by Leah Raeder
“So this is the legendary Vada Bergen,” Brandt said. “Now I see why my cuz is so wet for you.”
“Oh my god,” Ellis said. “Boundaries, Brandt.”
“Sorry. You ladies care to join me in a drink?”
“You’re underage.”
“Relax. Vada doesn’t look like a narc. She looks like she’s fun at parties.”
In the kitchen he took two bottles from the fridge. The opener was exactly where I remembered, and I glanced up at Ellis, my chest tightening.
“Are we having a tender moment?” Brandt said.
I snatched the bottles from him. “Are you twenty-one?”
“Busted. Twenty in April.”
“Which day?”
“Eleventh.”
“Mine’s the tenth,” I said, and popped the caps. “Okay, you can drink with supervision. But don’t turn me in.”
“Your secret’s safe with me, Ms. Bergen.”
Heat crept up my neck. I looked away.
The three of us wandered back into the living room gallery.
“You’re really good,” Brandt said.
I shrugged and he shrugged one shoulder, imitating me.
“I don’t know shit about art,” he said, nodding at a portrait of Ellis with her crooked, beguilingly boyish smile, “but anyone who makes Emily look that hot has talent.”
Ellis covered her face with her hands.
“She is that hot,” I fired back. “But thanks for the kudos. Means a lot, coming from a Philistine.”
Brandt grinned.
Ellis said, “I’m going to the bathroom. Then we’re leaving.”
We waited quietly till she was out of the room.
“Your cousin’s name is Ellis,” I said. “Stop calling her Emily.”
“I grew up calling her Em. Easy to slip.”
“You didn’t slip. You did it on purpose the first time you saw me here, too. This summer. I know you remember.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because you’re a troublemaker.” I leaned on a sofa. “Tell me about your disability.”
“What disability?”
“You favor your left arm.”
Brandt tilted his head. “Sharp eye.”
“How much function do you have?”
He raised his right shoulder, grimacing. The elbow didn’t bend. “It’s like a parasite. Hanging off my body. Sucking me dry.”
“How’d it happen?”
“I got what I deserve.” Brandt laughed. “You can’t run forever. The past always catches up with you.”
My throat went thick. “Do you know who did it to you?”
“Do you know who did it to you?” He gestured to my right arm. “You favor your left, too. We match, Vada.”
Observant.
I took a long sip, eyeing him. This wasn’t anything. He was just trying to provoke me.
A bored kid, going stir-crazy in his house, like I was.
“I’ve dealt with depression,” I said. “You can’t will it away. If you need someone to talk to, I’ve been there.”
“You want to be my therapist?”
“No. I’m not even sure I want to be your friend.”
Brandt smirked. “Brutal. I like it.”
“Listen, I care about Ellis. A lot. If you’re part of her life, you’re part of mine. But I don’t tolerate people who hurt her. No matter if they’re blood relatives.”
“So I’ve heard.” He lifted his bottle. “You’re very protective of your personal punching bag.”
I actually felt the words hit, right in my solar plexus.
Brandt’s eyes gleamed. Same green as hers, but his were cold, unblinking. Reptilian.
“We should get going,” I said, pushing off the couch.
He moved into the kitchen doorway.
“What are you doing?”
No answer.
I stepped around him and he touched my arm. My hand snapped to his.
“You don’t want to fuck with me,” I said. “And you especially don’t want to fuck with Ellis.”
“Feisty.”
I grabbed his other arm and twisted it in the socket. He hissed in pain.
“Not feisty,” I corrected. “Dangerous.”
Tears sprang to his eyes. I released.
“Vada. Stay, please. I’m so fucking bored.” He slouched in the doorway. “You two are always off playing lesbian Martha Stewart. No one can hold an intelligent conversation. Jerking off southpaw is giving me RSI. My mind is lonely.”
His words and his voice resonated with me, familiar.
We had more in common than I cared to admit.
“Pro tip,” I said. “Don’t ever physically accost a woman. We’re much more likely to stay when it’s our choice.”
His head bowed.
“Is everything all right?” Ellis said, coming down the hall.
“Yep.” I gathered our bottles to toss in the trash.
“Those go in the recycling,” Brandt said.
Ellis frowned. “Since when are you environmentally conscious?”
“I’ve always cared deeply about the Earth. I want it to be pretty for the day I assume control.”
The recycling bin was near overflow. I rinsed the bottles and dropped them in, nudging aside wood chips and shavings.
“He’s right,” I said. “Apparently he composts.”
“Portland chicks dig sensitive tree huggers. Right, Vada?”
“That’s the other Portland.”
“My bad. What kind of guys do you dig?”
“The kind who aren’t douchebags.”
“How about the kind who aren’t guys?”
Ellis looked at him, then me. “Let’s go before it’s dark.”
Was I actually flirting with her cousin? Fuck.
Brandt walked us to the door. He made Ellis promise to visit again soon, and wheedled me to join her, and for a moment I almost felt sorry for him. He really was lonely. As Ellis trotted down the front steps, Brandt brushed my coat sleeve. I stopped.
“I’d never hurt her,” he said. “She’s all I’ve got left.”
