19 Love Songs

by David Levithan

  Ryan walked over to Avery, stood right in front of him. “I’m definitely new at this,” he said. He wasn’t talking about what Avery was talking about. Instead he was saying that all of those things could be unlearned and learned, but the really hard part, the really awkward and scary and wonderful part, was being in a room with someone you liked and trying to find the right things to say, the right things to do with your body, the clearest signal to send to say that this meant a lot, that this really meant a lot.

  Avery raised the unicorn so her horn touched Ryan’s nose. Ryan laughed.

  “She approves,” Avery assured him.

  * * *

  —

  We find someone to love, and in finding that person, we find our own capability to love them.

  Most of the time—no, all of the time—we have had no idea what we were capable of.

  * * *

  —

  Two boys kissing in a room.

  One boy pausing to tell the story of the time he brought a unicorn to school.

  The other boy talking about his own brush with unicorns, this one on a folder he had to keep hidden under his bed. When his parents found it, he told them it belonged to a girl from school, that she had used it to give him her part of a joint assignment. Which was true, but not the reason he’d kept it long after the assignment was done.

  Both boys talking about unicorns and parents, teachers and erasers shaped like stars. Both boys debating whether there was really anything guilty about guilty pleasures. Both boys taking pleasure in deciding there was not.

  Everyone here has forgotten about laundry, about bedtime, about snow.

  * * *

  —

  Midnight is just another minute, when you’re not looking at the clock.

  * * *

  —

  It was Avery who yawned first, and the moment he started, something was set off in Ryan, and he started yawning, too.

  They were leaning against Avery’s bed when this happened, but they knew this was not the bed where they would end up. They’d promised. Plus, the bed in the family room was bigger.

  Avery’s mother had put out a new toothbrush for Ryan, from her dentist-visit stash. So they could stand side by side at the bathroom sink, brushing and spitting together. This was a first time for both of them, and they each felt the intimacy of it, the significance of such a quotidian joy. It was no big deal, and that was why it was a big deal.

  They did not talk about the sleeping arrangement; they simply went to the bed and arranged themselves for sleep. Ryan hadn’t been sure this would happen; Avery hadn’t been sure Ryan would want it. Their uncertainty showed, but so did their want, their almost existential want. They lay beside each other, but it wasn’t like it had been in the snow. There were layers between them, but the layers were thin. They leaned in and kissed, and the longer they kissed, the more feverish it became. Kissing with their lips, yes, but also kissing with their hands, with their skin, with their breathing and their heat. Ryan reached around Avery, pulled his body close, and Avery reached around Ryan’s back and pulled his body close, too, and together they felt like they were fusing, felt like they were both two and one. No clothes needed to be shed. No lines had to be crossed. This was everything, this closeness. This sensation of one another. This sense that touch could generate such feeling.

  Then the slowdown. The lighter touches. The lying there and breathing one another in. Wondering how the heartbeat could spread through so much of the body. Feeling the heat subside, but not entirely.

  The drifting of voices and the approach of sleep. Avery watching Ryan fight it, blinking out and blinking back, and then coming unmoored again. Avery wished him a goodnight. Ryan smiled, cuddled in. Wished him a goodnight back. Then fell—the gentlest kind of fall.

  Avery could not fall asleep as easily. Avery needed to think about this as it was happening. Avery needed to understand it in order to enjoy it. So he watched Ryan through the blue-black darkness, watched as his chest rose and subsided, extraordinary machine. How did this happen? Avery asked himself. How is this possible? Because this was a room he knew well. His parents were asleep in another room, allowing this. The snow kept falling outside, the reason Ryan was still here. All of it. This. You watch this person you are just getting to know, this person you want to tie notions onto, and suddenly the world is no longer a conspiracy of forces against you, but instead you understand that there are good conspiracies, too, there are forces that will help you, that want you to find this remarkable form of personal peace, this four-letter universe of a word.

  In Avery’s head, this all translated into I really like you and I want this to work and I don’t believe this and I want to believe this and This is real. This is real. This is real.

  It’s hard to fall asleep to such thoughts. You have to wait for them to slow. You have to wait for them to cool.

  While you do, you watch the person across from you. And somehow, you watch yourself, too.

  * * *

  —

  There is no way of knowing this, and no way of proving this, and there will certainly be no way of remembering this, but the moment Avery fell asleep, the snowfall stopped.

  * * *

  —

  Just before dawn, Ryan heard tanks scraping through the streets. His first instinct was to think the alien invasion had begun…but then he heard the sound further and realized it wasn’t tanks, it was a snowplow.

  Go away, he thought. Stop doing that.

  * * *

  —

  Later, Ryan was the first in the house to wake for real. Disoriented by the house, by the room, by the bed—but then grounded by the pink hair just a few inches from his eyes, the soft truth of the sleeping body at his side. And not just at his side—sometime in the night, Avery’s arm had reached for Ryan’s arm and stayed there, once again overlapping.

  The room was lit only by the light filtering in from outside, tinting the air the color of snow. Ryan stood up and walked to the window, bent back the shade and looked at the blanketed landscape, the igloo of his car. Icicles, some the length of swords, dangled from the roof.

