Between the Stars and Sky (5 page)

Since.

But now.

This
.

For the first time in months I am not alone.

Slowly, our lips touch three times more. And between those tiny touches are moments that last forever; songs of eternity in spaces between. Then, all at once, we are lost to each other. Nothing but the waves crashing at our feet, the stars above.

Us, between.

I am alive. I am heartbeats. I am a hurricane.

And I am found.

*   *   *

The truth is this: there is no truth, only lies living in the moments between. Everything is between something. Life and death. Love and lust. Hope and loss. And just for a second, one that flies by in an instant, I wonder where our story is going. Where it will end. But for now I am happy living in the between, the time just before dawn right after dusk, I have found with Sarah on the beach.

I wake to her.

Her eyes are closed. I watched the way she fell asleep, like she was holding back, holding on to something until she couldn’t anymore. Until she let herself go, let sleep take over.

Slow.

So, so slow-

and then in an instant.

And it occurs to me that so many things happen this way. It’s like falling in love, like growing older, like losing a parent. The best and worst things happen before we even know they did; that is their beauty and their betrayal. Darkness still pulls at the sky, though the stars are not as bright. Still, those dark moments find me and I feel like falling into them, but not with her. Not with Sarah here and now, and not with the hope that there is more.

I feel stronger.

Instead of falling, I fly.

I will remember this when I jump from here during the Firelight Fall. I will remember this feeling: Like I’m already flying off the cliff higher and higher until I touch the clouds with my heart.

With Sarah.

THERE IS A SONG my mother used to sing to me. Before I closed  my eyes to sleep. Before the night fell fully dark, she would sing me a soft song of heavy promises. This song is my first memory of her, but not my last.

Close your eyes, Baby Blue

Listen to the night, silent and still

Her voice was a quiet melody of broken sounds and soft lilts; there was nothing beautiful about her voice, but I thought the world of it. I still do.

Dream about the stars, bright and big

Paint with your heart, the colors of your dream

She would sit on my bed, tucking my covers under my sides and my hair behind my ears. Smiling. Always smiling even when her eyes were wet with things she wouldn’t say to me. She sang to me every single night until I was eight, and even after always made sure I had a smile before I closed my eyes. Even when she didn’t sing, I heard the song. I remembered.

Never be afraid to smile so free

You are safe, Little Baby Blue

I didn’t know until Dad called me from the hospital. Mom was almost gone. Almost burned away, her spirit. Her life. Everything about her, except my memories, was nearly vanished. Come quick. Don’t bring Natalie. Not for this. Not now. Don’t need your girlfriend for-

this
.

Family only.

At this place where we shouldn’t be.

This
-

place

between

my

life

and

the

death

of

my

mother.

You are loved, little one

You are mine, forever and ever

She lied.

I’ll never leave your side

So, Little Baby Blue, close your eyes.

She promised me so much.

Mom
.

And

didn’t

keep

a

word.

*   *   *

Now, I don’t forget but I don’t dwell.

Or maybe I do.

Maybe I do think about the times when my mother was alive and wish those memories were now and here and everything about who I am today.

Is that so bad?

Wanting my mother back?

But, with Sarah, a part of me is filled. A part of my heart doesn’t cry as much for the mother I lost, isn’t as complicated, and instead smiles for the girl I found.

I’m not sure if this is good or bad. If Sarah is closing a part of me that should be reserved for my mother, my family, or if she’s letting loose the space I need to move on and love again, more and more and more.

Remembering or forgetting.

But I can’t stop it.

Can’t stop either.

I can’t.

And maybe that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be.

*   *   *

My fingers hover over my phone, waiting and wanting to push the tiny, neon buttons. Waiting for my father to call. Wanting to call him.

But he doesn’t.

And I don’t.

Not yet.

Maybe one day, when we’re both brave enough, we will face each other like we’re meant to, instead of hiding behind memories of our family already gone.

I almost laugh.

Because I
know
I should call him. I miss him, the one person who is going through exactly what I am. He lost her too. My father. I know I should be the one to make this right when I was stubborn enough to push him away from something he had no control over, something neither of us did.

But he pushed me away too.

And I am still-

so stubborn-

not brave enough.

Yet.

I WONDER IF DREAMS have dreams. If the dream version of me ever sleeps or is simply awake forever.

Because I am sure I am dreaming.

For days I have felt like this: The never sky of dreams has stormed into the still blue of my reality, wild and vivid and too fast and too slow. And with certainty, I realize Natalie has no place in my heart anymore. No hold on my feelings. It’s as though she never existed in this new world I’m living in with a girl named Sarah Blake.

I am not brave enough for so many things, but in this I can try: My lips are on Sarah’s again, and I can’t get enough of her. Lose myself in her and find myself again. I want to taste every part of her, feel the way she moves and bends. Hear the way she laughs, the way she doesn’t.

But as our bodies stretch out on a blue and white checkered picnic blanket in the grass of Huntington Park, I realize I want so much of her that I almost want nothing. Everything all at once is too little of the things that should be felt slowly.

Like love.

