The Art of Us

by KL Hughes

  “I legit almost walked out three minutes into Shop yesterday when some freshman asked me how I lost my leg.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah.” Cam laughed, exhaling a long stream of white smoke. Alex watched as it slowly disappeared in the summer heat. “I just looked him dead in the eye and pointed at one of the circular saws. Pretty sure he almost pissed himself.”

  Smoke burned in Alex’s nose as she snorted. She shook her head, eyes watering but a smile stretching her lips. “Terrorizing the freshman.”

  “That’s what they get for being nosy little shits.”

  “True.”

  “Charlee likes to lecture people about privacy and respect and all that, but I just like to fuck with them.” When Alex passed back the joint, Cam took a deep drag and trapped it in her chest. “I don’t know why people get it in their heads that they need to know every detail of a person’s disability.” Smoke drifted from her nostrils in thin tendrils as she spoke, and for just a moment, Alex thought she looked like a dragon. “I mean, I get being curious and everything, but that doesn’t mean you’re entitled to the information. And then to just outright ask someone? A freaking stranger, no less? Like, you don’t know what kind of trauma you might be bringing up. Plus, it’s just not your damn business, you know? Not cool.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Life would be so much better if we didn’t have to adult all the time.”

  “We’re smoking pot on a bridge in the middle of the city.”

  “Okay, so we’re teening and adulting at the same time. I’m going to call it tadulting. We’re tadulting.”

  Alex wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. “Please delete that word from your vocabulary.”

  “I’m going to delete your name from my vocabulary.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  Cam grinned and passed the joint back after another small hit. “We should come up with fake names in case we get caught,” she said. “You know those bicycle cops like to ride the walk sometimes.”

  “You’ve got a medical-marijuana card.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t,” Cam said. “So, names. I’ll be Margarita Sanchez.”

  Alex laughed. “You’ve been thinking about this, haven’t you?”

  “Pick a name.”

  “Why don’t we just throw the joint overboard if a cop comes?”

  “Overboard?”

  “Overbridge?”

  “Over my dead body,” Cam said. “Pick a name.”

  “Fine. How about Frankie?”

  “Frankie?”

  “Frankie.”

  “Frankie what?”

  “Um, DeVito? Canterino?”

  Cam stared at her, deadpan. “You need to stop watching mob movies with Vinny.”

  “She likes gangsters.” Alex shrugged. “So does Charlee.”

  “I can’t believe Charlee took a night class this semester. She could be out here with us right now, melting, but she’d rather be in an air-conditioned classroom learning about blending techniques.”

  “She’s nurturing her talent.”

  “Oh God.”

  “She’s going to be amazing.”

  “You are the gayest of the gays, Alex.”

  Alex smiled and leaned back to stare up at the bridge lights. Smoke curled down into her lungs and then billowed back out between her lips, and the haze that clouded her mind turned the bridge lights overhead into stars in the city sky. Alex stared up at them and pretended she had floated into outer space.

  “I love it here,” she said, and she heard Cam sigh.

  “Me too.”

  Alex tugs her coat tighter around her torso. The freezing concrete seeps through her jeans like ice water, and she shifts from side to side to keep warm as she waits. The air smells clean, pure in a way only winter air can smell, and it tastes just as sharp and cold as it feels.

  She straddles the metal railing, her legs kicking out over the open air. The river below looks almost black, glinting in the moonlight as the cloud coverage clears its path every few moments. It’s beautiful, and Alex aches with the sight of it, the grip of nostalgia tight around her heart.

  “You’re not going to cry, are you?”

  Alex flicks her gaze toward the dark sky, the bridge lights spotting her vision, and blinks away tears. “It’s about time,” she says, turning to find Cam making her way down the sidewalk with a massive grin on her face. Her gaze drops to the heavy limp in Cam’s walk, and Alex frowns. “Is everything okay? Is your leg bothering you?”

  “Yeah.” Cam shrugs as she reaches her. “Nothing I can’t handle, though.”

