by Jessie Hilb
“I should what?”
“Hear the way he talks about you.”
The idea that Tate has heard Seth talking about me like that is acid in my stomach rising to my throat.
“I’d prefer not to, thanks.”
“So why’d you do it?”
“I don’t know, Tate. Why are you asking?”
“Because I care about you, Aden. Isn’t that obvious?”
I want to say it so badly. Here. Both of us really sober. It’s on the tip of my tongue, about to roll out of my mouth and knock him over. Forever changing whatever this is.
“I’m in love with you, Tate. There. I said it in plain daylight. I’m not drunk. Who cares what I did or didn’t do with Seth Bernum, because I’m in love with you.” Now it’s out there. Maybe I’ve ruined everything, but I can’t do this anymore. My breath is roped to my stomach, suspended midair. We’re silent, and I’m not sure I remember how to breathe, because here it comes. The part where Tate puts me out of my misery. The part where our “fast friendship” ends, because who can hold this much love without hating it or returning it?
Tate doesn’t break eye contact with me. His eyes are murky in this light.
“Your turn.”
“My turn for what, Ade? I’m in a relationship with Maggie. You know this.”
“I know,” I say. “But tell me this isn’t real.”
I’m on the brink of tears. Maybe this thing with Tate is in my head after all. Maybe whatever he says next makes me feel like the fool that I am.
His inhale is sharp. “I don’t have to. This”—he grabs both of my hands—“is real.”
His words are a shocking validation. Painful and liberating.
“I want more,” I say.
“I know.” He’s still holding my hands and I’m afraid to break eye contact because I know that when I do, this moment will be over and I’ll wonder if it was a dream.
Dad
Cupboards. Doors. Tools. Everything is crashing in the basement. It’s thunder. It’s rage. I hate this. It’s been four days since Jon was caught on campus buying weed, and we’ve been waiting for the fallout. Except Jon isn’t home. I am.
I weigh my options, knowing I could avoid this and let him do what he always does—rage, sulk, rinse, repeat. But I think we both know we need a change.
I stand at the foot of the stairs and listen to him. He’s swearing, saying awful, awful things. As I stand there listening to him, I’m drawn to the heat of his temper, and momentarily, I want to join him. My stomach twists into a knot, my father’s anger shaking me. God, it would feel so good to throw something and watch it shatter.
I find a time to swing the door to his workroom open in between crashes and swears.
Breathe. “Dad?”
“What, Aden?”
“Is everything okay?” It’s a stupid question, I know. I realize I didn’t have a plan coming down here—I just couldn’t keep avoiding him, his anger, or whatever’s underneath it.
My dad looks around the room. He’s made a mess. He tosses a screw into a box and sits down on the cement floor, my presence deflating him. He’s a big man, my dad. But he looks so like a little boy, crumpled on the cement floor of his workroom.
“Is this about Jon, Dad?”
He looks up at me and then shakes his head, not in disagreement, but like I couldn’t possibly understand.
I push on him. “Is it?”
“I guess so,” he says finally, the words having let the remaining air out of his fury.
“Why are you so angry?” I know the question is loaded.
“I don’t . . .” His voice trails off and our eyes meet, his head still heavy, but cocked as if a question has just formed in his head.
“What?”
“It’s just . . .” He chuckles low and soft. And when he says, “I’m not sure it’s anger,” I understand why he’s laughed without humor. We both know it’s time to stop calling all of his feelings anger, even if that’s how they’re expressed.
“What is it, then?”
He shrugs. He doesn’t have the right word yet.
“Dad, are you worried about Jon?”
He nods once because that’s it. My dad is so worried about Jon.
“Me too.” Even though it doesn’t fix anything, there’s relief in naming the truth. “What were you looking for?”
“My wrench. The one with the red handle.”
“Oh. Want me to help?”
He grunts in lieu of answering. I look under a table against the wall and find it immediately. I wonder how long it took him to blow a gasket on this.
I hand him the wrench, and he takes it, slumped in defeat. “What were you working on, Dad?” I realize I haven’t asked him about his project in months. His last big project, a horse commissioned by a hardware store customer, is gone.
For the first time since I’ve been in my dad’s space, we look at each other. He motions his head in the direction of his smaller worktable.
On the table sits half of a silver watch, taken apart, the small gears and wheels piled together next to the actual project. As I study the pieces of silver and other metal that have been melted and pieced together, I see it. It’s a music note pendant, about two inches in length, the insides of the watch decorating it.
“What . . .” I start to say.
“Graduation present.” He’s tired now. “The watch was your mom’s.”
Without looking at me again, he starts collecting the tools on the floor, putting them back in their large box.
“I’m going to love it.”
He gives me a half smile, but his eyes look lighter. I stand in the doorway for a second, watching him put things away, thinking how much easier it is to mask sadness with fury, but how much more it costs.
Me and Tate
They say timing is everything. I’m not sure it’s everything, but it must be something. Like meeting Tate. When I’m this and he’s that. But here we are. Me and him and Maggie and Marissa and Jon. My dad. Here we all are just trying to hold it together enough to make it through tomorrow a little more gracefully than yesterday. At least that’s what I’m trying to do. It won’t get better or more graceful or even different unless I make it so.
