by Robin Talley
To test my theory. To start living my real life.
Well, I’d done all that. And I was glad I had. It had been a lot of fun. I’d learned a lot, too, and not just about dental dams.
But none of that mattered as much as being honest with the people I cared about. I wanted that a lot more than I wanted to check stuff off some arbitrary to-do list of experiences.
“If I tell my parents, they’ll be devastated,” Christa said.
I understood. The truth was awesome, but it was also terrifying.
“This summer has been dangerous for me,” she went on. “I’ve gotten used to being the me I am here. When I go back there, I’ll have to go back to being the me they know.”
“You’re basically living a double life.”
“Kind of.” She reached into her hair and unclipped the pink streak, smoothing it out against her thigh. “I’m living a double life here, too, though. On the one side I’m the whacky girl who wears fedoras and makes up bizarre stories, and then when I’m with you, I’m just...me.”
I thought about that. “But you made up bizarre stories for me, too.”
“But I didn’t want to. Not after I really got to know the real you. Now I don’t want there to be anything between you and me that isn’t real.”
I sucked in a breath.
“Well, you should try being real with your parents, too.” I didn’t want to badger her about this, but it was important. I’d only started to understand just how important it was now that I’d talked to Dad. “Not about everything, and not all at once if that’s too much. But college is a big deal. You should tell them what you really want.”
Christa tipped her head onto my shoulder. “I’ll think about it. If I’m going to come clean about something, maybe it should be this. College and careers and all that stuff—I mean, it’s important, but it doesn’t feel as much like a part of me as you do.”
I squeezed her hand. God, it felt so good to touch her.
“What about you?” she said. “What do you want to do? In, you know, the future? Are you really done with music for good?”
“I don’t know.” I looked down at our clasped hands. “About any of it. I think I might want to pick up my guitar again when I get home, but if I do I’m only going to play for me, for fun. Not for lessons or anything. I used to want to grow up and be Prince, playing every single instrument there was, and singing and dancing and writing music and generally being a badass, but I think I’m kind of over that now.”
Christa laughed. “You’re already a badass. And you can always come back to it later on if you decide that’s what you want.”
I laughed, too. “The one thing I think I do know for sure, though, after last weekend, is that I definitely want to go away for college. Not live at home the way Drew did. I want to be part of a community. My school now is so tiny, and I like the idea of being part of something bigger, where you can get lost in the crowd if you want to, but everyone’s there for the same reason as you—because they want to learn.” I laughed again. “I’m sorry, that sounds so cheesy.”
Christa smiled. “Maybe, but who cares? You’ve got to be honest with yourself about what you want.”
I got quiet again. She was right.
I only had one more day with Christa, and I wanted as much honesty as we could muster.
“Do you think,” I began, then paused. “I mean, speaking of, you know, the future. Do you think you’ll, maybe, get married someday?”
She took a minute before she answered. “I think... I don’t know. Maybe? It seems so far away it’s hard to even think about.”
“I know what you mean.” I stared off into the distance. “Lately I’ve been wondering... I’ve been thinking of myself as bi because I’ve been into guys and I’ve been into girls. But will I always be this way? Or will I decide someday, you know, that I’m actually a regular lesbian or whatever?”
“Or that you’re straight?”
“Well, after this summer, I kind of can’t see myself only liking guys. But, I guess, maybe? Someday? Anything’s possible, right?”
Christa was quiet for so long I wondered if she’d fallen asleep. Then she said, “I wonder about that stuff, too.”
“You do?” I leaned around to look at her. “What did you say before, about maybe being pan? Does that mean pansexual?”
She half smiled. “Yeah. Sometimes I think that word is perfect for me, but other times, I’m not even sure I completely get what it means.”
“Me, either. I’ve heard it before, but I’m not really sure how being pan is different from being bi.”
“I think it’s saying that you can be attracted to anyone—guys and girls, but also people who don’t see themselves as guys or girls. Anyone at all, really.”
“Huh. I don’t think I’ve met anyone who doesn’t see themselves as a guy or a girl.”
“Not that they’ve told you about, anyway.”
“Oh.” I’d never thought about that. “Wow. Well, but can’t you be bi and still be into, you know, everyone? Potentially?”
“Yeah, I think so. Also do you know there’s this thing called biromantic? Or homoromantic or heteroromantic or whatever. The idea is that you can be romantically attracted to someone, but that doesn’t mean you’re necessarily sexually attracted to them. That you could be biromantic but heterosexual, or vice versa.”
My head was spinning. “That’s—wow. That could actually change some things for some people I know.” Or for me, even. I knew I was into Christa in both ways, but what about the guys I’d kissed before, the ones I wound up feeling mostly meh about? Maybe I was bisexual but homoromantic. Or the other way around.
