by Rose, Katia
“Dylan!”
“Just kidding.” He winks at me before shifting around so he can pitch them into the dumpster a few metres down the alley. “He shoots, he scores!”
I follow his lead and manage to sink the shot too.
“Do you need anything?” he asks after applauding my aim. “Water? A snack?”
I shake my head. “No, uh, I’m good.”
Now that we don’t have the marshmallows to distract us, the awkwardness begins to settle in—at least for me. Dylan looks perfectly content to sit here in silence, but I know that’s probably an act for my benefit. He must be wondering what he just walked in on and what the hell is wrong with me.
“Thank you,” I begin. “For...I don’t really know how to describe what we just did, but thank you. It really helped.”
“Anytime.” He stretches his arms out behind him, lacing his hands behind his back before letting them drop to his sides again. It’s something I’ve seen him do often enough that it’s a thing—a Dylan thing—and it makes me feel a pang of something like longing and possession all mixed up in one.
“Do you need some space?” he asks. “I can go back inside.”
“No.” My answer comes out quick and sharp enough to surprise us both. I try again in a softer voice. “No, um, I just need a minute, and then I’ll come back inside with you.”
The thumping of the music and the muted rumble of voices fills the quiet. Above us, a few diehard moths that have managed to survive the early October chill flit around the spotlight, casting shadows on the alley walls. I tug my coat closer around me, glad I thought to bring it out here.
“You’re probably wondering what just happened.” I break the silence, pulling my legs in closer so I can rest my chin on my knees.
“You don’t have to explain,” he answers calmly, “unless you want to.”
I was bracing myself for questions I wasn’t sure I could answer, but his openness to taking whatever I can give him, to walking away with nothing if that’s all I’m capable of, makes me feel like I can share more than I thought.
There’s no pressure from him, only support. He asks for me to share my story the way he used to ask us to share our poems in his workshops. It didn’t matter how much or little we had to say, only that it was sincere and honest.
No small talk.
“I have these...” I stop myself before I can call them ‘episodes’ or ‘incidents’ or any other watered down name I give them to stop myself from facing what they really are. “Anxiety attacks. I have anxiety attacks sometimes.”
It’s pathetic. I have so little control over myself that my own body can attack me. The emotions and situations other people take on as part of daily life leave me curled up in a ball on the floor, fighting losing battles with my own brain.
“I didn’t always have them,” I explain, staring at the tips of Dylan’s shoes again. “I didn’t have any of this. I...I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder back in April, right after I got back from England. It’s the reason I left England.”
I didn’t plan on saying so much, but it’s all so tangled up together, it’s hard to know where to start and stop.
“Sorry. You didn’t ask to hear all this. We should just go inside.”
“I asked to hear whatever you want to tell me,” Dylan reminds me, “and we can stay out here for as long as you like. DeeDee’s probably dancing on the bar by now, and if we go inside, I’m going to have to tell her to get down. I really don’t want to be seen trying and failing to get my employee off the bar in front of an entire room of people.”
I chuckle. “Yeah, I doubt anyone could make DeeDee do something she doesn’t actually want to do.”
“You can say that again.” We laugh together for a moment before he leads me back to the subject at hand. “So, you left England...”
“Yeah. It...I just...” I have to pause and swallow. This is still the hardest part of the story to tell: the admission that I failed, I gave up, I packed up and came home instead of fighting harder. “I think it all started right before I went to England, and it just got worse and worse while I was there. I’d find myself worrying about things I’d never worried about before, and I just couldn’t stop. I couldn’t get a grip on myself. I blamed it on the stress of university, on being in a new country, but there was this part of me that kept saying everything was wrong, that I’d made the wrong choice by even going there in the first place.”
I stop, letting the memory of that night just before I left for school hit me all over again. I can still feel his arms around me, still feel his breath on my skin as he comforted me and told me something about choices I never forgot.
Sometimes the only lens you get to see through is a rear-view mirror, and you can’t put the car in reverse.
When I look at my years at Brighton University through that mirror, all I see is a collision, a clusterfuck of twisted metal and acrid smoke.
“I don’t know if I even wanted to go to Brighton. It’s what everyone wanted for me, what I’d told them I wanted for so long. It was my dream, but then when I found out I had it, I...I started rethinking everything. By then it was too late to back out. I couldn’t quit. Everyone was so happy for me, so excited, and I...”
“And you weren’t,” Dylan finishes for me. “You weren’t happy and excited.”
I don’t know how much he remembers about that night, if the certainty in his voice comes from the memory of me sobbing in his arms, but I can’t think about that now. I can’t sit here questioning what the night meant to him, or I’ll never finish saying what I need to say.
“I was the farthest thing from happy and excited,” I agree, “and it only got worse. The anxiety attacks started sometime in my second year. I didn’t know what was happening to me. They’re...they’re more than stress. Sometimes there’s not even a reason or an explanation for them. Your brain just turns on you. When the first one hit, I was alone in my dorm, and I thought I was dying. I really did. I thought I was going to just die right there on the floor.”
