Engagement Rings and Hot-Tub Flings
(July 9-10, 2016)
6: In Love with Night
The crescent moon had gone to bed by the time Dipper and Wendy walked up the hill to their tent. For a long time they sat on a ground cloth, then lay back, side by side, and just looked up at the stars.
So many stars. Gravity Falls did not suffer from light pollution, and on a still, clear night the sky was full to overflowing. They could even see the silvery swatch of the Milky Way, which Dipper said he could never see in Piedmont. "Too much air pollution and too much light spill from San Francisco and Oakland," he said.
Wendy was holding his hand. They were dressed, but barefoot, and they'd agreed on separate sleeping bags for when they turned in eventually. Being together in the nude while immersed in a hot spring is one thing. Sleeping in one bag with someone you love is something else again, and far too tempting. She sent him a message: Dipper, you should totally come back and go camping with me in the middle of winter. On a real cold night, the stars are bright enough to light up the world.
—That's the extremely low humidity. But wouldn't it be cold?
Well, yeah, dude! Of course. But we could dress warm and cuddle up together. Anyways, if we don't go camping, we should at least go star-watching. You see a lot of meteorites then, too, if you're patient. And sometimes the aurora.
—I've never seen that in Piedmont, he confessed.
Hey, look. Is that down there in the southwest a star or a planet? The bright one?
—Let me see.
She flashed him a mental image of what she was looking at. Right there.
—Oh, that's Saturn, I think. Yeah, and to the right of it, the red one, that's Mars.
Two planets at once! How cool is that?
Dipper shifted around and peered. —Nope, too late. Venus was out, but I think it's behind the cliffs now.
When we get married, let's buy us a telescope.
That surprised him. He was the geeky one. —Strange idea, but I'm game.
Yeah, but I've never looked at the moon or the planets with a telescope.
—OK. What's that weird little thought that I keep getting flashes of? Shakespeare?
She laughed and said out loud, "Yeah, we read Romeo and Juliet in eleventh grade. Well, some of us did. That's a quote I remember. It's after Romeo and Juliet secretly marry, and she's waiting for him to come to visit her at night. What she doesn't know is that Romeo just killed her cousin Tybalt in a duel, and now he's on the run from the law, right? Let me see if I can remember the whole thing. OK, she's standing on, like, her balcony, right? And she's looking at the sky and says about Romeo, 'When he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he shall make the face of heaven so bright that all the world will be in love with night.' I think I flubbed a few words, but that's the gist."
—Oh, I see. Just married and she can't wait for him to die, huh?
Wendy gave him a nudge. No, dude! She just wants the rest of the world to see Romeo like she does. You did read the play, right?
—We had to read it and act out scenes in class, too. I kinda remember the quote. Don't remind me.
Why not? It wasn't a hard play to understand. I didn't think I'd like it, but I kinda did.
—It's not the play, but our teacher, Mrs. Buchan, made Mabel act out the Juliet part for the 'wherefore art thou Romeo' balcony scene and I had to read Romeo's lines. Awkward!
Yeah, I can see that.
—Some of the kids started saying it was twincest. Big laugh.
Sorry, man. You'd think teachers would be more sensitive to stuff like that. You didn't ask her to change the casting?
—You can't argue with her. The kids had a nickname for her. It was an adjective and her last name, and they rhymed.
They rhymed?
"Blankin' Buchan," he said aloud.
Oh. Oh, I get it. OK, we won't go into that.
They star-gazed until they got sleepy, spotted three unspectacular meteorites, listened to the muted roaring of the falls and the chirping of crickets, and at last went inside the tent and got into their separate bags. But they slept in some clothing, even if it was underwear, and with their arms stretched out, holding hands. And all the happy dreams they had, they shared.
On that same night, Mabel and Teek had a good movie date. They saw Finding Dory, which they both agreed was sweet and funny, but not quite as good as the first one. They had pastry snacks at a coffee shop afterward and then drove up to Lookout Point for a little alone time.
They even talked about plans, the first time that summer they'd had a really serious conversation about the future.
Teek asked, "Could you wait for me? Would it be all right if we put off getting married to after college?"
Snuggled against him, gazing out over the distant town and the starry sky, Mabel said, "I don't know. I think maybe so. If we text each other every single day, at least once, or more when things are going bad or we just feel lonely. And face-time at least three times a week."
"Sure," Teek said. "I'd want to do all that. And I wouldn't take summer classes, either. Now, at the film school, the summer after you're a junior, you're required to work as an unpaid intern on a production shoot for at least eight weeks."
"Unpaid, huh?"
"It's like an apprenticeship," Teek said. "And you still get a month off. And I think you get an allowance for food and stuff, you know, a per diem. But no actual pay, and no credit on the screen."
"That sucks."
"Just the way they do it," Teek said. "And there's no telling what you have to do as an intern—go for coffee, or take notes for the script supervisor, or even stand in for an actor when they're doing lighting set-ups. It's a chance to observe a real movie shoot, though, and that's the main idea. It's not exactly glamorous. But hey, maybe you could come out that summer and visit the set."
"Yeah, if I have enough money for an airplane ticket," Mabel said.
"We can scrape it up somehow."
"I just wish we could get married first," Mabel told him with a sigh.
"I'd love that, but it'd make staying apart a lot harder. Anyway, I want to have some way of supporting us," Teek said. "After college, even if I can't get a movie job right away, I'll have skills enough to find something."
"Chauvinist," she said. "I'm gonna be a famous fashion designer or commercial artist by then."
"We'll hope," Teek said.
After a smooch break, Mabel murmured, "Teek? About this intern thingie?"
"Yeah?"
"Promise me you'll refuse to help if they're doing nude shots of a gorgeous actress," she said, halfway teasing.
"I don't think they actually do those in modern movies," Teek told her. "Usually the actor wears a leotard, a body suit, and if they want details, they either do CGI or use a body double."
"Body double? You mean like stunt boobies?" She giggled.
"I guess so," Teek said with a chuckle.
"Maybe there's a job I could do!"
He didn't laugh. "I wouldn't want you to, unless you did it invisibly. Anyway, for Christmas break and spring break and every summer, I'll come back to you."
"You better," Mabel said. "OK, let's make some ground rules. Neither one of us will date other people. If we go out, it'll be in a group, OK?"
"Fine with me," Teek said. Truth to tell, he had rarely gone out on real dates all through high school so far, unless he was with Mabel. "But what about, I don't know, something just casual, like having lunch with somebody or something?"
"That would be all right," Mabel said thoughtfully. "As long as there's no flirting, no kissing or holding hands, and it's just friendly. But still try to have two or three other people along if you can."
"And you'll do the same?"
"Oh, sure, I promise," Mabel said. "Now, about making new friends . . . ."
It wasn't exactly a passionate evening up there on Lookout Point, where most teens came to park and make out (for varying values of making out) but she and Teek had a good talk, cleared the air, kissed and cuddled a little, and wound up feeling better about the future. And not once did they leave the front seats of his car.
And when you think about it, maybe that's about all a young and affectionate couple could really ask for on a beautiful summer night, with the stars twinkling down and love in the air. Maybe that can be just about enough sometimes.
Anyway, Mabel was feeling more like her old self after he dropped her off and kissed her goodnight.