When We Collided(78)

I’ve always fixated on the things I want in my life—paint palettes and sumptuous fabrics and star-flecked skies and dancing on my tiptoes and the smell of jasmine. But I usually imagine myself alone or falling in love with all kinds of different people. These days, I’ve started to daydream of the permanent relationships I want to have. Friends who stay in my life forever. People who I trust to love me even if I’m wobbling—the way I trust Jonah. And if that’s what I want, then I have scorched earth to till and replant. I love Ruby and Amala too much to not try.

I have a Japanese maple seedling, and I have seen how beautiful a rooted life can be. But I have miles to go before I decide where to plant us.

“I want to tell you something,” I say. I wish I could explain everything to Jonah. But bipolar disorder is an untranslatable term. I could tell him that sometimes it feels like being on a carnival ride, so fast and dizzying and fun at first. Then it goes on for too long, and you can’t stop. I could tell him how I hurt friends without meaning to. I could tell him that depression made me feel like a husk, empty and lifeless. Those comparisons might help, but bipolar disorder is so complex, and it’s mine. My feelings have back rooms and trapdoors, and I’m still learning them. I can’t quite articulate what bipolar disorder is for me, exactly, but I can articulate who he is to me, and so I take a deep breath.

“I want you to know that I wouldn’t have done anything differently this summer. Well, that’s not true, obviously.” I give a breathy laugh, and I let myself start over. “That first night we went to the beach, I wore my nightgown because why not? That’s me. But the day before I crashed the Vespa, I wore that nightgown all over town without even caring that everyone could see . . . and well, I wouldn’t have done that. But there still would have been picnics and writing plays and making scavenger hunts. I would have loved you the same.”

“I know that,” he says. But he closes his eyes for a split second—relief that he can’t hide from me. His hand is on my cheek, looking at me so admiringly that I almost can’t believe I’ll walk away from this. “It doesn’t change anything for me either, Viv. You know that, right?”

My own eyes blink closed. Yes. I already knew that, but I treasure the words.

“And thank you for the pie, Jonah,” I whisper, even as the first tear rolls hot down my face. “I’ll never forget it.”

“Me neither, Viv.” God knows—and so does Jonah Daniels—that I don’t just mean the pie. We know there are three little words branded inside my heart: Jonah was here.

I’m bogged down in my realities: money gone, friends I’ve hurt, medications I haven’t taken and the ones I have and will, a way forward that will be hard to navigate. I feel a little emptied out, but not exactly hollowed. Sometimes I feel empty like a new canvas.

I almost try to explain another untranslatable word—nyat —to Jonah. The idea has Buddhist roots and several meanings, depending on context. I think emptiness is the closest word, but, in English, we infer emptiness as a void, a lack. nyat is open with possibility, a meditative space.

But Jonah’s lips are warm on mine, and so I savor this kiss like the last bite. That’s the thing they never tell you about love stories: just because one ends, that doesn’t mean it failed. A cherry pie isn’t a failure just because you eat it all. It’s perfect for what it is, and then it’s gone. And exchanging the truest parts of yourself—all the things you are—with someone? What a slice of life. One I’ll carry with me into every single someday.

I lie down in the cool grass beside him as planets collide above us, and we stay like this for a long time, down to every last crumb. My cheeks are wet, but oh, my heart—it is so full.





CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Jonah

“Hi,” a little voice says. “Hi, hi, hi. Guess what! Waffles!”

I peek one eye open. Leah’s grinning back at me, bouncing at the edge of my bed. I was up till sunrise with Vivi two nights ago, and I’ve had a pounding headache since.

“Jonah, come on,” Leah says. She pushes all her weight onto the bed, jostling me. “You’re the only one who’s not up.”

“Okay, okay.” I sit back against my elbows. “Your hair looks nice.”

“Thanks.” Leah’s hands move to the ends of her braids. They’re the fancy kind. I can’t even fathom how to bend hair like that. “Mom did it.”

I trudge downstairs with Leah traipsing in front of me. Something stops me in the kitchen doorway. And it’s not just the smell of hot waffle batter.

Naomi is manning the waffle iron. Isaac is trying, and failing, to juggle three oranges. Bekah’s tongue is sticking out in concentration as she slices up strawberries. Silas is stuffing his face with the first batch of waffles, piled high with whipped cream and powdered sugar.

My mom is putting water in the coffeemaker. She’s in her pajamas, but then so is everyone but Silas, who’s wearing his work polo.

My family is everywhere, busy with individual tasks and reaching over one another. But, somehow, doing it all together. It’s such a familiar scene that part of me expects to turn the corner and see my dad. I know he won’t be there. But it feels like he’s in the kitchen all the same—in Naomi’s determination and Silas’s easy humor and Bekah’s sensitivity and Isaac’s precociousness and Leah’s everyday excitement. In my . . . well, I don’t know what. But I hope something. Something good.