“Good. She’s all I’ve got left, too.”
When I was halfway across the porch he called, “That’s not true.”
I glanced back.
“You’ve still got a great ass,” he said.
* * *
On the last day before Boston, the air crackled with static.
I rowed out with Ellis beneath the gray sky. We shared a joint, lay on our backs in the skiff and stared up at rain clouds, watching our smoke rise and twist above us like nebulas, and I thought, Tomorrow, everything changes. Reality splits. In one universe, I choose Blue. In the other, Red.
“What are you thinking?” Ellis said.
“I feel like Neo picking a pill. Hashtag weed thoughts.”
We both sat up, hugging our knees, sneaker toes touching. The boat rocked, a stray wave slopping over the gunwale and dousing my calf. I shivered.
“You?” I said.
“I was thinking about this Japanese art called kintsugi.”
“Did you see this in an anime?”
“No. Shut up.” She pushed my toes away, but I pushed back. “Kintsugi is a pottery technique. When something breaks, like a vase, they glue it back together with melted gold. Instead of making the cracks invisible, they make them beautiful. To celebrate the history of the object. What it’s been through. And I was just . . .”
I pushed her toes again. “Just what?”
“Thinking of us like that. My heart full of gold veins, instead of cracks.”
I stared. “That’s beautiful, Ellis. Where’d you hear about it?”
She smiled sheepishly. “Death Cab for Cutie.”
Ellis said she wanted to show me something at the cabin. We rowed back and trekked through the woods, through a sea of dry leaves fluttering around our shoes like golden paper cranes. Up in the tree house she had a log fire burning in the wood stove, and in the last good l
ight she’d set up an easel, a primed canvas, and a tray of paint. I stood in the doorway, dumbstruck.
She uncapped a tube of green acrylic, raised it to my face.
I hadn’t smelled anything like this in almost a year. It hit like a drug. My eyes watered from the faint plasticky scent, the gesso on the canvas. I edged away, dizzy, tumbled onto the sofa.
“Vada?”
When she touched me I grabbed her waist, crying.
“It’s okay, it’s okay.” She pulled my coat off, wrapped her arms around me. “I’m sorry. We don’t have to do this.”
“Is this another experiment?”
“No. It’s just something I always wanted to do.”
“You wanted to paint with me?”
“Yeah.”
I let go. Scrubbed hot saline from my cheeks and stood.
At first I didn’t dare touch the canvas. I showed Ellis what to do: mix colors on the palette, keep the paint wet, apply and blend. She rolled her sleeves up, fastidiously avoided spattering her clothes. Unacceptable. I dipped a finger in red and dragged it down the front of her shirt.
“Now that you’re dirty,” I said, dabbing paint on her cheek and chin for good measure, “you can fucking relax.”
Her eyes went wide. I laughed.
Ellis didn’t have a subject—she just put colors down, gleefully watching them interact, like a kid playing with a chemistry set. Yellow and red turning into mandarin orange, blue and green becoming Atlantic teal. My throat burned at the scratch of bristles on canvas and the muddy rainbow swirling in the water cup. But I made myself take it. I can do this, I thought. I can feel this even though I can’t really be part of it anymore. Through you.
Ellis tried to paint a line across the canvas with cautious, self-conscious strokes, but it kept going wonky.
“Why do I suck at straight lines?”
“Because you’re not straight?”
“Neither are you.”
“Those damn bisexuals, always getting the best of both worlds. Who do they think they are?”
She rolled her eyes. I laid my weak hand on her wrist.
“You’re trying to control it from here. It’s too close to the brush.” I ran my hand up her arm, slowly, over fair skin sprinkled with freckles and paint. Up to her shoulder, her collarbone. “Do it from here.”
I kept my hand there. When her arm moved I felt the smooth pull of threads beneath the surface. My palm slid over her neck, her back, feeling the delicate loom of muscle moving against my fingertips.
“If I could give this to you,” she said, “I would. I’d give anything to make you happy.”
I hugged her from behind, burying my face against her shoulder. “You make me happy.”
For a moment Ellis was still. Then she turned and cupped my jaw and I thought, Kiss me.
“You’re totally clean,” she said, sounding puzzled.
She smeared turquoise on my cheek.
“Hey.”
Royal purple next.
“Very funny.”
Jade green.
“Ellis—”
We both grabbed the palette.
Then she flipped it onto my shirt and it was all-out paint war.
Ellis had the advantage of surprise and squeezed a handful of red paint into her palm before I caught her. It splattered all over both of us, bright as blood. My hand slipped and hit the canvas and left a dripping scarlet print. We both stared at it, impressed, then lunged for more. I fought her for the blue tube and it burst in our hands, shooting everywhere as we screamed. Yellow spilled on the sofa. Green slathered the window. In the middle of absolutely wrecking Ellis with paint I got more on the canvas, too, and suddenly there was an unspoken cease-fire as we both attacked it, Pollock style, flinging paint with our bare hands. Exhilarated, I popped tube after tube and hurled it half-blind, hitting the wall and floor as much as anything. Who fucking cared? This glorious mess was me. This was the color and energy and motion that had been locked in me for a year, finally breaking loose.
