“Never again?” She doesn’t like the sound of that.
“Well, never say never.”
“I’d never say never,” she tells me.
There are a few more people on the beach now, mostly older men and women taking an afternoon walk. They nod to us as we pass, and sometimes they say hello. We nod back, return their hellos. Nobody questions why we’re here. Nobody questions anything. We’re just a part of the moment, like everything else.
The sun falls farther. The temperature drops alongside it. Rhiannon shivers, so I stop holding her hand and put my arm around her. She suggests we go back to the car and get the “make-out blanket” from the trunk. We find it there, buried under empty beer bottles, twisted jumper cables, and other guy crap. I wonder how often Rhiannon and Justin have used the make-out blanket for that purpose, but I don’t try to access the memories. Instead, I bring the blanket back out onto the beach and put it down for both of us. I lie down and face the sky, and Rhiannon lies down next to me and does the same. We stare at the clouds, breathing distance from one another, taking it all in.
“This has to be one of the best days ever,” Rhiannon says.
Without turning my head, I find her hand with my hand.
“Tell me about some of the other days like this,” I ask.
“I don’t know.…”
“Just one. The first one that comes to mind.”
Rhiannon thinks about it for a second. Then she shakes her head. “It’s stupid.”
“Tell me.”
She turns to me and moves her hand to my chest. Makes lazy circles there. “For some reason, the first thing that comes to mind is this mother-daughter fashion show. Do you promise you won’t laugh?”
I promise.
She studies me. Makes sure I’m sincere. Continues.
“It was in fourth grade or something. Renwick’s was doing a fund-raiser for hurricane victims, and they asked for volunteers from our class. I didn’t ask my mother or anything—I just signed up. And when I brought the information home—well, you know how my mom is. She was terrified. It’s hard enough to get her out to the supermarket. But a fashion show? In front of strangers? I might as well have asked her to pose for Playboy. God, now there’s a scary thought.”
Her hand is now resting on my chest. She’s looking off to the sky.
“But here’s the thing: she didn’t say no. I guess it’s only now that I realize what I put her through. She didn’t make me go to the teacher and take it back. No, when the day came, we drove over to Renwick’s and went where they told us to go. I had thought they would put us in matching outfits, but it wasn’t like that. Instead, they basically told us we could wear whatever we wanted from the store. So there we were, trying all these things on. I went for the gowns, of course—I was so much more of a girl then. I ended up with this light blue dress—ruffles all over the place. I thought it was so sophisticated.”
“I’m sure it was classy,” I say.
She hits me. “Shut up. Let me tell my story.”
I hold her hand on my chest. Lean over and kiss her quickly.
“Go ahead,” I say. I am loving this. I never have people tell me their stories. I usually have to figure them out myself. Because I know that if people tell me stories, they will expect them to be remembered. And I cannot guarantee that. There is no way to know if the stories stay after I’m gone. And how devastating would it be to confide in someone and have the confidence disappear? I don’t want to be responsible for that.
But with Rhiannon I can’t resist.
She continues. “So I had my wannabe prom dress. And then it was Mom’s turn. She surprised me, because she went for the dresses, too. I’d never really seen her all dressed up before. And I think that was the most amazing thing to me: It wasn’t me who was Cinderella. It was her.
“After we picked out our clothes, they put makeup on us and everything. I thought Mom was going to flip, but she was actually enjoying it. They didn’t really do much with her—just a little more color. And that was all it took. She was pretty. I know it’s hard to believe, knowing her now. But that day, she was like a movie star. All the other moms were complimenting her. And when it was time for the actual show, we paraded out there and people applauded. Mom and I were both smiling, and it was real, you know?
“We didn’t get to keep the dresses or anything. But I remember on the ride home, Mom kept saying how great I was. When we got back to our house, Dad looked at us like we were aliens, but the cool thing is, he decided to play along. Instead of getting all weird, he kept calling us his supermodels, and asked us to do the show for him in our living room, which we did. We were laughing so much. And that was it. The day ended. I’m not sure Mom’s worn makeup since. And it’s not like I turned out to be a supermodel. But that day reminds me of this one. Because it was a break from everything, wasn’t it?”
“It sounds like it,” I tell her.
“I can’t believe I just told you that.”
“Why?”
“Because. I don’t know. It just sounds so silly.”
“No, it sounds like a good day.”
“How about you?” she asks.
“I was never in a mother-daughter fashion show,” I joke. Even though, as a matter of fact, I’ve been in a few.
She hits me lightly on the shoulder. “No. Tell me about another day like this one.”
I access Justin and find out he moved to town when he was twelve. So anything before that is fair game, because Rhiannon won’t have been there. I could try to find one of Justin’s memories to share, but I don’t want to do that. I want to give Rhiannon something of my own.
