Stealing The Show (Such Sweet Sorrow Trilogy, Book One)

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The way the playground lights glow in their globes and throw light down onto the snow, it bounces back up like this is some kind of magical fairyland.  The slides and the see-saws look so colorful in it against the black of the night sky behind them.  I keep looking at it all, because it doesn’t look real, and I don’t feel real, and it all makes perfect sense that I’m waiting in the freezing cold in my pajamas under a jacket in the middle of the night.  

For a few moments, I’m alone in the playground, alone in the strange Dr. Seuss world under those lights.  Then, she is there, out of nowhere, sitting on the see saw.

I go over to her.  It’s the longest walk ever.  The snow hushes at me under my shoes.  She looks at me with half-serious, half-playful eyes, and I can’t tell which way they’re going to go.  I can’t figure out how we’re even here, or what to feel, or what to say, so I stand there still.

“Take a seat,” she says, and I slip onto the seat across from her.  It’s so cold, my ass gets practically seared by the metal through my sweatpants.  I remember how, as a kid, the see saws felt so big.  I felt like I was a hundred feet in the air when I went up high.  But now, with the two of us on it, just balancing level and not moving up and down at all, it feels like I’m only about a foot off the ground.

“Jubilee,” I say, but she holds up her gloved hand to stop me.

“Three things,” she says.  “I’m thinking The Count is going to deport me to Uzbekistan if he finds out I snuck out, so…  Three things.”

Her words turn into this mist in the air when she speaks, because of the cold.  It hangs there like a ghost, like a cartoon speech bubble, like the most perfect thing I’ve ever witnessed, because it’s her voice, and I’m hearing it again.

“Okay,” I say.

“So, why didn’t you ever tell me how you felt?”

I breathe out a ghost of my own into the cold night air.  

“I really don’t know.  Because.  I was scared.  And stupid.  Because I like being around my best friend and I figured it was better to be near her and in love in secret than risk her not feeling the same way and lose her entirely.”

Those eyes, blue and beautiful, are looking at me with that same mixture in them, I think, when I maybe see them soften a touch.  She says nothing.  She wants me to go on.

“So, like everything else in my life, I just watched.  I overthought everything and made theories and figured it couldn’t be any different through anything I could do.  But when Paps died…  I don’t know.  He said some things there at the end, and then we go on this crazy mission.  I can’t explain it, other than to say that I realized life was happening and I didn’t want to just watch.  I wanted to act on the happenings, and I wanted to take a chance at going through the happenings in love with my best friend.”

“Okay,” she says.  “Not the most eloquent, but I’ll go easy since this is a pop quiz.  So.  What if this doesn’t work?”

She pushes with her feet and rises up on the see saw, just a little ways, and in the cold the metal joint in the middle makes a tiny howl as we go up and down.

“But what if it does?” I say.  “That’s what I mean.  That’s what Paps made me realize when I saw all those old places he was when he was living in his love. What if it does work, and we get to have this playground as a magical place between us forever?  And we have more places to get, still?  And the only way you get those is by earning them, by trying.  And the person I want my stories and magic and memories to be with is you.”

She plants her feet and brings the see saw to a stop.  But now she isn’t looking at me.  She’s staring at the snow a few feet beside her.  She breathes out twice, big sighs that I can see as her breath mists in front of her.

“Okay,” she says.  Then she stands up from her swing and walks over to me.

“Okay what?”

“Just, okay.”  She stands up slowly so I do, too, and she walks over to me and takes my hands and pulls me close against her and hugs me tight.  And she looks up and I look down and we look right in each other’s eyes for the millionth time and the first time, too, and she’s more beautiful than I ever understood.  And then, like magic, we kiss.  

How many times did I imagine doing this?  How many nights did I wonder what her lips would feel like, and what her breath would taste like, and what she would do with her tongue.  Though I am worried that I’m too enthusiastic with my tongue, or that she’s grossed out by my breath or something, she doesn’t stop, so I don’t either.  And it’s more wonderful than I’ve ever imagined.  And even with my eyes closed, I know what she looks like, because I’ve looked at her so much, for so long.  I can’t believe that those are her thin lips against mine, that that is her wild curly hair brushing against my cheek, that that is her perfect little ski-jump nose against mine.  But it all is.  I don’t need to open my eyes to know how unreal and magical this moment is, with the glow of the lights and the cold and the bright still silence of the playground, waiting for action.

After a long while, the longest kiss I’ve ever experienced, anyway, she breaks off and looks down against my chest.

“Okay,” she says.

“Okay?”  

“Very okay.”  She clears her throat. “Um, so, a couple things.  We do this.  But we go slow.  Life isn’t like a play.  We have waaaaayyy more time than a play.  We don’t need to stage any more scenes in public to tell each other how we feel.”

“But I had to do that to …” I say, but she cuts me off with this look in her eyes.

“I know.  And as much as I hated it, I really loved it.  It was awesome.  But we can’t stay at that fever pitch forever.  We can’t keep it up—nobody can.  So, we go slow.”

She looks up at me now.  “And we play no games.  We’re honest, and we tell each other what we’re feeling.”

“Okay,” I say.

She gives me a skeptical smirk.  

“Really!” I say.

“Alright.  And one more thing: we stay friends.  Even if it means we have to break up to do it.  We end this, either one of us, before anything goes so bad that we can’t be friends.”

She means it, from the way she’s looking at me.  

I’ve never heard a more beautiful logic about something as mysterious as the heart.  

“Okay,” I say, because what else is there to say?  “Yes, absolutely.”

And then she’s there again, us in a kiss, our second one which is just as magnificent as the first.  Then she looks away and checks her watch.

“Oh.  Shit.  I’ve gotta go!  The Count’s probably readying my papers for a convent or something!”  She’s already running away into the dark, out from under the fairytale glow of the lights in the park.  She’s fading and fading, and then I hear her voice come clear through the cold air.  “I might perhaps possibly like you an incredibly lot, Lewis!”

“Can I see you again?” I shout.

“We’ll see what happens!” she says, and her car starts and she’s gone.  

And she’s right.  I don’t know what’s ahead for us, and I’m trembling just a little bit from the cold or the not knowing or both.  But I do know that this moment, right here, when everything is cold and scary and beautiful, is one that I will always remember, no matter what happens next.