Frankly in Love (Frankly in Love, #1)(40)

I cinch Brit’s hoodie down tight around her face and she does the same to mine, and we both look like cartoon characters waddling toward the pounding surf. Just for fun we attempt a kiss. It’s as awkward as flipping a light switch with your nose. I love it.

“I’ve never been to this beach,” I say.

“Technically it doesn’t exist,” says Brit. She points. “This city doesn’t want it, and neither does that one. Oh, there’s the sparkles.”

At first I think it’s just the white foam catching the meager light. But when my eyes adjust, I see it: an alien blue glow blooming and dissipating wherever the ocean churns. Peak sparkles.

“My brother studies marine biology,” says Brit. “The way he explains it, the sparkles are caused by tiny dinoflagellates that glow as a defensive response when they get tossed around. So their beauty isn’t what it seems, because really they’re undergoing trauma.”

Metaphor incoming. “Sorry, dinoflagellates,” I say.

I sneak my hand up her jacket and feel the small of her back; she tucks her fingers under my belt. We stand strapped snugly together like this. It feels like we’ve known each other forever already. Maybe this is why people get married? For this cozy feeling? Because I could savor this cozy feeling for a long time.

It’s a ridiculous scene. The moon hangs low and full like a lamp. The sea, a shining sheet of mercury.

I reach up into my jacket pocket—into our warm little world—and extract earbuds for me, earbuds for her. I hit Play on my phone. And I get to simply behold her face transforming as she listens to what I’ve titled “Song for Brit.” She doesn’t have to say anything. I can see the memories flickering silver and gold in her eyes like a music video.

It’s a song cut and pasted together, using sounds from every time me and Brit have been together so far. There are the plinks and scrapes from Scudders, a tweaked Purr-fect! sample from Let’s Heart Dancing, a layer of ambient room tone from our first partner project at her house. On top of it all I added water sounds from Lake Girlfriend. It’s our brief but brilliant history, in a single track.

As we stand here in this perfect-perfect setting, listening to the movie soundtrack of us, Brit and I become familiar A-list stars in a classic romantic film everyone knows and cherishes. I know what will happen next. Everyone knows.

We kiss, drawing circles upon circles over and over again. Then she says it:

“I love you.”

She says it like it’s something that urgently needs to be said. Like something she really needed me to know. And as soon as she says it, concern shadows her eyes. I sense that she was assuming I loved her too. That I would say “I love you” back. But now she might be wondering: what if I didn’t? What would she do with all the white sand on this beach? All these blue sparkles? That damn moon out there?

What would Brit do?

She says it again. “I love you, Frank Li.”

Our movie is shot day-for-night in monochrome. The song ends. We let the earbuds fall away, leaving no soundtrack but the ocean and air.

Do I love Brit? I do. I think I do. But there’s a gap that keeps my love from seating properly. It wiggles. It is imperfect. Is it something I can fix? I don’t know. If not, is it something I can get used to? Is it something I can live with?

I realize this gap is my problem. Brit does not have this gap. It is easier for her to love—simpler, less complicated. My love is slightly misshapen. My love is nonstandard. It requires workarounds.

Is it the same love, then? Does it matter? I have no idea. I’ve never been in love.

My ignorance leaves me with two ways to go: either say fuck it, I don’t know anything about love, so I’m going to wait and conduct more research—or fuck it, I don’t know anything about love, so I’m the perfect lab rat, and dive on in.

The fact is I want to love Brit. That has to count for something. Sure: there is a gap, it wiggles, it’s imperfect. So I’ll press gum into the gap and hope it stays. It’s a workaround.

I say it: “I love you too.”

Brit’s face breaks with joy. She didn’t need to be concerned after all. We are here, on this cold shore, safe and warm in our jackets like an old couple gazing at the horizon of time. Brit is an old soul. I can feel that. She has this strange patience that belies her age. For most kids this would be the moment where we tear each other’s clothes off and do it right on the beach. But Brit’s not most kids.

We both sense it’s time to kiss, so we kiss again. She smells like set sun and musk and ice cream. I zip open my jacket; she zips open hers. The zippers are mirrored, so we connect the two jackets together into one single cocoon of warmth. She pulls her hands into the cocoon and wraps them around my body to feel my torso with her thawing fingertips, rib by rib.

“I love you,” she murmurs, like she’s falling asleep. “It feels so good just to be able to say it finally. I love you.”

I feel a buzz. Return to Base.

“I love you too,” I say. Saying it makes it feel more true. I get the feeling that the more I say it, the truer it will feel over time. And eventually this truth I’ve created will weave itself into every fiber of my reality, until it moves naturally with my every gesture like a favorite shirt I can’t help but wear always.





chapter 15