This Is What It Feels Like

by Rebecca Barrow

  “Full disclosure?” Autumn smiled. “Me neither.”

  Their laughter died out quickly, giving way to fast breaths and Jules’s heart pounding so hard she was sure the entire world could hear it. She lifted her hand to brush a strand of blue hair from Autumn’s forehead. “Full disclosure,” she said. “I would really like to kiss you right now.”

  “Full disclosure,” Autumn said, her voice a little shaky. “I’ve never kissed anybody.” She took a step closer and her voice evened out. “But I would really like to kiss you, too.”

  The moment before it actually happened was the longest time in Jules’s entire life, this space of Should I be doing this? and Yes, of course and What if I ruin it all? and Autumn, Autumn, Autumn.

  And then they were kissing. Her mouth on Autumn’s. Her hand under Autumn’s chin, and Autumn’s hands on her waist and it was quick, sweet, and Jules was going to leave it there, not turn Autumn’s first kiss into something too much, but Autumn had other ideas. Because it was Autumn pulling Jules closer, Autumn opening her mouth, Autumn sighing in this way that made Jules slide her hand to the back of Autumn’s neck and slip her tongue across her lower lip. Jules felt like she was underwater. All she could see and feel and think was this girl and maybe she wasn’t really in love yet, but oh, maybe she was.

  Hanna

  “Jules, could you please concentrate?” Dia snapped her fingers in front of her friend’s face. “This is serious.”

  “I’m listening!” Jules rolled her eyes. “Jesus, Dia. A girl could change her mind, you know. I could be sleeping right now, but here I am. For you, out of the goodness of my heart.”

  Hanna listened to their bickering and pulled at the neck of her shirt. They were out in Dia’s yard so, Dia said, Alexa could run around outside.

  Hanna had nodded at that, acted casual, but most of her was panicking because she had to be on her best behavior, didn’t she? Dia hadn’t said they could have their writing session at her house without knowing what that entailed, had she?

  So this was Hanna’s test: prove she could be good and sensible and not dangerous around Alexa. Which, really, wasn’t hard, because the only time Hanna had really been dangerous, out of control, was when she was drinking and now she had four hundred and thirty-four days without that and all she had to do was be normal.

  (“Normal.”)

  “It’s two in the afternoon,” Dia pointed out. “And don’t act like you’re so selfless. I know you want that prize money.”

  “Who doesn’t?” Hanna lay out on the blanket Dia had put down. “Fifteen thousand dollars. It’s a lot.”

  “What do you think it’s like to be rich?” Jules stretched her feet out near Hanna’s face, and Hanna shifted away. “Sorry. Can you imagine? For some people fifteen grand is nothing. A night at a club buying bottles. A ten-minute shopping trip. A tenth of a car.” Jules laughed. “I could buy ten cars.”

  Jules was right, Hanna thought. Fifteen grand could buy ten rusted-but-still-pretty used cars, perfect for cruising from Golden Grove all the way to wherever Hanna wanted.

  Dia clapped her hands together. “How about we stop talking about money we don’t have and try to do some actual work?”

  “You are so boring sometimes,” Jules said, and Dia smacked her. “It’s true!”

  Hanna made herself sit up and grabbed one of her notebooks. “Where do you want to start?”

  Dia pulled her acoustic guitar into her lap and put her sunglasses on top of her head. “I was thinking we’d all pick out some of your lyrics that we like and see what fits with some of the ideas I have. And then we can . . .”

  Hanna let Dia talk and nodded every so often, to show she was listening, but really she found her attention going to Alexa.

  She was at the bottom of the yard, involved in some kind of game that Hanna couldn’t quite work out: first she picked up a bear, and then she filled a bucket with a handful of dirt, and the bear went to the robot with a teacup on its head, and repeat. But Hanna found herself mesmerized, almost, watching this tiny human that came from Dia carrying out this operation so seriously, pausing every so often to call out, “Mama, watch!” She definitely saw Elliot there—in her smile, the shape of her eyes, and it was like remembering he was gone all over again. Almost three years, now.

