by S. L. Naeole
Robert held me fast as I struggled to pull away. “Don’t, Grace. Don’t run from this just because you’re angry.”
“I’m not angry, Robert. You’ve got to learn to gauge your emotions better because what I’m feeling right now is disappointment and rejection, not anger.”
“I’m confused. You’re speaking to me as though you’re angry. Your thoughts are full of anger,” he stated, his words clinical in their lack of emotion.
“What you’re seeing and hearing is the result of once again being rejected, Robert. I get your whole chaste-virginal thing. I do. But what I did there—that was a kiss. I wasn’t throwing myself at you. I learned from past rejections not to do that anymore.
“But when you choose to pull away from my kisses; that hurts, Robert. When I see other couples who share in things that we never do, I feel like I’m losing out on something special. Even Donovan and Kendra kiss that way, and according to you, their relationship isn’t real. No, I’m not angry, Robert. There’s no room for that in me right now.”
He watched me, searched within my thoughts to find the slightest bit of exaggeration, but I knew he’d find none. I pulled away from him and he let me go. I walked over to the stereo and pressed the stop button. “I used to love that song,” I muttered.
I removed the CD from the slide that appeared at a press of the eject button and I placed it back into its case.
“When are you going to do it?” I asked as I put the case back into the void it had left behind when it was removed.
“When do you want me to do it?” he replied, his tone flat and emotionless.
“After you take me home.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“What’s there not to understand? You’ll take me home and then you’ll go and follow Erica around to see who is turning her brain to rat jelly.”
Robert shoved his hands through his hair and groaned. “No. I don’t understand you. You become aggressive and demanding when you want something, and when you’re denied it, you become defensive and withdrawn while I become the villain when all I was doing was protecting your virtue-”
“Who asked you to?”
“And yet, when I have asked you to turn, to become immortal so that we can have nothing but time to be together, to finally be with each other in the way that we both want, you deny me and again become withdrawn and defensive. Why?”
I looked past him towards the wall where the collage of photos displayed two people who were blindly in love, who appeared to have nothing but joy and contentment between them. “Angels believe in myths, too you know. You have these beliefs that humans all feel the same way; that our feelings can each be categorized and labeled, everything all sterile and clinical-like and if they happen to change, you can simply offer up a substitution and we’ll be alright.
“Well, let me fill you in on something, Robert. I’m human, which means I have human feelings, dynamic feelings that go beyond your black and white labels. And what I feel when you reject me and deny me the simple pleasure of kissing you, and then turn around and tell me that if I change for you, that you’d give me what I want, that tells me that who I am, the human Grace, isn’t good enough for you or your angelic virtue. And what I feel is unadulterated, unsterilized hurt.”
I walked towards the photos and pointed to them. “That is the sterilized version of us, Robert. It fits in here, in your room because that’s what works for you. Everything has its place, its reason, its need. I have a place, too, a reason in your life. But the way you act sometimes, Robert…it makes me feel like that place belongs only in those photos.”
I turned around on my heels and headed to the door. He reached it before I did and opened it, holding it for me as I walked past him. He said nothing as we walked out of the house and towards the detached garage. “Can we ride in the car?” I asked softly.
He gave me a puzzled look and I turned away from his gaze as we walked into the three car building. I didn’t need to say it. I simply thought it, thought that with the way I was feeling, the last thing I wanted to do was spend the next few minutes with my arms wrapped around him.
He nodded curtly and quickly opened the car door for me. I climbed in and fought the tears that threatened to spill onto the seat. Robert climbed into the driver’s seat and started the car, putting it into reverse and peeling out as though he were running away from something.
We remained silent the entire way to my house, my heart feeling heavier and heavier as each minute ticked by. When we pulled into the driveway, I saw Graham’s car parked in its usual spot by the curb. He was sitting on the hood, waiting for someone.
“He’s waiting for you,” Robert said in a low voice.
I said nothing. I simply sat in the car and thought about what had happened over the past few hours. I’d learned some shocking truths, but it was that last one that caused me to tremble with fear.
“Grace, please…”
He reached over for my hand and I didn’t pull away. Grace, you’re my entire world. I just didn’t know that though this is your first relationship, I’m the one who has a lot to learn. Help me, teach me. I do want you, Grace. Know that I am telling the truth when I tell you that I fight against every natural instinct in my body that tells me to give in to you, to give in to myself not because I don’t love you just the way you are, but because I’m trying to keep you safe, keep us safe.
“What does that even mean?” I cried. “Safe from what? From each other? Aren’t we hurting each other enough the way things are going now?” I looked out of the window and shook my head at the direction the conversation was heading. “We’ll talk about this later when we’re both not feeling so…different.”
I began to open my door and felt it being pulled away from my hand. Or, rather, I felt myself being pulled away from the door. Robert had me in his lap, one hand pressed securely against my hip, the other holding my face still. “Grace, I do feel different, and I don’t want that feeling to ever leave me.”
