Another Day

I want Justin to work on a sand castle with me. I want us to experience what it’s like to build something together. We don’t have any shovels or buckets. Everything has to be done with our hands. He takes the phrase sand castle literally – starting with the square foundation, creating a drawbridge with his finger. I work on the turrets and the towers – balconies are precarious, but spires are possible. At random moments, he compliments me – little words like nice and neat and sweet – and I feel like the beach is somehow unlocking this vocabulary from the dungeon where he’s kept it all these months. I always felt – maybe hoped – that the words were in there somewhere. And now I know they are.

It isn’t very warm out, but I can feel the sun on my cheeks and my neck. We could gather more shells and begin to decorate, but I am starting to tire of the building, and putting our focus there. When the last tower is complete, I suggest we wander for a little while.

“Are you pleased with our creation?” he asks.

And I say, “Very.”

We head to the water to wash off our hands. Justin stares back at the beach, back at our castle, and seems lost for a moment. Lost, but in a good place.

“What is it?” I ask.

He looks at me, eyes so kind, and says, “Thank you.”

I am sure he has said these two words to me before, but never like this, never in a way that would make me want to remember them.

“For what?” I ask. What I mean is: Why now? Why finally?

“For this,” he says. “For all of it.”

I want so much to trust it. I want so much to think we’ve finally shifted to the place I always thought we could get to. But it’s too simple. It feels too simple.

“It’s okay,” he tells me. “It’s okay to be happy.”

I have wanted this for so long. This is not how I pictured it, but nothing ever is. I am overwhelmed by how much I love him. I don’t hate him at all. There’s not a single part of me that hates him. There is only love. And it isn’t terrifying. It is the opposite of terrifying.

I am crying because I’m happy and I’m crying because I don’t think I ever realized how much I was expecting to be unhappy. I am crying because for the first time in a long time, life makes sense.

He sees me crying and doesn’t make fun of it. He doesn’t get defensive, asking what he did this time. He doesn’t tell me he warned me. He doesn’t tell me to stop. No, he wraps his arms around me and holds me and takes these things that are only words and makes them into something more than words. Comfort. He gives me something I can actually feel – his presence, his hold.

“I’m happy,” I say, afraid he thinks I’m crying for a reason besides that. “Really, I am.”

The wind, the beach, the sun – everything else wraps around us, but our embrace is the one that matters. I am holding on to him now as much as he is holding on to me. We have reached that perfect balance, where each of us is strong and each of us is weak, each taking, each giving.

“What’s happening?” I ask.

“Shhh,” he says. “Don’t question it.”

I don’t feel any questions – only answers. No fear, only fullness. I kiss him and continue our perfect balance there, let our separate breaths become one breath. I close my eyes and feel the familiar press of his lips, the familiar taste of his mouth. But something is different now. We are not just kissing with our whole bodies, but with something that is bigger than our bodies, that is who we are and who we will be. We are kissing from a deeper part of our selves, and we are finding a deeper part of each other. It feels like electricity hitting water, fire reaching paper, the brightest light finding our eyes. I run my hands down his back, down his front, as if I need to know that he’s really here, that this is really happening. I linger on the back of his neck. He lingers on the side of my hip. I slip below his belt, but he leads me back up, kissing my neck. I kiss beneath his ear. I kiss his smile. He traces my laugh.

Enjoying this. We are enjoying this.

I have no idea what time it is, what day it is. I have nothing but now. Nothing but here. And it is more than enough.

Eventually my hand slides down his arm and holds his hand. We stand there for a few seconds, or maybe a few minutes, hand in hand, forehead on forehand, lips gently on lips, drained entirely of longing, because everything’s been found.

Then we pull away, keeping our hands together. We begin to walk down the beach, like couples do. Time comes back, but not in a scary way.

“This is amazing,” I say. And then I cringe despite myself, because this is what Justin would usually call an obvious statement. But of course, on this day, in this place, all he does is nod in agreement. He looks at the sun, which is coming closer to the horizon. I think I can see a boat offshore, but it could just be driftwood, or a mirage.

