The Edge of Juniper (21 page)

“Let’s talk about it, then.  Let’s make plans.  I have lots of ideas.”

“In two weeks I will be officially told that my parents are splitting up, and my life will have no predictability.  I can’t plan for anything.”

“Well, we don’t have to make plans.  I don’t need things to be predictable.  I’m comfortable just taking what comes.”

“I’m not.”

“What makes you so sure your parents are getting a divorce, anyway?  What happened?”

“They’re not staying together.  I think I knew it from the moment they told me it was a possibility.  It was something about the way they said it wouldn’t affect their trip.  They’re the kind of people who need to believe they’ve wrung all the water out of a washcloth before they call it dry; that they’ve done every last thing possible in every last situation so they can rest easy, sure they never make a bad choice.  But I think I knew from the start it was a let’s-make-sure trip, not a let’s-fix-things trip.”

He kept rubbing my back, and it was reaching the point where it felt more irritating than good, so I shirked him off and scooted a foot away.

“I’m sorry.  About your parents.”

“So I just have the two weeks left.”

“What should we do with those two weeks?”

“Nothing.”

He leaned forward and twisted his body to try to see my face, but I was sitting hunched over my knees with my hair a long curtain between us.  “Fay, what’s going on?  Why shouldn’t we do anything with the time we have left?”

His voice was still calm and he didn’t seem to understand how serious I was, which upset me further.  I wanted him to lose his composure, to reflect the disarray I felt.

“Because, Malcolm, I don’t think it makes sense for us to stay together.”

“What does that mean?  It doesn’t make sense?  You’re breaking up with me?”  Finally, a hint of fear, the same fear that was washing over me.

“I think breaking up would be the rational choice, yes.”

Malcolm moved to the row below me and sat on the bench where my feet rested.  He lifted my legs, slipped off my flip-flops, and put my feet in his lap.  His big, warm hands encapsulated them and held them tight.  He looked up into the cave of my hair, where my face was hidden.  “It’s not possible to use the word
rational
when talking about the two of us breaking up.”

“You know what’s not possible?  A teenage relationship lasting forever.  People falling in love and staying in love.  Me knowing how to love somebody right.  Me trusting anyone ever again who is supposed to always stay the same. Me—”

He dropped my feet in an instant and grabbed my head, bringing me to his chest.  He crushed me with that hug, crushed my body to his, and crushed my heart into bits.  Why was I doing this?  Maybe I didn’t have to break up with him.  Would it be fair to him, to try to keep him while I fumbled around like an idiot, not sure of anything, and a thousand miles away?

After a long while, where I cried into his shirt and tried to pretend I wasn’t, he pulled back and looked at me, holding my face in his hands.  He wiped underneath my eyes with his thumbs.  “We are not breaking up.”

“But I’m leaving.  I can’t let myself get closer to you.  I’ve seen what happens when that ends.  I’ve seen my parents’ empty eyes.  I’ve tried hope, and I’ve tried putting things out of my mind.  Neither worked, and I’m too scared.  I can’t keep the fears behind the door.  Why do my aunt and uncle stay together?  That’s not what love looks like to me, but those are the people who stay together and my parents are the people who get divorced.”

“I don’t understand it, either, but we don’t have to understand. We’re not them, we’re us.”

“Malcolm, the other night at the pond, I did wish on stars.  About ten of them, and for one of them I opened my eyes while you were kissing my mouth, and I wished this summer would never end.  Not only does the summer have to end, so does my family.  All I see are endings, everywhere.  Wishes don’t come true.”

“Can’t we wait, and see if you still see an ending for us in two weeks?”

“What would be the point?”

“The point would be that I’d have two weeks to convince you not to give up.”  He pressed his lips to mine, and pulled my hips toward him.  He didn’t stop pulling until I was sitting in his lap.  He kissed my cheeks, my forehead, my eyelids, my nose, and back to my lips.

“The
point
, Fay, is that we’re not breaking up.  We don’t need to borrow trouble, and if we have two weeks left until you move back to Perry, we’re not wasting it.  Let’s see what happens.  Just let it unfold.”

“I don’t know how to trust anything right now.”

“I love you.  You can trust that.”  He brushed his thumb across my bottom lip, and I shivered.

“You can’t love me.  Teenage love is doomed.”

“You’re wrong.”

“I’d say in ninety-nine point nine percent of cases, I’m right.  Haven’t you ever looked around the halls during a passing period at school?  Have you watched the couples form, make out like they’re dying, declare their love, and then break up, all in the span of a week?  You have to admit that’s the general rule.”

