Even If the Sky Falls (12 page)

“I'll keep that in mind.” I reach my hand out, a strange automatic gesture for such a short period of knowing someone, but it feels natural.

I hook his pinkie to mine as we float. Miles is humming a tune I don't recognize, and I wonder if he just came up with it. “What is that?”

“What's what?”

“What are you humming?”

“A tune,” Miles says, and I can tell that he's smiling from the tone of his voice; I even know it's a stupid smile too, the kind you make when you're being a smartass.

I forge on. “That's useful. I mean, what song is it?”

“Not sure, started as one thing and turned into another. And now it's a new thing—not sure what it is yet.”

“Hum it again.”

He starts and stops until the song is floating above us
and deep down below us in the water. I join in but very softly, only for a moment, long enough to feel part of it as well. “I like it. Are there lyrics?”

“Maybe.”

He offers nothing more, and it irritates the crap out of me. He can't just stop sharing everything about his life after being so forthcoming. I refuse.

“I call Questions.”

“It's called Questions, Questions. If you are going to invoke it, please do so correctly.”

I splash water in his face, then place my hands on my hips. “Fine, I invoke Questions, Questions.”

He floats away from me, a smile across his lips. “I don't think you're ready.”

I dive toward him, intending to pull him under with me, but he's too fast. He jumps up and away from me, teasing. “I am too ready.”

“Give it your best shot.”

“All right, song writing. How do you do it? How does it happen?”

“Lots of different ways.”

“Name one.”

He's thinking about it.

“Once,” Miles breaks the silence, “I wrote a song by pulling bits and pieces from different archives I found online.”

“Like library archives?”

“Mm-hmm. Mom taught a boy how to research—proper
research—not Google and shit. It's amazing what you can find when not every other word tagged is ‘penis.'”

I laugh—and it is this odd hollow thing because my ears are under the water—I wonder what he hears. I then manage to smoothly swallow a liter of pool water, coughing much of it up.

“You okay?”

I try to play it cool; I cough and fail. “Peachy. How does it work? The archives into songs.”

“I would pull letters and scan journal pages and just take a sentence here and there, forming a song or a pile of crap, either/or. They don't all turn out golden; most of the time it feels like I'm trying to fit together different pieces of a puzzle that just don't work and I end up throwing away the whole thing, but once in a while . . . once in a while you get the right series of letters and it starts coming together.”

“Can I hear one?”

“Maybe.”

“Please?”

He smiles.

“Let's see, there's this one called ‘My Darling Jean,' but you gotta imagine this with some amazing music behind it, okay?”

“Okay.”

Miles clears his throat and starts; his voice is deeper than I expect.

Everything is dark here,

at night the stars are pale.

I worry about tomorrow,

because, dear Jean, what if I fail?

I shiver, his voice tangles around me, twisting around my fingers, waist, down my legs.

My heart I left with you,

the world now more than cruel

what little hope I have left

feels weak. Sometimes I think

I'll never wake and feel you

beneath me.

There's more, I can tell, but that's all Miles offers. “They sound like sad letters,” I say. Yet something in his voice brought out the longing, the love and passion that linger through time.

“They were. Lots of the letters were written by soldiers during World War I, and they're all there, just scanned in and nobody knows whether the men who wrote them lived or died.”

I took a deep breath, savoring the feel of Miles next to me, pretending the song is about tonight, about possibly never seeing each other again. What memories should we
make? What memories did I want to make?

“How do they get the letters and not know what happened?”

“My mom says a lot of the stuff gets donated or tossed out, found in old homes. I could only tell they were from the war from the dates and a mention here or there about a battle, but not a lot, they mostly spoke about missing home and trying to hold on to the good memories.”

“Good memories.” I nod. Lately all the bad memories have been infecting the good ones; latching onto happy moments and simply forcing them out. I need all the good ones I can get, like tonight: tonight is a good memory.

Our pause extends, and the lapping of the waves bothers me. I close my eyes, dipping my head under; when I emerge the sky is one blanketing cloud: gray and heavy, even the quickening wind can't move it. As I stare needlelike pellets of water descend, pinpricks of cold. I let go of Miles's hand and stand, tipping my head to the side to let the water drip out. It's not painful yet, I think, we still have time.

“What are you running from, Sunshine?” he asks, his voice so soft I can't hear him at first, when I do I blank, my shoulders tense, and I freeze before I can control my body and hide my reaction.