I want every day to be like this. I don’t understand why it can’t be.

“We should do this every Monday,” I say. “And Tuesday. And Wednesday. And Thursday. And Friday.”

I’m joking. But not really.

“We’d only get tired of it,” Justin says. “It’s best to have it just once.”

Once? I don’t know what he means. I don’t know how he could say that.

“Never again?” I ask. I don’t want to be wrong here. I really don’t want to be wrong.

He smiles. “Well, never say never.”

“I’d never say never,” I promise him.

Company. There are other couples on the beach now. Only a few, all of them older than us. Nobody asks us why we aren’t in school. Nobody asks us what we’re doing here. Instead, they seem happy to see us. It makes me feel like we belong here, that we are right to be doing what we’re doing.

This is how it’s going to be, I tell myself. And then I look at Justin and think, Tell me this is how it’s going to be.

I don’t want to ask him. I don’t want to have to ask. Too often, it’s my questions that push things off course.

I don’t want this to be fragile, but I still treat it like it is.

I’m starting to get a little cold. I have to remind myself that it isn’t summer. When I shiver, Justin puts his arm around me. I suggest we go back to the car and get the make-out blanket he keeps in his trunk. So we turn around, head back to where we started. Our castle is still there, still standing, even as the ocean comes closer.

Once we have the blanket, we bring it back to the beach. Instead of wrapping it around our shoulders, we put it on the sand and press ourselves beside each other. We are lying down, staring up at the sky. Clouds push by us. Every now and then a bird appears.

“This has to be one of the best days ever,” I say.

Without turning his head, he puts his hand in mine.

“Tell me about some of the other days like this,” he asks.

“I don’t know . . .” I say. I can’t imagine another day like this.

“Just one. The first one that comes to mind.”

I think about times when I was happy. Really happy. Balloon-floating happy. And the strangest memory comes into my mind. I have no idea why. I know I need to give him an answer, but I tell him it’s stupid. He insists I share it anyway.

I turn to him and he moves my hand to his chest, making circles there.

He is here. This is safe.

I tell him, “For some reason, the first thing that comes to mind is this mother-daughter fashion show.”

I make him promise not to laugh. He promises. And I believe him.

“It was in fourth grade or something,” I say. “Renwick’s was doing a fundraiser for hurricane victims, and they asked for volunteers from our class. I didn’t ask my mother or anything – I just signed up. And when I brought the information home – well, you know how my mom is. She was terrified. It’s enough to get her out to the supermarket. But a fashion show? In front of strangers? I might as well have asked her to pose for Playboy. God, now there’s a scary thought.”

Some girls have moms who partied all the time when they were young, who laughed and giggled and flirted and dressed in super tight clothes. I don’t have a mom like that. My mom was, I think, always the same as she is now. Except maybe this one time.

I tell Justin, “But here’s the thing: She didn’t say no. I guess it’s only now that I realize what I put her through. She didn’t make me go to the teacher and take it back. No, when the day came, we drove over to Renwick’s and went where they told us to go. I had thought they would put us in matching outfits, but it wasn’t like that. Instead, they basically told us we could wear whatever we wanted from the store. So there we were, trying all these things on. I went for the gowns, of course – I was so much more of a girl then. I ended up with this light blue dress – ruffles all over the place. I thought it was so sophisticated.”

“I’m sure it was classy,” Justin says.

I hit him playfully. “Shut up. Let me tell my story.”

He holds my hand on his chest. Before I can go on, he kisses me. I think the story might end there, but he pulls back and says, “Go ahead.”

I forget for a second where I was, because for a moment I fall out of the story and back into now. Then I remember: My mom. The fashion show.

“So I had my wannabe prom dress,” I say. “And then it was Mom’s turn. She surprised me, because she went for the dresses, too. I’d never really seen her all dressed up before. And I think that was the most amazing thing to me: It wasn’t me who was Cinderella. It was her.

