Part II
Chapter 11: Right Angles Part II
I check for a pulse the way I was taught in elementary gym class, fingers resting haphazardly on my wrist (because after all, elementary school was a long time ago.) When I feel nothing I’m not surprised, before realizing that it can’t be true. I’m more panicked by the latter, more encouraged by the former.
Her eyes are all over me now, waiting for my words to wipe away the crinkle of confusion that’s formed around the bridge of her nose. She has sand in her hair. Her mouth is open and poised, needing my response in order to shape hers.
I avert my eyes toward the dark-haired ghost who looks betrayed and unraveled in the mist. She’s slipped, she’s released, and she’s divulged without correctly predicting her consequence.
Kat is Kat because of the absence of these mistakes. Without them she’s one of us. And for a second I feel so sorry for her loss that I almost forget Spencer’s face.
But just as I never, ever have before, I didn’t this time either.
“What is she talking about?” she asks again, smiling a little as if it will somehow encourage me.
“I…I don’t even know how to finally…”
“Inside joke,” Kat interrupts, the Kat-ness seemingly finding its way back into her blood stream judging by the look of her emotionless face, “she wanted to rub up against everyone and everything back then, pre-extreme homo makeover. For years she couldn’t mention a name in high school without me giving her shit about how she probably wanted to make sweet, reckless love to the party at hand. Mostly she just had a party with her own hand.”
“Wow, Kat,” I say, shaking my head.
“Whatever. Point is, she probably did want to get all up in your sandbox. But she wanted everyone’s, so it’s just like…it doesn’t actually mean anything.”
She had recovered desperately-not a pretty version of herself, certainly-and though it might not have been a smooth transition or a touchdown after an interception or even believable to anyone with any sort of ego, it had worked. Spencer’s face smoothed a bit and she laughed enough for it to almost be contagious.
“I can’t wait for my yearbook,” she says quietly, winking at me before shaking the sand from her hair. I wasn’t even sure how she could have known it was there.
But she did. She knew.
“Sometimes I miss the old Ashley,” Kat says, looking at me with a sincere grin that makes her look like the old Kat.
“I’m sure you’re the only one.”
“Well, of course, because I’m the only one who knows to miss her. She never met anyone else.”
“I still can’t believe I don’t remember you,” Spencer says, shaking her head, “that’s so weird.”
“There was nothing worth remembering,” I reply, digging in the sand.
“That’s not true.”
“See? Kat says that’s not true.”
I sigh, “Don’t be fooled. Kat can be wrong sometimes just like everyone else.”
I can see Spencer and the ghost exchange smiling glances, and I contemplate burrowing into the sand and waiting for them to forget about me and leave. But then I realize it’s exactly what old Ashley would have done and so I don’t.
I thought it was over after that. I thought my heart might find its normal rhythm and stop sprinting its staccato beat against my chest. But there was no such luck, and eventually I could feel it even in the tips of my toes.
I was nervous. It’s that feeling of knowing your heart has fallen lower in your chest and is holding only with quickly snapping cables like an elevator in an action movie. You feel it and you think you know why. But maybe you don’t know why and maybe you don’t remember when you got so homesick for something that doesn’t even resemble home. You don’t even really know what home is to you, anyway.
For some reason this makes me think of Kat’s childhood house of brown, her startling paleness clashing with everything surrounding her.
She hums from the front seat as we weave our way back towards Berkeley and away from the quiet beach. We hadn’t stayed for long. The ghost was restless, disappearing at times behind fog clouds that blended with her complexion and left her even more mystical than she had started. Spencer’s mood had floated similarly. She was in a fog and then she wasn’t. Self-imposed and inspired by her wandering lady love and intensified by the gray expanse of the lonely, mysterious bay.
I wanted to wrap my arms around her and tell her in her hair-covered ear that life is always going to be okay. But she was already enveloped by something else, and I had to wait my turn.
The fact that the feeling seemed familiar made the nervousness far worse. And I was tired of trying to figure out why the nostalgia had a current that the bay could never understand.
I push open the front door and am grateful for every sliver that’s revealed to me as it swings.
