Raining On Heaven

by Amanda Foote

  I shook my head. “Why do you even care about me?” I asked him, sitting up. “I’m nothing special.”

  He looked out on the water and thought for a few minutes. Then he sat up next to me and looked right at my face. “When we wrecked, your parents died, and our car is what killed them. But you came to my stretcher as they carried me away, and you held my hand.” He slipped his fingers through mine, and I let him. “And when you came to the hospital to see me, you asked about Amy and even though she didn’t make it, you still asked her name.” He smiled. “I care about you because you care more than any other person I’ve ever met. Even though you pretend not to.”

  I frowned. “I’m not pretending anything.”

  He shook his head. “I can tell when you’re lying.”

  “You don’t even know me,” I said.

  “I know you,” he replied. I said nothing. “I know you,” he repeated.

  He leaned over and kissed me on the side of my forehead and stood up, holding out his hand. “Come on, I’ll walk you back,” he said. And he did.

  ✽✽✽

  “The ice melted,” Bobby stated the next morning. “Gotta go get some more.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Dillard, sitting at the cement table eating some pizza-flavored Pringles, said to him.

  “Okay, leave the eggs here and we’ll have breakfast ready when you get back,” Liberty Bell said.

  “Will do,” Bobby replied, getting her cooking supplies out of the back of the truck and handing her the eggs and milk. “Be back in a few.”

  Bliss sat happily in my lap, patting the table with her tan chubby hands. Her curly honey hair fell in loose ringlets around her neck, and I swept it carefully up with my hands and into a tiny ponytail holder. Liberty Bell, still in her pajamas (as was I), started a fire in the nearby grill and set the skillet on top of it.

  “Scrambled okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “Sounds great.”

  She turned around again, humming some country song I didn’t know, and started mixing eggs and salt and pepper into a bowl.

  I cleared my throat carefully. “So… Dillard kissed me.”

  She whipped around, nearly spilling the eggs. “What?!”

  I nodded. “Yep.”

  “Who what when where why how?” she breathed.

  I laughed nervously. “Last night. By the water.”

  “Go on,” she said.

  “I woke up to go to the bathroom and he was still awake, he walked me up there then we sat by the water for a while.”

  “And he just kissed you?” she exclaimed, stirring the eggs with a fork excitedly. “Willy nilly?”

  “I don’t know what that means,” I said.

  She laughed. “Oh. Like, out of nowhere. Just because.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, I don’t know. Yes, sort of. We were talking about his friend that died in the wreck. I said sorry and that someone should apologize for everything, and it might as well be me. Then he kissed me.”

  She poured the eggs into the skillet and sat down across from me at the table. “Did you like it?”

  I grinned sheepishly. “Well, yes.”

  She smiled widely. “Was that your first kiss?”

  “Uh, no.” I thought back to eleventh grade, and a sloppy, saliva-filled encounter with Marcus from fourth hour Mythology class that took place outside where the buses picked students up, in that weird nook where one wall of the building met the other and they’d decided to make a boxy slab instead of a corner. Not a fun experience. “But, it was my first kiss with him. It was nice,” I smiled.

  “Do you want to date him?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I think so.”

  She stood up again to stir the eggs. She laughed. “So date him!”

  “It’s kind of complicated.”

  “How so?” she asked, mixing the eggs with the back of her plastic spatula.

  “He’s… and I’m… and we’re…” I stammered.

  “Uh huh…”

  “I mean, he lives in California, for Pete’s sake. And I live here now.”

  “So it might be long distance. If you like him, what does it matter?”

  “I like him,” I said. “At least I know that much.”

  The eggs were done so she scooped them up out of the pan and onto a paper plate, then diced some potatoes and tossed them into the same skillet.

  “How do you know how to do all of this?” I asked her.

  She looked at me long and quietly, like she was wondering where I’d come from. “My mother taught me how to make breakfast, back when I was like nine. Did your parents not…” She trailed off.

  I shook my head. “We were take-out people. My mom liked to cook, but I never wanted to learn from her and never liked what she made. And my dad was afraid of the stove.”