He ran his hands up and down my arms, from shoulder to elbow.  The look on his face was once again calm, as though my proclamations had no effect on him whatsoever.  “I meant you were wrong when you said I can’t love you.  I do, so you’re wrong.”

“You’ve known me for one summer.”

“Yes.”

“You’re seventeen.”

“Yes.”

“I just broke us up.”

“No you didn’t.”

“You want two more weeks?”

He kissed my nose.  “I don’t want time limits, but yes, I want these two weeks with you.”

“Fine, but if we do this, I think we should be prepared for the end.”

“You think it will hurt less if we’re prepared for it?”

He had me there.  “I just know my parents will come and take me away and we won’t see each other enough and we’ll drift apart.”

“Fay, you are terrible at living in the moment.  I’ve never seen someone so bad at it.”

A laughed escaped.  “I am not bad at it.  A lot has happened in the last couple of days.  I feel like an entirely different person.  I don’t feel like the kind of person who has the luxury of living in the moment.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t trust the moment not to fall apart.”

We sat together on the bleachers for another hour.  We murmured things to each other, we kissed intermittently, we put our fingertips on each other’s skin.  Each time I started to freak out again, he calmed me down again.  Finally we made our way down the bleachers, me holding onto his belt loops, knowing I should let go but not wanting to.  The streets were lit by porch lights with fogs of moths surrounding them.  The air was cooler than it should have been for early August.

“Honestly, I think we’d be very good at a long-distance relationship.  I could drive out and stay the weekend sometimes,” he said.

“Your parents wouldn’t let you do that.”

“They would too.”

I smiled, wondering if he was right.  “This isn’t how tonight was supposed to go.”

“There is a reason for that.  You didn’t really want to break up with me.  I know it, and you’ll figure it out.”

“I never said I
wanted
to.”  I stopped when we reached the Colfax stop sign.  I tilted my head back and closed my eyes, arms resting at my sides.  His lips landed on mine just like I hoped they would.  A mixture of sadness and hope and fear swirled inside my head.

“Do you work tomorrow?”

“No.”

“Meet me at the pond at ten?  I’ll bring us a picnic.”  His eyes were still bright, but there was a tinge of darkness in them too.  Maybe my words had penetrated that positivity force field of his.

“Okay.  I’ll be there.”  I turned left and he turned right.  We were forced to head in different directions, on the sidewalks and soon, in life.  I knew it and he would figure it out.

Celia was on her bed, and true to her word she was surrounded by red licorice, chocolate bars, and magazines.  “I ate all the ice cream.  There was only a scoop left, anyway.  But I saved you this chocolate.”  She held it out, and tilted her face up to me, her feelings fully exposed.  Her eyelids were pink and swollen, and her bottom lip trembled.  She bit it, to hold back the tears, I figured.

I sat down on the end of her bed.  “You better keep it.  Malcolm didn’t accept my breakup.”

“He didn’t accept it?  He doesn’t have a choice.  He’s the dumpee, that’s the whole point.”

“Well, he thinks I didn’t mean it.”

“
Did
you mean it?”

“I guess I didn’t, really.  I don’t want to break up with him, but it seems stupid to keep trying, especially long-distance.  I don’t know, I guess I’ve just lost faith.”

“That’s not true.  Right now you’re upset.  You just allowed yourself to leave the denial stage of grieving, and now you’re left with anger and depression.  And you know what?  What’s wrong with enjoying what you have while you have it?  Sure, most teenagers break up eventually, but you can still get something valuable from it.”

I sighed, allowing the feelings of sadness and defeat to enter.  There was freedom in letting those feelings come, in dropping my resistance to them.  I didn’t try to stop my eyes from welling up.  “Yeah.  I guess it was somehow easier to believe in Malcolm and me when I was fooling myself about my parents.”  I wiped my eyes, picked up a chocolate bar, and took a huge bite.  “There must be things going on in my parents’ marriage that are worse than I imagined.  Worse, even, than the kind of fighting your parents do.”

“Fay, I’ll be straight about it for once.  Healthy people who can’t make it work split up.  Unhealthy people who can’t make it work get violent.”  She stuffed the last of a Red Vine in her mouth and chewed it thoughtfully.  “Do you think it qualifies as abuse?”

She lay back in her bed.  I swept all the candy and crumbs and magazines to the floor and lay down beside her.  “Abuse is such an awful, abstract word.  Donna and Todd aren’t abstract to me at all, so to apply that word to them feels like it doesn’t fit.  But it
does
fit, which makes my brain feel scrambled.”