  Alex shifts from the railing and reaches up to take Cam’s hands. Helps her lower herself to the ground. “You should have told me. You didn’t need to walk all the way out here when you’re hurting.”

  “Don’t worry,” Cam says. “I got a cab, so I only had to walk a little bit.” She settles in next to Alex. “I’m totally about to take this leg off, though.”

  Alex scoots closer to help her. “Why didn’t you just leave it at home and use your crutches instead, or your chair?”

  “I already had it on. I had to work at the theater today, and it’s just easier to get around with the leg. Even when it hurts.” She rolls up the leg of her sweatpants and holds the material out of the way while Alex unlocks and detaches her prosthesis. “I’ve got an appointment with my prosthetist in a few days. Had to wait until after New Year’s.”

  “God, I can’t believe it’s already the New Year.” Alex hands the leg to Cam and ties the empty part of Cam’s sweats into a knot to keep the cold air out.

  Cam sets her prosthesis aside. “And we didn’t even celebrate.”

  “It hasn’t exactly been a great time for celebration, Cam.”

  “Yeah. Things have been pretty messed up lately.”

  “Yes.”

  “But we’re going to celebrate now.”

  “We are?”

  “Guess what I brought.”

  The shit-eating grin that follows is enough to tell Alex exactly what Cam brought with her. “You didn’t.”

  Cam reveals a small, clear bag and dances it around in front of Alex’s face. Three perfectly rolled joints bounce around inside. “I definitely did.”

  “I haven’t smoked since college.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” Cam selects a joint and tucks the bag back into her pocket. “Have you done anything fun in the last five years?”

  “I had a lot of Wii Sports competitions,” Alex says. Cam snorts as she fires up the joint.

  The first inhale is deep, loud. Cam speaks as she holds in the smoke. “Are you as sore a loser at video games as you are at board games?” Her voice takes on a muted, nasal quality that makes Alex’s chest feel like it is expanding, like she is growing back into her old self—as free and open as the night sky.

  “I think I’m better now.”

  Cam laughs, exhaling the smoke with the sound. “Doubt it,” she says. “I still crack up every time I think about you shouting at Vinny for trying to play ‘clit’ in that Scrabble tournament.” She puts on an exaggerated imitation of Alex’s voice. “‘That’s not a word, Vinaya! Add an ‘oris’ or fuck off!’”

  “This isn’t what I wanted my Scrabble legacy to be.”

  “Too bad. Here.”

  Alex sighs as Cam holds out the joint. She pinches it between her fingers, her nose scrunching a bit at the familiar skunk smell. “I’m going to be so high.”

  “So high you can fly.”

  Alex takes a deep drag. “What about you?” Smoke sticks and curls in her chest. She holds it in until she coughs, then fans the smoke away from her face.

  “We’ll fly together,” Cam says, bumping Alex’s shoulder with her own. “Like we used to.”

&nbs
p; Alex is surprised at the way the words sink straight to her heart. She shifts to lie down, and Cam mimics her so that their bodies face in opposite directions, Cam’s head next to Alex’s. They stare up at the twinkling bridge lights together and pass the joint back and forth, watching thin wisps of smoke meld with their frozen breath and float up toward the heavens, dissipating along the way.

  “How did we get like this?” A pleasant sort of haze permeates Alex’s mind. “We all used to be so close, then everything just fell apart. We stopped talking. We stopped being family.”

  “We never stopped being family.”

  Alex closes her eyes. “It felt like it sometimes.”

  “I know.”

  They fall into silence for a while, and Alex tries to let herself revel in the feeling of weightlessness. Floating. She feels numb from the cold, but her senses feel overloaded. Traffic sounds become a symphony, horns and percussion creating a familiar tune, and the air seems even crisper than before. Her fingertips tingle, and Alex just wants this to last.

  “Broken things can be fixed, you know,” Cam says, her voice adding to the symphony. “If something falls apart, you can put it back together.”

