First Comes Love (14 page)

I tell them I know it won’t be easy, and I’m not trying to escape. I take a deep breath and stand up.

“I’m not asking for your permission,” I say. “I am doing this.” They both stare at me and my dad’s frowning and my mom’s eyes are filling with tears.

“But your support would mean everything to me,” I add. “And I know Amanda would want me to do this.”

They’re both silent. I ask for one more thing.

“I want all of us to meet with a counselor before I leave,” I say. I slap a piece of paper down on the table. It lists three counselors Dylan and I narrowed down from our research. I stand my ground and wait. I remind myself that this is heading in the right direction. I need to be the brave one.

My mom just stares at the piece of paper as if it’s a hornet she wants to crush. I would have done the same thing a few days ago. My dad’s face is deadpan and his eyes are frozen, staring down at the ground. At least no one’s screaming. I leave the room because I understand what they need. It’s what I needed after Dylan confronted me about all this. Time.

***

We’re sitting out on the concrete foundation
we discovered on Camelback Mountain. We’ve come out here a few times. We need to make the most of the view from our dining room before it becomes a workout gym for one of the Diamondback baseball players or Arizona Cardinals (our prediction of who owns this spot). Tonight we brought a blanket and spread it out underneath us. I’m trying not to think about the dwindling days we have left together. I’d rather focus my energy on more productive thoughts—like how to keep Dylan from leaving.

I ask her where she sees herself in five years.

“I have no idea,” she says, and confesses she has trouble planning a week ahead, let alone five years.

I tap my foot on the ground. “But don’t you want to plant roots eventually?” I’m hopeful. I want her roots to have the same city limits as mine. At least the same area code. Preferably a New Mexico area code.

“Not any time soon,” she says.

I try a different angle. “What about a job? You have to make money.”

Dylan leans back on her elbows and thinks about this.

“Money’s okay, but it’s not the most important thing on my list. Cars are great, and nice clothes, and five-star restaurants. But I’ve always been more impressed with the sky. With canyons and trees and mountains. I’d rather invest my time collecting memories and friends and love and all the things money can’t buy.”

I can’t help but smile. So much for having a practical conversation with this girl. I’m consciously savoring the time I have left with her because I know it’s drawing to a close. She has no idea how intriguing she is to me. How smart and fascinating and unpredictable and magnetic. And she’s singled me out as her lucky audience.

I ask Dylan what she thinks about when she’s alone.

“You want to know what I mostly think about?” she asks, and her eyes meet mine.

“I think about you,” she says. She leans closer to me and holds one of my hands inside her smaller ones and examines it like it’s a map to some mysterious world. She tells me she thinks about my lips and my eyes and my skinny long legs.

I inform her that she’s the one with skinny long legs. Mine are toned.

She smiles and says she loves my big hands and long fingers with veins wrapping around the knuckles like a vine. She slowly traces each vein with her index finger and it makes my heart race. She tells me she loves my long eyelashes and my toes and the patch of hair on my chest.

“Is there anything you don’t like about me?” I ask, because I want to know how to be better. How to be half the person she is. Then she looks at me like I’m crazy and tells me she loves everything about me. I wonder how that can be possible, but then I think maybe when it’s right, this is exactly how it should feel.

“What random thing did you do today?” I ask. It’s my favorite question.

“Today it was more of a random thought.”

I wait for her to continue.

“I thought about the best way to be born,” she says simply, as if this is a normal thing to contemplate. “If you could choose how you come into the world, how would you want to be born? It’s your most important entrance; you want to make it count. Imagine if you could be hatched from an egg—wouldn’t that be cool? To crack out, to stretch your arms and legs and break through walls? That would be a memorable entrance, not the crying, screaming, terrified way humans are squeezed out into the world.”

“I guess it’s not ideal,” I say.

“If I could be born any way, I’d be a raindrop,” she says. “I’d begin in a cloud and start with a peaceful descent and then gain speed on the way down to earth. Then I’d land in a forest and I’d grow like a cabbage patch kid.”

I don’t interrupt, because she’s in some crazy trance now.