He pulled my face towards his, holding me still as his lips found their way to mine. With infinite slowness, he gently cupped my bottom lip between his and I felt him tug at it slightly before the tender nerves that existed just below the surface lit up with activity, letting me know that he had just licked my bottom lip.
I took in a deep gulp of air, inhaling his breath as I did so. His eyes were wide, his pupils darker than I’d ever seen them and I felt myself fall into them, disappearing into inky blackness.
***
“You’re awake, finally.”
I blinked at the light that shone brightly in my eyes and covered them with my hand. “Mmm. Robert…”
“I’m here.”
I moved my hand and focused on the two heads that observed me from their seat on the coffee table of my living room. “What happened?” I mumbled as I rubbed the sting out of my eyes.
Graham snorted. “Robert suffocated you, what do you think?”
Robert, in turn, gave out a rather obnoxious laugh. “Graham is just upset because he had to witness us making out.”
My hand dropped from my face and I sat up far too quickly, the dizziness causing me to sway. Robert and Graham both reached out to grab a hold of me. “We…were making out, weren’t we?” I sighed.
Robert chuckled and nodded. Graham rolled his eyes. “It was gross. It was like seeing my little sister making out with the janitor or something. It looked like you guys were deep in conversation up until that point. What were you talking about anyway?”
I looked at Robert and he winked at me as he answered Graham. “Mythology.”
BYGONES
Robert left less than an hour after I woke up. I walked with him, hand in hand to the door and instantly felt shy, as though this were the first time we were saying goodbye. He had laughed, but the moment we stood in that doorway, there was no room for humor.
“Thank you,” I said shyly, heat suffusing my cheeks.
“For?”
I tried to say
it, but the words simply would not reach my lips, and he smiled. “Oh. Well, you’re welcome. And I should say thank you as well.”
“For?”
He brought his free hand to my face, gently tracing the curve of my ear, my jaw, and finally the bow of my mouth. “For proving me wrong.”
“Oh.”
He chuckled and rubbed the pad of his thumb across my lower lip, still so very sensitive to his touch.
I’ll be back by this time tomorrow. I promise you.
As much as I anticipated it, I wasn’t disappointed when Robert did not kiss me goodbye and instead simply pressed his forehead to mine for a brief moment. After what had happened at his house and then in the car, I understood that he had gone beyond the boundaries that he had set for himself and needed time to adjust to that. I was willing to accept that because now I knew that it was possible to do so.
When I walked back into the living room, Graham had popped in my old copy of Rocky Horror and was waiting patiently for the iconic lips to start lip-synching to the intro. I plopped down next to him on the couch and together we watched the first ten minutes of the movie in silence.
“So, Grace—ow!”
I smiled smugly as I rubbed my fist, pleased that I had delivered the first punch after only ten minutes. “You were saying?”
Graham rubbed his arm and glared at me, having not expected that I wasn’t going to allow him to break the rules simply because we had gotten off to a late start. “This is serious, Grace. Ow-ow, stop hitting me!” His arms flew out and grabbed a hold of my hand as I reared to deliver another blow, pushing me down onto the sofa cushions. “You psycho! I broke up with Stacy!”
Everything in me went on pause as I allowed his words to bounce around in my head. I slowly sat up down and looked at him, unsure whether his news was a good thing or a bad thing.
“You broke up with Stacy,” I said, a statement rather than a question.
Graham nodded and gingerly let go of my arm, twitching in response to my every move, obviously fearful that I’d hit him again. “I guess I should be honest and say that we kind of broke up with each other after school. I had actually planned to do it a couple of days ago-”
“The day after I fell…”
“Yeah,” Graham confirmed. “And I wanted to talk to you about it on the way to school, but then Robert showed up and…well, you know what happened. I gotta admit that I was a little jealous that you’d just forgive him for not being there for you, but I was more upset that I wasn’t going to get to talk to you, ask you for some advice about what to do…so instead I just winged it. I went to her dad’s school and we talked. It was probably the only time we ever had a conversation without arguing. Ironic, isn’t it?”
“Very,” I agreed.
“Stacy and I both like each other more now than we did when we first went out, but we know that we’re not good together. Heck, the whole school knows that we’re not good together,” Graham laughed softly. “Stacy’s a great girl, and despite all of the fights, I’m glad that we dated, Grace. I really am. I can see why you two are friends, and why you, Stacy, and Lark make such a good team. You guys compliment each other. I always thought that Stacy was the oddball out of the group, but now I know that it’s me.”
His jaw set into a stubborn line as something crossed his mind. “I was such a jerk, Grace. I know I’ve told you before how sorry I was about how I treated you last summer, but Stacy made me see it from a different point of view. Not from yours, or from mine, but from hers.
“She told me about how it looked from her end, how hard it was for her to hear about what had happened from some of the kids that go to her dad’s school, and to know that you were alone through all of it. She told me that I had apologized for what I had said to you. I mean, I apologized for what I had said to Erica, but I never apologized for leaving you alone.
