The Memory Book(34)

Mariana continued, sipping her beer. “I would love to be your age again. I would have spent so much less time chasing men, so much more time absorbing.”

Stuart coughed a little, and I could feel my cheeks getting hot.

“Oh!” Mariana laughed, looking between us. “I’m sorry. No, love is a beautiful thing. Don’t ever avoid it. And I regret nothing. But my work is my love now.” She turned to me. “What do you want to study?”

“Economics and public policy. Then law school,” I said, and sat up straighter.

“Good. But don’t put yourself in a box. Study everything.”

“Like what?” I said, and I almost wanted to bring out my notepad, to write everything down.

Soon the three of us got into talking about politics, and then living wage conditions, which as you know I have a fair amount to say about, and when the three of us looked up, Stuart’s manager had his hand on Stuart’s back, telling him his shift was over.

Stuart counted his drawer and cleaned up the bar.

Mariana said good-bye to me with a kiss on both cheeks and told Stuart she’d see him at the reading.

Finally, he came out of the bathroom in just a T-shirt, his button-down shirt slung over his shoulder, wearing his sunglasses.

“Ready?” he said.

“Yes,” I said. My hands were twitchy and my stride was strong and my thoughts were chatty as we walked out into the setting sun, and that is how I hope I will remember Stuart forever, as he was last night, his skin almost orange in the sunset, the rays again reflected in his lenses.

I hope the rest of my life is like this, I remember thinking. Just hanging out with famous writers, having conversations about books and politics.

“I want to be a writer like Mariana,” he said after some silence.

The sun had gone behind the trees then. We paused in the middle of a tiny side street, his street.

“I bet you will be,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s not… whatever. I lose focus. I have trouble… finishing things. I just want to be a writer who writes all the time, who writes these full, rich, deep stories. Not little flashes in the pan.”

“You’ll get there,” I told him, and touched his arm in what I hoped was an encouraging way.

“I better,” he said. Up until this point, he’d been hopeful—longing, yes, but hopeful. Now he sounded tense.

“What do you mean?”

He held up his hands. “I gave up everything to do this. I didn’t go to college. I can live at my parents’ place now, sure, but not for long. I have to succeed. Like, what we were talking about last time we hung out. My own definition of success. I just want to finish.”

We kept walking until we reached an old cream-yellow house with white trim.

“Yeah.” I touched the place between my ribs, near my sternum. “It’s like, here. This constant pressure coming from inside, not outside.”

“I can sense that in you,” Stuart said. “You’ve got this drive. It’s so nice to be around.”

“It’s nice to be around you, too,” I said, quiet and soft. So unlike myself. Because it was the kind of thing I’d never said before. And that would have been enough for me, for him to say he liked my ambition.

“So, what are you doing right now?” Stuart glanced behind him at his parents’ house, folding his sunglasses in his hand. “You want to come inside?”

“I want to,” I said. I looked at my phone. My mom had texted me, asking if she should pick me up at the Canoe Club on her way home from work. “But I can’t. I’m sorry. I want to…”

“Of course,” he said, and got closer to me, looking at me with his black eyes kind of sleepy.

He put his hands on my waist, pressing through my sweatshirt. “Is this okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, but I’ve never…” I didn’t know how to phrase it. So I just said it. “I don’t really know how to do this.”

Stuart smiled. “Do you want to try?”

In answer, I lifted my lips to his, where they stayed, and his lips moved a little, soft at first, and then more solid, unlike any touch I’d ever had. I felt his tongue, so I opened my mouth a little. Humans have been doing this for centuries, I remember thinking, and then not thinking at all, because his mouth was warm and wet and tasted like limes.

Then it was like someone dumped warm water on me, slowly, and it made me want to hold him tighter. I brushed my hands down his arms, then up again, across his shoulders, to his face.

I wanted to keep going.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I let go. He let go.

“Bye,” I said, and tried to keep my mouth closed because my breaths were coming heavy.

“Bye,” he said, and closed his mouth, too, like he wanted to say something else but couldn’t.

I walked back to the Canoe Club, got in the car with Mom, and pretended like everything was normal.

But I can’t stop thinking about it. I didn’t know I wanted such a feeling until it happened. I just made out with Stuart Shah. I just made out with Stuart Shah.

I feel I am a different person than I was twelve hours ago, like my hard, cracked skin is falling off to a new layer of pink raw skin, like I am making the transformation. Like Mrs. Whatsit in A Wrinkle in Time, when she left Earth through different dimensions, for a purple-gray planet with two moons. She was a bundle of rags and boots on Earth, and on the new planet, she became a brilliant creature with a powerful body and wings, almost beyond description. I’m still wearing my clogs and sweatshirt, still smelling the night on it, but I look different. I am different.