Celia turned to lie on her side, and rested her forehead against my shoulder.  “It fits.  It fits, there’s nothing we can do about it, and my brain has been scrambled for half my life.  Never mind.  I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

“Okay, we’ll talk about something else.  What happened with Ronan?”  I turned onto my side to face her.

“You’ll never believe it.  He cried.”

“I do believe it.  You’re worth crying over.”

“All I know is he cried and I didn’t.  Not until I got home, at least.  That means I won the break-up.”

I clucked my tongue.  “Ordinarily I’d tell you that what you just said was awful.  But you got rid of Ronan, and that makes you a winner, indeed.”

She giggled.  “I love you, Fay.”

“Are you drunk?”

“No, I’ve just gone crazy.  Too many feelings.”

“I can relate.  I love you too, you know.”  We were quiet for a long while.  I debated whether or not to say this, but I wanted to acknowledge it.  “Celia, do you wish you hadn’t had sex with him?”

She snorted.  “No.  I don’t care about that.  I was never the wholesome type anyway.”

“Celia, no.  No, no, no.  You were wholesome and you still are, same as anyone else.  This is why I think the whole idea of virginity is stupid.  Why all the focus on whether or not a girl has done it?  Just because you’ve had sex, you’re not any less precious.  You’re not less pure, you’re not less valuable or wholesome.  Being a virgin or not doesn’t change that.  Am I getting through?”

She sighed.  “I hear what you’re saying.  That is not my issue.  I don’t have an issue.”

“Okay, but if you ever do feel like you regret having sex with Ronan, you’re allowed to have that feeling while still knowing that decision didn’t change your worth.”

She didn’t respond, but I didn’t push her on it, because she started to cry quietly.  I let it go, like I’d been doing with Celia since the day we were old enough to talk.

17

I
woke up
late, in Celia’s bed, with the sun streaming across my face.  It was nine-thirty, and I was supposed to meet Malcolm in half an hour.  I took a quick shower, and against my better judgment, put my swimsuit on under my clothes. I didn’t know what would happen in our relationship, and I didn’t know if it was wise to spend the next two weeks ignoring my doubts.  I may have been simply putting off the inevitable, but the alternative was to spend that time wallowing and aching to see him.  I found myself tightening the strings of my bikini around my neck, focusing on the possibility of a romantic swim with the skin of our bellies sliding together under the water.  There’d be time to ache and wallow back in Perry.

Since I was running a little late, when I walked through the trees and into the clearing around the pond, Malcolm was already there, sprawled out on a blanket.  His face was to the sun, his eyes were closed.  I tiptoed close to him and knelt down to wake him with a kiss.  Before my lips touched his, he smiled.  I kissed his smile, his stretched lips warm with sunlight, and his teeth slick under my mouth.

He grabbed me and pulled me down to him, keeping his hands on my hips.  It was me who pulled back first, and slipped off him to stretch out at his side.  “Malcolm.  Don’t get carried away.  I’m still leaving soon.”

“That’s the best reason to get carried away.  We have to make the most of it.”  He traced my eyebrows with his fingertip.  “I love your eyebrows.  Have I ever told you that?”

“No.  But it’s me who loves
your
eyebrows.  Did you know that’s one of the first things I noticed about you?”

He grinned.  “And was it my eyebrows that sucked you in?”

“Actually, yes, partly anyway.  You weren’t like the other boys I’d been around.  You looked like a full-grown man.”

“So I have the eyebrows of a man?”

“Yes, you have very manly eyebrows.”

He laughed and buried his face in my neck.  He kissed up and down the length of it.

I reached up and ran my fingers across his jaw.  His stubble was so thick, it crossed the line into beard.  “You also have the beard of a man.  You haven’t shaved in a while.”

“Do you want me to shave it?”  His voice was muffled by my hair; he hadn’t retreated from my neck.

“No, I like it.”

“Are you hungry yet?”

“No.”  I had been hungry on the walk over.  Aunt Donna was in the kitchen and I didn’t dare try to grab some food because breakfast was over and the kitchen was closed.  But being with him now, my stomach felt full.  All the sadness and worry in my heart had dropped down into it, and there wasn’t room for anything life-sustaining.

“Want to swim?”

I rolled over to look at him.  He had a spark in his eye.  He really did mean to make the most of our time together.  A laugh bubbled out of me at his mischievous look.  “Sure, let’s swim.”

He peeled off his shirt and walked to a tree that was close to the water.  “I added something new.  Watch this.”  He grabbed a length of thick rope, walked backward with it, and took a running start. He soared out over the water, and shouted as he let go, “I love Fay Whitaker!”