“For me,” Christa said, “I’ve had crushes on more girls than guys over the past year, but sometimes I’ll still see a guy I think is hot, and I’ll try to figure out why I think he’s hot. Is it because he looks girly? Or is it because I like guys the same way I like girls? Also, I used to be into more guys than girls, but then I wonder if that’s only because, you know, society expects me to be into guys, and when I was younger I didn’t know to question that.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.” I squeezed her hand. “The thing is, I’ve wanted all along to figure this stuff out as soon as I possibly could. But lately I’ve thinking more like—there really isn’t a rush, right? We’ve got time to make sense of it all.”
“You think? I always thought most people already knew about all this—you know, whether they were gay or straight or bi or whatever—by the time they got to be our age.”
“I used to believe that, too, but now I’m not as sure. I mean, if you think about it, people used to not realize they were gay until they were really old and already married to straight people. That’s the way it was for, like, Eleanor Roosevelt.”
“Yikes,” Christa said. “That would suck.”
“For real.”
We grew quiet again. Thinking. Wondering.
Then, after a long moment, I realized there was something I wanted to do. Needed to do.
I turned to face her. To break the silence.
I smiled at her. She smiled back.
“I never told you my favorite song,” I said.
She laughed. “I knew you had one!”
“I’m sorry. I guess that was another lie when I told you I didn’t.”
“It’s all right. What is it?”
Instead of answering her, I took out my phone and pulled it up. While the song was loading, I stood up and held out my hands, pulling Christa to her feet beside me. When the song began, I closed my eyes and started to dance.
I’d never danced in front of anyone. I’d never shared this song with someone, either. I’d thought it would be embarrassing, and it kind of was—but more than that, it felt as though I was opening myself up for her. Letting her se
e a part of me. Because I wanted her to.
“I know this song,” she said after the first few notes had played. Her hands tugged at mine. She was dancing with me. “Prince, right?”
I nodded. It was Prince’s best song of all time. The best dance song of all time, too. “This is ‘Kiss.’”
We danced together under the stars. I kept my eyes closed, but I could see her anyway. I could feel her.
The pulse and pound of the music ran through us as her finger traced the edge of my jaw. Turning me to face her.
I opened my eyes. She was looking right at me, her eyes soft and warm, the music still thumping through our bodies.
She kissed me. She kissed me, she kissed me. Our lips parted and danced together, lightly, exploring each other again for the first time.
I’d never felt anything like this before. Not even in our Texas dorm room. Here, the sun shone down on us, even in the dark night.
I’d been spending my whole life trying to figure out where I was supposed to be, who I was supposed to be, when I was supposed to be right here. Kissing her.
We separated slowly as the song ended, our lips drawing apart, our foreheads drawing together. I linked our fingers again—our hands had come apart somehow, had wrapped themselves around our backs, our necks—and, slowly, I pulled her against me.
It was late. I didn’t know how late and I didn’t want to check. I wanted to keep Christa at the center of my world, even if it was only for a little longer.
“So what happens tomorrow?” she asked as we turned back toward the church.
“I don’t know. What do you want to happen?”
“More of this.” She squeezed my hand.
“Let’s do it, then.”
“But what about—you know. Everyone?”
“We’ll figure something out.”
She squeezed my hand again. I squeezed back.
I felt almost ready to burst again, from feeling too many things at once. Except this time it was a good feeling.
But I hated that I only got to feel it for one more day.
CHAPTER 25
Something sharp poked into my back. I blinked foggily at the ceiling high overhead as I dug around to find the offending sharp thing—a sleeping bag zipper. Whoever put their bag close enough to mine that I wound up sleeping on the zipper was in for it once I was awake enough to complain. It was our last morning in Mexico, and in a couple of hours we’d be on a bus for the airport, but that didn’t mean one of these annoying girls could get away with—
The girl next to me rolled over until her face was only inches from mine. I had to shake myself fully awake before I believed it was really Christa.
She was smiling at me, still mostly asleep, stretching in her sleeping bag with her eyes half-closed.
Then I remembered.
The night before last, Christa and I had decided to start again. That this thing between us could last right up until we climbed onto the bus for Tijuana.
I didn’t want to think about the bus, though. I wanted to remember yesterday.
We’d spent the entire day side by side. We watched each other silently during breakfast, smiling secrets at each other over every bite. We spent the morning together at the work site, helping to finish installing the fence. After that we had the afternoon off, so we went into town. We went to the computer place first, then bought tacos from a street vendor and sat in the plaza in the middle of town, talking.
Now that we weren’t lying about anything, we had more to say than ever. I wanted to tell her all my stories, and I wanted to hear hers. For the first time, we talked about our past relationships (or lack thereof). Christa told me how she’d wound up kissing Madison—once on a dare and once on a sugar high—and I told her the story of the college girl who gave me my thirty-six dental dams. She broke her no-selfies rule and took a photo of the two of us with our arms around each other, giggling up at the camera. I broke my no-singing rule and let out a few bars of the cover version of “When Doves Cry” that I’d been working on since I was ten.
We talked and laughed and smiled until the sun got low in the sky. The only time we touched was when our hands brushed by not-quite-accident as we were getting up to leave.
