First Comes Love

by Katie Kacvinsky

  My body is sore and tight from muscles that haven’t been used in more than a year. Coach Clark wasn’t kidding about his training intensity. He meets with me almost every day to make sure I’m lifting, doing squats, running, jump-roping, throwing, swinging. To make sure I’m paying for taking an extended vacation. But I like the physical pain. It reminds me that I’m finally focused on the future and on a goal I have some control over. And the endorphins give me this natural high. Like I’m immortal. Like nothing can hurt me. Kind of like sex. But not nearly as good.

  I’m the new kid on the team, and so far everyone’s welcomed me in like a brother. Todd’s the only person who’s brought up Amanda, and I get the feeling he’s more sensitive than the average guy, because he admits he enjoys watching reality shows with his girlfriend and her friends. He told me how sorry he was and if I ever needed to talk he was there and if I wanted to come to a Bible study with him sometime I was always welcome.

  The whole team knows why I’m a year late to accept the scholarship. I don’t mind that people don’t bring it up. It’s not a subject conducive to locker room talk. But I appreciate Todd’s giving me an outlet if I need it. I hope I won’t.

  The girls on campus have been especially attentive to my needs. I’m the shiny new fresh meat, and they’re not shy about hinting they’d like a taste. One girl in particular, Amber McCaphrey, a sophomore volleyball player, has made herself particularly available. She took it upon herself to pay me a personal visit when I moved in, and volunteered her time as my private welcome committee. She showed me around campus, gave me a tour of the library, and her house, and even her bedroom. Ideally, that’s where every great tour ends, right? But my mind’s too occupied to think about her, and my heart’s too full to make space for her. She only magnifies what I miss about Dylan, and instead of making me forget, she makes it harder to move on.

  The guys on the team think I’m crazy to pass her up. Amber’s got legs that keep going. Typical volleyball player body—long and lean and an ass that’s made for spandex, or maybe it’s the other way around. But she knows it. And she knows how to use this arsenal of sexual energy to get what she wants. She wears the miniskirts to prove it. And her hair and her face are always done up, even when she’s working out.

  She also plays the leaning game. Very well.

  But she tries too hard. She notices her appearance in anything she passes that offers a reflection. She smells like a box of perfume. Nothing is ever out of place. And to most people she’s perfect. But to me it’s so far from it, because my idea of perfect is being too busy laughing at yourself to care what you look like.

  I don’t go more than an hour without wondering where Dylan is and who gets to hear her stories and make her laugh, and I have to shove the thoughts out of my head before I want to shred something.

  ***

  After a month has passed, I decide it’s time to call her. It occurs to me that I’ve still never talked to Dylan on the phone. We’ve fallen in love and had sex and told each other our life stories, but we’ve never even called each other. This is so backwards.

  I made her give me her home phone number in Wisconsin before she left. She tried to convince me that we shouldn’t try to get ahold of each other. We should leave it in fate’s hands. Well, she can be the daydreaming optimist, but I’m going to be the levelheaded realist and know fate can only get you so far. It can put you down the right path or introduce you to a particular person, but the rest is up to you. Even the strongest storms need a wind to carry them in.

  I pick up the white card her number and address are scribbled on and tap it on my nightstand. I sit on my bed and lean against the wall and dial the ten digits that will connect me with somebody that still holds the world in her hands.

  It rings four times, and I’m about to hang up, and then a woman answers, sounding out of breath. I know it isn’t Dylan, because she sounds older.

  "Hi, I'm a friend of Dylan’s?” I say it like it’s a question because friend isn’t quite the word I’d choose, but lover or sexual partner probably wouldn’t be appropriate. We never tried to label what we had.

  “Oh,” she says. “You must be Gray.” Bam. Nails it on the first try. I can see where Dylan gets her intuitiveness from.

  “Yeah,” I say, and hesitate, because I hadn’t planned this out. I don’t want to sound all needy and ask where Dylan is and who she’s with and if she’s talked about me and if she misses me and all the things I’d pay to know.

  “I’m Dylan’s mom,” she says, all light and easy. “I was wondering when you’d call. It’s been, what, a month now?”

  It’s been a month and six days since the morning she left. Way too long, in my opinion. But who’s keeping count?

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “I’ve heard so much about you,” she says, and she tells me she feels like she knows me. I rest my elbow on my knee and I’m starting to relax. Then I hear her scream, “Serena, Dylan’s boyfriend is on the phone,” and my stomach cramps at the word boyfriend because even Dylan’s never called me that, and then I hear the other line pick up and this younger girl gets on the phone.

  “Is this Gray?” she asks, and I say yes and she screams and tells me she knows we had sex, and then she hangs up.

  I can feel blood flowing to my face. I pull the phone away, drop my head, and mumble, “Oh, my God.” Could this be going any worse? I can hear Dylan’s mom saying something, and I reluctantly put the phone back to my ear.

  “Oh, Gray,” she says, all consolingly, and she apologizes and says Serena is sixteen going on six. She tells me not to be embarrassed, because if Dylan loves me I’m family now, so we might as well open up.

  Like that helps.