  Look at her, Hanna thought. She walks and she talks and she’s an actual person. And I missed it all. She had missed all the times Dia must have been so excited—and all the times she struggled, too, and things got hard. Jules had been the one there for her.

  “Hanna?” Dia’s fingers waved in front of her face. “Are you paying any attention?”

  Hanna started. “Sorry,” she said, and looked at Alexa as she spoke. “I was thinking about Elliot,” she said without thinking, only hearing herself a second after the words were out.

  Fuck.

  See, she was getting better at the whole watching-her-mouth thing, but sometimes she couldn’t contain it.

  She turned back to look at Dia, her eyes wide. “She reminds me of him.”

  Jules shot Hanna this warning look, like What the hell are you doing?

  But the corners of Dia’s mouth lifted ever so slightly. “I know,” she said, wistful. “There’s something about her, right? Like the way he was.”

  “Does she know about him?” Hanna said, filter fully disengaged.

  Dia nodded. “As much as she can understand. I show her pictures and stuff,” she said, turning to watch her daughter. “We talk about him.”

  “I can’t believe she’s going to be two,” Jules said, and she called Alexa’s name. “C’mere!”

  Alexa scrunched her face into a frown. “I’m busy!” she called out, and Jules burst out laughing.

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, looking at Dia. “She’s your kid, all right.”

  Dia rolled her eyes but smiled. “Let’s work,” she said.

  This time Hanna paid attention, picking through her notebooks and unearthing words that she barely remembered writing. She might have said she hadn’t if the proof wasn’t right there in front of her, in that scratchy black pen with the looping letters.

  Dia picked out melodies on her guitar and echoed them with her voice, shaping sounds into Hanna’s words. Jules noted down every little change, the lift in the second verse, where Hanna said she wanted to add a fill, added words when Hanna’s weren’t quite perfect.

  Hush, pretty baby

  Haven’t you heard?

  About the fight last night

  The mess your mama don’t like

  I’ll show you where to go

  To find your diamonds and gold—“pearls?”

  And honey, we’ll sleep till it’s hunting time

  Dia tightened her D string and played a line, switched to chords, and sang along. “‘Hush, pretty baby / Haven’t you heard’—like that?” she said. “Kind of a gothic, heavy feel?”

  “I like that,” Hanna said, and she sat up. “With really intense drums, like . . .” She demonstrated, hitting her hands on her knees. “Jules, what do you think?”

  “Yeah, I’d make the bass kind of intense, too,” Jules said, nodding, and they went back and forth with all these different ideas—“Maybe in the bridge have it all disappear, real quiet, and then back to loud?” and “Play that again, but an octave up,” and “Wait, I’ll come in there.”

  It was getting easier, being around Dia and Jules. It was like they were actually—well, not friends, but not enemies. Not actively hating each other.

  She didn’t have to second-guess everything they did, waiting for the punchline, the hidden camera or whatever.

  She was supposed to be there for the music, but sometimes Hanna found herself thinking about more than that—about being friends again. Was that something she wanted, though? Was that ball even in her court?

  Maybe.

  After a few hours Hanna and Jules left and set off walking home. Hanna pushed her hair behind her ear and tried to ignore how badly she needed to cut the dead
ends off, searching for suitable small talk to fill the silence between her and Jules. “That was good, right?”

  “Yeah,” Jules said. “You two didn’t bite each other’s head off, and we actually got some writing done. I give us a B-minus.” And then, with barely a pause: “I want to ask you something. But you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

  Hanna looked at their feet, walking out of sync, and shook her head. She knew exactly what Jules wanted to ask. “We can go there, if you really want,” she said. “You want to know why I stopped drinking, right?”

  Jules paused as a bus roared past, and when it was gone she said, “Actually, I want to know why you started.”

  Hanna took a breath. She had talked so much, at rehab, and that had been good, but it wasn’t like this. It wasn’t telling one of the girls who used to know her better than she knew herself.

