts in the pit of my stomach and radiates outward, that tells me I’ve done something good for someone else, that I’ve brought someone I care about joy or fulfillment or whatever name you put to it—I don’t ever want to let that go.
This can’t be a mistake, I think. Nothing that feels like this could be wrong.
Toni leans her forehead against mine, her chest rising and falling quickly. Her hands are on both sides of my neck, so gentle, and I shiver at the feeling. I feel like this isn’t even my body right now. No one has ever made me feel like I was going to vibrate right out of my skin unless they held on to me the way that she is. It’s scary and thrilling and makes everything I ever thought I knew about desire fly right out
the window.
How I felt with every ex is nothing compared to this. That was minor league. This is the majors. The is the Super Bowl of lo—
“I feel crazy,” she breathes. She giggles, and it’s a little hysterical but a lot relatable. “Do you feel crazy? Is it supposed to feel like this? I’ve never …”
“Me either.” I shake my head. It’s a complete sentence yet an unformed thought, but everything about me feels unformed right now. I’ve been unmade by Toni Foster.
“No, I mean … I’ve never.” Her voice is so quiet, it sounds like a confession.
“You’ve never …”
“Kissed anyone before today,” she says, looking down. “That, backstage, that was my first kiss.”
If it were physically possible, I would swear that she had just stolen the breath straight out of my lungs. Seriously. My throat feels tight, and it’s not a telltale sign of an asthma attack, it’s something else entirely. Something somehow scarier, bigger.
I don’t know how to tell her that I’ve had hundreds of kisses, with dozens of people, in the front row at concerts and in the janitors’ closet at school next to an old mop and in the back seats of too-small cars. But none of that can compare to this.
That it doesn’t matter how much she does or doesn’t know, or how much practice she’s had with how many girlfriends, because this is it. This is what it should feel like.
That I’ve been searching and searching and here, with her, is the first time I’ve ever felt found.
“Okay,” I say instead. The words are all caught in my throat. I wind my arms around her waist and press my cheek to her chest. I nod, and hope she understands what I’m saying.
Everything is packed into that word, and I trust her to hear it.
Okay as an admission: I want you like I’ve never wanted anyone before.
Okay as a promise: I won’t hurt you. I’ll protect you.
Okay as a plea: I don’t want to let you go. Please don’t let me go.
And when she pulls my body against hers and presses her nose to the top of my head, I know she gets it. This whole time, I’ve thought she wasn’t a talker, that she struggled to communicate. But maybe she has been talking to me. Maybe I just didn’t know how to listen until now.
“Yeah,” I whisper. “Yeah, okay.”
We stand together, just sort of breathing the same air for a minute. Until an all-too-familiar voice jars us out of the moment.
“Hey! Hey, you!” Toni’s eyes go comically wide at the sound of Festy Frankie behind us, grabs my hand, and pulls me after her. “Stop! Like, Swiper no swiping!”
We’re dashing through the Core like we stole something, which, okay we technically did. People barely even notice the twin expressions on our faces though, or the fact that Frankie is right on our heels. I trust that this looks like some kind of fun game, which is why everyone simply smiles absently in our direction as we duck in between vendor booths and attempt to get lost inside a huge crowd gathering for the Kacey Musgraves show that’s getting ready to start.
For someone who supposedly spends most of her summers flocking from festival to festival, laying out in the sun, and taking strategically perfect selfies, Festy Frankie is pretty fast. Her bell-bottom crocheted pants seem to be slowing her down some as they keep getting tangled around her ankles, and that’s the only thing that gives me and Toni the chance to break away.
Toni takes her hat off to make herself less conspicuous as we get absorbed by the audience. I thank my almighty stars that I’m short enough to qualify for the kids’ meal at Applebee’s.
I reach in my fanny pack to grab my inhaler and take a puff. But when I look down and realize Toni’s hand is still in mine, I blush. I honest-to-goddess blush, at something as simple as holding a girl’s hand.
I can count on one hand the times I’ve done this with other people. With me, most of my dates want to skip past the innocent stuff—the hand-holding, silly board game nights, staying up until three in the morning giggling to each other over the phone and refusing to be the one who hangs up first.
“You think the coast is clear?” Toni looks over her shoulder and peeks around my body, like Festy Frankie has somehow shielded herself behind my super imposing five-four frame. I laugh, and Toni looks down at me, smiling halfway like she realizes how ridiculous she’s being. “Wow, she can move. I figured all the festivals meant plenty of weed, which would inevitably mean an inability to run long distances.”