“There was this one day when I was eleven.” I try to remember the name of the boy whose body I was in, but it’s lost to me. “I was playing hide-and-seek with my friends. I mean, the brutal, tackle kind of hide-and-seek. We were in the woods, and for some reason I decided that what I had to do was climb a tree. I don’t think I’d ever climbed a tree before. But I found one with some low branches and just started moving. Up and up. It was as natural as walking. In my memory, that tree was hundreds of feet tall. Thousands. At some point, I crossed the tree line. I was still climbing, but there weren’t any other trees around. I was all by myself, clinging to the trunk of this tree, a long way from the ground.”
I can see shimmers of it now. The height. The town below me.
“It was magical,” I say. “There’s no other word to describe it. I could hear my friends yelling as they were caught, as the game played out. But I was in a completely different place. I was seeing the world from above, which is an extraordinary thing when it happens for the first time. I’d never flown in a plane. I’m not even sure I’d been in a tall building. So there I was, hovering above everything I knew. I had made it somewhere special, and I’d gotten there all on my own. Nobody had given it to me. Nobody had told me to do it. I’d climbed and climbed and climbed, and this was my reward. To watch over the world, and to be alone with myself. That, I found, was what I needed.”
Rhiannon leans into me. “That’s amazing,” she whispers.
“Yeah, it was.”
“And it was in Minnesota?”
In truth, it was in North Carolina. But I access Justin and find that, yes, for him it would’ve been Minnesota. So I nod.
“You want to know another day like this one?” Rhiannon asks, curling closer.
I adjust my arm, make us both comfortable. “Sure.”
“Our second date.”
But this is only our first, I think. Ridiculously.
“Really?” I ask.
“Remember?”
I check to see if Justin remembers their second date. He doesn’t.
“Dack’s party?” she prompts.
Still nothing.
“Yeah …,” I hedge.
“I don’t know—maybe it doesn’t count as a date. But it was the second time we hooked up. And, I don’t know, you were just so … sweet about it. Don’t get mad, alright?”
I wonder where this is going.
“I promise, nothing could make me mad right now,” I tell her. I even cross my heart to prove it.
She smiles. “Okay. Well, lately—it’s like you’re always in a rush. Like, we have sex but we’re not really … intimate. And I don’t mind. I mean, it’s fun. But every now and then, it’s good to have it be like this. And at Dack’s party—it was like this. Like you had all the time in the world, and you wanted us to have it together. I loved that. It was back when you were really looking at me. It was like—well, it was like you’d climbed up that tree and found me there at the top. And we had that together. Even though we were in someone’s backyard. At one point—do you remember?—you made me move over a little so I’d be in the moonlight. ‘It makes your skin glow,’ you said. And I felt like that. Glowing. Because you were watching me, along with the moon.”
Does she realize that right now she’s lit by the warm orange spreading from the horizon, as not-quite-day becomes not-quite-night? I lean over and become that shadow. I kiss her once, then we drift into each other, close our eyes, drift into sleep. And as we drift into sleep, I feel something I’ve never felt before. A closeness that isn’t merely physical. A connection that defies the fact that we’ve only just met. A sensation that can only come from the most euphoric of feelings: belonging.
What is it about the moment you fall in love? How can such a small measure of time contain such enormity? I suddenly realize why people believe in déjà vu, why people believe they’ve lived past lives, because there is no way the years I’ve spent on this earth could possibly encapsulate what I’m feeling. The moment you fall in love feels like it has centuries behind it, generations—all of them rearranging themselves so that this precise, remarkable intersection could happen. In your heart, in your bones, no matter how silly you know it is, you feel that everything has been leading to this, all the secret arrows were pointing here, the universe and time itself crafted this long ago, and you are just now realizing it, you are just now arriving at the place you were always meant to be.
We wake an hour later to the sound of her phone.
I keep my eyes closed. Hear her groan. Hear her tell her mother she’ll be home soon.
The water has gone deep black and the sky has gone ink blue. The chill in the air presses harder against us as we pick up the blanket, provide a new set of footprints.
She navigates, I drive. She talks, I listen. We sing some more. Then she leans into my shoulder and I let her stay there and sleep for a little longer, dream for a little longer.
I am trying not to think of what will happen next.
I am trying not to think of endings.
I never get to see people while they’re asleep. Not like this. She is the opposite of when I first met her. Her vulnerability is open, but she’s safe within it. I watch the rise and fall of her, the stir and rest of her. I only wake her when I need her to tell me where to go.
The last ten minutes, she talks about what we’re going to do tomorrow. I find it hard to respond.
“Even if we can’t do this, I’ll see you at lunch?” she asks.
I nod.
“And maybe we can do something after school?”
“I think so. I mean, I’m not sure what else is going on. My mind isn’t really there right now.”
This makes sense to her. “Fair enough. Tomorrow is tomorrow. Let’s end today on a nice note.”
Once we get to town, I can access the directions to her house without having to ask her. But I want to get lost anyway. To prolong this. To escape this.
“Here we are,” Rhiannon says as we approach her driveway.