You undid me, beneath you, but somehow I lived.
It was nothing like my mind-scenes of fluttering kisses and sunlight on our skin and the breeze sweeping in through the French doors making us lie together so tightly that no part of our bodies had to feel the cold, but it happened and you happened and one day we might happen together.
When I first saw you we were outside. It was second grade and you'd just moved from Columbus, and the leaves were just beginning to fall off the trees. I was quiet then and I saw you sitting on the jungle gym swinging your legs so that your boots scuffed each other each time you moved and I looked at the trees and they swayed towards you and a gust of wind picked up and blew up fallen leaves, swirling around me so that I could only see that jungle gym, and you. Even then at barely seven years old I felt a tug in my stomach and I knew that with you, things would be different. So I told my muscles to move me forward to where you were wearing a soft orange sweater and jeans- not impractical floral shorts like I was. You've always loved the crisp fall air but I held onto my bare legs as long as possible, and later, when it got really cold, you would give me your sweater and maybe that's all I really wanted. But that first day, when we walked off the playground together we looked like summer turning into autumn and in that moment I didn't want anything from you except to make you smile.
We used to try and figure out a time we'd met before, like maybe one day when my family went to Columbus to see my grandparents and we were sure we'd been at the same park even though we couldn't even remember that park's name or what it looked like or what month it was. But it didn't matter because we held fast to our stories and stood for things we knew but didn't know how to say. Sometimes I felt like the only way I knew myself was by looking at you and knowing you were looking back at me.
Our parents became friends and slowly everything melded into one until I couldn't remember whose cats were whose and where were had Thanksgiving last year. One autumn my parents told us that we'd have a little brother or sister- I'm not sure I knew at first which of our mothers was pregnant. When your dad left for the first time, in winter, our moms would sit together in the kitchen and we'd share hot chocolate and take turns sipping it so that it was like our lips belonged to the same mouth and then our parents would make us leave so that they could talk about grown-up things. You only cried once about your dad and it was when you thought I wasn't looking, and so instead I made you laugh. In spring I'd have my birthday party and the first year I refused to invite anyone else and so we went to a pond and had a picnic and I cried when you had to leave so you got to sleep in my bed for the first time. But in summer, in summer we didn't have to wait for the weekends to sleep over and we'd lie in fields until we itched and then lay there more waiting for the fireflies. I couldn't bring myself to catch them like the other kids, though, and so you held my hand and squeezed it every time one lit up over our heads. That was even better than keeping them in a jar, I thought, because it felt like fire anyway.
The day we started middle school we wore matching skirts, and we didn't bother to look at any of the other girls. We had other friends, of course, but no one dared tried to sit in between us at lunch. Somehow I was pretty, willowy and graceful but you didn't care about straightening your hair like the other girls because it would just get messed up at soccer practice. Then one day a boy asked me out and you looked in a mirror and decided you didn't like yourself. So you started sneaking makeup into school and teasing the boys about how stupid they were (which just made them like you more and you knew it). And then in eighth grade you came back from summer vacation and you had grown a couple inches and wore a push-up bra, though you still had bony boy-hips and I was glad for that. I never told you, but I never even noticed you changing. I thought you were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen but not because you did your hair or put on eyeliner but because I was dating a boy and I didn't like the way that he smelled musty and sweaty and how he dragged my lips into a kiss and didn't know what to do with his hands when we went to the eighth-grade end-of-the-year dance. Boys lined up to dance with you then and you turned them all down. That night I watched you grab your coat and walk up the stairs from the cafeteria, where the dance was, and as the boy started shifting his hands again I told him I felt sick and ran up after you.
We hadn't talked in a few days because eighth grade is a volatile time, but when I ran to grab your hand you turned around and I fell smack into your body and caught me with your lips. We stayed like that for too long and then slowly I righted myself and kissed you again. After that we didn't talk about what had happened, but I forgot about my boyfriend and you forgot about teasing the others. We spent the summer like we had just a few years before except this time our goodnight kisses meant something else.
High school came and we both joined the cheerleading team and made friends with all the girls who happened to already be pretty at age fifteen. We went to parties that our parents thought were sleepovers and kissed boys and sometimes each other, but only after we'd had a few Hard Lemonades or Ices. We could rarely get hard liquor so we all pretended we were drunker than we were. Faked hangovers, faked blackouts, unspoken rules: it was easier that way. You even started wearing sunglasses to Sunday morning cheerleading practices, though your eyes were just as beautiful and as clear as they had been on Tuesday, or Wednesday, or Thursday night. But no one crossed you that way, and you liked having the power.