  “What?” she laughed, and I realized how ridiculous it was, so I laughed too.

  We were still laughing when the boys pulled up, and we watched as they unloaded the newly filled ice chest, and we all sat down to eat scrambled eggs and potatoes.

  “You know,” Liberty Bell said to me, “I could teach you. How to cook, I mean. If you want.” I nodded, smiling with a closed mouth full of egg.

  After breakfast, Bobby pulled a case of cupcakes out from the bottom of the ice chest, and they all sang Happy Birthday to me off-key, while Bliss giggled in my arms and I blushed bright red. “Thanks, guys,” I said.

  “I’m game for a hike,” Bobby offered later, relaxing in his camping chair near the fire pit, hands poised behind his head, elbows out. The epitome of chill.

  “That sounds fun,” I agreed. “I could definitely use the exercise.”

  Liberty Bell and Dillard both nodded in agreement. So we strapped Bliss into her baby carrier, the kind that wraps around the chest of the person holding her. Dillard volunteered to carry her so we wrapped him up.

  We drove around in the truck in our shorts and tennis shoes until we found what looked like a small entrance to a trail, and parked on the side of the road. The trail was thin and muggy but we hiked the whole thing, which according to Liberty Bell’s step tracker she wore on her wrist it was 1.8 miles. We were hot and sweaty and dripping and exhausted when we finally walked all the way back around to the entrance of the trail, and the icy refreshing water of the river sounded like… well, like heaven, to us.

  We drove back to the campsite and changed quickly into our still-slightly-damp swimsuits we’d hung up over a tree branch, and made our way to the closest swimming area, and everyone but Dillard and Bliss jumped straight into the water, screaming at the cold but relishing in the relief from the heat. I got out and took Bliss from Dillard, who took his own turn jumping in. I stumbled, tired, over to the nearest picnic table and sat down, bouncing a very sleepy-looking Bliss on my knee.

  To my surprise, I was approached by a tall, shirtless, tan guy in a ball cap wearing red Oklahoma University swimming trunks. He sat down next to me and said “Hey.” I glanced down at the water where the others were still swimming, but Dillard had already looked up to grab my attention and I watched him notice the guy sitting next to me and his face grew dark. He started to get out of the water.

  “Hey,” I replied, Bliss cooing softly on my knee.

  “You here alone?” he asked. I could see Dillard coming closer in the corner of my vision.

  “No,” I said.

  He shrugged. “I was wondering if I could have your number.”

  Dillard was right up behind him now and his face looked upset but he didn’t say anything. He was dripping wet and just so cute with that simple little frown on his face, the scar above his eye crinkling up like wadded paper. He slid into the seat at the table, not saying anything. It felt more protective than possessive, which I appreciated. “I’m… well, I think I’m kind of taken,” I said to the guy, but I was talking at Dillard. I watched his frown morph into a huge grin, which was even cuter.

  The guy nods. “Cool. Sorry to
bother you.”

  “No worries,” I said, and he got up and returned to his own friends, and Dillard slid into the seat he had emptied.

  He didn’t say anything, just grinned at me uncontrollably, and I literally couldn’t wrap my brain around how cute he was being. “Hey. I want to give this a go if you do,” I said, and gave him a quick kiss.

  He nodded, grinning even wider now.

  A dripping Liberty Bell and Bobby sat down just at that moment, Liberty Bell smiling like she was in on a secret, and Bobby shouting, “What the hell did I miss?!”

  ✽✽✽

  That night, we knew we had to go home. In the morning, we would pack up, return to our daily lives, leave the beautiful river and our memories behind at that campsite. But for now, we sat around the campfire staring into the playful flames, wishing the night would never end. If the night never ended, Dillard would never go back to California. Cadence would never leave us. And I would never have to grow up.

  “I think I love it here,” I said to the flames. “I’m never leaving.”

  I felt Dillard’s head turn beside me, sensed it from the corners of my eyes where stormy clouds had begun to gather and dew drops were threatening to fall. I felt him staring at me.

  “I love it here, too,” he said. “Oklahoma.”