“After we picked out our clothes, they put makeup on us and everything. I thought Mom was going to flip, but she was actually enjoying it. They didn’t really do much with her – just a little more color. And that was all it took. She was pretty. I know it’s hard to believe, knowing her now. But that day, she was like a movie star. All the other moms were complimenting her. And when it was time for the actual show, we paraded out there and people applauded. Mom and I were both smiling, and it was real, you know?”

Real like this is real – Justin listening next to me, the sky above, the sand underneath. It is real in such an intense way that it feels unreal, too. Like I had no idea it was possible to feel so much at once, and have it all be true.

“We didn’t get to keep the dresses or anything,” I go on. “But I remember on the ride home, Mom kept saying how great I was. When we got back to our house, Dad looked at us like we were aliens, but the cool thing is, he decided to play along. Instead of getting all weird, he kept calling us his supermodels, and asked us to do the show for him in our living room, which we did. We were laughing so much. And that was it. The day ended. I’m not sure Mom’s worn makeup since. And it’s not like I turned out to be a supermodel. But that day reminds me of this one. Because it was a break from everything, wasn’t it?”

“It sounds like it,” Justin says. And the way he looks at me – it’s like he’s finally realized how real I am, how here I am. What I’ve just said isn’t worth that. Which means I must be worth that.

“I can’t believe I just told you that,” I say. It’s like I’m giving him a chance to change his mind.

“Why?”

“Because. I don’t know. It just sounds so silly.”

“No,” he says, “it sounds like a good day.”

“How about you?” I ask. I know I’m pushing it. It’s one thing for him to listen. It’s another to have him actually tell me something.

“I was never in a mother-daughter fashion show,” he says.

Ha ha. So maybe he isn’t taking this seriously after all. I hit him on the shoulder and say, “No. Tell me about another day like this one.”

I can see him thinking about it. At first I think he’s debating whether or not to tell me anything. But then I realize that, no, he’s just trying to come up with a good answer.

“There was this one day when I was eleven,” he starts. He’s not staring out to the ocean or looking anywhere else, distracted. He’s looking right into my eyes, his way of saying this story is for me. “I was playing hide-and-seek with my friends. I mean, the brutal, tackle kind of hide-and-seek. We were in the woods, and for some reason I decided that what I had to do was climb a tree. I don’t think I’d ever climbed a tree before. But I found one with some low branches and just started moving. Up and up. It was as natural as walking. In my memory, that tree was hundreds of feet tall. Thousands. At some point I crossed the tree line. I was still climbing, but there weren’t any other trees around. I was all by myself, clinging to the trunk of this tree, a long way from the ground.

“It was magical. There’s no other word to describe it. I could hear my friends yelling as they were caught, as the game played out. But I was in a completely different place. I was seeing the world from above, which is an extraordinary thing when it happens for the first time. I’d never flown in a plane. I’m not even sure I’d been in a tall building. So there I was, hovering above everything I knew. I had made it somewhere special, and I’d gotten there all on my own. Nobody had given it to me. Nobody had told me to do it. I’d climbed and climbed and climbed, and this was my reward. To watch over the world, and to be alone with myself. That, I found, was what I needed.”

I’m almost crying, imagining him there. Every now and then he’ll tell me something about when he was little, but not like this. Usually he only tells me the bad things. The hard things. Mostly as an excuse.

I lean into him. “That’s amazing.”

“Yeah, it was.”

“And it was in Minnesota?”

I want to show him I remember what he tells me – his family’s moves, how cold it was there – so he’ll feel he can tell me more.

I want to tell him more, too. I always want to tell him more, but now that I know he’s listening – really listening – it means something different.

“You want to know another day like this one?” I ask, moving even closer, like I’m building a nest of our bodies in order to catch all the memories.

He pulls me in, settles the nest. “Sure.”

“Our second date,” I tell him.

“Really?” He seems surprised.

“Remember?”

He doesn’t. Which is fair, because it’s not like we labeled everything as a date. I mean, there were plenty of times before our first date where we were in the same place with other people, flirting. I’m talking about the second time we arrived together and left together and spent most of the time together.