  “Is it still snowing?” Avery asked from behind him.

  “No,” Ryan answered, turning. Watching as Avery slowly sat up, impulsively stretched—those early-morning infant movements, when we see if everything is still working, and if we remember how it all works. Even though Avery’s hair was a pink nest and his eyes were scrunched up and his cheek bore the imprint of a pillowcase’s seam, in this light, this pale morning filter, Ryan felt such a remarkable attraction toward him—desire, yes, but also a profound fondness for this moment, a deep cherishing of whatever this was.

  “Let’s build a snow dragon,” Avery mumbled, eyes closing.

  Ryan didn’t think he’d heard this right. “What?” he asked—gently, just in case Avery was going back to sleep.

  “A snow dragon,” Avery repeated more emphatically, eyes still closed. “Surely they have snow dragons where you come from?”

  “Nope,” Ryan confessed.

  “Well then.” Avery opened his eyes. “I guess I’ll just have to show you.”

  They didn’t bother changing out of their sleep clothes. Instead they went back to the dryer and Ryan pulled his jeans on over the sweats he was wearing. Socks returned to feet. Boots returned to socks. Mittens returned to hands.

  It was so bright outside, and no longer quiet—the morning being scored by the sound of dripping, the sound of shovels being used a few houses over. If he looked closely, Avery could see shallow commemorations of last night’s footprints. Even the snow angel remained as a shadow of its former self—still there, but partly lifted.

  Snow was gathered, but never so deeply that the grass would begin to show, spoiling the illusion of white. What started as a mound slowly became a shape. What seemed at first a sh
ape evolved into a body. And from the body, a neck was grown, a head. Wings on the ground. A tail. A bystander might not have been able to decipher it. But when Avery’s mother looked out the window, she turned to her husband and said, “Oh, look, they’re building a snow dragon!”

  * * *

  —

  We all know that nothing built with snow will last.

  But we all remember what it’s like to have snow in our hands, to make something soft less soft so we can build with it. We all remember the sensation of being outside, of making a shape, of building.

  So something of it must last.

  * * *

  —

  Later, Ryan would find the texts from his father, telling him the roads were fine now, so he should come home. And after Ryan replied by turning off his phone, Avery’s mother would receive a call from his mother, saying just about the same thing. Later, Ryan, Avery, and Avery’s parents would take turns with their two shovels, digging out Ryan’s car, making a path for him to leave. But not before lunch. Not before a last round of kissing in Avery’s bedroom. Not before photographs were taken with their creation.

  * * *

  —

  As they built the snow dragon, they talked, but not about the snow dragon. Avery didn’t tell Ryan what shapes to make; Ryan didn’t make suggestions about the pattern of the scales that they traced with their bare fingers into the dragon’s skin. It didn’t matter that Avery had done this before. It didn’t matter that Ryan hadn’t. The end result was nothing like what it would have been if Avery had built it alone, or if Ryan had. You would never be able to entirely tell who did what. Whatever resulted was unique to the two of them.

  It was, they would say later, the first thing they built together.

  It would be the first of many things that would be entirely theirs.

  TRACK ELEVEN

  The Woods

  It is not my intention to surprise him. I just happen to bump into his housemate on her way in, and forget to text him that I’m in the building. The door to his room isn’t all-the-way closed, so I push it open without feeling the need to knock. I say “hello” as soon as I step inside—it’s not like I’m sneaking in. He’s at his desk, and the moment my voice registers, he slams his laptop shut. Then he turns around, thinking he’s removed all traces of guilt from his face. But I can still see them there.

  I have never, in over a year of us being together, seen him slam his laptop shut. So I’m figuring this has to be pretty bad.

  “What are you doing?” I ask. And even as I’m asking, I’m coming up with answers. An obvious one, harkening back to the times I’ve slammed my own laptop shut, is porn. But we’re far enough along in our own sex life that it seems ridiculous for him to fear me catching him in an ogle or a wank. I think I’ve made it perfectly clear that I believe all kinds of sex acts are fine, as long as they’re consensual. And I’ve also made it clear that there are certain things I will never consent to. Which means, as I play this out in my head, that whatever porn he’s been watching has to involve something so despicable that he’s afraid it will pervert our relationship to an irreparable degree.

  Or—other option—he’s been cheating on me, and I’ve just caught him in the act.

  “Seriously,” I say, “you need to tell me why you just did that.”

  I can see him snagged on the horns of the dilemma, trying to squeeze his way off, but only making the wounds worse.

  “If I tell you something,” he says, “do you promise not to judge?”

  “I can’t promise that,” I reply. “I’m already judging.” I feel it behooves the situation for one of us to be telling the truth. And anyone who answers yes to a question like Do you promise not to judge? is unquestionably a liar. Judgment is not something one can control—only the expression of judgment can be tamed.

  Not that I’m in any mood to tame my judgment.

  “Tell me anyway,” I say.

  He sighs. “There’s something I’ve been hiding from you, because I just don’t know how to have this conversation.”