  Then she actually keeps talking about it. So much for a light, easy conversation. She tells me Dylan must be head over heels in love with me to want to have sex, because she’s always been a little cautious in that department. The only boy she thinks Dylan has ever kissed besides me was her neighbor, Spud Seebly.

  “And he was a nice boy, but he had braces and his name was Spud, so let’s face it: how good could he be?”

  “Um,” I say. I am beyond desperate to get the topic off my sex life with her daughter. And, really, Spud Seebly? What kind of parents willingly name their kid Spud? They should be arrested for douchebaggery.

  “Dylan isn’t around, is she?” I ask.

  I get this highly amused laugh for an answer. She starts rambling again, it must be a family trait, and tells me Dylan was barely home long enough to shower and eat and she acted more excited to see the dogs than her own family.

  Sounds like Dylan.

  “I swear, she’s part bird, Gray. She was out of that damn bridesmaid’s dress, which she looked beautiful in, by the way, and into that sorry excuse for a car of hers before I could say hello.”

  I run my finger along the headboard of my bed and stare out the window. The sun is setting behind the rooftops and my eyes travel as far west into the horizon as I can see. I ask her if Dylan’s in California yet. Another small laugh answers me.

  “Your guess is as good as mine. Last I heard she was in Boise, staying with her cousin for a few days. To earn spending money, they were going to help some firefighters build a trail. Don’t ask me how she finds these random jobs.”

  I try not to get jealous at the image of strapping firefighters spending quality time with Dylan.

  We talk a little bit more about the summer, and then Dylan’s mom asks me all these questions about school, way more than my own mom asks. I ask her when Dylan plans on moving to Shasta City to start her job. She can’t roam around carefree forever. Or, maybe I don’t want her to be free. Maybe I selfishly want her to be tied down so I always know where to find her.

  “I think she starts next week,” her mom says. She tells me her aunt paid her way too much to sit around her pool this summer, snapping pictures.

  “She did some painting,” I say in Dylan’s defense.

  “Painting, that
’s a nice story. Aunt Dan gave that girl money just to sleep in a king-size bed and entertain her housekeeper. Two thousand dollars for doing nothing. That’s no way to teach Dylan any kind of work ethic. That girl needs to learn charm will only get you so far in life.”

  Two grand is pretty generous. Dylan never told me how much her aunt gave her.

  “That should last her for a while,” I say.

  I can hear her shaking her head. “One would think. But Dylan gave most of it to the animal shelter when she got back. Money runs through that girl’s fingers like sand.” She asks me to hang on for a second and then comes back to the phone and tells me she has to go, dinner is burning, but it was great to talk.

  “Call back anytime,” she says.

  I panic.

  “Wait,” I say. “Can you give Dylan my number the next time she calls?” Her mom says yes, of course, and I give her both my cell and home number. She reads each number back to me to make sure she got them right.

  “Tell her I’d like to hear from her.”

  “Oh, Gray, we’d all like to hear from Dylan. Who wouldn’t?”

  When I hang up my head is in the clouds, because for a brief moment I was back in Dylan’s life, soaring along with her. But then I come down to the white walls of my bedroom and the state of New Mexico, and I’m excited to be here. But sometimes I have to remind myself to be excited because I wonder if I’d be happier just following her. I wonder if it’s okay to let a single person be the center of your life.

  Dylan

  I’m sitting in a dusty parking lot in Northern California, in the complete unknown, which oddly makes me feel complete. I love this vagabond lifestyle, this feeling of weightlessness. I couldn’t be happier because I’m free. I’ve set off on another journey to discover places and people and fill up the holes of wonder inside me that grow wider and deeper the longer I stay in one place. I want to empty the basin of all that’s known and predictable and fill my life with new experiences, with rainbow liquids that change colors with the touch of a finger. I want to create my own world by stepping out of the places I know.

  I sit on the curb next to my car and drink gas station coffee (it only tastes good when you’re on the road). This rugged scenery suits me. People told me to move to San Francisco or check out Carmel, or the wine country. But I don’t want a polished atmosphere. I’m more intrigued by these high desert plains, these scrubby bushes and scraggly trees, barely clinging to life. The people here are rough cut too, as if everybody’s working overtime to survive. In the distance Mount Shasta pierces through the clouds and spreads out before me like nature’s giant welcome sign. My new home. The peak towers feet in the sky and has been described as “lonely as God and white as a winter moon.” The mountain looks misplaced, standing all alone with its head in the clouds. I feel like we have that in common.

  I met a man yesterday, in Weed, California, who owns a brewery. He told me you only go around this world once. You’ve got to make the most of it. So, every day, with everyone I meet and everywhere I go, that’s what I’ll set out to do. If you wake up every day determined to make the most of it, how can you ever be disappointed?

  Today I met a woman who owns a bakery in Yreka, California, an old gold mining town close to the border of Oregon. The steep hills around it are dusted with metal and gleam in the sun, teasing people to believe there’s a treasure buried inside. It’s the kind of a town where the local hardware store doubles as a coffee shop and cowboys pull up around a horseshoe-shaped counter to drink coffee next to shelves of fishing tackle.