“She said that I needed to think about how it felt to sit alone in my home when my dad was off on one of his benders and Mom was out perming and dyeing her problems away at the salon. She told me to imagine doing that and then having no one to call. I didn’t fully understand that what I had done to you cut you off from everything, and I’m sorry. I’m probably the sorriest piece of crap you’ll ever meet in your life. It’s no wonder I’m such a screw up when it comes to girls, huh?”
I gave Graham a good once over, looking at him in a way that I never truly had before. He was still the handsome boy that I was proud to say was my best friend. He still had those rich green eyes that could make a girl swear off any other color for the rest of her life, and a smile that could kill you with dimples. And none of that did anything to mask what lay underneath. He was still cocky, but he was also humbled now.
He no longer had the picture perfect life. I knew now that he never truly did, that it was all an act that his parents had put on for show which he kept up because it was the only way he could keep himself, keep Graham from turning into a joke like his home life.
“Graham, we’re in this together, right?” I asked him. When he nodded, I continued. “Well then, if we’re in this together, as best friends, then you should know that you don’t have to apologize to me over and over again for the same mistake.”
Graham smiled at that. “That’s funny because Stacy said the exact opposite. She said that I needed to make it clear, over and over again, that I was sorry for what I did to you, and that I wanted to make amends in any way I could.”
We both laughed at the excess of Stacy’s advice. “Her heart was in the right place, but I think that if you apologize to me one more time, I’ll have to do some serious soul searching to try and figure out whether or not I’m the bad person.”
He looked at me quizzically. “What do you mean, figure out whether or not you’re the bad person?”
“Well, if you said you were sorry one more time, I’d have to spend a considerable amount of time working one of the springs in this couch free so that it stabbed at you all night while you slept.”
Graham slammed a pillow into the side of my head while I burst out laughing. “You’re heinous, you know that?”
I nodded my head while I continued to laugh, the vision of him tossing and turning by one strategically placed spring doing much to undo the damage that the day’s events had caused.
“I’m sorry,” I said to him when I had regained my composure.
He brushed off my little display of hysterics and smiled as he put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me next to him, our heads resting against each other. “I tried to be a good boyfriend, Grace.”
I stared at the television and attempted to find something useful to say. I could find nothing, so I just let him continue talking.
“I tried to be the boyfriend that she expected, but I’m no good at meeting expectations. You know that, Grace. Everyone always expected so much from me. My dad expected that I’d get some huge football scholarship, but look at me. Third quarter is almost up and the closest I’ve gotten to an interview with a scout was when Mrs. Goldman’s granddaughter was selling girl scout cookies last week. My mom expected I’d turn out to be some kind of whiz kid and instead I blew all of the classes I’d have had with you this year on stupid and useless junk for Erica.
“And then there were her expectations. She expected me to completely stop thinking about you, to pretend that you didn’t exist, but I simply couldn’t do that. I couldn’t ignore the fact that I had hurt you. I couldn’t ignore the fact that you had always been there for me, always been my rock, and I left you to play with a stupid cardboard box, which meant that I disappointed you, too.”
Graham pressed the pause button on the remote control and then threw the remote onto Dad’s recliner with a raspy sigh of disgust. “That sounded stupid—I’m no good at this kind of stuff, Grace. I can’t tell people what I’m feeling or thinking the way that I want to, it never comes out right. That’s why…”
He stopped talking and though I wanted to ask him to continue, he didn’t. He just sat back and
stared at the television screen, the movie frozen in time just like our conversation.
As the digital clock on the VCR slowly moved ahead, I sat there and thought about what he had said about failing to live up to the expectations of so many people, myself included. It brought me back to the conversation that Dad and I had had on that first day back to school.
He had told me that I expected too much from people, that I had expected too much from Graham and that it was probably a good thing that our friendship had ended. I had left the house that day angry, hurt that he would suggest such a thing, and although Graham and I had worked things out, I still carried a small amount of resentment towards my dad for having said it at all.
Yet now I could see that he was right, and I felt an inordinate amount of guilt for putting Graham through that. Perhaps if I had been the better friend…
“Hey, I’m going to hit the sack. I work the day shift tomorrow and then I’ve got an interview at the sporting good shop next to the Dairy Queen so I need to get some sleep.”
Reluctantly, I stood up and watched as he stretched himself out on the couch, his feet extending way past the arm. I grabbed the blanket that he had thrown onto the recliner and opened it up, carefully placing it on him, making sure to cover his feet. “Goodnight, Graham,” I said to him softly as I climbed the stairs to my room.
“Goodnight, Grace,” he called back just before I reached the landing.
I flipped the light on in my room and shut the door softly. I turned around and let out a softened squeal. Lark was sitting on my bed, her legs folded in front of her, a book in her lap.
“Jeez! Could you at least warn someone that you’re going to be sneaking into their room?” I hissed. I walked over to my dresser and began rummaging for clothes; I needed to take a shower and wash off the wear of the day that was starting to feel like a second skin.
She didn’t even move, didn’t acknowledge that I had said anything at all. I shrugged my shoulders and, after grabbing some underwear and my usual pajamas, I left the room to head to the bathroom, flipping the light off as I did so.
