I quickly slip out of my clothes, taking a moment to stand there, in Talia’s bedroom, naked down to my bra and underwear. A chill runs up my spine as I take a deep breath, goose bumps running up my bare arms.
“You done?” Talia asks, knocking on the door.
“One sec!” I shout back, hastily throwing on Talia’s clothes, trying not to think of them pressing against my bare skin as they previously have hers. As I finish, I ball up my own clothes and hug them against my chest.
“Ready!” I call. Talia opens the door and smiles as she tosses the jeans and shirt she was wearing earlier onto the mound of clothing on her bed.
“You can put that in the car if you want,” she says, pointing to the clothes I’m still clutching like a security blanket. I nod, momentarily unable to speak.
I follow her out of her room, keeping my eyes on the walls to get one last look at her childhood photos and definitely not so I won’t look at Talia’s body in those leggings. We get to the front door, and she motions for me to give her a second, jogging toward the other side of the house.
I hear tidbits of Spanish floating through the thin walls, Talia and her father, I guess. I didn’t even realize he was home. And maybe it’s the wall dulling their tones, but their words sound empty, hollow. I can’t imagine my parents and me ever sounding like that, even when just talking about mundane things like needing more toothpaste or passively commenting on the weather. Then I think of seeing Mom’s disappointed face for the first time after what happened last night, and it feels a little more imaginable.
* * *
“So what’s the deal with Sammie and Lindsay?” Talia asks as we begin our incline. She brought us to a hiking trail near the outskirts of town where my elementary school once came on a field trip. I suppress the memory of Sammie threatening to put worms in my lunch if I didn’t stop ogling our classmate Milo Wu, who picked me a poppy on the way to the junior trail.
“What do you mean?” My breath is already coming in shallow and dry, and we’ve barely begun walking.
“Well, you said you guys have been friends for a while, and feelings like theirs don’t just appear out of nowhere.” They don’t? “But they’re also both so … what’s the word?”
“Bold? Charismatic? Flirtatious?”
She laughs. “Yes. Yes to all of that.”
“I’m going to let you in on a little secret,” I say, leaning toward her conspiratorially and lowering my voice. “It’s all a front.”
“Their feelings or their cockiness?”
“The latter,” I reply. “They’re both the type to talk about masturbation or sex without a hint of shame, but ask them about their feelings and they promptly shut down.”
“They’d probably save themselves a lot of time if they were more honest about their feelings. They’d save Wesley plenty.”
“Ah, so this isn’t just chisme you’re looking for.” I point my finger at her. “You’re sneaky.”
She mock gasps and presses a hand against her chest, her tank top darkening in the spots where it touches her sweaty skin. I trip over loose gravel.
She reaches over a hand to steady me, but I quickly brush her off. “I’m good.” I fan the back of my neck. “Just a little hot. As for Lindsay and Sammie though, trust me, Agatha and I agree. I think they’re just scared of being that real with each other, you know? Risking their relationship changing and all that. Even though they obviously both know how the other one feels.”
“I get it,” she reassures me. “Even if you’re close, going from friends to dating is so scary. Just admitting how you feel is such a gamble. But it’s nice when you find people you don’t have to worry about that with.” We take a turn around a bend, and I’m grateful to see the ground flatten out a bit. At least the fresh air is crisp in my lungs, even as I heave it in ungracefully. “I mean, like, when you can be honest with someone, completely honest, and you trust them not to bail on you for being real.” Her voice gets floaty, eyes glazed and staring far off toward the tree line. She recovers immediately, snapping back so quickly I may have just imagined that look on her face. “Not just about romantic feelings, of course. Just, people you can be up-front with.”
“Yeah, that’s the best,” I reply awkwardly.
“You’ve got that with your friends though, right?” she asks, adjusting her bun as a coil of hair escapes from her scrunchie.
I hesitate, only for a second as I catch my breath, but that second hangs heavy on my chest as I half-heartedly say, “Yeah.”
She pops her eyebrow, clearly having noticed the moment of uncertainty.
“It’s just…,” I begin too quickly, words lost before I can even think of them. I start over slowly, careful not to let the words pour out too suddenly. It’s easier now that the trail is inclining again. “I’ve known them for so long. And they know me. We repeat stories and anecdotes and finish each other’s sentences.”
She smiles. “That sounds nice. I love Zaq and Wes, but we don’t have that much history.”
“Yeah, it is nice.” I pause, collect myself, and maneuver around my thoughts. “But sometimes, when you’ve known someone for years and they build up this image of you, it’s hard to talk about things that mess with that image. It feels like you’d be breaking some bond of trust between you and that person by being different than you were before. I don’t just mean subtle, slow changes. I mean, like, the big things that they never saw coming.” I inhale long and slow, the words suddenly exhausting me more than the hike. “Do you know what I mean?”
“Completely.” She nods, her eyes so wide that she almost looks frightened.
I wait a moment before asking what’s been on my mind since we left her house, the moment too perfect to let it pass. “Were Dani and that girl from the photo like that for you?”
“Like what? People I could be honest with or people I worried about being honest with?”
I wipe sweat, and probably a layer of foundation, off my forehead. “Either.”
She stops to retie her sneaker, propping her foot up on a rock. When she rises, her eyes look glossy. “That other girl was the first. Dani was the latter.”
“Can I ask what happened?”
She doesn’t reply right away, but we keep moving. We come across a bench overlooking a grassy area where a family is playing a game of soccer. Talia nods to the bench, and we sit. For a few seconds, the crunch of gravel, our heavy breathing, and the family’s laughter are the only sounds between us.