  Next door to the hardware store is a bakery, where I ordered the best cinnamon roll I’ve ever tasted—so sweet, the sugar danced in my mouth. When I asked Lila, the owner, what the secret ingredient was, she told me it was happiness. She said when you put happiness into what you cook, it tastes so much better. She told me when you put happiness into your job and your relationships, they grow. If you’re not enjoying what you’re doing or who you’re doing it with, it won’t turn out, she told me.

  I want my life to be like that. I want it to be mouthwatering, savory, and memorable with every bite. It’s strange how people tell you things at the exact moment you need to hear them. Words can be the most comforting of all. They can pick you up and keep you moving.

  But no matter how much I gain, there is something even greater I lack, because one memory keeps chasing me.

  I can’t go an hour without thinking about Gray.

  You know you love someone when he makes all the ordinary moments feel extraordinary. When doing absolutely nothing feels like everything. Gray assumed he wasn’t enough. And what I didn’t admit, what I didn’t realize at the time, is that it’s just the opposite. He was too much. That kind of love is the kind that traps you. And I’m not ready for it yet.

  That’s why I need to leave him alone. Distance is the best thing.

  I stare out at the horizon and wonder what it would be like if you could have two lives, side by side. Your self and your alter ego. One life would be safe, predictable, and accepted. You’d follow the social guidelines: college, marriage, kids, career, golden retriever, and a two-story home in the suburbs. But I think everybody has this inner spirit, this dream of where their potential could take them if they were willing to break out of the norm and take risks. Most people hold their fantasies out of reach, as if their desires are a mountain they could never summit. They settle for living at the base of the mountain instead. There aren’t as many obstacles, or avalanches, or unexpected delays. But they’ll never be able to see the view from the top.

  I feel like I violently teeter between these two selves. And I’ve decided to chase my wild side. I don’t want to have any regrets. I think the worst mistake in life is to wonder, What if? I’d rather fail miserably pursuing my dreams than succeed at something I have to settle for.

  I stand up and open my inspiration log to my page of oughtas. My goal for this week: Let Him GO. I stare down at the words with a frown. This goal is going to throw off my perfect record, because it seems impossible.

  Why can’t I block Gray out of my mind?

  I know he has a million distractions. Moving. School. Baseball. Girls. That one really irritates me, but I try not to dwell on it, because we’re all unique fingerprints. No matter who he meets, there’s no one quite like me. People might be replaceable, but chemistry isn’t. You can find other people to be attracted to, other people to crush on and laugh and hang out with. But you can’t control who you click with. Who gets you—someone who can finish your thoughts, who shares your cells as though you have a molecular bond.

  Deep down, I hope he’s moved on. It’s better that way. I hope, eventually, I will too.

  First Forget

  Two Months Later

  Gray

  I try not to think about Dylan, because when I do my brain flexes with anger. Was I that easy to forget? Was our summer together just a fling to her? Was I just a dwindling romance in her storybook life? Am I the one being a girl about all this? Because I thought what we had was real. I fricking proposed to this girl. And she can’t so much as call me? She can’t take two minutes out of her random day filled with God knows what and check in, tell me she misses me?

  And that’s the thought that hurts the most. She doesn’t miss me.

  And I miss her every day, especially at night. Nights give me the most trouble. I’m back to sleeping pills because I need something to numb my thoughts and turn off the stadium lights in my head.

  The worst part is this internal battle that constantly plays out in my head, because underneath my anger and frustration (that’s helping me throw really fast, by the way), I still love this girl. I want to be mad, I want to be furious, but then I look around at where I am and who I’ve become and I have her to thank for it. How can I be mad when I owe her so much?

  I want to hear her voice. Hear her crazy thoughts. I want to live inside her brain for a day. Every day. I want to taste her. I want to lock her down. It’s hard to st
ay mad at her when, really, all it comes down to is, I don't want to let her go.

  ***

  Miles and I walk home from Lobo Field, where we’ve spent a few hours in the batting cage. He has one of the purest swings I’ve ever seen, and he’s been working with me on my form. My timing has always been off, and quitting for a year hasn’t exactly helped my batting. I ask him if we can practice again tomorrow.

  “Sure,” he says. “I’ll help you out, but only if you give me some advice.”

  We’re walking with the sun on our faces, and I turn my baseball cap backwards so the rays can spill into my eyes. Two girls approach us on the sidewalk and they say hi to Miles and then they smile at me and I nod back. One of the girls follows me with her eyes and I can’t help but notice her trip as she walks by. I hear them giggle and sprint away.

  “What do you want to know?” I ask Miles. He’s an outfielder with an amazing arm and the best hitter on the team. He only needs help narrowing down all the minor league teams interested in signing him.

  “I want to know your secret with the ladies,” he says, as if I should have guessed.

  “What?” I stare at him.

  “You draw them in like a fire, man. How do you do it?”

  My eyebrows flatten with confusion. Miles is a great guy. I’ve heard girls say he’s cute—he has dark red hair and brown eyes and more freckles than skin. He’s always got a crooked grin on his face. He knows every person on campus by name. Everybody loves him. I’m cool just by association. And he thinks I’m . . . what? A ladies’ man?