“Dack’s party?” I say.

“Yeah . . .”

Still unclear. “I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe it doesn’t count as a date. But it was the second time we hooked up. And, I don’t know, you were just so . . . sweet about it. Don’t get mad, all right?”

I don’t want to ruin it. I am afraid I’m ruining it. Why don’t I just stop when things are good?

But then he says, “I promise, nothing could make me mad right now.” And he crosses his heart. Something I’ve never, ever seen him do before.

Smile. I’m not ruining it. I’m really not. “Okay,” I say. “Well, lately – it’s like you’re always in a rush. Like, we have sex but we’re not really . . . intimate. And I don’t mind. I mean, it’s fun. But every now and then, it’s good to have it be like this. And at Dack’s party – it was like this. Like you had all the time in the world, and you wanted us to have it together. I loved that. It was back when you were really looking at me. It was like – well, it was like you’d climbed up that tree and found me there at the top. And we had that together. Even though we were in someone’s backyard. At one point – do you remember? – you made me move over a little so I’d be in the moonlight. ‘It makes your skin glow,’ you said. And I felt like that. Glowing. Because you were watching me, along with the moon.”

I have never said this much to him. In all the time we’ve been together, I’m not sure I’ve ever let the words come out like this, without inspecting them first. I thought I knew what we were, and that was good enough for me.

What is this? I think. Because now he’s leaning over and kissing me, and it’s making everything romantic. Justin has been able to do romantic things before, sure. But he’s never made everything seem romantic before. The universe, at this moment, is romantic. And I want it. I want it so badly. I want the touch of his lips on mine. I want the way my heart is pounding. I want this nest, my body and his body. I want it because it’s that unreal kind of real.

There are so many other things we could say, but I don’t want to say any of them. Not because I’m afraid of ruining it. But because right now I have everything. I don’t need anything more.

We close our eyes. We rest in each other’s arms.

We’ve somehow made it to the better place you always want to be.

I don’t even realize I’m falling asleep. We’re just so comfortable that I guess we go there.

Then my phone is ringing, the ringtone so much shriller than the ocean. I know who it is, and even though I want to ignore it, I can’t. I open my eyes, shift away from Justin, and pick up the phone.

“Where are you?” Mom asks.

I check out the time. School’s been over for a while now.

“I just went somewhere with Justin,” I tell her.

“Well, your father’s coming home tonight, so I want us to all have dinner.”

“That’s fine. I’ll be home before that. In an hour or so.”

As soon as those words leave my mouth, the clock that had stopped begins to tick again. I hate my mother for causing this to happen, and I hate myself for letting it.

Justin’s sitting up now, looking at me like he knows what I’ve done.

“It’s getting late,” he says. He picks up the blanket and shakes it out. Then we fold it together, drawing nearer and farther and back nearer again, until the blanket is a square. Usually we just roll it up and throw it back in the trunk.

It feels different, driving home. It’s no longer an adventure; it’s just driving home. I find myself telling him all the things he never wants to hear about – other people’s relationship drama, the way Rebecca’s really trying hard to get into a good school and leave the rest of us behind (which I fully believe she should do), the pressure I feel to do well, too, or at least good enough.

After a while, the sun has set and the headlights are on and the songs we’re choosing are quiet ones. I lean on his shoulder and close my eyes, falling asleep again. I don’t mean to do it, but I’m just so comfortable. Usually I’m leaning in to him to prove something, to claim something. But now – it’s just to have him there. To rebuild that nest.

When I wake up, I see we’re getting close to my house. I wish we weren’t.

The only way for me to avoid being depressed is to create a bridge between now and the next time we’ll be like this. I don’t need to plan exactly when we’ll get there. I just need to know it’s there for us to get to.

“How many days do you think we could skip school before we’d get in trouble?” I ask. “I mean, if we’re there in the morning, do you think they’d really notice if we’re gone in the afternoon?”

“I think they’d catch us,” he says.

