“I can say good-bye right out here, no problem,” I said, and when I opened my arms and he came in for the hug, I put my hands on his shoulders, rose on my tiptoes, tilted my head, and kissed him.
I don’t care that he pushed me away, hard, or that he didn’t say anything after that, just shook his head and went back into the house and locked the door between us, that when he finally saw the real me he ran away. I don’t give a shit about any of it, but you might, because before he did all that? Before he remembered who he was supposed to be and what he was supposed to do? He kissed me back.
I CAME TO FIND YOU.
I came to find you and take you away, because I couldn’t go home again, and after I’d done what I’d done, I couldn’t very well let you go home again, either.
I couldn’t go without you.
That was always the plan, that we would go, and we would go together. We were supposed to be two parts of the same whole. Conjoined twins without the freak factor, one mind and one soul.
I would have told you everything. Once we were safe on our way, the past gnashing its teeth at our backs. Once we’d driven far enough to hit tomorrow, I would have told you my story, because I would know you’d chosen me, you’d chosen us, and you could be trusted with the truth.
Maybe I shouldn’t have left you there. Definitely I shouldn’t have left you there alone, in enemy territory, all boozed up and no place to go, thinking you could hold your liquor when all along it’s been me holding you up, holding you back, holding your hair and mopping your puke and letting you believe you could handle things on your own. Maybe I shouldn’t have left you. But you shouldn’t have asked me to.
GIRL MEETS GIRL, GIRL LOVES girl, girl saves girl. This is the story of us, Dex. The only story that matters.
The story of us: That night at Beast, before you went all to liquored-up shit, when we let ourselves float on the arms of the crowd, surfing the love of strangers. Love pulsing with the beat, a wave that lifts you up no matter who you are. The ocean doesn’t care. The ocean only wants to slap the shore and then carry you back to the deep.
The story of us: You need me to turn you wild. And I need you. I need you to be my conscience, Dex, just like you need me to be your id. We don’t work apart.
Our story ends happily ever after. It has to. We escape Battle Creek, pile into the car, and burn a strip of rubber down the highway. Fly away west, to the promised land. Our rooms will be lit by lava lamps and Christmas lights. Our lives will glow. Consciousnesses will rise and minds will expand, and beautiful boys in flannel shirts will make snow angels on our floor and write love letters on our ceiling with black polish and red lipstick. We will be their muses, and they will strum their guitars beneath our window, calling to us with a siren song, Come down come away come with me. We will lean out of our tower, our hair swinging like Rapunzel’s, and laugh, because nothing will carry us away from each other.
You always tell me there was no before Lacey, that you were only you once you met me. Now I’m telling you: After Dex, there is no more Lacey. No more Lacey and no more Dex. Only Dex-and-Lacey, only and always. You should have had more faith; you should have known I’d find my way back to you.
I will always come back for you.
THEM
LACEY’S MOTHER THOUGHT THINGS WERE supposed to be different this time. Of course, they were supposed to be different last time. Supposed to be. That was pregnancy; that was motherhood; that was the motherfucking joy and promise of bringing a child into this godforsaken world, a lifetime of supposed-to-bes.
You were supposed to be healthy; you were supposed to be good. You were supposed to be a person who did not drink, did not smoke, did not snort or shoot up or, God forbid, eat some fucking unpasteurized cheese. You were supposed to be a whale, but not too big a whale. You were supposed to rest your hands on your belly and wait for a kick; you were supposed to have sex, but not too much sex, not so much or so dirty that junior would sense his mother is a whore. You were, above all, supposed to be happy. About the hemorrhoids, the swollen feet, the pineapple-sized lump of screaming flesh tearing its way through your vagina like a fist through pearl-pink tissue paper. You were supposed to be glowing with the fucking ecstasy of giving your body over to someone else—not the baby, no, that you could maybe accept, in all its nipple-sucking, spitting, burping, shitting glory, but to anyone and everyone with an opinion on what you were supposed to do and who you were supposed to be. You, who had been no one of consequence, became someone whose every choice counted, whose every mistake verged on crime against the public interest. You became a mother, and mothers were supposed to be. You were somehow supposed to be happy about even that.