I fumbled in the tray, finding only empty tubes. My fingers and toes tingled. Crazed, breathless. We both looked like we’d faced a paintball firing squad.
“Holy fuck,” I said.
Ellis closed the small space between us and kissed me, so hard I rocked back on my heels. I tasted paint, spearmint, salt water. Our arms wrapped around each other, and the numbness at the edges of me spread until all I was sure was real was the bell toll of my heart, a vague sense of blood ringing through my veins. I kissed that sweet pink mouth again and again and pulled back to look at her.
“It’s on your glasses.”
She tossed them onto the coffee table.
Down to the couch, her beneath me. Dabs and dashes of paint everywhere, on skin and clothes and upholstery, as if this were a van Gogh close-up and if you stepped back far enough, it would condense into a clear image. My hair fell around her face in a cup of shadow and she tucked it behind my ear.
“This is how I remember you,” she said. “Just like this.”
“Covered in paint?”
“That, but also the light in your eyes. The fire.”
I laced my fingers through hers. “I think we’re lying in Process Yellow.”
“Want to move?”
“I’m not letting you go anywhere.”
Ellis gave me that aw-shucks tomboy smile, ever so slightly crooked, and I couldn’t help myself. The words were out before they hit me.
“I love you,” I said.
We both stared, a little shocked.
“I love you, too.”
We’d said these words a thousand times. But right now it felt like the first.
It was too intense for a kiss, for the way I wanted to touch her. Too pure to let some ephemeral thrill dilute it. Too perfect just like this. I guess she felt the same because she simply held me, so tight each breath we took made it hard for the other to breathe. Skin colliding, bones smashing, twisting together, crashing into each other. As close as we could get. This could be the last night I hold you like this, I thought. And I don’t ever want to let go.
—11—
It rained all morning. The road was a ribbon of chrome winding through deep, dark forest, the broken coast shining like shards of metal covered in oil. Wind whipped foam off the water, thickening the air with mist. An empty fury that was all breath.
Ellis drove the rental car. I fought the urge to reach out, put a steadying hand on hers. She was good, if overcautious. I was good but reckless. That’s why we fit so well. Balanced each other out.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” I said. “About Blue.”
She frowned at the highway, the oncoming headlights scribbles of gold gel on the asphalt.
“He asked me to bring you. It was his sole condition for meeting, actually.”
Ellis kept staring straight ahead. “Why?”
Because I’m torn between the two of you. Because looking at you side by side will break me, and I’m not sure which half of my heart will be bigger.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“What if he wants to kill us both?”
“Really? Is this a Lifetime Original?”
“What do you actually know about him?”
“I know he’s not like that.”
“What is he like? Since you’re the expert.”
Her tone was cool, taunting. I wanted to say He’s like you with a dick, but I didn’t rise to it.
After a while she glanced over, sober now. “If it’s Max, and he’s decided he can’t live with the pain anymore . . .”
“Max wouldn’t do that.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he’s had the chance to hurt me.” And the chance to take advantage. I looked out the window. “He never has. We have a connection, Ellis.”
We fell quiet. Rain came down hard, bouncing off the blacktop like flashing coins. After a while I laid my hand lightly on her leg. Not in an erotic way, but not platonic, either.
Merely familiar. I felt her tense up, then relax. We listened to the rain shredding the sky, all those threads of mist fraying into water.
Boston is almost a smaller, statelier Chicago, but instead of a neat grid its streets are a drunken spiderweb. I got us lost twice even with GPS. Neighborhoods scrolled past: cobblestone lanes and redbrick row houses, gas lamps leaking yellow fumes of light into the rain. We crossed the Charles River, its pewter skin stippled with raindrops.
Dane met us at a café a few blocks from the official meeting place. He ran out with an umbrella in either hand. Always the gentleman.
Indoors I threw my arms around him, squeezing hard.
“She missed me,” Dane told Ellis when I let go.
“Shut up.” I mussed his hair. He wore tight jeans and a fitted leather jacket, no inch of muscle undefined, and that puckish smile I’d actually, yes, sorta missed. “Been raising hell?”
“Been raising lots of things, baby.”
Ellis laughed.
“Don’t encourage him,” I said.
Dane winked at her. “You keeping out of trouble, Red?”
We both did a double take. Ellis recovered smoothly.
“Morgan never listens to her voice of reason. That’s why we’re here now.”
“Come on,” Dane said, motioning toward a table. “Let’s strategize.”
I left them to check myself in the bathroom. Last chance before meeting him face-to-face. As soon as I exited eyeshot, I pulled out my phone.
one more hour
my hair is frizzy from the rain
and I’m pretty sure Red hates us both
but this is actually happening
how will I know it’s you? what are you wearing?
—Vada
I set my phone on the counter and touched up my lip gloss, tried to tame the frizz. Understated makeup. Blue already knew me glammed up. No pretension today.
My phone vibrated.
you’ll know me when you see me.
i’m nervous, vada.
but when i think of holding you in my arms, all the fear falls away.
and all i feel is you.
see you soon.
—blue
I pressed the phone to my chest, inhaling deeply.
“Vada?”