I walked to the edge of the pond, laughing, my worries easing.  His head surfaced and he smoothed the water off his face.  I studied him.  “Is it really true?”

“Oh it’s true, alright.  I yelled it in the light of day, for all the deer and fish to hear. Now it’s your turn to jump.”  He moved out a few feet, so I wouldn’t land on him when I flew off the rope.

I grabbed the rope and walked back farther than he had.  I was determined to get a better distance.  As the rope swung out, I didn’t shout out to him.  But when I surfaced just a foot in front of him, I looked him directly in the eye.  “I love you, too.  Even though it’s too scary and possibly pointless, even though we are still new to each other, and even though I’m leaving, I love you.”

He palmed the skin at my waist and pulled me to him.  Our bellies touched, just like I had wanted.  He spun me in slow circles.  “We’re dancing.”  He spread his hands over my back, bringing me even closer to him.  “And there is too a point.  I can think of a thousand reasons to love each other.  And a thousand more reasons to be hopeful.”  He lifted me up, and I wrapped my legs around his waist, arms around his neck.

The feeling was building in me, that simmering heat of being near him, the feeling that pushed all the dark, hard stuff away and left me standing only in the light.  He buried his face in my neck, a place he seemed to enjoy being, and released a soft groan.

“I’ve been wondering,” I said, and swallowed loudly.  “What are your thoughts on skinny dipping?”

I felt him smile against my neck.  He pulled back to look at me, and ran his nose along mine, and kissed my eyelids.  “I never thought about it.”

“You mean you haven’t already done it?”

“Nah, I always keep my trunks on.”

“But did the other people keep their suits on?”

“Well, they were drunk and out for a laugh.  If you and I did that, we wouldn’t be drinking and I’d be in it for something other than laughter.”

“We could laugh a little.  I bet it would be fun.”  I kissed his neck and he sucked in a breath.

“Okay,
you’ve
obviously thought about it.”

“I’ve been thinking about this for years.  I’m comfortable with you, Malcolm. I want to do it.  Right now.”

He stared at me, as if in shock. 

I laughed a little.  “Are you okay?  We don’t have to.”

“Is this savoring, or is this rushing?  I just want to be sure.”

“I don’t feel rushed. What about a partial version—you know, just my top.”

He didn’t answer, but placed his mouth gently on mine, moving so slowly as though he was afraid of scaring me away.  A minute passed by in a blink, too many more minutes passed by in a breath.  I wasn’t complaining, but I did begin to wonder if we were ever going to get around to taking my top off.

I decided to switch the mood from serious to fun and mischievous.  I pushed off Malcolm’s thighs with my feet and swam about six feet away.  I lowered myself until the water sluiced over my shoulders.  I grinned at him and reached behind my neck to untie my swimsuit.  The strings fell and floated on top of the water.  I untied the back, and swam away from my bikini top, leaving it floating in front of him.

“Just try and catch me!” I shouted, feeling giddy and exposed and alive.  I dove under the water and kicked hard.  He and I both knew I was the better, faster swimmer.  I wondered if he’d swim faster now that he had a new motivation.  When I surfaced, I laughed and swam as hard as I could, peeking behind me.  I squealed because he wasn’t far behind, paddling in that splashy, awkward way he had.  He was like a tree trying to swim.  He sort of floated, and his arms swept across the water like branches, but he just wasn’t a fish.  I was.  I swam circles around him, both of us laughing, splashing, teasing.

After a few minutes of this, I was ready to be caught.  I spun around and faced him, treading water lightly.  He slowed too, as though checking to make sure I hadn’t changed my mind.  He swam right up to me and put his arms around my waist.  He could touch the bottom, I couldn’t.  “Hold on,” he said, “I’ve got you.”

He lifted me again, and looked me square in the face as he slowly closed the rest of the space between us.  I put my arms around his neck and rested my head on his shoulder.  The hair on his chest was rough against my skin.  I tried to match my breathing to his, but I couldn’t get control of it.  It seemed he couldn’t either.  He swirled us through the water, dancing again.  Slowly he approached the shallows.  We clung to each other, my arms began to ache from holding him so tight for so long.

He came to a stop when the water was at his waist.  He lowered me inch by inch, never taking his eyes off my face.  When my feet touched the cool, muddy bottom of the pond, I stood before him.  “I can’t stand one more second of you not touching me,” I whispered.

So he did.  He put his hands on me, and the earth spun faster and my head spun along with it, and my feet sunk down into the mud. I shared a part of myself that day, a part I wanted to leave with him, where it could stay, when I couldn’t.

