I’m here, I said with my lips on hers. I don’t know what I have to give. I don’t know if it’s enough. I know you don’t have much to give, either. But still, I’m here.
At first she kissed me with a smile on her lips, but the tighter I held her, the more urgency she felt, the more she spoke to me, too. Her hands fisted where they gathered behind my neck, her lips hard on mine. Her brows bent together, body leaning into me, feet just barely touching the ground. And when we both pulled back, fireworks illuminating our faces, I read her response in her red, white, and blue eyes.
I’m here, too.
BEMUSE
be·muse
Verb
To occupy the attention of: distract, absorb
Keith hated when I wore heels.
I wasn’t sure why, because he was plenty taller than I was, but every time I wore them he would complain. He said I didn’t know how to walk in them or that they didn’t go with what I was wearing, and in both cases, he was lying. I was a fashion designer for Christ’s sake, I knew how to wear high heels. Still, after a while, I stopped wearing them when we would go out. I saved them for girls nights.
I remember I’d fastened up my favorite pair of Jimmy Choo’s the day I left him, though.
Looking back now, I wondered if I’d done so on purpose. Was that the first time I told Keith to take what he thought about how I should look or act and shove it right up his ass?
Maybe.
Regardless, it made absolutely no sense that Keith’s issue with my high heels was the first thought to pop into my head when Julie ran up on my porch and told me Zeek had given her a promise ring, but it was.
“Wow!” I said, forcing a smile and sitting up straighter on the little wicker bench. She’d plopped down next to me and wore the biggest smile, finger that sported the new bling waving in front of me. I reached for her hand, steadying it, surveying closer. “It’s beautiful.”
“Isn’t it?! I just can’t believe it. He snuck over when my parents were sleeping last night and we had the most amazing night and then this morning before he leaves he just pulls it out of his pocket and puts it on my hand! We were both crying, it was the most romantic thing.”
I was nodding, eyes fixed on the ring and lips pinned between my teeth to keep myself from speaking before thinking. I didn’t know what to say.
I still remembered the promise ring Keith gave me when we were seventeen—I could remember what he was wearing, where we were when he asked, how we’d both cried, too—and yet I couldn’t remember any of it. Because the biggest piece that was missing was the innocent love not yet touched by reality. I couldn’t recall what it felt like to feel that love so strong without any fear attached at all. That part of it was gone for me, maybe forever, and my heart ached with the realization.
“You don’t seem happy for us,” Julie accused, pulling her hand back. “What? We’re too young?”
Yes. “No, no, not at all, Julie,” I assured her.
And truthfully, I didn’t think that. Davie and Yvette weren’t the only high school sweethearts I knew who were absolutely perfect for each other. I had to keep reminding myself that just because my own love had gone sour didn’t mean every other love story would, too.
“I think it’s pretty special,” I continued. “How are you feeling about it?”
She was still eying me warily, but her narrowed eyes leveled out and she smiled, kicking back beside me on the bench and staring at her finger. It was a strange day for the middle of July. The high had just barely touched sixty-four degrees, and now that the sun was beginning its descent beyond the mountains, it was only cooling down further. I tucked my oversized sweater around me and pulled my feet up, hugging my knees as I waited for Julie to talk.
“I’m not scared, you know?” She finally stopped looking at the ring, tucking her own legs up to match mine. She leaned her cheek on her knee and smiled. “I love him, that I know for sure, but I don’t know where life will lead us. And that’s why I love what he said when he gave me this ring. He didn’t promise to marry me or love me forever, he just promised to love me while he could and to never do anything that would intentionally hurt me.”
I felt the joy radiating off her, almost like it was a steam that could permeate my own skin.
“I can get down with that,” she finished, flashing me a huge smile.
I chuckled. “You’re sure you’re only sixteen?”
I saw so much of myself in Julie, especially when she grinned wider with a slight blush in her cheeks, and yet she was so much wiser to the world than I felt like I was. I frowned, wondering if leaving Keith had blackened my heart, if I was ruined for love and fairy tales and romance. Would I ever see a ring again as anything other than an imprisonment? Would I ever see it as a symbol of undying love? Or maybe just of a love worth fighting for here and now, regardless of the future?
I felt like a pessimist, like an old witch raining on a princess’ parade.
Julie’s eyes lit up as she looked behind me just before I heard Anderson’s boots climbing the stairs.
I turned to find him bundled up in a thick beige sweater, face and hands clean, hair still damp from his shower. A sweater shouldn’t have turned me on, but it was the sweater I’d bought for him on an impulse buy in Gold Bar the other day. I’d been with Yvette planning out side dishes for the pig roast and seen it in the window of a small boutique next door. I never thought I’d see him wear it.
And now I couldn’t wait to take it off him.
“Well I’m going to go show Momma Von,” Julie said, popping off the bench with a wink. She waved to Anderson as she squeezed past him and then turned back to me. “Can you still make my costume for the Alder 1k? Please, say yes!”
“Are you kidding? Our costumes are almost done, putting finishing touches on tomorrow.”
“Yes!” She threw up her hand for Anderson to high five. He did so with a smile and she scampered off, big curls bouncing the entire way.
“Costume? I didn’t realize we were dressing up this year,” Anderson said, standing tall in front of me with his hands tucked in his pockets.
The Alder 1k was a tradition at the pig roast where everyone in the community jogged around the small cabin loop, stopping twice for Jell-O shots along the way. From what I’d heard it was a riot, and I’d be participating in it very soon.
“Oh yeah. You better bring your A game too, buddy, because Julie and I are out for gold.”
He laughed. “Oh yeah, and what’s the prize? Some of Momma Von’s hooch?”
“Like you wouldn’t dress up as a pony with a rainbow tail if it was.”
“Touché,” Anderson agreed, extending a hand out for mine. “Walk by the river with me?”