“You only have fifteen minutes,” she says.
“That’s okay,” I tell her. “It’s worth it.”
This is where Violet told me she’d be. She offered to meet me outside when she was finished, but I can’t wait another fifteen minutes. I need to see her now.
“There’s the observation tower,” the woman says. “It’s free and open to the public. You still have time to go there. But there’s no food allowed.”
“Oh, this?” I say, holding up the artichoke I bought on my way over. “It isn’t actually food. At least, not in this context. It’s a flower.”
“Put the flower in your backpack, please.”
*
I text Violet to meet me in the tower and find my way to the elevator.
She’s looking out over North Beach when I find her. So many people are up here, taking in the panorama of the city through the glass walls, but there are things I need to say that can’t wait. So much is clear to me now.
I touch her shoulder. She turns to face me.
“Hey there,” she says.
“The Exploratorium yesterday. The de Young today. Is this a museum tour?”
“It’s just a habit, I guess. It’s always easy to find the museums, and that way you’re guaranteed something good to look at.”
I smile.
“But somehow I don’t think you’re here to discuss my habits,” she says. “You look nervous. What’s wrong?”
A chime sounds, and then a recorded voice tells us that the museum will be closing in ten minutes. So I rush in and say, “I think I never really wanted to meet you. That’s why I ran away from Shelbie’s party.”
Hurt flashes across her face, but I keep going.
“The idea of you kept saving me, over and over. Every time I felt worried, all I had to do was think of your name and I would be calm again. All of my paintings were about you, but they were also about the idea of another world, another life, one that might feel better than the one I’d been inhabiting. You were my escape. I needed you to keep being an idea to me.”
She shrugs, which is not what I’m after. I have to push through this part, though, to get to what I really want to say.
“All those stories Lehna told me about you. I survived on them. I was destined to be disappointed and then what would save me?”
She looks away, but I take her hand.
“Wait,” I say. “This time I’m not finished. Then something happened: I met you. It didn’t matter how much I managed to mess things up in order to prolong the dream of you—you showed up anyway. And you were—you are—better than the dream. And I’m realizing now that your job isn’t to save me, and I’m okay with that. All I need for you is to be in my life, and I’ll figure out the rest of it.”
“Be in your life?” she says. “I don’t know what you mean by that.”
“More than be in my life,” I say. “Much more than be in my life. I mean I want to be your girlfriend. I want to see you every day. I want to wake up to texts from you that say good morning and I want to kiss you whenever I want to. I want to kiss you right now.”
She laughs.
“You really know how to worry a girl,” she says. “I mean, a little warning next time would be good. Something like, ‘I’m going to say a bunch of things that sound like rejection, but in the end I’ll turn it all around and say something good.’”
“I was just being honest!” I say. “The opposite of elusive!”
“Right,” she says. “Good. I very much prefer honesty.”
“I almost forgot!” I reach into my backpack and pull out the artichoke. She looks confused for a moment, but then I see her remember. She takes it from my hands.
“So can we kiss now?” I ask.
“Yes.”
It’s entirely different than it was on the street. Her mouth is still soft, but just as I relax into the kiss she bites my lower lip. I yelp in surprise, but I don’t pull away. I can feel her smile. The bite is a warning. It’s a Don’t think I’ve forgotten, a Don’t you dare pull anything like that again. And now her hand is on my neck, and she’s pulling me even closer, and ohmygod we need to get out of here. But even though I know this is taking PDA one step too far, I can’t stop kissing her. So we become the exhibit of us. One more spectacle in a museum packed with things to see. We breathe each other in. We tune the world out. Our kiss builds walls around us, until— “Ah-hem!”
An elderly white-haired docent is standing a few feet from us, looking more amused than stern.
“Museum’s closing,” he says.
“I’m sorry!” I say, but the joy in my voice betrays how immensely far from sorry I am.
Violet takes my hand. She grins at the man.
“My girlfriend and I got carried away,” she says, and he laughs, and we cross the tower to the elevator, and before the doors slide shut we’re in each other’s arms again.
SATURDAY
THURSDAY
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
21
MARK
We walked through the future and felt we were borrowing it.