  Now I’m the one snagged on the horns. This strengthens my anger—my outrage!—at whatever he’s done, whatever he’s about to tell me. And it also makes me immeasurably sad, because, yes, this is going to hurt. At this point, we’re supposed to know each other’s major secrets—the secrets we don’t know yet are supposed to be the minor ones, the forgettable ones, the ones that were buried so long ago that no one remembers where the graves are. But this—I can feel what’s coming is a major secret, a present-day secret that’s going to reveal that I am, in fact, the buried one.

  Who is it? I want to ask. But I don’t say the words out loud, because saying them out loud will make this scene real. And I’m afraid of that. I was really enjoying our life together, until a minute ago.

  “Okay.” He looks down at the laptop in a way that I imagine a murderer looks at his gun, after the deed is done. Then he looks back at me. “It started three years ago. Before I ever met you.”

  So it’s an ex-boyfriend. A non-ex ex-boyfriend. A hex-boyfriend.

  “And…I don’t know. There was never any way to tell you. I thought that if you never knew, it didn’t matter. At least, not in terms of you.”

  So everyone knows about it except me. Everyone.

  “I don’t expect you to get it. I know it’s not your thing.”

  Infidelity? Damn right, that’s not my thing.

  “But—I’m just going to say it, okay?”

  I nod.

  “For the past few years, I’ve spent a lot of my time writing Taylor Swift fan fiction. Like, a lot of it. And I guess I’ve become…popular at it.”

  I stare at him. This is not the kind of joke he’d make. It’s either the worst cover story ever fabricated to hide infidelity with an ex or…he’s serious.

  He opens up the laptop, gestures me to come look.

  It’s a blog; I’ve caught him in the middle of an entry. The banner at the top trumpets:

  The Triumphs and Travails of the Fearless Miss S

  Someone has drawn a picture of Taylor Swift beneath it. She looks like a stylish swashbuckler. Or maybe a fashion ninja.

  Under that are the stats.

  My boyfriend has 394,039 followers.

  * * *

  —

  For the next three hours, I catch up. I sit there in his room, on his laptop, and learn what he’s been doing when I haven’t been around. Or when I’ve been in the very same room, thinking he was writing emails or watching videos.

  Owen can’t bear to be around as I read it, so he heads out to run errands. I’m so engrossed I barely notice when he leaves.

  It’s not what I thought it would be. I was expecting, for lack of a better term, extreme kissyface. I don’t know very much about Taylor Swift circa the year of our Lord(e) 2015, but I do know she falls in love a lot. And breaks up a lot. And writes a lot of songs about it. So I’m expecting stories along those lines. Maybe with some shopping thrown in, because Taylor Swift has always reminded me of one of those girls in the mall who really seems to be enjoying her shopping.

  But that’s not the way Owen’s written it. Instead, The Fearless Miss S is this dashing, daring superhero whose biggest superpower seems to be, of all things, empathy. In episodes that span the globe, she fights off dastardly bastards and fair-weather friends, usually on behalf of a girl or gay boy who didn’t know any better. Her archnemesis is Justin Bieber, the most duplicitous rogue within The Secret Society of Insincere Canadians, a nefarious organization that almost managed to take over the world during the chart reign of “My Heart Will Go On.” Mostly, Bieber and The Fearless Miss S fight over the misbegotten heart of a girl named Selena. (A quick Google search informs me that this is Selena Gomez, an actual person—or at least as much as a celebrity can be called an actual person.) The action jumps from past to pres
ent, and incorporates song lyrics in unexpected ways. There’s even an origin story that the reader has to piece together over time, involving a mysterious experiment that goes awry when three radioactive tears hit an acoustic guitar. The Fearless Miss S is plunged into what’s called The Jonas Vortex—then fights her way out with strength and song.

  I can’t say I particularly see the appeal. It’s fun, for sure. But I wouldn’t read more than one installment if I didn’t know my boyfriend had written it.

  Other people, though, are clearly hooked. There are hundreds—sometimes thousands—of comments for each entry. There are, I see, fan blogs for Owen’s fan blog. The Fearless Miss S’s Facebook page shows people from all over the world (particularly the Netherlands) dressed as her, or dressed in T-shirts emblazoned with what I can only imagine are her more popular catchphrases. Like: Banality Belongs With Bieber, But You Belong With Me. Or: I Knew You Were Trouble, Which Is Why I Kicked Your Ass. Or (and I’ll admit I don’t understand this one): You Don’t Have 2 B 22 2 B 22.

  I stop reading when Owen shuffles back in. He holds a bag of donuts—a transparent form of bribery that I unconditionally accept.

  “So, yeah,” he says, passing the bag over. “That’s that.”

  “I like it,” I tell him. “It’s fun.”

  He stands more rigid. “Fun.”

  “I really enjoyed it.”

  “Enjoyed.”

  “Yes, enjoyed.” I don’t understand why he’s acting like this isn’t a compliment.

  But clearly Owen doesn’t see it that way. “You’re not saying it’s good. You’re dancing around it. I knew I shouldn’t have shown you.”

  “No! It’s good! I mean, for what it is.”