I think about Tate and the way I ripped open my heart a few weeks ago and showed him the contents. I told him I loved him. And he didn’t run or cringe, or even pull away; we’ve carried on, the electricity sparking and snapping between us. He can hold so much of me without rejecting me, but can he love me? It burns that he won’t show me more of him, but I’m starting to think that maybe there’s room for change.
So tonight will be different. I will be different.
Tonight it snows. The kind of snow that silences everything it touches. I’m grateful for the hush. I’m grateful for the early arrival of darkness.
I wrap a red scarf around my neck before leaving to get Tate. The night and the red and the snow make me feel beautiful. Tonight it snows and I’m beautiful.
Even though I love Tate, there’s this part of me that is starting to hate him. But I love him much more than I actually hate him, so I let myself go to him. I let myself make this mistake again and again and again. It’s become a way of being cruel to myself. It’s a way of getting my fix. But it’s never enough. Tate is my addiction.
When I pull into Tate’s drive and flash my lights, the door opens and he runs out barefoot, wearing jeans and a sweater that makes his eyes the color of the storm clouds. I roll down the window.
“Come in,” he says. “My mom just made a batch of hot cocoa.”
“Cocoa?” He sounds like a three-year-old, but he’s running back to the house, and I have no choice but to turn the car off and follow.
Tate’s mom is warm and laughing and light, like she was at the coffee shop, like Tate. Tate’s dad is working at the hospital, noticeably absent.
For a minute, as I watch his mom move around the house in a warm fleece bathrobe, serving us hot chocolate in thick, ar
tsy mugs, I let myself imagine she’s my mom. But I don’t linger there, because I don’t really want Mrs. Newman to be my mom. I want my mom to be my mom.
She tells me to call her Sandy, and so I do. She turns on vintage holiday music in the background while the three of us talk idly about classes and teachers. This feels so normal. I wonder why we’re listening to Christmas music when Tate and his family are so clearly Jewish.
I look at Tate. “So, uh, Christmas music?”
“What? Jews don’t like a little holiday spirit?”
“I didn’t say that.”
He smiles, nudging me with his elbow. “We’re weird, I know. It’s family winter tradition.”
Tate gestures toward the couch, and I sit down as he eases in next to me, almost touching my body with his, his mom in a love seat catty-corner to us. I sit with my feet tucked under me, hands wrapped around the warm mug, Tate consuming the space around me. The sweet smell of chocolate and the warmth of Tate’s body in his woolly sweater leaning into me is—I could close my eyes and freefall like this forever.
“So tell me more about you, Aden,” Sandy says. She takes a slow sip of her cocoa, which I saw her spike with Bailey’s before she sat down.
“What do you want to know?”
I’m not sure if she’s putting me on the spot or if she genuinely wants to know me.
“What do you love?”
Tate. I almost say it because his name has become synonymous with love in my obsessive head, but instead I take my time. What do I love, not who.
“I love music. But you already know that. I love math, particularly calculus, but you know that, too. I don’t know.”
“Ade’s a lover,” Tate says.
I elbow him. Thanks.
“Ow. I meant that in a good way. You are. You’re passionate about so many things. It’s hard to pin you down. You’re a lover.”
I give him a sideways glance.
“That’s a wonderful way to be,” Sandy says. “But I would’ve guessed that from the moment we met. Some people are passionate in general. I’m like that, too. It’s exhausting, isn’t it?”
I smile. “Completely.”
“What do you love?” I ask her.
“That’s easy. Art.”
“Maybe this is a dumb question, but why do you love art?”
Tate smiles at me and nudges my arm ever so slightly. A secret’s passed between us. He likes my question, or the way I’m interacting with his mom, or the warmth of this moment.
“I love art because it’s a way to express and preserve feelings that might otherwise be forever lost. When that thought or feeling or perception is expressed and interpreted by someone who experiences the art, it’s made bigger than it was to begin with. And over time, art, collectively, tells us more about who we are as human beings than anything else.”
“That makes perfect sense. But isn’t there art in almost everything?”
Tate and Sandy exchange a look.
“Yes.” Tate answers my question.
“I believe that if it’s an authentic form of expression, no matter the medium, then yes. There is art in so much that we do. But in my opinion, art is made with purpose, intent to express or communicate, if that makes sense.” Tate’s mom says this gently, smiling because it’s assumed we speak the same language. And we do.
I think of my dad in the basement building and welding. There is art in all of that.
I could swear Tate is leaning harder than he was before, but it’s slight, and I’m drowning and swirling and losing myself in this moment.
“We’re gonna go to my room and hang for a bit,” Tate says, hopping off the couch.
“We are?” I think that’s me talking.
“Okay, sweetie,” Sandy says. She gets up. “I’m heading to bed.” She squeezes his arm and gives me a warm smile.
“G’night, Mom.”
“Good night,” I say.