“Thank God,” I say, stepping inside. Spencer follows quickly behind me, dropping her bag on the floor and kicking it against the wall.
“I’m tired and I want to watch prison documentaries online, so I think this is goodbye, my lovelies,” Kat says, leaning against our doorframe.
Spencer nods, lips locked in a closed yet sincere smile.
“Alright, Madam Addams. I’ll see you in the next couple of days, right?” I ask, lightly tapping her on the shoulder.
“Unless my life of nicotine, alcohol, and caffeine addiction catch up to me and mouth-to-mouth isn’t in my beautiful kitty’s arsenal, then yeah.”
Spencer laughs.
“Keeping it positive as always, my friend.”
“It’s the name of the shame,” she says, tipping her sunglasses down over her eyes, “see ya, kids.”
I watch her walk down the hall for a moment before gently closing the door. I didn’t want to jolt any of my senses awake just yet-not until I deciphered Spencer’s mood.
She moves quickly, backing away from the door like she’s suddenly terrified of it. I have to wonder if maybe she feels more comfortable around ghosts.
“That was fun,” she says, and it’s loads less sincere than the smile.
“You don’t sound like it was all that fun…and you don’t have to lie to me, you know.”
“I mean, it was fun,” she says, laughing when she sees my look of disbelief, “seriously, it was. But it was hard to forget about the fact that I have this stuff going on with Robin.”
“Do you know what you’re going to do yet?”
“No, not at all actually. Because I’m fucking scared. I think I’ve realized that I’m scared of what it means if I don’t make this work with her.”
“Why would you be scared?” I ask, gesturing for her to follow me into the living room, “like, are you scared of being alone or what?”
She sits next to me on the couch, blue eyes cast downward, “I guess I’m scared of being this wrong about someone. I’m scared that my instincts wouldn’t have informed me that I had a lying cheater on my hands.”
“It’s okay to be wrong about people. We’re fucking chameleons.”
“Right…”
“We are.”
“So you’re not really who I think you are then, huh? Your colors could change at any moment?”
“My colors have changed once or twice in this life,” I answer honestly, “but are you living with a stranger? No, I don’t believe you are.”
“So convincing,” she laughs, but it sounds more like someone’s crumpling a piece of paper.
“Spencer…”
She waves her hands in the air, shaking her head like she’d use every physical part of herself to stop me from talking, “No, no, no. It’s fine, you know? I don’t need you to like…fix this. And you can’t anyway because you just sleep with girls. You don’t actually know about feelings. You don’t actually care.”
I narrow my eyes, knowing where this was going and why it has to. Ever since becoming the present version of myself, I had been an easy target for girls who liked to believe that touching and feeling were separate things altogether.
They were probably right, but I couldn’t know.
“I care about you, though. I care about how you’re feeling,” I say, reaching down to grip her knee, mirroring images I had seen of people who actually knew how to show sincerity, “I hope that you know that because it’s true.”
“It doesn’t even matter. The one thing you’re known for giving out to everyone and you haven’t even offered it to me…”
I swallowed-hard.
“What are you talking about?” I ask her, shifting nervously.
“Why haven’t you tried anything with me?”
I make a strange sound from low in my throat, literally searching for words to push up and out. But no-nothing.
“Is it that you don’t find me attractive or what?” she continues, smiling a bit cruelly now.
“You’re my roommate,” I finally muster, knowing it’s not going to be enough.
“Yes, and you’re the picture of self-control when it comes to sex, aren’t you?”
“It’s just not a good idea.”
“Because you think I’d fall in love with you or something, right? What a joke.”
I took two deep breaths, fighting tears. I was completely caught off guard by this sudden switch in personality. I had only seen her calm and composed, even when she was sad or hurt. But it was as if she finally realized that she was living with the enemy. The person who turned down love when it was offered. Made that act her purpose as if it could actually hold any purpose at all.
“Trust me, Spencer. I know that you wouldn’t.”
“Then do it,” she says, and it’s practically a plea.
She wants to try it my way. She wants to not care. What she doesn’t know is that in the resistance, there’s the aching of not having. Some feel the agony of losing. Others mourn what they’ve never known, without the body to weep over. Their tears are absorbed by nothing at all and their pain is aimed at no one, but it’s still present. It still haunts.
