“I don’t know how to make this any more obvious for you!” Her voice grows louder with each syllable.
There are two sides to every story and two versions of every person. The version of Grace speaking now is the doubter. She’s the same person who wouldn’t come out to her parents and would only hold my hand if no one was looking.
She shakes her head back and forth, and her lower lip trembles. “Sometimes I feel like you’re trying to make me into this person—this person that I’m not. You keep talking about me being in the closet like it’s some sin to not know who I am yet! I’m just as confused about Andrew as I am about you.” She pauses. “I’m going through something here, Ramona, and that doesn’t mean I’m hiding. It means I’m learning, and I get to do that, don’t I?”
I take a step back instinctively. I’ve always known that whatever we were, it wasn’t perfect and it could never quite be defined. But I feel... led on. Her phone calls. Her texts. All she had to do was cut me off. Let our physical distance fade into emotional distance.
Red, searing anger settles in my chest. “Listen,” I sayfinally, my words clipped. “I’m not making you do anything or be anyone. It’s not like I forced you to make out with me back there.”
She plucks her purse up off the grass and clumsily puts her flip-flops back on. I can see the two mini bottles of liquor taking an effect now. “It’s all black and white for you. I’m gay or I’m not. I’m with you or I’m not. That’s not real, Ramona. Real life is messy and complicated. I have a whole world—an entire existence—that you’re not a part of.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “Well, I’m sorry if I’ve complicated things for you.”
“I can’t give you what you want.” Her voice is firm and completely sober for a moment.
I shake my head furiously. “Maybe I tried to make us something more, okay?” My voice is desperate in a way I barely recognize. “I’ll admit that. But it wasn’t just me in this, okay, Grace?” There are only so many more words I can get out without breaking down. “Every... every time I kissed you, you kissed me back.”
“I liked kissing you!” she shouts, reminding me that she’s had too much to drink, too quickly. “It was fun. But Christ, Ramona, the summer is over. Maybe in your world summer lasts forever, but not for me. You know, it’s like you get to live in that little town and work your little jobs and never really grow up. You don’t have to face the future in the same way I do.” She turns and stomps down to the bottom of the hill.
“Mylittletown? Mylittlejobs?” I shout at her, but shedoesn’t turn around. She leaves me up here to bleed out.
I lie down in the soft grass of a yard belonging to a girl I’ve just met as my whole body fluctuates between rage and despair, skipping up and down like a heart monitor.
After a few moments, I hear steps in the grass and Freddie plops down next to me.
“Hey, where’s Viv?”
“Inside,” he says as he rips up little fistfuls of grass.
“How’d she like her present?”
“She liked it.” He sighs. “But she didn’t want to keep it.”
“That sucks.”
He lies down next to me. “She thinks we should just be friends. And according to her, friends don’t give each other outrageously expensive headphones.”
“Oh.” I loop my arm through his. “I’m so sorry, Freddie.”
“Everyone else saw it coming. In fact, I saw everyone watch it coming. Even Gram said that maybe we should take a break. See where things are after graduation. And it’s not like Viv didn’t give me plenty of hints. I didn’t want to see it, so I ignored it.”
“I think I know how you feel,” I tell him.
“Can I tell you something?” he asks. “Something I didn’t tell anyone else. Well, not any of my friends.”
“Of course.”
“Gram gave me the option of us waiting to move until after I graduated.”
“Wait.” I try not to sound as shocked as I am, but basedon everything I know about Freddie, I just can’t fathom this. “Why wouldn’t you just tell her you wanted to wait?”
“For selfish, stupid reasons,” he says. “I was tired of watching everyone succeed without me. Blame it on ego. I thought whatever I had with Viv was strong enough to survive a year spent a few hours apart. We could pick up right where we left off in college. Maybe I’d find something new to be good at. Something that could make me extraordinary like swimming does for her and our other friends.”
“Wow.” I don’t even know what to say.
“What about you?” he asks. “Where’s Grace?”
“It’s over.” The words fall out of my mouth like two drops in a bucket. “Is it bad that I was hoping it’d work out for you and Viv, because if it worked out for y’all it might work out for me and Grace?”