  “Tell me what to do.”

  “Since when do you not have a plan?”

  “Since all my plans fell apart,” Alex says, mouth dry and vision suddenly clouded with tears.

  Cam shakes her head, her temple bumping against Alex’s. “There’s no formula for starting over. Trust me. There’s no right way or time. You just have to start.”

  “I just want to go home.”

  “Then go home,” Cam says, her words slightly muffled by the dwindling joint held between her lips. “What are you waiting for?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Cam sits up and rests her back against the railing. She nudges Alex’s shoulder with her residual limb. “You remember our code names if the cops come by?”

  Alex forces herself up with a groan, snatches the small stub of a joint from between Cam’s lips, and settles against the opposite railing. “Honestly,” she says after taking a short puff, “whatever cop happened upon us right now would probably be more alarmed by this torso-less leg we’re hanging out with than by the pot.”

  For three solid seconds, Cam’s response is silence, her face blank as she stares at Alex and blinks. And then she breaks, bursting into loud, raspy laughter. Alex follows. The joint falls from her lips into her lap and then rolls off onto the concrete. It catches the breeze and zips off the edge and out of sight before Alex can grab it.

  Both Alex and Cam gasp, their laughter briefly catching in their throats, and stare at the edge where the joint disappeared. They gape at each other for a moment. Then Cam snorts, and they explode into laughter again.

  Cam grabs her prosthesis. “What do you say, Frankie?” It makes a metallic thudding sound as she bounces it against the railing. “Should we feed the damned thing to the fishes?”

  “I’m not jumping in after it when you change your mind.”

  Their laughter melds together again, and Alex lets the sound slip down between her ribs and wrap around her heart. A mending kind of music, it makes her feel alive again. When it dwindles away on the cold air, they sit comfortably in silence until Cam reaches over and pats Alex’s shin.

  “You don’t have to wait to be happy, you know.”

  “Don’t I?”

  “There aren’t any rules here, Alex. There isn’t some respectable amount of time you have to wait. You and Kari broke up because you’re in love with Charlee, so, like, go be in love with her.” She pinches the material of Alex’s jeans and shakes it, jostling Alex’s leg. “Stop wasting it. That’s how you do better. You know? By not making the same mistakes you made the first time. Just follow your heart. That’s how you make it right.”

  Alex lets the words sink in. “Maybe I’m a little afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of everything falling apart again.” She wraps her arms around herself. “The world doesn’t just flatten out for love, you know. It keeps flinging us around, keeps pelting us with everything it has. And we just have to figure out how to stay standing, how to hold on to each other.”

  Cam pats her leg, and Alex covers her face with her hands. “You’re so poetic when you’re high.”

  Alex laughs into her hands, the sound wet and rough, and rubs at her eyes until they feel raw. Tears smear against her fingers and palms, and she sighs, looks up at Cam’s small smile. It almost dips at the edges, caught somewhere between joy and sorrow. “I never… Before Charlee, I never knew love could be like that. You know? She makes everything feel so full. Like, even simple things have some kind of magic in them. And I’m terrified to have that again because I’m terrified to lose it again.”

  “Well,” Cam says, “as your sister would say, fear is the best motivator.”

  Another small laugh escapes, and Alex nods. “I guess it’s not faulty logic after all. Don’t tell Vinny that, though.”

  “My lips are sealed.” Cam reaches for her prosthesis. “Now, help me get my leg back on. My ass is frozen, and I can’t feel my face.”

  “You’re not wearing that leg.” Alex stands, blinks until her vision clears and she feels steady, then holds out her hand. “Come on. I’ll carry you down, and we can call a cab.”

  Cam narrows her eyes as she grabs Alex’s fingers with one hand and the railing with the other. “How high are you?”

  “My legs feel like jelly, my mouth is a desert, and I literally just said Charlee makes life feel magical.”

  Cam laughs as Alex pulls her up. “Yup. You’re soaring.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “You don’t sound like a very reliable chariot, Jelly Legs,” Cam says, “but I’ll take it.”