“I can’t. You don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to protect me. If that’s what this is, then know that I don’t need protecting.”
“It’s more than that.”
She nods at me before standing up. When I finally follow the trail up to her face, I find her eyes looking at the ground near my feet. On the third blink, her eyes stay closed several moments longer than necessary.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and the tears are coming out of hiding now, “I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m saying.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, no it’s not. Ashley, I know that you care and…and we’re friends. You’re trying with me and I’m trying with you. Sex has no place in that.”
“Why do I feel like you weren’t actually asking for sex?”
“Wishful thinking?” she laughs sadly.
“I think you just wanted someone to be with you. And maybe you wanted some control back. I don’t know how a lot of things feel, I guess. But you know what? I know how that feels.”
And I do. Because that feeling is who I am.
“I’m sorry,” she says again.
It scratches at my ears like low-hanging tree branches. I don’t want to hear an apology from her. I simply want her to feel better.
“I think maybe we can,” I say, grabbing her hand and allowing her to pull me up.
“What do you…”
“You can be with me if you want. I think it’s fine.”
My hands are shaking, and I’m convinced she has to feel it since she’s yet to let go. Or maybe I haven’t let go. All I know is that if I can’t make her feel better, I can help her feel nothing instead.
“Ashley, I think you were right the first time. It’s not a good idea.”
“You’re my friend. Let me be your friend. It can just be that, right? It doesn’t have to mean anything that we don’t want it to mean.”
She stares at me. Her hand is so hot, I feel like I’m touching something that’s been boiling. Her shoulders slowly drift south, like the possibility is becoming okay. And for the first time I wonder, have I considered my own stability at all?
“I…” she says, and then she stops and shakes her head, “are we sure?”
How many times and how many years had I wished she needed me for anything-anything? I owed us this, right? Both of us.
I nod twice.
We were in her room. We tried starting in the living room, but no one moved until she laughed rather loudly and gestured down the hall. I followed her with unsure steps-like an obedient toddler-and once we had reached the room, she grabbed my hand again and pulled me forward a bit. Up close her eyes seemed almost overwhelming. Two glass prisms tinged with a tricky, changing blue. I wanted to keep them, but I…
“Friends,” she states more than asks, and I attempt a confirming smile.
She thinks I’m letting her have her control back, I’m sure. But actually, I’m so shamefully nervous that I can’t convince my body to do the things it wants to do. Like running and/or staying forever.
“Will you undress me?” she asks, her voice surprisingly strong, “I like that.”
I can’t remember anyone ever having to ask. I’d have been embarrassed, but I was too nerve-sick to pay it any attention. Instead, I called on the heavens to help me move my hands, and the heavens made it so. The right one moved slowly through the air until it made contact with the collar of her shirt. It decides there are better, easier ways and enlists the help of the left before grabbing the bottom of it instead and tugging it up and over.
When it’s off, her hair is unruly and her eyes are still closed, so I proceed. I reach around for the clasp of her bra, fearing my nerves would most certainly give me away. But no. I’m too practiced to get it wrong, and there’s a moment where I realize that maybe I’d want to show her a mistake.
When the bra is off, I close my eyes as well. Years of waiting to see and I close my eyes immediately. When I feel that she’s touching me, they shoot open just as quickly.
“I’m sorry,” I say without thinking as she looks into my eyes.
“Apologize to someone who doesn’t know,” she replies.
I’m convinced she’s forgotten the “you” at the end, until I understand that she hasn’t.
Then she moves my hands to her face and leans in.
I want to run, but I can’t.
Short moments later, we’re in her bed and parallel with her writhing beneath me. Somewhere between standing and here, I remembered that she needed more than a nervous teenager. I gathered up years of sure moments for my own confidence, veiled myself in them and attempted to make her forget while I remembered. Because Kat would know me well enough to ask later, I appreciated long seconds of awareness that I was finally on top of Spencer Carlin. She was finally looking up to see me.
Her eyes stayed open and watching as I slid my fingers inside her. Even when my own eyes closed, I could tell she was still watching. It was almost horrible how much she felt as I had always known she would. It was almost too much.