“Well, I am. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I know.”
We sit there for a while, the open air and this new clean space between us lacing us even tighter together.
“So who are you when you’re with me?” I ask after a while. “When we’re together at night, are you the real you? The princess?”
She smiles, bringing my hand to her lips, her breath playing over my knuckles as she speaks. “At first, yeah. But now . . . I don’t know. It feels like I can be both with you. Everything. You’re stable for me, Grace. You calm down my thoughts more than any coloring book.”
I smile, relief that she thinks I’m good for her a palpable beat in my chest.
“I’ve never felt like I fit anywhere,” she goes on. “With Mom, yeah, but that was it. I never felt at home in my ballet classes, even when my mom was the teacher. I loved dancing, but when someone thinks ballerina, they don’t picture me. They sure as hell don’t picture gay. They think white girl, plain and simple. Blue eyes, blond hair, stick-straight legs, with her arm looped around some lean-muscled guy’s bicep. My mom always told me it would be hard to make it as a dancer. I mean, it’s hard for anyone, but for a black girl?” She shakes her head. “But she never said impossible. Because she did it. She wasn’t famous, but she was happy. She accomplished what she wanted. She made me believe I could do it too. I fit inside her belief, you know what I mean? And after she died, I felt like a ghost, drifting through the air, trying to land so I could dance. So I could do anything. But now . . . I don’t know. These past couple of weeks have felt different. I do fit somewhere. Maybe I fit right here.”
“Maybe you should move to the lighthouse.” I lean back and touch the whitewashed wall. “There’s room for at least one sleeping bag.”
“Not here, the lighthouse, you silly doof.” She smiles and presses a single kiss to my palm. “Here, you.”
“Oh.” I sound all breathy, like Eva’s words stole every sip of air from my lungs. “Wow, you know how to turn a girl’s head.”
She laughs, but then she turns serious again. “And maybe I fit with Emmy and Luca, too. I know she cares about me.”
“She really does, Eva.”
“Yeah. I just . . . I know she didn’t mean to, but she’s my guardian now, so it’s like she’s automatically supposed to be this replacement for my mom. And I didn’t want that. I’ll never want that. Emmy can’t save me and I don’t want her to.”
“Of course not.”
“But . . . I told her I’d think about dancing.”
I squeeze her hand. “Yeah?
She nods, her eyes round with what can only be called fear. “I have an audition. For a dance education program.”
I feel my own eyes widen. “What? Why didn’t you tell me? Where? When?”
“NYU. It’s not until October. It was scheduled before everything happened with my mom and I . . . I don’t know.”
“You’re thinking of not going?”
She shrugs. “I want to. And I don’t.”
“Eva. You have to do it.”
“Like you have to do yours?”
I blink at her. I never told her how conflicted I feel about my own audition, my own future. I guess I didn’t have to.
Scooting closer, I lace our fingers together. “We shouldn’t have to feel guilty about being happy. Should we?”
“I don’t want to.”
“Do you feel guilty when you’re with me?”
She rests her head on my shoulder, and her voice goes soft around the edges. “Sometimes, yeah. But not because of you. It’s just weird feeling happy about anything. But my mom would’ve loved you. Or maybe she does love you.”
“Do you believe in heaven? Or . . . I don’t know. Life after death?”
She lifts her head, gaze fixed on the ocean. “It’s a nice thought. But, honestly? Not really. Still, I think I believe in something, because it doesn’t feel like Mom’s just . . . nothing, you know? It feels like she’s still here. Or maybe it’s just here.” She taps on her chest a few times. Even when her hand stills, she keeps it settled over her heart, her eyes on the black ocean pressed against the black sky.
The briny wind clings to us, tossing our hair together, our scents, our breaths. I take the hand she has against her chest and link it with mine, transferring it to just above my own heart. I squeeze and she squeezes back. As it turns out, I’m starting to suspect that I can commit to someone, I can fall in love. At least I think I can, because I don’t believe someone incapable of love could feel as terrified and relieved and excited as I feel right now just sitting here, holding Eva’s hand.
“I want you to know something,” I say to her as I pick up my own spoon and take a bite of peanut butter.
“What?”
A million butterflies zing through my stomach, but I need her to know because Jay never knew anything.
“You’re . . . you’re really important to me,” I say, forcing my eyes on hers. “More important than any guy I’ve ever been with.”
She tilts her head at me, a smile flashing across her mouth, there and then gone. “Because I’m a girl?”
I shake my head. I know that’s not it. I mean, I love that she’s a girl. I love her smooth skin and the soft curves under my fingertips when we kiss, the way my mouth can slide from her lips to her neck with nothing to slow me down, but that’s only her body. I liked Jay’s body too, how his arms seemed to swallow me, the way he smelled, the flat plane of his chest where I would lay my head, that little V where his hips met his pelvis. I like it all in different ways and for different reasons. But those are just details for my hands and eyes. This—?this pull toward Eva—has nothing to do with what I can see or smell or touch. It’s something more, almost animal and instinctual, buried so deep inside my chest, I feel it like blood flowing through my veins.
I’m not sure how to say all this. It’s all so overwhelming. Suddenly I feel shy, unsure, a fourteen-year-old me wondering if I can really take another girl’s hand.
“Hey.” Eva squeezes my fingers and a small smile curls over my mouth—?I already am holding her hand.
So I tell her the truth. “You’re important to me because you’re Eva.”
Her smile widens. She grabs the neckline of my T-shirt and pulls me closer and closer until our mouths collide.
Chapter Twenty-Three
THE NEXT MORNING, I’M JOLTED AWAKE AT GOD KNOWS what time. I don’t have to work today, which means I can avoid Luca, and I sure as hell don’t want to wade through Chopin after staying up with Eva until nearly three a.m. the night before. I’d planned to sleep and sleep and then sleep some more.