We Are Okay(27)

“You’re right,” she finally says. “I’m sorry. Let’s just get the bed ready.”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” I mutter.

And now I’m taking the cushions off the sofa, and Mabel is moving the coffee table to the side of the room to make space for the bed to fold out. We find handles on each side and pull. Squeaky bedsprings, flimsy mattress. She shakes out the fitted sheet and we put it on together, tuck in the sides because the mattress is so thin.

“The rug’s looking better and better,” I say.

“Getting cold feet?”

I feel myself smile, and when I look at her she’s smiling back at me already.

“I can do the rest,” she says, picking up a pillowcase. “You go get ready.”

Like Jane Eyre, I carry a candle to light my way. But when I get to the bathroom and look in the mirror, all I see is myself. Despite the darkness, the long shadows, the quiet, this room is free of intruders and ghosts. I splash icy water on my face, dry it with a towel Tommy left out for us. I brush my teeth, I pee, I wash my hands, and pull my hair back in a rubber band I brought with me. I think of Jane Eyre with Mr. Rochester, of how much she loved him and how certain she was that they could never be together, and I think of how in a couple of minutes I’ll be in bed with Mabel. I tried to make it sound like it was nothing, but it is something—I know that. She knows it.

Maybe her hesitation wasn’t about Jacob at all. It could just have been over the ways we’ve changed. It could be that she’s still too angry to think about the weight of my body on the same mattress, the accidental contact we’ll make throughout the night when we’re too lost in sleep to keep to one side or the other.

I take the candle and head back to the living room. She’s already in bed, on her side facing the edge. I can’t see her face but I think her eyes are closed. I climb onto the other side. The springs groan. No sense in pretending she could sleep through the noise of it.

“Good night,” I whisper.

“Good night,” she says.

Our backs are to each other’s. We’re as far apart as two people could be on a mattress this size. The space between us is worse than our awkwardness, worse than not knowing what she’s thinking during our long stretches of silence.

I think I hear something.

I think she’s crying.

And here are things I’d forgotten, resurfacing. Text messages she sent.

Did you meet someone?

You can tell me if you did.

I just need to know.



There were others, too, but I can’t remember them. In the beginning her texts were knives, slicing holes in the cocoon of motel must and diner coffee and the view of the street out my window. But after school started, after Hannah, I was a stranger with a secondhand phone and someone named Mabel had the wrong number.

That girl she was trying to reach—she must have been running from something. She must have been someone special, for her friend to keep trying so hard. Too bad she was gone now.

We never talked about what would happen to us.

That was another one.

The way we used to kiss. How I would catch her looking at me from across the room. Her grin, my blush. Her thigh, soft, against my cheek. I had to deny all of it, because it was part of a life that was over.

All I can hear is the crackle of the fire. She may not have really been crying—I may have imagined it—but I can feel it now, the way I hurt her. Maybe it’s all of this remembering or talking about books and paintings again or being with Mabel, but I can feel the ghost of me creeping back. Remember me? she’s asking.

I think I do.

And that girl would have comforted Mabel. She would have touched her as though a touch were something simple. So I lift my hand, search for a safe place on Mabel’s body. Her shoulder. I touch her there, and before I have time to wonder if it’s unwanted, Mabel’s hand covers mine, holding it in place.





chapter twelve


JUNE




LATER THAT DAY, after Gramps had caught us with the whiskey and Mabel and I had spent the school hours blushing every time we saw each other, after Gramps had made a casserole for dinner and there had been more quiet between us than usual, he asked me to sit down on the love seat.

I nodded.

“Sure,” I said, but my chest filled with ice.

I didn’t know how I’d answer the questions he was about to ask me. Everything was too new. I followed him into the living room and took my seat. He stood in front of me, towering, not even a hint of a smile, only worry and sadness and something verging on panic.

“Listen,” he said. “I want to tell you about different kinds of love.”

I braced myself for his disapproval. I had rarely felt it before, and never for anything substantial. And I braced myself, too, for my anger. Because as unexpected as Mabel’s kiss had been, and as nervous and unsettled as I’d felt ever since, I knew that what we did wasn’t wrong.

“You may have gotten the wrong impression,” he continued. “About Birdie and me. It isn’t like that between us.”

I felt a laugh escape me. It was out of relief, but he didn’t take it that way.

“It may be difficult to believe,” he said. “I know it may have come across as . . . romantic, because of how I act when I get her letters. Because of that dress she sent me. But sometimes two people have a deep connection. It makes romance seem trivial. It isn’t about anything carnal. It’s about souls. About the deepest part of who you are as a person.”