“Renee...” His voice cracks as he says my name, and my own is going hoarse, threatening to break, but I have to push through. I have to get this out.
“By third year, I was skipping classes because of it. My grades were slipping. I broke up with this guy I was seeing because I just couldn’t handle emotions anymore. I barely had any friends. I couldn’t be around people because I would worry too much. I worried about everything, all the time. When I failed an assignment for the first time in my life, I decided that was it. Enough was enough. I had to get my shit together. I forced myself to go to this lecture I’d been skipping for weeks. It was in this big auditorium, and about ten minutes into the class, I just...I lost it. Right there in front of everyone. I don’t remember much of it, but I know I ended up on the floor. They called an ambulance. They evacuated the whole room. Everyone was just staring as they left. People were literally running away from me. The whole trip to the hospital is kind of hazy when I think about it now. The first thing I remember clearly after that is lying in my bed in my apartment with the lights off, shaking under the blankets and wondering if I’d ever be able to leave my room again.”
There it is: my darkest moment. The most painful memory I have. The absolute worst day of my life.
“I only had one year left, just one and I would have gotten my degree, but I couldn’t do it. My mom had to fly over and help me deal with moving back here. This summer was...hard. I just felt so weak, so sick of myself.”
“You are not weak.”
His tone is harsh enough to startle me. I look up to find him staring at me with a gaze so intense it’s almost cruel.
“You are not weak, Renee.”
A whole host of replies pop into my head:
You don’t know what you’re talking about.
You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen me then.
You’re wrong.
I don’t say any of them. The answer I give him comes from somewhere deep
inside me, from some hidden room I’m only just learning to unlock. Its door refuses to stay shut tonight.
“Thanks.” I don’t drop my eyes again. “I...I know.”
He blinks at me in surprise, like it’s the last thing both of us were expecting me to say.
“I’m not weak. I may have been too scared to make some hard choices, but these past few months—these past few weeks especially—I’ve been...changing. Growing. Getting stronger.” I let out a bitter laugh. “I know tonight probably isn’t the best example of that, but I’m here, right? I’m still standing...or sitting on a milk crate, I guess. I’m still going to show up for work tomorrow. I’m still going to go to my therapy appointments and take yoga classes and do whatever it takes to make me feel like myself again. This place...” I glance at the wall of the bar behind me before continuing. “This place has helped me feel more like myself. Something about this feels good. It feels right.”
My eyes lock with his on the last word. He’s staring at me with an expression I can’t place, but if it wasn’t totally absurd, I’d say he’s watching me with something close to wonder. The air between us gets thicker as the silence stretches, the space that separates where we’re sitting seeming too big and too small all at once.
We’re magnets again, our poles shifting, the force between us pushing and pulling in equal measure as we figure out and fight against what we want.
Him.
That’s what I want. I’ve just split myself open in front of him, and I can’t hide what’s in my heart anymore. I want him closer.
I’m not weak. Tonight I’m strong enough to reach for what I want.
Twelve
Dylan
INCANTATION: A chant or series of words used to suggest magic or ritual
Renee pushes herself to her feet in front of me. The spotlight behind her silhouettes her shoulders and turns her hair into a halo framing her face. As I sit looking up at her, I realize I’ve never truly known what it means to be in awe of someone before. She’s perfect—not because she’s flawless, but because she won’t allow herself to be stopped by her flaws. She carries them with her, refuses to bow under their weight. I meant what I said it to her: she’s the farthest thing from weak.
I could sit here looking at her all night, but she seems ready to go inside. As irrational as it is, a part of me hoped we really would be out here all night. There’s so much more I want to say to her, so much more I want to know: where she’s been, what she’s seen, who she is. Whenever we start talking, I end up wishing time had an emergency brake just like an elevator. I wish we could hang in a suspended moment together and talk and talk and talk until we’d said everything we could possibly say, until I knew her inside out and the only thing left would be to reach for each other and speak with our bodies.
I push myself to my feet. It feels dangerous to even look at her, but I can’t stop staring.
“Dylan.” She says it like a prayer, but I don’t know what she’s praying for. “Dylan, just before I went to England, there was this one night...I don’t even know if you remember it. It was an open mic night, and after—”
“You were wearing white.” I have to cut her off. I can’t handle her thinking it’s possible I could have forgotten. “That night, you were wearing this white dress.”
Her eyes go wide before they soften. I notice her hands twitch at her sides.
“I never forgot the things you said to me. I also never got to thank you for them.” Her voice lowers until it’s hardly more than a whisper. “Thank you, Dylan.”
I don’t think we’ve moved, but somehow we seem closer together. How else would I be noticing how thick her eyelashes are, or how perfectly symmetrical the swell of her bottom lip is?
“I always wondered something,” she continues when it’s clear I can’t speak. “That night, did you...Were you...Did you want to kiss me?”
I wanted to do more than kiss her. I wanted to breathe her in. I wanted to inhale her.