  She hops onto Alex’s back and loops an arm around her neck, while Alex’s arms hook around her thighs. Cam grabs her prosthesis where it leans against the railing. “Okay. Good to go.”

  Alex blinks to keep her vision clear as she makes her way down the sidewalk, holding tightly to her passenger. When she feels Cam’s chin drop to rest on her shoulder, she says, “I’m really sorry I missed out on the last five years of your life, Margarita.”

  Cam leans their heads together and sighs. “Me too, Frankie. Me too.”

  Alex paces in the elevator. Her palms feel sweaty inside her gloves, so she takes them off and shoves them into her coat pockets. Her stomach knots and flips with every breath she takes and every floor she passes. Her head is a hazy mess of echoes.

  “You don’t have to wait to be happy.”

  Another floor passes. A ball of tension builds at the base of Alex’s spine. Every inch of her body feels taut and wired despite how relaxed she felt on the bridge.

  “You’re in love with Charlee. Go be in love with her.”

  When the elevator lurches to a stop, Alex closes her eyes. The doors grate and squeak as they separate, and when she opens her eyes again, her heart begins to race.

  “Go home.”

  Alex hesitates so long that the elevator doors nearly close again with her still inside. They jolt back open when she propels herself forward and crosses the hall. When she reaches the door, she rests her forehead against it and tries to calm herself down. Another deep breath and then she raises a fist to knock. The sound is loud and echoing in the empty hallway, and it makes her heart race faster, harder.

  She doesn’t have a clue what she wants to say; she’s not even sure where to begin. The second that door opens, though, words no longer matter. Charlee’s sleepy, bloodshot blue eyes lock onto her, and Alex feels all the rest of the world melt away.

  “Alex.”

  At the croak of her name, all the pieces Alex has kept quiet and contained for years soar up to the surface and bloom in the flickering fluorescent light of the old hallway. Tears flood her eyes, and
the tension drains from her body.

  “I can’t sleep.” Her body feels riddled with both excitement and exhaustion, every inch of her trembling. “I close my eyes, and I see your face. I feel your breath on the back of my neck. Hear your voice like you’re right there beside me. But when I open my eyes—”

  In her pajamas, Charlee stands in the open doorway, leaning against the door. “I’m not there,” she says, and Alex nods.

  “And I can’t sleep.” She wipes at her cheek with sweaty fingertips. “I can’t sleep, because my head is so full of you.” A shallow breath shudders across her lips. “Because my heart is broken.”

  “Alex.”

  “Because I love you so much, Charlee. I love you so much, I feel like I can’t fit it all inside me. I feel like I’m going to burst with it. I love you so much, it hurts.”

  Charlee’s eyes water. Her lips quiver. “It hurts to love me?”

  The toes of her boots inch over the threshold as Alex reaches for her. She cups her cheek, caresses her. “It hurts the way your first deep breath hurts when you break the surface.” Another step. Her hand slides down from Charlee’s cheek to her neck. “When you’ve been underwater too long.” Her fingers trace over Charlee’s exposed collarbone, over her shoulder. “It’s fast and sharp.” She trails down her arm. “Dizzying.” She dips down to Charlee’s hand and squeezes the pads of her fingertips. “But it’s the best feeling in the world, that breath.” Another small step. “Because it’s exactly what you need.” She releases Charlee’s fingertips to run her hand along Charlee’s waist.

  The tears caught in Charlee’s eyelashes break free as she closes her eyes at Alex’s touch, at Alex’s fingertips pressing into her side. Nothing and no one has ever been more beautiful.

  “It’s how you stay alive,” Alex says, lifting her other hand to Charlee’s neck and taking another tiny step, just enough that their bodies brush together. “It’s how you know you’re alive.” Another small step. The tips of their noses brush, and Alex can feel Charlee’s warm breath against her lips. “It’s how you know you’re going to be okay.”