“What are you thinking?” she asks me, pulling away and resting her hands against my chest. “Your hands stopped moving.”

I can’t help but forget her question for a second, thinking only of the way her hands feel against my rising and falling chest like she is the one pulling it up and pushing it down, giving me life. And then I tell her, “I’m just thinking about you, how nice this is.”

“I knew you’d like a picnic.”

“IS THAT JACKSON GRANT?” Mrs. Porter’s shrill voice echoes off the gazebo which, I’m sure, is still in trauma after experiencing a night between Mrs. Porter and the mayor. “IT IS JACKSON GRANT! HOW ARE YOU DOING?”

“Fine, Mrs. Porter!” I yell back, trying to keep my voice from breaking with laughter. “Thanks!”

She rises from her seat, smoothes her hair that is shining with hairspray, and puts both hands to her lips so her voice sounds even louder than before. “WHO ARE YOU WITH? IS THAT SARAH BLAKE? A PICNIC? DESSERT IS THE WAY TO A WOMAN’S HEART! WHAT DID YOU MAKE? NEVER MIND, I’LL COME OVER LATER AND ASK.” Even from here, I can see her lips smack together in a mess of purple, glittery lipstick and gloss. “HAVE FUN, JACKSON. HAVE SAFE SEX IF YOU DO HAVE SEX. NO ONE WANTS A BABY AT YOUR AGE. MY GOODNESS, SHOW HER YOUR ARMS. YOU LOOK SO CUTE.”

I can’t even roll my eyes, I’m laughing so hard. Silent fits of giggles bubble in my chest and fight for air, and from the way Sarah is shaking beside me, her eyes wide and wet with tears, I can tell she is about to lose it too.

“What is for dessert?” I ask, grinning. My words blow out of my mouth choppy and whispered. Laughter is still heavy in them. And then suddenly, it’s not. Suddenly, this moment is serious and sensual and the world falls away from us until it’s only me and Sarah.

Her eyes, a deeper shade of blue in the setting sunlight, trace my face down to my lips. “What do you want?”

I whisper, “I want what you want.”

“I want to be a bird and fly into the sunset.”

I smile so wide my lips hurt. “Not what I meant, but okay.” I’m reminded of my summer wish, goal, to be a bird and fly for freedom, and it strikes me as incredibly romantic that Sarah knows me well enough to know this. Or maybe she doesn’t, in which case it means even more. We share this little piece of serendipity. “I’ll be a bird too.”

She kisses me quick. “Follow me.”

*   *   *

Fire burns behind us; the branches we hold are beacons in the dark night like sparklers, fireworks running down the beach. Past the outskirts of Huntington’s downtown, the docks, my Atlantis stone. We move so fast it’s like we’re not moving at all. We control the wind, the world. The waves are our breaths, their rippling sounds against sand our exhales.

I shout, “Where are we going?”

She doesn’t answer. Still running, Sarah turns, and even though her hair whips around her face like a blonde storm, I can tell she is smiling.

My branch is nearly out, the red, hot part of the stick reaching for my fingers. Almost ready to burn me.

“Don’t drop the stick!” Sarah screams at me.

I can barely hear her, but I hold the stick tighter. I can feel the heat of the flame nearly on my skin, bubbling down the branch. Closer and closer and closer.

Suddenly, we stop. Just outside Sarah’s house, on the other side of the beach, our legs stop moving but my heart continues to pound.

Sarah grabs the branch from me, throws the stick in a mad arc through the air so it lands in a pile of brush outlined by stones. It doesn’t take long for the leaves and sticks to catch and burn into a calm and warm fire.

“I thought you were trying to burn me,” I tell her as we sit together on the sand near the sparking red.

She grins. “Maybe I was.”

I don’t know what to make of this. So, I ask, “If you were trying to, why didn’t you? What was the point? We could have just walked to your house and lit the fire here.”

“But what fun would that have been?”

“Safe fun.”

“There’s nothing safe about having fun, Jackson.”

“Uh,” I begin, “there’s living. That’s fun.”

“If you do it right.”

“There’s a right way to live?”

“And a wrong way,” she tells me.

“And you’re right?”

“Always,” she says, smiling. Almost laughing. And I can tell she’s playing with me. “But seriously, I don’t know if I’m doing it right, but I’m living the best way I know how. I want to live, Jackson. Not just be. Not just breathe. I want to live so viciously I almost die.”

My heart stops-

for a short second.

I wonder if maybe I’m doing it wrong, life.

Or if maybe I’m right-

and life is the problem.

I don’t tell Sarah this: Her words undo me, make me think of my mother and how she’s not alive to live right or wrong or at all.

Instead, I say, “Sometimes, living like that can kill you, Sarah. Aren’t you afraid of that?”

“Should I be?”

“I don’t know,” I answer because I don’t. I know I’m afraid of losing people, but I’m not sure if I’m afraid to die. Afraid to live enough that I might.

And I wonder.

Are life and death the same?

Almost.