  Liberty Bell and Bobby nodded. Bliss dozed ungracefully in Bobby’s arms. He pet her hair with his free hand, a cold pop in the other. He shrugged at me. “Heaven,” he said. “You never have to.”

  Chapter Eight.

  The Fourth of July rolled around sooner than I’d expected. The Armstrongs, LB and Bobby’s parents, threw a party at their trailer out in McLoud.

  Cadence insisted on coming along. “It really can’t hurt me that much to go out just once, can it?” She insisted. “Just give me this one thing.” Marlene and I glanced at each other worriedly, but we relented. How could we say no to her?

  When we got to the party it hadn’t really started yet. Bobby was playing a video game in the living room and Liberty Bell was laid out on the couch, playing on her new iPhone that she had been obsessing over since she got it a week ago. “Have you seen the picture quality of it’s camera?! For a phone, it’s amazing!” she had said to me at least four times already. We wandered in with Bliss in tow, Marlene juggling two bottles of wine in one arm and Bliss in the other. I carried the cake Cadence had made. Cherry with blue icing.

  Liberty Bell sat up when we came in and greeted Bliss with a smile and a coo before she said hi to the rest of us. We heard more cars pulling into the driveway behind us, and before we knew it the party was thriving and breathing, like its own creature. Karaoke had taken over the main television set, Cadence and Bliss were ‘plum tuckered out’ (Liberty Bell’s words again) on the couch, Dillard and Bobby were in Bobby’s bedroom playing a video game on his tv, and Marlene was half wine-drunk, having a ‘grand ol’ time’ (LB’s phrase, not mine) laughing it up with the Armstrong parents.

  Liberty Bell pulled me from the couch to the kitchen island where the “adults” were practically falling over in laughter, and approached her mom. “Mom,” she said. “We want to go to a party at my friend Natalia’s house. If that’s cool.”

  Her mom shook her head, mid-laugh. “I don’t know, Liberty Bell. You didn’t stay for the last family party either. And that was your graduation party.”

  “Mom, please.”

  “Let me think about it for a while, okay? Go say hi to some of your family you haven’t seen in a while.”

  Liberty Bell sighed dramatically. “God, mom! Why don’t you ever trust me? I’m an adult now and you can’t control me!” Liberty Bell stormed off toward her room. Her mom seemed sad and appalled and probably thought Liberty Bell was just throwing a fit, but I knew she probably just wanted to see Natalia.

  I took a good long look at her mom. Liberty Bell was angry because she felt like her mom didn’t appreciate that she was an adult now, but I just wished I had a mom at all who could appreciate or not appreciate me at her leisure. Maybe if LB had thought about it that way, she’d have behaved differently. Marlene and Melissa were discussing Liberty Bell now, even though I was standing there, soaking in every word. It’s like they had forgotten I was there. But I tuned them out after a few seconds.

  I noticed how really pretty Dakota was and knew that’s where Liberty Bell got her very simplistic beauty. Liberty Bell liked to sport the “cat eye” eyeliner look, and her mom did too, and it so perfectly accentuated each of their big green eyes. Tonight she wore a black t-shirt with bleach stains on the sleeves and a big purple peace sign on the back. A year later at their next Fourth of July party I will see her wear a yellow blouse with flowy sleeves and a low, frilly collar. I’ll ask her about it. Got it at a thrift store, she’ll say, but I’ll already know that because I’m the one that takes it there, the one that donates it. It was hers. You know. It could have been anyone’s shirt really, but I knew it was hers because there was a rather obvious red stain on the hem from when I’d opened a bottle of ketchup five years ago with too much force and spilled it all over her. Napkins, mija, she’d said. Quick! I was afraid she’d be mad, but she was laughing. When I see Liberty Bell’s mom wearing it years later, it stings, but not as much as I thought it might. That’s the moment I knew for sure I’d be okay. I mean, I’d never be okay about their deaths. But when I see her wearing the shirt, I know my mom lives on in my memories. God, it sounds so cheesy. But the memory of that stupid ketchup stain is so vivid just by looking at that yellow shirt, and the way my mom would make me feel is right there at the top of my skin, her laughter and the way her hand gently grazed mine as she threw the dirty napkins away, that way she told me “I still love you,” without saying anything at all.

