“I’m sorry.”
You were crying again and this time, I wanted to cry with you. It was getting harder for me to see you like this. You were a fragile shell of your former self and I was stuck with the responsibility of holding the leftover pieces of you together.
Not that I minded. I would have done anything to have a place in your life again. But your misery stuck by you like a shadow and no matter what I did, I couldn’t completely chase it away.
“You have no reason to be sorry,” I said.
“I know what I do to you. We don’t have to pretend,” you replied.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
You cracked a smile and the world seemed lighter. “Do you like it when I ignore you at school?”
Your tears dried at this point so your words didn’t hurt as much as they should.
“I’m lonely without you,” I admitted. Lonely was an understatement. I was utterly untethered from everything good the world had to offer in your absence.
“I’m here.” You grabbed my hand. “I haven’t left you. Things have been so crazy at school and at home. I barely get the chance to see you.”
Screams from the house across the street filtered into the conversation. You winced at the familiar voices. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but you understood every word.
“My boyfriend has also been having a rough time,” you added. “He’s been struggling with precalc and basketball tryouts are coming up.”
In my room, he was always “the boyfriend,” never Harry. A constant reminder of what I couldn’t have with you. It made him sacred, never speaking his name.
I thought it made you feel less guilty when you kissed me. Because wasn’t that what you really came to my room for? To do those things that made us more than friends?
It certainly wasn’t to crowd around my beat-up laptop watching movies, but you liked doing that too. Swaddled in my spare gray blanket and munching on imported mochi-covered strawberries, you were soothed. We watched marathons of mermaid movies and sea life documentaries, anything that made you smile.
You planned to join the swim team, becoming an athletic power couple with Michael. Your dreams unfolded before me like a slick brochure, a gleaming vision board of the future. A full sports scholarship to a big-named UC, college sweethearts in Greek life invited to every social event, a high-paying job you didn’t hate, and two-and-a-half kids behind a white picket fence.
I didn’t see myself in any of these life events beyond being your long-distance best friend and maid of honor. And that was if I remained your best friend after all of this.
The thought of you getting married made me uneasy. I doubt your husband would sit back while you dragged me to bed. Whatever we had here, I knew deep in my heart that we couldn’t do this forever.
At some point in the night when the movies were finished and the snacks were gone, you were yourself again. Which meant you dropped all pretenses, every reason you gave for visiting me dissolving in the dark. Everything that mattered happened in the dark.
I switched off the lamp and whispered “goodnight,” but that was also an act, my contribution to the theatrics. As soon as the world was bathed in shadow, your mouth found mine. It was instinctual, absent of the usual teenage fumbling. I hardly had time to settle into the blankets before you reached for me.
Low-hanging fruit wasn’t the right term for it. I was worse than that because I already fell from the tree, fresh and begging to be picked. I was a windfall, waiting for the farmer to judge if I was too bruised for eating.
It didn’t matter to you. As your teeth scraped my neck and nicked my skin, I knew you were too hungry to see me as damaged goods. Most of my bruises came from you anyway.
You left a valley of hickeys beneath my shirt, each one more darker and pleasurable than the last. You were good at kissing. It was a mystery to me as to why until I remembered you had practice.
Somehow that didn’t kill the mood. If anything, that made me kiss you harder.
I wasn’t allowed to kiss your neck or anywhere visible, especially if I had no intention of being gentle. I left my bites on your breasts and thighs, areas your boyfriend were too shy to explore. It made me laugh inwardly that Harry didn’t know how to love you properly. If he did, maybe you wouldn’t have sought me out for comfort.
It was the only time in my life I thanked the universe for making clumsy heterosexual boys.
As you twitched beneath me, breathless and warm, I wondered if I could call what we had love. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for you. You didn’t have to come to my bed crying for me to risk everything I was to make you happy.
I should have been ashamed for making myself so easy. And yet, this was you. The warm caramel of light and sugar in my life. The only person who knew me and still cared for what I was.
We kissed like our lives depended on it. I became intimate with the terrain of your body. Someone could blindfold me and I would still know where that sensitive area behind your ear was or exactly where to bite.
It was 4 a.m. by the time you fell asleep in my arms. I didn’t know if it counted as night or day, but I did know that the sky was dark. I stroked your hair and kissed your forehead, every touch a plea to remain like this forever.
Thanks to you, I was losing sleep. I should have sank into my dreams beside you, but nothing my subconscious could conjure would beat the sight of you in my bed slumbering peacefully.
When dawn came, you would leave and the night we spent together would be forgotten. Staying awake was my way of holding the sand in the hourglass, praying that the future wouldn’t come. You were mine when the stars came out, but his when the sun broke.
In those hours that I held you, I wished that I was someone else. If I were a boy, at least I would have a chance of dating you. Maybe I’d even be big enough to fight your boyfriend.
Another delirious fantasy.
The digital display of my alarm clock burned my retinas. I wasn’t keeping track of the sleep I was getting since it was so little, but I thought I averaged a solid two hours per day. A good number since you made a habit of coming over every night.
But that day, there was no sleep for me. I stared at the ceiling, numb as a corpse, while you quietly left my bed and the sky brightened. My eyes traveled to the boob light, which was starting to look more like an eye by the way it stared at me.
“What?”
The beady thing at the center of the light bore into me. I thought about getting up to smash it, to destroy the thing that seemed to be judging me more by the second. I imagined the glass raining from above and the countless little cuts on my body. Blood would pool beneath me. Maybe you’d even swim in it, but by then I would be gone and unfit for kissing.
And I really wanted to kiss you again.
I barely managed to stay awake as my mother drove me to school, her usual remarks about my clothes fading away into a sleep-deprived fog. I snuck a coffee in before class started, trying not to think about what you were doing with Michael as he drove you to school.
Evan walked me to class, energy drink in hand. Apparently neither of us were getting enough sleep. We gave each other sleepy nods as he told me about how coffee no longer helped him stay awake.
“Keep up the morning brew and eventually, you’re going to need something stronger,” he said sagely.
“But I don’t drink mine with milk.”
“Of course you don’t. Let me guess: black and with a hint of sugar?”
I ignored his quip. “Give me a few days and I’ll stop drinking it.”
He halted in his step. “Nana, it’s been a month. Don’t you think if you wanted to stop, it would have happened already?”
Has it really been that long? I sipped my coffee, enjoying the flavor.
“I’ll quit eventually.”
We exchanged glances and a silent conversation happened between our eyes.
You’re addicted, his face said, his mouth flattened into a straight line.
No, I’m not. My brows creased in denial.
But something else passed between us, a question we both wanted to ask.
Why aren’t you getting enough sleep? Neither of us gave an answer.
8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNm9L4GYlEd