  She stopped walking and perched on a low wall outside a pretty house. “I felt all this pressure,” she said, shielding her eyes as she looked up at Jules. “To be this person I wasn’t. My mom was always getting at me about my grades or my hair or something. And I started to feel . . . sad all the time. But I didn’t feel sad when I was drinking, and I could forget the pressure, and I could be this version of myself who didn’t care about anything. And we were always at parties or shows, it was easy access, and it was this thing I could hold on to—when I felt bad, when I was hating myself, I could figure out that it was only five more hours until I could get a drink, and then I could get through those hours.”

  Jules nodded slowly. “Okay,” she said. “So why did you stop?”

  “I wanted to be better,” she said. “That was it, really. I wanted to be proud of myself. But I had nothing to be proud of. I lost my best friends, I lost my music, I made my sister scared of me. I lied all the time. I kept trying to quit and falling back into it. I didn’t like myself when I was drinking, but I didn’t like myself when I wasn’t, either, and at least when I was drunk it was easier to forget. But there’s this thing sometimes, where you think you’ve hit bottom and then you fall a couple hundred feet below that and you’re, like, is this it? Is this me?”

  Lying in another hospital bed. Looking out and locking eyes with Molly, her scared face. The scratch in her throat as she’d tried to say, I’m sorry, Molls, I’m so sorry.

  Is this me?

  She chest hurt at the thought of talking about the Molly of it all, and so she skimmed past it. Not a lie, more an . . . omission of the truth. She’d tell the whole story one day.

  Instead she said, “I really thought about it, if this was going to be me for the rest of my life. How much I didn’t want that. And my parents, they wanted me to go to rehab, and I thought—what’s one more failed attempt? But that time I didn’t fail. So—recovery. Sobriety.” She held her hands out. “Here I am.”

  “Here you are,” Jules said.

  “I counted it out,” Hanna said, and the memory of that first week of rehab flashed so close to the surface. “One hour without a drink. Then an afternoon. A whole day. Seven days. And it hurt, in ways I didn’t know it would. Physically, in my head . . . it’s like this other version of yourself is in there with you, pushing and pushing and pushing you to give in. And when the anxiety hits, the depression, what do you do? The thing you used to make yourself feel better is gone now. You can’t have it.” She exhaled slowly. “But now it’s been four hundred and thirty-four days. And sometimes I think, it would be nice to have a beer, a little something, just to take the edge off. When my mom starts picking at me, when I fail a test, when I hear a song that reminds me of us back then. When I feel like shit and the effort of trying to stay clean feels like a waste of energy because I’m never going to be anything but a fuck-up—my head says, Would it be so bad? Wouldn’t it make you feel better? But it’s never just one drink, not for me. That would be it, and I’d be right back exactly where I don’t want to be. So. I keep counting.”

  Jules looked at her for a moment without saying anything, and Hanna almost began to regret saying any of it. But then Jules shook her head. “Hanna,” she said, “I’m really happy it’s working out for you.”

  Hanna shrugged. “I got myself in, I get myself out. Besides, I still have plenty more changing to do.”

  “Well, we all do,” Jules said. “But, fine, if you won’t be proud of yourself, am I allowed to do it for you?”

  “I am proud of myself,” Hanna said. “Sometimes.”

  I am okay.

  I am not broken.

  I am here.

  Sometimes.

  Jules

  Jules was in a good mood.

  Writing with Hanna and Dia yesterday had been so good, working old parts of her brain that were suddenly wide awake and itching to create. And hanging with Hanna like they were kind-of-friends again—that was cool. On top of that, she was still electric all over from her date with Autumn. From the kissing of Autumn, the holding hands with Autumn, the kissing Autumn again.

  She was maybe in too deep.

  But that didn’t stop her from texting Autumn at the end of her shift at the mall: lunch?

  Autumn’s reply flew back: where?

  Jules tapped her phone against her lips. The Gardens, she wrote back. I’ll bring sandwiches, you bring a smile.

  Autumn: ☺

  The bus ride over gave her plenty of time to overthink things. Like—she hadn’t actually seen Autumn since their date the other night. And she didn’t know what she was supposed to do now—a kiss hello would be way too much, right?

  But would Autumn expect Jules to kiss her again?

  Was she supposed to ask Autumn out again, for a second date, officially?

  Would Autumn ask her?

  Would Autumn kiss her?