I’d thought it would be torture, spending so much time together but not being able to really touch, but it was actually a fantastic afternoon. I felt closer to her after that than I had in Texas. Back then, it had still felt like we were holding something back. Probably because we were.
We sat together at dinner and vespers, too. Vespers was twice as long as usual because we all had to go around and say what we were going to miss the most about being here. Some people got pretty emotional. A few girls cried, and even my dad looked choked up when he talked about how he was going to miss the local families he’d gotten to know and how even with the language barrier we were all part of the larger church family. I looked over at Juana, who was resting her head on her mother’s lap, and I got kind of choked up, too.
Jake said he was going to miss vespers. Most people laughed at that. Brian coughed and muttered something under his breath. I couldn’t make out what he said, but Jake must have because his face paled and his eyes dropped. Some of the other guys laughed, but Drew gave them the stink eye and slapped Jake on the shoulder, muttering, “Don’t worry about them, dude. We’ve got your back.”
When it was my turn I said I was going to miss the food and that I’d never go to Taco Bell again. People laughed. It was weird to say that sitting next to Christa, though. I’d miss her with a ferocity I couldn’t even fathom yet.
Christa said she was going to miss the idea of making a difference and helping others every single day. I was surprised, because I’d never heard her talk that way before. As she spoke, she wiped at her eyes, and I realized I was doing the same thing.
After vespers we went back to our spot by the tree. We didn’t talk at first. We just sat and watched the branches sway and the stars gleam. I don’t know how long we were there—maybe an hour—before Christa started murmuring.
“I decided something. During vespers.”
“What did you decide?” A niggling feeling of hope sprang up in me. Did she want to throw our one-day fling plan out the window? For us to be together, even once we got back home?
“I’m going to tell my parents I want to go to culinary school.” She nodded firmly. “And that I’m a lot more serious about cooking and photography than I’ll ever be about law school. Plus... I’m telling them I broke up with Steven. It isn’t the whole truth, but it’s a lot closer than I’ve been.”
I squeezed her hand. I let myself feel disappointed, but only for a second. “I think that’s an incredibly brave decision.”
We kissed.
In the beginning we’d kissed hard and fast, trying to squeeze as much as we could into the time we had. Now, when we had hardly any time left, our kisses were slow, almost lazy. We touched each other with a warmth and lightness we hadn’t bothered with before.
When it was time to go back to the church, we decided wordlessly to move our sleeping bags together. As I lay there, waiting to fall asleep, it was the first night I hadn’t felt the hard, unforgiving floor beneath me. Instead, I was only conscious of the warmth of Christa lying next to me.
We didn’t even touch. It was just the knowledge that she was there. The sound of her breath. The shape of her in the dark.
That morning, I watched as she slowly opened her eyes. She frowned, sighed and closed them again. I smiled and nudged her arm with mine.
At first she winced and turned away. Then she saw me and widened her eyes. “Oh!” She clapped her hand over her mouth and started giggling.
I giggled, too. Then I felt something wet on my pillow and realized I was crying at the same time.
I didn’t ever want this to end.<
br />
I wished we could skip straight to college. I wished we could have a whole world to ourselves. Even if that world was just a tiny, dingy dorm room.
But we’d already decided today was the end.
“What’s wrong?” Christa whispered. My eyes were still leaking tears.
“Nothing,” I whispered back. I sat up quickly. “We’re behind. Everyone’s packing already.”
I wiped my eyes and reached toward the foot of my sleeping bag for my clothes. Most of us changed in our sleeping bags. It was easier than waiting in line for the bathroom.
There were some things I would definitely not miss about Mexico.
Once I’d wriggled into jeans and a T-shirt, I climbed out of my bag and rolled it up so I could shove it into my duffel. Next to me, Christa was packing silently. I was about to say something to her—maybe Don’t forget the shirt I borrowed, maybe I’ll miss you, maybe Let’s just try emailing when we get back and see how it goes?—but before I could open my mouth, my dad was standing next to me.
“You almost ready, sweetheart?” He surveyed the stuff strewn around my sleeping bag. It should’ve been abundantly clear that I was not almost ready.
“Actually, Dad, I wanted to ask you something.”
“And I wanted to tell you something. Let’s go get you some hot chocolate.”
I caught Christa’s eye, gave her a tiny smile and followed Dad outside. The church ladies had set up breakfast for us right out in front of the church with coffee and hot chocolate and bread. I poured myself a mug and picked up a roll.
“What’s that?” I asked as Dad licked the flap on an envelope.
“A donation from Holy Life of Rockville, to help the congregation here finish up the rest of the construction.” Dad tucked the envelope into his pocket. “I’ve got to remember to give it to Reverend Perez before the bus leaves.”
“Oh, whoops. Were we supposed to finish the whole thing while we were here?”
Dad chuckled. “Er, no. The youth program is more of an outreach effort than a true construction team. This donation, though, is an offering from the Rockville congregation. They offered to compensate Señor Suarez for his guitar, but he refused to take it. So they decided to give the church this gift instead.”
