“There was this one day when I was eleven,” he starts. He’s not staring out to the ocean or looking anywhere else, distracted. He’s looking right into my eyes, his way of saying this story is for me. “I was playing hide-and-seek with my friends. I mean, the brutal tackle kind of hide-and-seek. We were in the woods, and for some reason I decided that what I had to do was climb a tree. I don’t think I’d ever climbed a tree before. But I found one with some low branches and just started moving. Up and up. It was as natural as walking. In my memory, that tree was hundreds of feet tall. Thousands. At some point, I crossed the tree line. I was still climbing, but there weren’t any other trees around. I was all by myself, clinging to the trunk of this tree, a long way from the ground.
“It was magical. There’s no other word to describe it. I could hear my friends yelling as they were caught, as the game played out. But I was in a completely different place. I was seeing the world from above, which is an extraordinary thing when it happens for the first time. I’d never flown in a plane. I’m not even sure I’d been in a tall building. So there I was, hovering above everything I knew. I had made it somewhere special, and I’d gotten there all on my own. Nobody had given it to me. Nobody had told me to do it. I’d climbed and climbed and climbed, and this was my reward. To watch over the world, and to be alone with myself. That, I found, was what I needed.”
I’m almost crying, imagining him there. Every now and then he’ll tell me something about when he was little, but not like this. Usually he only tells me the bad things. The hard things. Mostly as an excuse.
I lean into him. “That’s amazing.”
“Yeah, it was.”
“And it was in Minnesota?”
I want to show him I remember what he tells me—his family’s moves, how cold it was there—so he’ll feel he can tell me more.
I want to tell him more, too. I always want to tell him more, but now that I know he’s listening—really listening—it means something different.
“You want to know another day like this one?” I ask, moving even closer, like I’m building a nest of our bodies in order to catch all the memories.
He pulls me in, settles the nest. “Sure.”
“Our second date,” I tell him.
“Really?” He seems surprised.
“Remember?”
He doesn’t. Which is fair, because it’s not like we labeled everything as a date. I mean, there were plenty of times before our first date where we were in the same place with other people, flirting. I’m talking about the second time we arrived together and left together and spent most of the time together.
“Dack’s party?” I say.
“Yeah….”
Still unclear. “I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe it doesn’t count as a date. But it was the second time we hooked up. And, I don’t know, you were just so…sweet about it. Don’t get mad, alright?”
I don’t want to ruin it. I am afraid I’m ruining it. Why don’t I just stop when things are good?
But then he says, “I promise, nothing could make me mad right now.” And he crosses his heart. Something I’ve never, ever seen him do before.
Smile. I’m not ruining it. I’m really not. “Okay,” I say. “Well, lately—it’s like you’re always in a rush. Like, we have sex but we’re not really…intimate. And I don’t mind. I mean, it’s fun. But every now and then, it’s good to have it be like this. And at Dack’s party—it was like this. Like you had all the time in the world, and you wanted us to have it together. I loved that. It was back when you were really looking at me. It was like—well, it was like you’d climbed up that tree and found me there at the top. And we had that together. Even though we were in someone’s backyard. At one point—do you remember?—you made me move over a little so I’d be in the moonlight. ‘It makes your skin glow,’ you said. And I felt like that. Glowing. Because you were watching me, along with the moon.”
I have never said this much to him. In all the time we’ve been together, I’m not sure I’ve ever let the words come out like this, without inspecting them first. I thought I knew what we were, and that was good enough for me.
What is this? I think. Because now he’s leaning over and kissing me, and it’s making everything romantic. Justin has been able to do romantic things before, sure. But he’s never made everything seem romantic before. The universe, at this moment, is romantic. And I want it. I want it so badly. I want the touch of his lips on mine. I want the way my heart is pounding. I want this nest, my body and his body. I want it because it’s that unreal kind of real.
There are so many other things we could say, but I don’t want to say any of them. Not because I’m afraid of ruining it. But because right now I have everything. I don’t need anything more.
We close our eyes. We rest in each other’s arms.
We’ve somehow made it to the better place you always want to be.
I don’t even realize I’m falling asleep. We’re just so comfortable that I guess we go there.
Then my phone is ringing, the ringtone so much shriller than the ocean. I know who it is, and even though I want to ignore it, I can’t. I open my eyes, shift away from Justin, and pick up the phone.
“Where are you?” Mom asks.
I check out the time. School’s been over for a while now.