“Then a stork would pick me up when I’m just this tiny baby and he’d wrap me in flannel sheets and fly me home. He’d tell me stories on the way, about oceans and carnivals and love and family and I’d fall asleep to the rhythmic flapping of his giant wings. When I woke up, my parents would be holding me. Amazed at this miracle breathing in their arms.”

Then, as if this isn’t enough, she says her other random thought for the day is what animal she’d like to be.

“But the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced I love being human,” she says.

This surprises me. I figured she’d want to be a bird. Something with wings. “Why?”

“We have it the best,” she says. “Think about it. First, we’re bipedal. And I like being tall. Imagine being quadrupedal. You wouldn’t be able to walk hand in hand. Or have your hands free to take pictures. How boring would that be?”

I admit I’ve never thought about it.

“And being a mammal is crucial. I’d hate to live in the water. No hiking in the sun. No road trips. No running and Rollerblading and feeling the wind in your hair. And I can’t swim very well,” she adds.

“And imagine being nocturnal. No more sitting back and enjoying sunsets or feeling the sun on your skin or studying the clouds in the sky. And humans have the largest brains. Think if we had a tiny cat brain? No analyzing, philosophizing, writing, reading, dreaming. I can’t imagine that.”

“We wouldn’t be having this conversation,” I point out. “What a loss that would be.” She catches me roll my eyes and she lifts her hand up to slap me but I grab it in mine and squeeze and press my lips to hers before she can argue.

Friday night I’m over at Gray’s and we’re watching TV.
But I have a problem watching television—I prefer to make it interactive. So, during the commercials we turn the volume down and do our own voice-overs for the actors. We turn a shampoo commercial into an ad for killing head lice. We transform a Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial into a public service announcement about diabetes.

I wander into Gray’s room and he follows as if we’re attached by an invisible cord. Lately, it feels like we are. I turn on his stereo and tell him I want to listen to music.

He plays me his favorite. Acoustic. The guitar, he argues, is the best instrument. He says you can go without any other instrument and write any song imaginable. A guitar can wail, it can cry. It can drum, it can laugh. It has every range of emotions, like it’s part human.

He plays Ryan Adams’s album
Heartbreaker
and we turn the lights off and lie on the floor next to the speakers. We spend hours listening, just listening. We hear every beat, every clever layering of instruments. The carpeting absorbs the bass and howl of the harmonica and the heartbeat of the drums. Gray’s fingers dance against mine and I memorize his hands. I’m relaxed, but I’m too high to fall asleep. The music falls around us like rain and it melts over our skin and into our bones. We imagine what he was thinking when he wrote each song. We dissect the meaning of the lyrics. We listen to what the music is saying.

It’s the best date I’ve ever had.

I get up and turn on Gray’s desk lamp and study a corkboard hung on the wall. He uses it to tack up ticket stubs from all the concerts he’s been to. I read the concerts out loud.

“Black Crowes, the Killers, the Roots, Atmosphere, U2, Beastie Boys, Bob Dylan, Ryan Adams, Tom Petty, Paul Simon, Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Counting Crows, the Flaming Lips…

“Where did you see all these shows?” I ask. He tells me mostly in Phoenix, a few in Vegas. Some in Los Angeles. My eyes perk up at this.

“I’ve always wanted to see L.A.,” I tell him. He says it’s only a six-hour drive. I look down at him and he’s lying on the floor, his arms folded behind his head. He doesn’t have to see my plotting smile—he can sense the question. His summer school classes are over and we both know he has the weekend off from work.

“When do you want to go?” he asks, his eyes on the ceiling.

“Can we leave in the morning?” I ask.

“You’re crazy,” he says.

I nod in agreement and crawl back down on the carpet to join him.
Tell me something I don’t know,
I’m about to say, but his hands tug me on top of him and his warm lips are on mine too fast for the words to slip out.

***

We head out at an ungodly hour (according to Gray),
but I can’t sleep when L.A. is waiting to be discovered. We stop for gas and slam coffee to keep us awake for the long drive, then head west, through the Mojave Desert.