“It would have been a bad idea,” I manage to get out through my clenched jaw. She’s staring up at me through those damn eyelashes, and all I can think about is her mouth, her neck, that inch of her gorgeous bare shoulders I can see before they meet with the edge of her coat.
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
Everything grinds to a halt.
Shit, shit, shit.
“I’m glad you didn’t,” she repeats, “because I wasn’t ready for you to kiss me then, not like I am now.”
I start mentally cursing for an entirely different reason as she blinks up at me.
“Do you want to kiss me right now?”
“Renee—”
“Please. Just answer me. I need to know.”
No small talk.
That was my only rule when I taught poetry. It’s the same rule I let guide me when things get tough, when it’s easier to run away, to avoid saying what needs to be said or hearing what needs to be heard.
Anything I say now would be small talk. Any explanation I tried to make would fall short of the mark, and maybe I should be taking a step back instead of a step forward, but I can’t answer her with anything but honesty, not after what she’s shared with me tonight.
So I kiss her.
I cradle her neck with one hand and grip her waist with the other. Finally, almost three and a half years after the first time I ever imagined doing it, I press my lips to hers.
I intend to go slow. I intend to keep it short and sweet, to let her take the lead, but the second she gasps into my mouth, I fucking lose it. She tastes so good, impossibly good as her lips part and I sweep my tongue along them. Her soft moan travels all the way through my body. It makes my blood rush, makes my hand tighten in her hair, makes my cock twitch where she’s only inches from pressing her body against it. She flips every switch I have.
Her hands clutch the fabric of my button-down, pulling me closer as my tongue explores more of her mouth. The sounds she makes are better than anything I could have imagined. If I didn’t know I’d take her crashing down with me, I’d be falling to my knees.
I draw in a sharp breath when her hands slip behind my neck and her chest is thrust against mine. Her body feels so soft against me, curved in all the right places. It’s taking everything I have not to slip my hands under her shirt. I need more of her skin.
“You have no idea what you do to me.” My admission comes out on a sigh when she breaks away to gasp for air.
“I’ve thought about this for so long.”
I groan as her hips meet mine.
“You’re sure this is okay?”
“Kiss me again,” she answers.
I can’t get enough of her taste. We end up backed against the wall, her hands still around my neck, mine digging into her hips through her jeans.
“Dylan.” She pulls back enough to look me in the eyes. “I want this.”
I know from the sound of her voice that she’s not speaking in the heat of the moment. She’s saying this to slow us down, to make us both stop and accept what’s happening here.
“I want this with you. I didn’t think I was ready to be with someone, but I’m never going to be ready for anyone, myself included, unless I try. It’s not just going to magically happen one day, and what I’ve realized these past few weeks is that I’m ready to start trying.”
“Renee, you’re...” I struggle to find the words. “You’re amazing. Everything about you, it just...astounds me. I...”
She bites her lip, the start of a shy smile playing across them when I trail off and just continue shaking my head.
“You astound me too. We can continue astounding each other.”
I press my forehead to hers. “I would really fucking love that.”
There should be a ‘but’ at the end of that sentence. I know there should be. I’m still searching for a reason I can’t seem to find when the sound of the door swinging open stops me.
By some miracle of fate, we’re standing behind it and have time to jump away
from each other before the cook I left inside steps into the alley.
“Shit!” He jumps about a foot in the air when Renee and I emerge from the door’s shadow. “You scared the shit out of me!”
“Sorry, man.” I really fucking hope my shirt is still on straight. “What’s up?”
“I was gonna head out for the night. Just wanted to let you know.”
“Cool. Yes. Thanks for staying late.” I flash him a double thumbs up—an actual double thumbs up, like a complete idiot—and he waves to us both before leaving.
Renee bursts out laughing as soon as the door swings shut.
“Did you just give him a double thumbs up?”
“It was a stressful situation!” I protest, but I’m laughing too.
“We should probably go inside,” Renee announces once we’ve calmed down. “My underage sister is in there and hell-bent on getting drunk tonight. I left her with my friend, but I should relieve her of the burden.”
“Yeah, sounds like you might be needed in there.”
Neither of us moves. I don’t know exactly what opening that door will do, but I do know we’ll be stepping through into something entirely different than what we’ve been.
There’s no going back. There’s before that kiss, and there’s after.
“I meant what I said.” Her gaze doesn’t waver from mine. I see fear there, but I also see courage. Determination. Passion.
She’s a lioness.
“I want this,” she tells me, her expression softening, displaying the barest flash of vulnerability.
I mean it as much as her when I answer, “I want this too.”
She reaches for the handle, and we step through the door.
Thirteen
Dylan
CADENCE: The natural rhythm of speech or poetry without an intentional rhyme scheme
Chance the Rapper blasts through my speaker as I rinse the shampoo out of my hair. I’ve been listening to his discography nonstop since that day Renee had ‘Same Drugs’ playing at Taverne Toulouse. He’s one of those artists I always find myself coming back to. The guy’s got talent. Like Renee said, he’s got that thing.