  Stop. Over. Thinking.

  She got off the bus and went into the park, found an empty bench next to a cluster of palm trees. She sat and quashed the impulse to rub her sweaty palms up and down the sides of her thighs. Why was she so nervous now?

  Should I hug her?

  This was all new to Jules. She had nothing to compare it to, no expectations of her own to temper. It was times like these she wished she could pick up her phone and text Ciara, ask for her older-wiser-queer-girl wisdom. But that wasn’t possible. Add that to the list of things she regretted, mistakes she’d made and wished she could undo.

  Chill, she told herself as she waited. When she saw Autumn approaching, she waved and was rewarded with Autumn’s smile.

  “Hi.” Autumn smiled, and Jules’s nerves stilled.

  “Hey,” she said, holding a hand above her eyes to shield from the sun. “I got you extra peppers.”

  “My favorite,” Autumn said, and she sat on the bench by Jules’s side. “I’m starving.”

  They ate their sandwiches and talked about nothing in particular—made fun of their manager, Greg, talked a bit about the band. Jules almost told Autumn about the contest, let it slip, but she caught herself and remembered her plan. Tell her when it was over, when (if) (no, when) they had won. She felt giddy at the mere idea of it.

  “So it’s good,” she found herself saying. “Practice and everything. It’s fun.”

  “I have a question,” Autumn said. “How come you picked Dia? Over Hanna?”

  Jules put a hand over her heart like ouch. But it was a fair question. “I knew Dia first,” she said. “She’s like my sister. I loved Hanna, but—Dia was having the baby. Hanna was . . . I was tired of her.” That was the honest truth, even if it wasn’t nice. “It was easier without her. It was easier to be with Dia. It’s shitty, because I never wanted to give up on Hanna, but—how long do you wait? I don’t know.” She rubbed her neck, guilt seeping in. Autumn would think she was terrible now. “I tried, before everything. I did.”

  “I get it,” Autumn said, and then she screwed her face up. “Or I guess I don’t, exactly. But I understand what you’re saying.”

  “You’ll like Dia,” Jules said. “When you meet her.”
r />   “Good,” Autumn said, her smile back.

  Okay, Jules thought. This is good. They were talking and Jules had yet to say or do too much, and Autumn was laughing, and this was all excellent. “The other night,” she said, balling her trash up. “I had a really nice time.”

  “Me too,” Autumn said, but her smile dimmed a little. “Can we talk?”

  “Uh . . .” It slipped out before Jules could stop herself, and her knees started bouncing again. In what world did can we talk ever lead to anything good? “Aren’t we talking now?”

  “I mean, like, talk about us,” Autumn said, and she dipped her chin. “Or, me.”

  “Okay,” Jules said. “What about us? And you? Did I do something wrong? Do you not want to go out again? That’s fine, okay, whatever you want.” Lie—it was most definitely not fine with Jules. This was supposed to be their beautiful beginning, not a messy crash and burn already. So what had Jules done to screw it up?

  “Breathe,” Autumn said with a smile. “You didn’t do anything. I mean, except take me on the best first date I could have asked for. I’m—” She paused. “It was my first date.”

  “Mine, too,” Jules said.

  “Yeah, but, I’m not the first person you’ve dated. Right?” Autumn said. “I didn’t . . . I don’t know what this means. Like, I think I’ve had crushes on other girls before, but I never thought about it too much. But then there’s you, and it feels like so much more. So maybe I’m gay? Or maybe I’m bi. Or maybe I’m something else entirely. Or maybe I don’t even know yet. Am I supposed to know yet?”

  Jules lifted one shoulder. “I don’t know. That’s all yours. No one else has to know or not know what or who you are.”

  “But it matters, right?” Autumn said, and her cheeks were flushed pink. “Does it matter to you? I don’t even know if I’m supposed to talk about this with you, like—is this so neurotic to you? You must think I’m ridiculous.”

  “As if,” Jules said with a laugh. She plucked at the fraying threads in the ripped knees of her jeans, her heart slowing as she realized that this wasn’t Autumn ending things. She just wanted to talk. “I think you’re amazing.”