Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee(93)

Making something with someone you love is the same way.

As we stand there together in the moon’s shadow, for that brief moment, I wish I could tell time stop and it would obey, as if time were the one thing that wouldn’t leave me behind.





On TV, expressions of love are grand and cinematic. They happen under literal fireworks or in the pouring rain.

But in real life, sometimes what happens is you get done watching a movie with a boy who took you by surprise with the way he slipped into your heart, and you walk out to the parking lot, where he opens the door of his pickup truck for you because he’s charmingly old-fashioned in all the good ways. You unlock his door for him, and he gets in. He goes to start the truck but stops, and you ask him what’s up, and he says he has something to tell you and he’s having a tough time forming the words. And you’re a little scared until finally, he says he’s gotten a job as a trainer and grappling instructor at a gym in Knoxville, and he’s lined up a place to live with a couple of other MMA fighters.

And then he looks you in the eyes and says that the reason he did that is because he loves you and the thought of your being far from him made him heartsick.

You turn the fiery pink of a sunrise inside.

So you tell him you love him too, and that it would have also hurt too much to let him be far from you, so this is a pretty cool new development, to say the least. You try to think of a quip to help you deal with everything you’re feeling, and you’re coming up empty for once, but he saves you by kissing you, in a way both urgent and gentle, and he tastes like movie theater popcorn butter and salt, and you can’t get enough of him, and because he is a very good kisser, in addition to every other good thing he is, you kiss until you fog up the windows on his truck, and a cop knocks on your window to make sure everything is okay, which it very much is—more so than it’s ever been.

You maybe take a break from kissing and cry a little bit because you’re so ecstatic, and it might be the first time that’s ever happened to you—crying from joy—and you feel as though a massive burden has been lifted from you because you didn’t realize how scared and sad you were to leave behind your best friend and the boy you love in order to chase a dream. In fact, you were starting to question the worth of your dream.

You ask him if he’s really sure, because you know how loyal he is. He tells you he’s sure—that he can be a champion anywhere he goes, under anyone with whom he trains—and the look in his eyes (he has nice eyes) tells you that you now occupy his top tier of loyalty, which is a sublime place to be.

Sometimes things are better on TV, but this is better in real life.





On TV, expressions of loneliness are grand and cinematic. Walks through cemeteries with swelling strings playing. Plucking petals off a rose while rain cascades down your windows.

But in real life, sometimes what happens is you’re picking out a final movie for the show you do with your best friend (and you know it’s not really the final movie because you’ll surely do other shows with her as a guest, but still), and a rogue wave of loneliness breaks over you with such intensity that it literally drives you to your knees and robs your breath. It reminds you of the one time you stood in the ocean, with a father who abandoned you, and you felt the cool water wash indifferently over your feet.

And so you kneel on the cheap carpet in your cramped bedroom in the double-wide you share with your mom—who does her best—and you try to breathe through the crushing weight in your chest, and you wonder if you’re going to be okay, and you reflect on how little dignity there is in loneliness, because by definition, it’s a burden you bear alone. You wish that being lonely was something you could get good at, the way Tibetan monks can control their body temperature with their mind. Or the sort of thing you could find exaltation in, the way all sorts of monks everywhere did.

But then you think about how, to experience loneliness, you have to feel the absence of somebody, and you’d hate to have gone through life never having anybody, so you’re grateful in a weird way.

On TV, things are uncomplicated, with lots of fanfare. But sometimes real life is better, in all of its complications, in all of its everyday, quiet ache.





I thought my excitement about my internship would take the edge off my melancholy over doing our last show, but it doesn’t. I still have a last-day-of-sixth-grade feeling. All year you’re excited for school to end so you can move on to junior high, but then the day comes and you realize that something that was an important part of your life is dying. And endings are still so new that you don’t know quite how to feel.

You find an excuse not to run out the door when the bell rings and school’s out. You talk to your teacher one last time. You use the restroom one last time. You take a circuitous route back to your classroom. On your way out, you look back and sigh, and you experience this deep wistfulness, and you wonder if life is just a series of endings. New beginnings don’t make endings any easier.

Tonight it’s only me and Delia, no guests, the way we started. The way we’ll finish. I’m glad it’s this way.

I keep looking at Delia. She’s working with all her strength to be brave. I sense her almost chanting it to herself like a mantra. She seems like someone holding a bucket over a nest of angry wasps (or maybe hornets determined to shut down an ill-conceived theme park). They’ll get out if she lets the bucket drop, and her arms are getting tired and shaky.