“No,” I say quietly, still trying to convince myself. “No, I’m not mad. You were just dancing.”
She visibly relaxes and runs her hands over her hair. The motion smooths down her locks until she lets go, and then all her curls pop up again. “I wouldn’t call that dancing.”
“What would you call it?”
She shrugs. “Faking it.” She exhales as she sinks down into the sand. Ahead of us, the sea slams against the shore, high tide on its way. She looks so small, all the jokes and fearlessness that led me to the top of the lighthouse stripped away.
Except the lonely. The lonely is still all over her.
I sit down next to her and open her water, nudging her arm until she takes it and sips.
“Thanks for helping me,” she says. “Really.”
“No problem.” I say that, but I know I’m lying. I can feel a ball of anger—?a problem—?coil together in my chest. Not at Eva, but at my mother, who’s slowly turning me into something inhuman. Unfeeling and cold.
“Hey.” She touches my arm, and I lift my eyes to hers, which are a little bleary-looking. “I’m serious. I haven’t been to many parties, and you were a total badass back there.”
I’ve had a lot of practice, I want to say. But I don’t. I can’t. That’ll lead to questions. And questions will lead to me explaining my mother, my life, and that’s something I’ve vowed not to do with anyone except for Luca, and even sharing it with him sometimes is hard enough. Talking about Mom feels like a betrayal. It all sounds so tragic, almost cliché, like something out of a Lifetime movie. And my mom . . . well, she’s my mother. And things aren’t that bad. They’re not that bad.
“Okay,” I say instead. Profound, I know.
“You know that one guy? Jay?”
I snort. “Yeah. You could say that.”
“He smelled like roast chicken.”
I laugh. “Oh my god, that’s right. He always smells like that when he drinks and gets wild. It’s like he sweats out all the meat he eats. It’s totally bizarre.”
“And totally disgusting.”
“And that.”
“He called me exotic. I really hate that.”
I tilt my head at her. “Why?”
She shakes her head. “You’d think having a white dad and a black mom means I have three legs and feathers. I’m biracial, not some rarely spotted species from some barely populated island.”
“Well, Jay’s an idiot. So he might literally believe you’re a rarely spotted species from some barely populated island.”
Eva snort-laughs, choking a little on her water. “Or he’s an entitled white asshat in America and he’s horny.”
“Oh, that’s a given.”
We laugh a little more, drink a little more, watch the ocean roll over itself a little more. I’m not sure how much time passes before I fill the silence with a whole bunch of stupid.
“So, you’ve really never met your father?”
She sucks in a breath.
“Sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have asked that.”
“No. No, it’s fine. Just surprised me is all. I didn’t know you knew that.”
“Luca told me.”
“Right.” She lifts the water bottle to her mouth, gulping until it’s empty. “And no, I haven’t.”
“You don’t even know who he is?”
“I know his name, a white dude my mom toured with when she was performing with a ballet company in Philadelphia.”
“Oh. Mine too,” I say. “I mean, my dad was some white dude, not that he was a dancer. And he wasn’t just some dude. I mean, my mom was married to him. God, sorry. I shouldn’t have brought this up.”
She laughs a little at my babbling. “It’s fine. And yeah, I figured your dad was a white dude.” She gestures to my pale-as-hell arms. “Anyway, my parents weren’t married and he didn’t want to be involved, I guess, so my mom didn’t put his name on the birth certificate. She only told me his name last year.”
“That must’ve been so hard on her, doing it all alone.”
“We did okay, but back then it was, I think. And then her company was all pissed that she got pregnant and fired her.”
“Really? Can they do that?”
She shrugs. “They did it anyway. I mean, from the start she wasn’t a favorite. Had to pretty much claw her way into the company, even though she was one of the best dancers.”
“Why?”
She gives me an Oh, come on look and presses her fingertips onto my wrist, her skin even darker against all my pale.
“Oh,” I say softly.
She waves a hand and then wraps her arms around her knees. “She had me and opened up a studio with a couple of friends of hers from college. It’s just been me and her ever since. I think meeting my dad now would just confuse me.”
“How do you mean?”
“I don’t know. I mean, he’s white. He’s a man. He may be a stellar human being, but how would I know? I’m curious, sure. I think about him a lot and maybe someday I’ll look him up, but I think he’d just . . . complicate how I see myself. It’s already hard enough.”
“What’s hard? I mean, about how you see yourself?”
She smiles, but there’s no mirth in it. “Other people’s voices can get really loud. When I was a kid, hardly anyone looked like me and I’d spit back stuff I heard people say at school and at dance. My mom would get so mad. She was really good about building me up, pointing out all the great things about being who I am, about being myself. And it worked. I like myself, I do. But I’m still—?” She presses her lips flat and looks away. “It’s just hard sometimes, that’s all. I get really anxious, like there’re too many things in my head, too much to feel. I’ve always been like that, even before Mom . . . anyway. You wouldn’t really understand.”
I frown because I want to understand. No, I’m not a black girl and my mom’s not dead and I have no idea what that’s like, but I feel this weird tug in my chest, a hook pulling me toward her. Like some foundational part of me, while different from Eva’s experience, does understand. Needs to.
“That’s why I like to color,” she says. “Chills me out, slows down my thoughts, and makes everything make sense. Colors, lines, patterns. No matter how intricate, it’s still ordered, you know?”
“Piano does that for me.”
She nods. “Ballet used to. I loved the method to it, you know? Choreography, positions, technique, the beats of the music. But how I still had all this freedom to—?”
“Make it your own.”
She smiles at me. “Exactly.”
“And ballet doesn’t do that anymore?”
She shrugs and looks away. “There’s a lot of freedom in coloring, too.”
Her answer reeks of bullshit, but I don’t push her. “Sounds like I need to try it out.”
“You do. Preferably on a windy day at the beach.”
“With some peanut butter.”
“Always with peanut butter.” She smiles and rests her cheek on her knee, watching me. “So what about you? Where’s your dad?”
“Oh. He died in Afghanistan.”
Her eyes widen. “I’m sorry.”