Page 72 of When We Were Magic
“How come you didn’t come over and say hello?” she asks, stepping over a tree root.
“I don’t know.” I look at a tree fifty feet ahead of us. Am I supposed to go around it? Of course I’m supposed to go around it, that’s a stupid thing to think, it’s not like I could gothroughit. “I didn’t think I was, um. I didn’t know if you wanted me to.”
“Why wouldn’t I want you to?” Roya asks. Her voice verges on impatient. I sneak a glance at her, but I can’t read her face at a sidelong angle like this, not while I’m trying to pretend I’m not looking.
I don’t say anything. I let myself get absorbed in picking my way around a four-inch-tall thistle. How do I answer a question like “Why wouldn’t I want you to?” The real answer is, “Because you secretly think you made a huge mistake yesterday,” or “Because you don’t like me the way you thought you did,” or “Because I’m a bad lay.” Or “Because I might have ruined our friendship by having sex with you and you don’tknow how to tell me that you don’t want anything to do with me anymore.” But all of those answers will sound like I’m looking for her to comfort me, or like I’m needy, or like I expect yesterday to have meant something more than what it probably did. So I don’t say anything. Roya waits for me to answer her, but she’s not very good at waiting. She does a big I’m-being-patient sigh and then immediately loses her patience.
“Hey, about last night … ?” She says it slowly and my heart sinks. “If you didn’t, um. If you didn’t want to have that mean anything, or if you didn’t want it to be a thing …”
“No,” I whisper before I can think better of it, even though I probably should say that it’s fine and it’s whatever and I don’t care. “It meant something. It meant a lot.” I focus on the terrain, looking for spiders or lizards or prickly plants that will snag my jeans. I try to feel the way the dry patches of grass crunch under my sneakers. I wish my heart would slow down. I wish she would stop looking at me.
“Well. It meant a lot to me, too.” She reaches over and grabs my hand—we’re supposed to stay arm’s-length apart, I think, and even as I think it, she draws me a little closer to her. And then closer, and then she’s walking right next to me like we’re on a date instead of pretending to look for a dead boy in the woods.It meant a lot to me, too.What does that mean? It’s the kind of thing you say to make someone feel better. It feels like a pat on the head. I shouldn’t have said anything. Did I say something? I can’t remember.
It’s so hot outside, and so bright, and the air is so close and so thick. And Roya is so close.
She’s right next to me. Mint smell and warmth. Something cool bumps my wrist, and I look down to see what it is—she’s wearing the bangle again. She’s been wearing it a lot lately. She stops walking, and I realize we’ve come to the tree that I noticed before, the one that will need to be gone around. But Roya doesn’t let go of my hand. I can’t make myself look at her face. My heart is pounding and the tree is in the way and she won’t let go of my hand but she also hasn’t said—
A finger under my chin, gentle pressure. She turns my head until I’m looking at her face. “What’s going on?”
My eyes burn. “I’m really scared that you’ll change your mind.”
“Okay.” That’s all she says. She’s looking at me, and she’s so close. I wait for her to say something else—to tell me I’m being stupid, or that I shouldn’t worry, or to ask what I think she’ll change her mind about. But she doesn’t. She waits.
So I keep going. “I don’t want to start something if it doesn’t mean the same thing to both of us. I—I know that you probably don’t feel the same about me as I do about you and I just really don’t want to make a mistake. And our friendship is more important to me than anything, so if you don’t want to—”
She cocks her head. “Why do you think I don’t feel the same?”
“Because you aren’t in love with me,” I say. I immediately regret it. “I mean, I don’t mean like, I didn’t—”
She kisses me. It’s a light kiss, a stop-talking kiss, afeatherlight brush of her lips against mine. It works. I stop talking. I stop breathing. I stop thinking. I stop worrying. There’s just her lips, right there, a thought away from mine. Her breath and mine, together.
“I don’t know if I’m in love,” Roya says. She pulls me closer, so close that her hair is brushing my shoulders. The big oak tree leans over us and I can’t help but wonder if I’m meant to always be closest to Roya in leaf-filtered light. I can’t help but wonder how much Marcelina already knows about us, because of what the trees have told her. “I don’t know what that means. But I want to find out. And I want to find out withyou.”
“Since when?”
“Since always, dummy,” she says, bumping my nose with hers. “Since forever. I don’t know.”
“But—”
“Look,” she says, cutting me off. “I’ve been into you for a really long time. And I know that we’ve missed each other a lot. I know that we’ve both done the wholethere’s no way she likes me backthing for like a hundred years. But I’m done with that, okay? We hid body parts together. If we can figure that out, we can figure this out too. I want to figure it out.” She brushes her nose across mine. “I want to figure it outwith you.”
She kisses me again, a longer kiss, abelieve mekiss. And I try. I try to believe her.
“I should tell you something,” I whisper against her lips. I don’t want to tell her, but I know I have to. It would be dishonest not to, and if there’s anything I don’t want to do toRoya, it’s lie. “I was going to sleep with Josh because I wanted to make you jealous. I know it’s stupid. It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. Well. Almost-done.” She doesn’t laugh. “But. I don’t know. I thought that maybe if I slept with him, you’d get mad, and we’d have a big fight, and you’d yell at me for sleeping with some guy I barely know, and then I could say, ‘Well, it’s none of your business anyway, it’s not like you’re my girlfriend!’?” She does laugh at that, barely, just a breath, and I’m flooded with relief. “And then you would say, ‘Well, why not?!’ and we’d kiss and all of this would happen.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she says. And then she laughs again, another small, breathy laugh. A little incredulous. “And it’s probably exactly what would have happened.”
“I know.” I shake my head, and because our foreheads are still pressed together, it makes her shake her head too. “I’m sorry. It was stupid and manipulative and it was the only way that I could think of to make you see me the way I see you.”
“How do you see me?” she murmurs.
“Glowing,” I murmur back, kissing her with each word. “Brilliant. Loud. Fast. Wild. Kind, when you think no one is looking.” She laughs and her teeth bump my lip. “Magic.”
“Then I see you exactly how you see me,” she says. “Except add anxious and silly and kind, even when you think peoplearelooking.” She considers me for a moment, then adds, “And maybe a little scary.”
I step back. “Scary?”
“A little,” she says. “You did something to Josh that wedidn’t know was possible. I know it wasn’t on purpose, but. You know. He’s dead. That’s a little scary.”
