Birthday(59)

I know I’m going to pay for this later. But right now, with my heart hammering in my ears, it’s worth it. I lean out the window, hold out both middle fingers, and as we careen out of the neighborhood Morgan’s laughter is the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard.





MORGAN



I stop at the gas station at the bottom of the hill and I kiss him while the engine idles. I’m not scared anymore, and I’m not shy. My fingers are in his curls as I pull him to me, as we navigate the tiny space, and I didn’t know kissing could feel like this.

Eric makes a deep, satisfied sound, only to have it cut short with a wince. I pull back and see how one side of his face is starting to swell. I hold his hand, and I kiss his jaw, and I head inside for two cans of Coke. When I return the car is quiet, but Eric is smiling down at something on his phone.

“Here,” I say. I hand him the Cokes as we hit the road again. “Drink one, hold the other against your jaw. We can get you some ice later.”

“I’ll be fine,” he says. “Thanks.” He taps a beat on one of the cans and bites his lip. “Should we … talk? About this?”

“I’m scared,” I say. I look at him and in the very last dark rays of the setting sun he’s as beautiful as he’s always been. “I don’t know. This is all happening so fast.”

“I think it’s been happening for years,” he says. He flashes me a smile only to wince when the Coke can touches his skin.

“But what do we do now?” I say as I turn onto Lafayette Street, distantly aware I’m driving on autopilot toward Federal Park. “You can’t go home, but if you stay with us, your dad’ll—”

“I love you,” Eric says. I favor him with another glance and he grins sheepishly. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” I whisper.

We pull into the parking lot and I run my hands over the steering wheel, touching the smooth spots worn down by Mom’s hands and noticing how my own fingers fit into the grooves. The night sounds kick up, the frogs, and crickets, and a few late-season cicadas. And I just told Eric that I love him.

Eric hops out of the car and I follow. “I want to show you something,” he says over his shoulder. We walk deeper into the park. Soon the lights from the parking lot fade to nothing and all we’re left with is moonlight. We cross a clearing where we used to lay out sometimes watching clouds and, eventually, he stops in front of an old, old maple tree swaying in the breeze. “Here it is.”

“A tree?” I stand beside him and take his hand without thinking, and as my neck cranes up I realize there are dozens of fireflies flitting back and forth within its branches, and it feels familiar somehow.

“This is where I started to fall in love with you,” he says.

“What?”

He sits in the grass, gently pulling me down into his lap. I’ve never sat in a boy’s lap before, hardly dreamed I could, and I suddenly realize I’ve lost more muscle than I thought, or he’s gotten even bigger in the last year. I feel so small as I tuck my legs to the side and he winds his arm around me. I rest my cheek in his hair and close my eyes. His hand rubs up and down my side.

“We were twelve,” he says in a voice as soft as the wind in the grass. “Eleven? That part’s hard to remember. It was a long time ago. But I remember you were climbing this tree. I was standing down here, so worried that you’d climbed too high. High enough I could barely see. You fell, and for a minute I thought you’d died, and if you were dead, then I wanted to die too.”

“Always a drama queen,” I whisper just above his ear. The wind mixes with my voice and in this boy’s lap, my boy’s lap, I feel close to whole.

“It was a long fall.” He laughs despite everything. His fingers dig into my side and I arch my back and squeal, but he holds me close before I can get away in earnest. “I was hovering over you, trying to see if you were breathing. You opened your eyes, and I don’t know. The light caught them just right. Your hair was getting long and it had fanned out around you.” He kisses my collarbone, the side of my neck, the joint between my ear and my jaw. I tilt my face up to the moon, my stomach a heated tangle of too many emotions. “You were beautiful. I loved you already then. I didn’t know it, and I didn’t know I was waiting for you to tell me who you are, but both are true.”

I kiss his forehead. He kisses my temple. We lie in the grass, kissing gently to keep from hurting where his father struck him, touching where it’s safe to touch between the minefield of my body and the weight of years. The mountains sing around us. Who knows how long? Eventually I’m lying with my head on his shoulder, curled next to him, eyes closed and perfectly ready to fall asleep in the grass, and I wish I could, I wish we could, but one thought won’t leave me.

“Eric?”

“Mm?”

“What’re we gonna do?”

“No idea,” he says, but the reality hangs between us: his father, what’s at stake for both of us. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

I can think of a lot, but I don’t say it.

“But we’re going to be together,” he says. “No matter what.”

“Okay, Eric,” I say. I nuzzle in closer to him and breathe in deep.