We’re in L.A. by the afternoon and we drive straight into Santa Monica, where we check in to a hotel on the coast. Between the two of us we have enough money to splurge on a small ocean view room. We stand out on our narrow balcony and stare at the crashing waves like they’re part of a foreign world. When you spend your summer in a landlocked city like Phoenix, the ocean has a strange effect. On the hottest summer days it’s easy to think the world has dried up, that the relief of rain is a myth. Seeing an endless body of water spread out against the horizon instead of a cracked desert plain is like turning your world upside down.

I change in the bathroom, and when I come out, Gray blinks as if he doesn’t recognize me. His mouth slowly falls open as his eyes trace my outfit.

I run my hands over my silky hips. “It’s just a dress,” I say. But I know what he’s thinking—it’s short and black and hugs me in all the right places. My mom and sister forced the dress on me last year, claiming that clothes are like bait. This is my first time wearing it, and it proves their theory right. From Gray’s expression, I’d guess he wants to do one thing: Rip it off. I even combed my hair straight and put on some mascara and eyeliner and lip-gloss. For me, it’s a monumental transformation.

“You own a dress?” he says, and I stare at him like it’s a stupid question.

“Every girl needs to own a little black dress,” I tell him, as if it’s a law. I pull him out of the room before he gets the chance to molest me. We’ll save that for later.

We cross Ocean Drive and pass restaurants and souvenir shops. We walk past a bike lane busy with skaters and runners, and finally we reach the warm, sandy beach. We watch seagulls ride the wind as if they’re floating on an invisible wave in the sky and we wade into the cold, curling water. We walk down Santa Monica Pier and people watch and look at amateur artwork. We ask strangers to take our picture while we do awkward prom poses, with Gray standing behind me and wrapping his arms around my waist as we both force tense smiles.

We hop into Gray’s car and drive downtown so he can introduce me to the most famous street in Los Angeles—Sunset Boulevard. We eat sushi at Miyagi’s and sit outside to watch the constant stream of traffic crawl down the strip. He points out the Viper Room, the Roxy Theatre, and the Whiskey Bar, and talks about the bands that made them famous.

We walk past Armani and Prada boutiques. We walk into Book Soup and browse the ceiling-high shelves stacked with screenplays. We sit down in the corner and read out loud the opening scene from
Pulp Fiction.
We head outside and see the Sky Bar and the Comedy Store and the House of Blues and point out the Porches, Ferraris, and endless limos that speed by. We pretend to see celebrities.

We drive down to Hollywood Boulevard to see the Mann Chinese Theater. We get Vanilla Ice Blendeds at the Coffee Bean on the corner of Hollywood and Orange. We take pictures on the Walk of Stars and buy CDs from artists promoting their albums on the street. We buy each other fake Oscars at a souvenir shop. Gray picks out “Best Director” for me and I buy him “Best Vocal Performer.”

We walk hand in hand outside the Kodak Theater, bustling with tourists and shoppers. We stare at the blinking cinema lights of the old theaters and watch searchlights rotate in the sky above us like planets circling on a wild orbit.

When we’re both exhausted, we drive back to Santa Monica, but I insist on seeing the ocean at night, so we head down to the beach. It’s the perfect place to end the perfect day.

And to bring up a thought that’s been plaguing my mind.

The waves are white against the black horizon
and rise up only to crash down like angry fists. Dylan and I sit on the sand and watch the free performance. We’re both quiet, and I wrap my arm around her shoulders. I lean close to her and rub my lips back and forth along her jaw line and slowly work my way down her neck. I feel her shudder. She tells me I’m missing the ocean and it’s beautiful. I tell her she’s more beautiful. My other hand’s resting on her leg. I slowly slide it up, under her dress, and I can feel her thigh break out in goose bumps.

I hear her breaths shorten and I smile to myself. I’ve never been very smooth with women. Or confident. But with Dylan I am.

“I want to give you something,” she says suddenly. I look into her eyes and they’re wild, intense, but with a hint of seriousness. I tell her I’d love anything. I tickle her neck with the tip of my nose. I tell her I’d love a book on tractors now that I’ve finished the one on mullets. I wait for her to come back with something. When I look at her she isn’t smiling, and I realize this is something serious.

“What is it?” I ask.

She tells me it’s something you can only give one time, to one person. My heart pounds and my eyebrows shoot up.