“A fatal underestimation, Miss Foster.” She bumps her shoulder into mine, looks down at where our hands are still locked together, and pulls hers back to rearrange her hat. It doesn’t seem like she’s eager to do it though, and that fills me with a warm burst of satisfaction.
We get jostled around a little bit by the crowd and she sighs.
“Sometimes I romanticize how nice it is to be here so much that I forget how gross it can be.” She dodges out of the way of someone’s raised arm threatening to deliver a hairy pit straight to her face. “You wanna dip out of here and regroup?”
Regrouping, in Toni’s estimation, is getting cotton candy to share and refilling our water bottles at the hydration station before finding a spot under a tree to try and catch some shade.
“I want to tell you something,” she starts. She takes her hat off to rest on top of her stomach and leans back so her head is resting on my thighs.
I pull off more cotton candy than I need to just so I don’t say anything embarrassing. Half of every terrible conversation I’ve had in my life started with “Can I ask you something?” and the other half with the dreaded “We need to talk.” I nod, bracing for impact.
We look at each other, and she reaches out to brush some stray cotton candy off my cheek. The touch is so gentle it’s barely there.
She smiles.
“I really like this version of you.”
SATURDAY AFTERNOON
I don’t know how long we’ve been sitting together under this tree, but it doesn’t feel important anymore. Time and plans and solitude, all the things I thought were most important to me at the beginning of this weekend, disappeared somewhere between the dance barn and this moment.
Maybe this is what my dad meant when he used to say the music is always with us. Olivia is a melody that has made a song of my universe, and I realize I want to spend a long time trying to figure out all the notes. I don’t want to rearrange them, but damn do I want to analyze them. To figure out how to play them and when.
“Penny for your thoughts?” I smile up at her and pluck her sunglasses from her face to slide them onto my own. The big, white, heart-shaped frames look out of place on me I’m sure, but I like wearing something of Olivia’s.
“A penny? Have you no respect for the working class? It’s a fifteen-dollar minimum for my thoughts, ma’am,” she says. I laugh and it feels like I won something. Like I’ve done something very right to deserve to feel this way.
“You’re so right.” I eat the last of the cotton candy and grin. “The going rate for the thoughts of teenage girls has been undervalued for too long.”
She traces the bridge of my nose with a sticky finger before her face turns serious. “I need to tell you—” She pauses briefly before blurting, “Do you like me?”
She asks me as if it’s a question with a yes or no answer. As if like is even big enough to wrap its arms around all I feel for her.
I can’t hear anything around me, can’t make out the sound of the muffled band from a stage across the field. I can’t see the people in their fringed bikinis and vintage Farmland T-shirts with lineups from years past milling around waiting for the set to start. All I can see is her. The brown of her eyes that go nearly black after the sun sets. The hard press of her lips against each other when she thinks. The tense line of her shoulders as she gears up for what she thinks I’m going to say.
I don’t just like her.
I could do this, I tell myself. I could have a good thing, and it would be not simple, but spectacu
lar. Not perfect, yet precious. I’m not ready, not exactly, but my mind will just have to catch up with my heart this time. This time I’m going to choose to leap.
My heart rate is ratcheted up high, but in the best kind of way. I reach forward and grab her hand where it rests on her cutoff-clad thigh. I’m going to say it. Those three words I’ve been thinking all day but too scared to say.
“Olivia, I—”
But I don’t get to tell her. I don’t get to apologize for whatever I did to make her question whether or not I was in this all the way, or to make her a promise, or ask her all the things I want to ask her.
An all-too familiar snap rings out, and this time there’s no mistaking it for a stage effect. All at once, Olivia’s eyes go wide, scared, at the sound of a gunshot. She’s yanking me to my feet and we’re running. And everyone around us is too. Someone is screaming. It might be Olivia, but I can’t tell. My feet are too heavy for my body, and I can’t keep up. I’m not sure what’s happening, and it’s happening so fast.
“Toni!” she screams, frantically pulling me behind her, the stampede of people around us threatening to level us both. “Please, we have to run! You have to go faster!”
And suddenly, it’s not a moment I’m living through—it’s a memory. I’m sprinting from a gas station on 56th and Georgetown Road, darting into the street, trying to escape, to find someone to help my dad. I’m breathing too hard. I can’t see through my own tears. I’m having a panic attack.
Someone’s shoulder slams into mine and I stumble. Olivia’s crying in front of me, begging me to stand up.
I think distantly that there might be sirens.
I think that I love her.
I think that means I’m going to lose her.
I’m breathing too hard. I’m slipping away into the moment. I’m feeling the overwhelming sensation of fear that gripped me this morning at the DJ Louddoc set. And I don’t know how it happened or where she went, but I lose Olivia in the rush of people around me.