“My point is,” Sarah tells me, her fingers moving over mine and between and under, “that I don’t want to be afraid to live so that I experience everything under the sun. I want to jump off cliffs and see fireworks and drive fast and kiss until I can’t breathe and fall in love until it hurts. And I want to run down the beach with burning branches instead of lighting a fire with a match.”

I know but I ask, “Why?”

“Because that’s living.”

In this moment I know. Sarah is dangerous. Sarah is alive. More than I am, maybe more than I want to be. But I don’t want to stop, not now. Not like this. I want to run with her, see life with her. I want to be the one she kisses to take her breath away and loves until it hurts her.

I won’t hurt her.

I say, “I’ll be yours.”

“My what?” she asks.

I want to say your
love
.

Your only one.

But I don’t. Not yet.

Instead, I pull her closer and ask her what she’s thinking about.

“My house looks like it could fall into the lake,” she tells me. “Everything about it looks heavy.”

“It’s huge,” I admit. I run my hand down her arm.

She says, “The truth is, Jackson, everything about my life felt heavy until you came along. That one summer. Do you remember? You told me you hated me and threw sand in my hair and ran away.”

“I remember.” She rests her head against my chest and I smile. “I ran because you kissed me.”

“It was that bad?”

“That good.”

“Oh.” I feel her smile. Feel her arms tighten around my waist, her fingers digging gently into my back. “Do you... Do you want to head back to my house? Maybe spend the night?”

“No,” she says easily. “I may be reckless, Jackson Grant, but I do not spend nights with boys who I do not know.”

“You know me.”

“Not well enough for
that
.”

I grin. “For what?”

She rolls her eyes. “For whatever that smirk on your face is thinking about! Now, go home and go to sleep and call me in the morning. And remember, we are having dinner with Miles and Sean tomorrow.”

“We are?”

“Didn’t I tell you?”

“No.”

“Surprise.”

As she walks away not looking back, I silently say good night and good morning to her. And I can’t help but look back on everything she just said. Beginning with
we
.

That little word resting between Me and Her will follow, I know.
Us
is waiting.

We is my wings.

Us
is my sky.

I will-

I am flying.

*   *   *

“So you love her,” Miles tells me in the bathroom the next evening, just as the sun is beginning to set against the lake outside the restaurant.

“I don’t know. Maybe. It’s only been a few days since we’ve started over. Not yet,” I respond, not wanting to have this conversation right now. In the bathroom. While I am doing things only done in bathrooms and forests and swimming pools. With Miles. Standing next to me.

“Yet!” he shouts. He is victorious.

“Fine.”

“Doesn’t Sean look great today?”

“Miles, I am peeing.”

“Sorry, just nervous.”

“About peeing?”

“I’m going to ask him to marry me. Someday. At the end of summer, maybe sooner, maybe later. I don’t know. I just know he’s the only one for me.”

I am speechless.

Miles is-

one thousand miles ahead of me.

And I couldn’t be happier.

“Say something!” he says as I follow him to the sink and start washing my hands. His face riddled with nerves and lines and hopes and questions. And, without asking, I realize I am truly his best friend. And he is mine.

When my hands are dry, I reach over and put my hand on his shoulder. I say, “I can’t wait to tell the story about how you told me you were going to propose to Sean while you and I were peeing. It’ll be an epic Best Man speech.”

“Shut up,” he laughs, pushing my hand away. But he is smiling and his eyes are lit from somewhere I can’t see.

Someday, I want to be as happy as him.

I learned a long time ago that family is not found in blood but in the people who care about us most. And in Miles I found something between a brother and a friend.

“You have piss on your pants.”

“What!” I look down. “I do not. You do.”

Miles smirks and says, “You know, I never thanked you.”

“For what, Mr. Piss Pants?” I ask, drying my hands.

He rolls his eyes. “For Sean. I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“I do,” Miles insists. “I wouldn’t have said anything to him if you hadn’t told me to get over myself. I wouldn’t have fallen in love. I wouldn’t have been this happy without you. If you hadn’t told me.”

“If I hadn’t left, you mean.”

He whispers, “That too.”

“But not all that?”

“Not all.”

“What else is there?” I ask because I don’t know and I want to.

“Are you happy, Jackson?”

Maybe. Almost. I’m not. But I don’t want to say it. I don’t want to say why I’m miserable and why I can’t be completely happy and why I want to start over and over and over again.

But.

I do.

“She died, Miles. She died and I died too.”

He says, “I know.”

A surge of anger. “You don’t know!”

“I know that too.”

I smile, and I hate that I smile. But I’m glad Miles can still make me. “I just don’t know how to be the kind of happy I used to be.”

“You’re happy around Sarah,” he tells me. “I can see it. And I know you can feel it.”

“Yeah, but is that enough to forget what happened?”

“You can’t forget.”

“I know.”

“Is it enough, Jackson? Because if you aren’t sure, if you are hesitating, you better figure it out. She deserves better than almost being enough and so do you. You both do. So is it? Is she enough to make you happy?”

She is.

*   *   *

Waves grab the sand, pulling away words Miles had written for Sean. Still, I can see a glimmer of
always
and
meant
and
want
in what the lake refuses to touch.