Tate’s room is in the basement. When we get there, he says, “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
He bounds out of the room, and I sit down on his unmade bed. It smells musty, but it’s Tate’s must. I consider lying down, putting my head on the pillows, pulling the Tate-blankets over me. I don’t. Tate returns quickly with the bottle of Bailey’s his mom was using for her cocoa.
“Don’t you think your mom will notice? What about your dad?”
“Nah,” he says. “She rarely drinks it. And there’s another full bottle of this stuff in the liquor cabinet. My dad will get home in the middle of the night or not all. And when he does get here, he’s a zombie. He’ll sleep into the day.”
“Okay.”
What does this mean? I will myself not to say anything because it might take the magic out of this moment, but if I drink here, I can’t drive home.
“What?” Tate says, taking a swig of the sweet liquor straight from the bottle.
“Are you sure this is a good idea? I mean, how will I get home?” Magic broken?
“It’s no problem. We’ll just tell my mom we fell asleep talking. She won’t ask questions. Promise.”
I raise my eyebrows.
“She won’t ask questions?”
“Nope. She’s really cool about this kind of thing. She trusts me.”
Trusts him to what? Not have sex with girls when they’re alone in his bedroom all night? Not that sex is where this is going, but . . .
Tate hands me the bottle. I take a drink. It’s sweet but strong, burning on the way down my throat. Then I text my dad that I’m staying at Marissa’s again tonight. My insides are cringing because if I drink I’ll be stuck here with Tate all night, and though it’s all I want, maybe it’s not all I want.
Tate turns on the Shins. “Kissing the Lipless”—our song. He grabs my hands, and we dance around the room together, free, singing at the top of our lungs. We’re buried in the basement, Tate’s mom on the third level. I’m hoping she can’t hear us. I try not the think about the lyrics of the song—about wearing your heart on your sleeve for someone and burying a friendship.
I flop onto his bed, winded. He sits down on the floor next to the bed and leans his head back. My hair hangs off the bed next to Tate. He reaches for my hair and runs his fingers through the ends. I’m floating, present but out of control because part of me is evaporating with each slow stroke of Tate’s hand in my hair. I’m not sure if we’re both drunk, because the wild feelings I have for Tate are convoluting the alcohol. Or the other way around.
When we make eye contact, I know. He knows. Something at once small and huge passes between us. Then his mouth is on mine and we are kissing because, finally, finally, we’re not fighting it or questioning it or pulling away. We are letting go together because if we don’t . . . If we don’t, I will die by not-kissing.
Tate’s hands are on either side of my face, and he’s gently pushing me backwards. I’m on my back, his body pressing into me. Our mouths together. His mouth against mine is everything a first kiss is supposed to be. It’s soft and hard, earnest yet unassuming. He tastes like Bailey’s and butter and salt. This kiss is saying everything he’s never said. I’ve fallen into a black hole—lost myself in this strange mix of dark and light, and I’m not sure I’ll ever recover.
We are kissing, our bodies pretzeling together. It’s like we’ve done it a thousand times before, but it’s also new and beautifully awkward. It’s loving him hard and soft. It’s fingertips exploring faces. It’s knowing each other’s depths. He traces his hand along my collarbone, and I thank God for my collarbone, a beautiful, sensual spot on my body where neck and chest converge.
He rolls on top of me and puts his hand on my stomach and then reaches around my back, pressing our bodies into each other. Everything I ever thought was true about my body just isn’t. Because here in Tate’s arms, his hands, I am liberated. I’m not too fat. I’m nothing that isn’t enough. I’m just a spirit and a body and in that I am enough.
We vacillate between the intensity of loving each other ri
ght here and now, to laughing.
Everything is perfect except for one thing. Right in the middle of this intense joy is a piercing sadness I can’t name.
***
I have no idea what time it is when I wake up, but I am alone. I’m alone in Tate’s bed. I touch my face—I can feel his hands on my cheeks before he put his mouth to mine. It’s like moving from sea to land. The waves are still moving my body—we’re still kissing.
I listen for the sound of a flushing toilet, something to say he’s coming back. That he hasn’t left me alone. But somehow I knew from the moment I woke that he’s not in the bathroom. He’s not coming back to lie next to me and kiss again. He’s gone, and I’m alone.
Something inside me breaks.
Leaving Tate’s house alone and broken at five in the morning is bitter. I am a fool. I gather my things from his bedroom floor and suck in breath after sour breath, forcing the tears down into my belly.
It’s not snowing anymore, but the hush of it lingers here, made loud by the sound of my mitten against the windshield as I try to deice it without a scraper.
A light comes on in Tate’s house and he pulls a curtain aside. He doesn’t move when I look up and spot him standing in the window watching me. He is watching me struggle with my mitten and the ice. Tears are spilling freely down my face. Tate just stands there watching. A tall, unfeeling shadow in the window.
Marissa
She’s been wearing dark eyeliner all week. We are the same, me and Marissa. Both fools. Both sad and alone. Both keeping things to ourselves. We’ve drifted from each other.
“Just come to Ike’s with me,” I say as I walk by my best friend, who’s staring into her empty locker.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
She orders a mocha. I’m tempted to get a black coffee to even us out, but I’m not that interested in making a statement. It’ll be two mochas. Extra whip.