  But… I haven’t gotten to that part of the story yet.

  I zoned back into the conversation just to hear Dakota say, “You can’t ever really picture what kind of kid you’re going to get. I got Liberty Bell.” She seemed to notice me then, and turned to me. “She really wants to go to that party, doesn’t she? She doesn’t usually talk to me like that.” I just nodded. She sighed. “Alright. Go tell her I said she can go.”

  I thanked her and left to find Liberty Bell in her room angrily texting on her phone, her body thrown half across her bed. “Your mom changed her mind, we can go.” She lit up.

  She jumped up from the bed and pounded the floor furiously in her bolt out the door. She paused briefly at Bobby’s door to ask the boys if they wanted to go and then rushed into the living room only to thrust herself at her mother in a massive hug. “Thanks Mom!”

  “Sure, baby girl,” Dakota smiled, smiling proudly at Marlene.

  ✽✽✽

  We picked Melonie up on the way to Natalia’s house. Liberty Bell was shaking, she was so excited. From the backseat, tucked neatly into Dillard’s side, I asked her if she was okay. “Yeah!” she exclaimed nervously. “Just been waiting for a while for this chance.” I didn’t ask her to elaborate.

  This party pretty much resembled the last one, with adults and teenagers littering the yard of Natalia’s double wide trailer house. The biggest difference between this party and the last one was the host: where Sal’s house was littered with cigarette butts and ashtrays, Natalia’s living room was filled with burning incense and candles. Where Sal’s house had drunken idiots roaming the halls and vomiting in the yard, Natalia’s house was filled with pot-smoking hippies, hipster wannabes, the not-so-cool but actually way-cooler-than-cool kids.

  Natalia herself had just taken a hit off a joint when we wandered in. Her eyes lit up at the sight of Liberty Bell and suddenly things weren’t so confusing anymore. “Bell!” she said, and I half expected Liberty Bell to get angry the way she’d gotten angry the time I’d accidentally called her “Liberty,” but she didn’t. Instead she grinned the biggest smile I’d ever seen her wear and sat down next to Natalia, really close. Bobby and Melonie joined a couple of people standing around the kitchen island, where Bobby grabbed
a beer and Melonie poured herself a coconut rum and Coke.

  And Dillard grabbed my hand and pulled me away from the group. The hallway was dark but he led me into it. He pushed me gently into the wall. His lips found my lips.

  I’m not really sure how long we stood there locked together, but somebody yelled “Get a room!” and suddenly I found myself underneath his heavy body on an uncomfortable bed in a room that smelled like marijuana and bodily fluids. Even with his addictive lips caressing my neck, this was hard not to focus on. His hands slid down my body to the bottom hem of my shirt, where his fingers played with the fabric until I gave him the okay to slide his hand beneath it.

  No one had ever touched me this way before. Nobody had made my skin feel like fire, my lips feel swollen, my heart feel full and heavy and unbroken.

  He tugged nervously at the button to my jeans.

  It took everything I had in me to stop him. God knows, I wanted him. I wanted him the way he wanted me. The way the sun wants the moon and the ocean wants the shore.

  “Dillard,” I breathed.

  “Mmmm?” he mumbled between passionate kisses.

  “Dillard!”

  He stopped short. “Heaven?” he asked. His eyes were full of fear when he looked into mine. He was afraid he’d hurt me somehow, had done something wrong, had ruined it.

  “I really, really like you,” I said.

  “I like you too,” he replied, tensing up like he thought I was about to break up with him or something.

  “I don’t... “ In a way I was afraid I’d disappoint him, and in a way, well, I didn’t really give a shit and I knew that if he didn’t understand then it was his loss. “I don’t think this is the time or place for this. I really like you, and I don’t want to have sex with you in some strangers’ house with a bunch of people in the other room.”

  He sighed. “I know. I was kind of thinking the same thing. I just couldn’t find it in me to stop kissing you…”

  I laughed. “I like kissing you too.”