“You brought spaghetti on a picnic?” I asked, laughing.  I was fully clothed again, having even put my shirt back on over my wet swimsuit.  I had no regrets about letting him see me half-naked, but when I first walked out of the water, I felt a little exposed on dry land.  I guessed that’s why skinny dipping is more popular than streaking.

“What can I say, the cupboards were bare.  Mom made this last night and it was good.”  He touched the side of the bowl with his finger.  “I hope it’s warm enough.”

He passed me a fork and we dug in.  “My mom hates to share food like this.  She doesn’t want anyone’s fork to touch hers, and she likes to know exactly how much food she’ll get to eat,” I said.

“I’m that way about dessert.  When we’re at a restaurant, don’t go asking the server to bring two spoons.  You’ll have to order your own.”

I laughed and rested my shoulder against his.  I ended up holding that position, and ate my noodles while leaning against him.  “We haven’t been to a restaurant together, unless you count me washing your dishes at Heidi’s.”

“I’ll take you to one tonight.”

I set my fork on the blanket, and fiddled with the ring on my right hand.  My parents had given it to me for my thirteenth birthday.  It was my first real piece of jewelry, sterling silver with an emerald.  They had given it to me at a sushi restaurant.  I’d always loved that memory, but a strange impulse overcame me, to rip the ring off and fling it into the pond.  I resisted.  “I don’t want to go to a restaurant.  I’d rather have you all to myself, and also, I just don’t feel like being around a crowd.  You know where I want to go, when we’re done eating?”

“Where?”

“To your cabin.  Isn’t it just through those trees?”  I pointed over his shoulder.

He wrapped his hand around my wrist and moved it about a foot to the right.  “It’s just there, about fifty yards in.  You can see it easily when the trees are bare.”

I relaxed my arm, but he didn’t let go.  He slid his hand down it until our fingers were laced.  He picked up my other hand and held it too.  “Thank you for today, for not insisting on staying away from me.  Am I ever going to be able to stop chasing after you?  Will you ever be convinced of my feelings?”

My cheeks grew hot with embarrassment.  I’d had no idea trusting someone else’s feelings would be so difficult.  “I don’t know why I’m so hard to convince.”

“I do.  You don’t trust easily.”  He frowned.  “Maybe that’s a good thing. People should have to earn your trust.”  He paused and looked at the sky.  “I want to earn it.”

Anxiety washed over me.  I dug a little deeper and unearthed shame, too.  “Malcolm, you deserve to be trusted.  It’s not you that I don’t trust.  It’s just…how can people be so reckless with their hearts?  Hearts are getting smashed all over the place.  If I have faith in love, I could end up as one of those people with a smashed heart.”

“It’s a risk, but I’ll take my chances with you any day.  Soon you’ll be gone, and I don’t know when I’ll see you again, and that will hurt.  But being here with you today is worth it.”  He jumped up, nearly stepping in the bowl of spaghetti, his eyes excited.  He held his hand out to me.  “And you’re here too, so you may not be admitting it to yourself, but I bet it’s worth it to you too.  You already love me.  You said it, and no take-backs.  It’s too late for your heart.  Whether it ends up being worth it or not, whether you let yourself have faith or not, you’ve already taken the risk.  You might as well give over to the feeling.”

His hand was still extended to me, his grin wide and the light in his eyes almost brighter than I could stand.  I couldn’t suppress the joy rising in me.  “Enjoy it while it lasts?  That’s your big plan?”  I laid my palm on his.

“That’s my big plan.  That, and to make it last as long as I can.”

The late afternoon sun streamed through the window and warmed my feet, while Malcolm’s fingertips trailed across my belly.  We had left our picnic by the pond and come to the cabin.  I never wanted to leave the cozy bed, or Malcolm’s arms.

There was no clock here, and I didn’t dare ask him to check the time on his phone, for fear something would call him away from me.  But the way the sun was coming in, I knew it was getting late.  I didn’t care.  I was going to file this day away as one of the perfect ones.

“How can kissing be so much fun?” I asked.  I put my hand on his to still it, because it was starting to tickle, and turned to him for another kiss.  “I mean, I could kiss you until dark.  We’ve already spent half the day kissing.  Do you think something’s wrong with us?”

He laughed against my lips.  “Yes.  We’re crazed.  They should lock us up, as long as we get to share a cell.”

“I’m glad you’re not one of those guys who just want to jump right to sex and skip all the small, fun steps beforehand.”

He laughed again, though this time it was his halfway-embarrassed laugh, the one that told me I had hit a little too close to home, maybe gone an inch too far.  I joined him in laughing, because that was my favorite way to make somebody laugh.