“Maybe once a week? Once a month? Starting tomorrow?”

I figure he’ll laugh at that, but instead he looks bothered. Not by me, but by the fact that he can’t say yes. A lot of the time I take his sadness in a bad way. Now I almost take it in a good way, a sign that the day has meant as much to him as it has for me.

“Even if we can’t do this, I’ll see you at lunch?” I ask.

He nods.

“And maybe we can do something after school?”

“I think so,” he says. “I mean, I’m not sure what else is going on. My mind isn’t really there right now.”

Plans. Maybe he’s right – maybe I always try to tie him up instead of letting things happen. “Fair enough,” I say. “Tomorrow is tomorrow. Let’s end today on a nice note.”

One last song. One last turn. One last street. No matter how hard you try to keep hold of a day, it’s going to leave you.

“Here we are,” I say when we get to my house.

Let’s make it always like this, I want to say to him.

He pulls the car over. He unlocks the doors.

End it on a nice note, I think, as much to myself as to him. It’s so natural to drag a good thing down. It takes a lot of control to let it be what it is.

I kiss him goodbye. I kiss him with everything, and he responds with everything. The day surrounds us. It passes through us, between us.

“That’s the nice note,” I tell him when it’s through. And before we can say anything else, I leave.

Later that night, right before sleep, he calls me. I never get calls from him – he always texts. If he wants to let me know something, he lets me know, but he rarely wants to talk about it.

“Hey!” I answer, a little sleepy but mostly happy.

“Hey,” he says.

“Thank you again for today,” I tell him immediately.

“Yeah,” he says. Something’s a little bit off in his voice. Something has slipped. “But about today?”

Now I’m not happy or sleepy. I’m wide awake. I decide to make a joke.

I say, “Are you going to tell me that we can’t cut class every day? That’s not like you.”

“Yeah,” he replies, “but, you know, I don’t want you to think every day is going to be like today. Because they’re not going to be, all right? They can’t be.”

It’s almost like he’s talking to himself.

“I know that,” I tell him. “But maybe things can still be better. I know they can be.”

“I don’t know. That’s all I wanted to say. I don’t know. Today was something, but it’s not, like, everything.”

“I know that.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

He sighs. Again, I have to tell myself this sadness is not something directed at me. It has to be directed at the fact that he can’t be with me.

“That’s all,” he says.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. If he’s worried that I’m really going to expect this from him every day – he can’t think that, can he? I decide to leave it alone. I say, “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, you will.”

“Thanks again for today. No matter what trouble we get into tomorrow for it, it was worth it.”

“Yeah.”

“I love you,” I say.

It’s not like Justin to say I love you back. Most of the time, he resents it when I say it, accuses me of saying it just to see if he’ll say it next.

Sometimes he’s right. But that’s not why I’m saying it tonight. And when he responds by saying, “Sleep well,” that’s more than enough for me.

I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, but for once I’m really looking forward to it.

2

Mom is up before me, as usual, in the same place at the kitchen table. It’s like she thinks Dad or I will steal her seat if she doesn’t beat us to it – and if she loses the seat, where will she spend the rest of the day?

“You look nice,” she tells me. Which would be a compliment, if she didn’t sound suspicious.

I don’t tell her that I made sure to look nice because it’s the one-day anniversary of everything getting better. She’d shoot that down real quick.

“I have to give a report,” I tell her. “In class.”

I know she’s not going to ask me what report, or what class.

Eager. I want to get to school as soon as possible, to see him. I hope he’s feeling the same way over at his house. I could text him and ask, but if things are going to change, then I can change, too. I don’t need to know everything all the time.

Mom and I say more to each other, but neither of us is really listening. I want to go, and she wants to stay. It’s the story of our lives.

I have to take the bus because my car is still at school. I could ask Rebecca or someone else to drive me, but then I would have to spend the whole ride talking about things instead of thinking about them.

His car isn’t there when my bus gets in. In fact, he doesn’t show up until almost everyone else has pulled in.