By sophomore year we had stopped pretending we were drunk and started pretending that we liked the boys we were dating. It wasn't enough, but it was something, and no one questioned the way we looked at each other on double dates and at dances or when we were singing. Or that when we went out with whatever boy we were stringing along at the time, we always climbed out from between their sheets and met back in between each other's. Each night we moved closer and closer together, as if we were trying to erase where we had just come from, purge the sticky smell of some boy's sheets that his mom probably changed for him a few weeks ago. Sometimes one of us would cry or laugh and once you came into bed naked because your clothes smelled like him. As we were falling asleep, I reached out and touched the perfect curve of your stomach, illuminated by the moon, and you shivered and drifted off smiling. I think I fell in love with you when we were seven, but if not, it was right then.
The next night you came back through my window and I heard the zipper from your jeans and a soft thump on the floor and then heard your shirt and bra and underwear come off and then I heard nothing, just you climbing into bed. When you curled your body next to mine didn't open my eyes because I was afraid I would never be able to close them again. But you whispered my name and I couldn't let you down, I could never let you down, and so my fear came true and I watched you all night instead of sleeping. The third night, our mothers went out of town together to who knows where and neither of us even called our boyfriends. Instead, we climbed into bed and turned on a movie and ate chocolate and drank gin & tonics, a rare treat from the liquor cabinet. I could see thoughts forming in your eyes, maybe from the alcohol or maybe just because we were alone, and you looked sad. When I asked what was wrong you mumbled that you wished you had gotten to go to a guy's house tonight before you came here. Then you stared at my face and watched my eyes drop and my heart sink through the floor- though I couldn't pinpoint the feeling at the time. And I looked up, your huge brown eyes looking into my blue ones and I mustered up the courage to ask you why. It took you the entire scene where Sebastian has brunch with Annette Hargrove to finally answer, "because I like coming home to you." And in a fit of bravery—maybe the alcohol, or maybe just you—I reached over with both hands and lifted your tank top over your head. I did the same to my own, just in case, and then I took another breath and unhooked your lacy, red bra. We sat there like that and you brought up your hand as if asking me for permission, and looking at you was all you needed. My own bra fell to the floor and you giggled a little bit at how stupid we looked, sitting there, bare, wearing sweatpants. So you stood up and those fell away, too, and you grabbed my hand and pulled mine down. I've never seen anything so beautiful, except maybe you everyday of my life. And with the movie still rolling across the screen I fluttered my fingers over your slight hips and again ran my hand up and down your body. This time, you shivered again, but you smiled into my mouth as you kissed me. We fell asleep, kissing, naked, and wonderful. In the morning you were still there and we made pancakes and mimosas and kissed some more and never spoke about that day again, until maybe now. Our parents came back and we went back to our nightly routine: shivering, and sweet.
And then spring came and you got too drunk at a party, again, and found your boyfriend fucking some other girl and you threw a beer bottle at the window and ran home to me where I was grounded for some stupid grade I got on a paper because I was admiring your body instead of writing it. You slammed my window shut and stumbled into my bed and ripped my clothes off, only this time your hands didn't stop at my hips. You pushed me open and pressed our bodies together and we kissed until our mouths and hands were sore and it wasn't romantic or beautiful or like I imagined it, but it happened and eventually you whispered my name and I came undone beneath your hands, grasping at your hair. We lay there breathless and you turned to the side and cried. I thought it was about the boy, but later I realized that it had nothing to do with him; nothing at all.
It took you a year to tell me you loved me. It took a year of confusion, tears, meaningless sex, alcohol, songs, and each other. Finally, you broke, but you didn't realize that I had broken first. I had grown accustomed to waiting and didn't know how to be with you, really be with you. You were the scared one; you never guessed that I was terrified. Not of the relationship, or my sexuality, or breaking up with my boyfriend, but of having all of you. It changed things- it changed us. But when I woke up one morning and realized that I was crazy and that I couldn't have you without all of you and I never wanted anything less in the first place, I asked you to go to prom with me. In that moment I realized you were scared of things that I couldn't even fathom, that I never even considered. So I tried to tell you: you are you and I am I and sometimes we were a mixture of those things, but nothing more. And never, never something wrong. You still thought you were wrong though, and so I continued waiting until you figured out there is nothing more right in the world.
I waited through our seasons, through the spring when we looked at each other only with pained expressions and didn't win in New York to the summer where we hung out only in groups and missed each other every night. You started driving to who-knows-where every single day and I danced each afternoon until I was physically unable to and one day you called me and I panicked when I saw I'd missed it. But this is a small town, and I found you sitting on the hood of your car outside my dance studio, knees pulled to your chest. My heart broke seeing you so vulnerable and small and nothing like the metal frame of your little red Ford. I dropped my bad and ran to you and somehow, we came back to each other. We went to the fields and slowly held hands and you'd still squeeze mine each time we saw a firefly. We didn't talk much, but we didn't need to. Growing into each other wasn't like last time- it's never like the first time you fall in love. This time it was full of more understanding and more pain and more knowing. Sometimes I wished I could be seven again and release that knowing; to let the years go and just feel you with my heart. But that's not how the world is- and so for now, we let it spin.
to be finished, soon.