“I'm sorry, I shouldn't have, I just thought we were—” He floats toward me, inching down so that we are level with each other.

Opening up. Sharing secrets.
We were, or more you were, Miles.

“No baggage,” Miles says, reminding himself, jumping up onto the edge of the pool.

“That's right, no baggage.”

I try to sound nonchalant, like I don't want to know even more about him, like I don't think the no-baggage rule is total bull.

He dips his feet back in the water, motioning me over. I take a seat next to him but farther apart, and he moves closer until he's just a foot away, stopping short of touching me.

“Questions, Questions,” he says. “But this time I want to ask something of myself.”

I lift an eyebrow in response.

“I asked you what you were running from, but I should ask that of myself first, right?”

“I—I don't know, yes?” I say before continuing. “Yes. Okay. What are you running from?”

“I have a girlfriend,” he says like he's ripping off a Band-Aid even though I suspected as much; a part of me imagined him with several girlfriends. He waits for my reaction.

“Was it one of the girls from the square?” I offer.

“No, actually—but they were her friends.”

“And you didn't want them to see you with me in case they thought—”

Miles cut in. “I didn't want them to see me at all, regardless of whether or not you were there—no offense.”

I flinch a bit, but he doesn't catch it. “Zero taken. Why didn't you want them to see you?”

“Because of Angie.”

“Your girlfriend?”

“Yes.”

Angie is a pretty name. I try to imagine her and Miles together, to crush these little butterflies before they grow any bigger.

“Okay.” I nod, urging him to continue.

“Angie—Angela—and I have been friends since we were born. Clichéd, I know, but our mothers are best friends so we were always together. Playdates, school, same neighborhood. She's been a part of my life for so long . . . if you erased her you'd take me away too.”

Miles keeps glancing at me from the corner of his eye, gauging my reaction. If he's expecting me to be jealous he's going to be waiting for a while. I should be, I suppose, I'm—okay, I'm attracted to Miles so I guess I should be threatened—but the most I feel is a brush of disappointment that I'm not the only one he's opened up to, that this wasn't 100 percent unique, just for me, but I sweep it away, reminding myself that my plan was never to jump Miles but to lose myself to the night (and maybe make out a bit). Plus the way he speaks about her, it's almost like Angie is his left leg and what would be the point of
being angry at a girl he's spent his life with when I've only known him for a day?

“Eventually playdates led to date-dates and it seemed like a natural fit—dating my best friend. It's what all those movies talk about, right?”

“Right. Sounds nice.”

I'm shivering, and I can't control it. I dip back down into the water before Miles can notice. I don't want to leave the pool just yet even if it's still raining.

“I guess.” He shrugs.

“Are we getting to the part where this is baggage yet?” I say, and Miles splashes me hard, which makes me splash him back. He pushes me further into the water and when I try to pull him in, he holds on to my hand tight, the mood suddenly shifting. I meet his eyes, concentrating on the feel of the water around me, telling myself that's why I feel so warm and not the heat coming from his hand in mine.

He breaks the gaze and stares down at our hands intertwined; I try to pull away, but he won't let go. “It took us a while to figure it out.”

“Figure what out?”

“The different types of love. I love Angie. I do. And she loves me.”

It should've been crazy weird to hear a boy confess his love for someone else while you held hands under the water but for some reason this didn't bother me. When Miles spoke of his love for Angie it was frank and quiet, like
Abuela spoke, his fingers gently moving across my hand. “She will always be a part of my family—she
is
family . . . like a sister. Not a girlfriend.”

A sister. It felt like a hundred butterflies were kissing my skin. Tingles ran up my spine, my heart lightened. I did not contain them. The butterflies control the water, float me toward him; we are inches apart as his eyes find mine. I think of straightening, placing my hands on either side of him. It would make me much warmer—skin to skin. I blush at the thought.

“Does she feel the same?”

“Sort of—she thought we had just gotten into a routine, but it wasn't even that, we had become a—damn, this is hard to explain.”

“You should just word vomit it.” I reach over to the edge where he's sitting, pulling myself closer, and he grabs my hand, tugs, and now I stand right in front of him.

“I'm trying. I swear.” Miles keeps stroking my hand, searching for the words. “It sounds so simple, but we were best friends, then boyfriend and girlfriend, and then we just went back around to best friends again. Love, but not in love. She got there too, eventually.”

“You broke up?” I need to know.

“Yes.”

I fight the smile. Don't smile.

“So you don't have a girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Even though you said you did, just a moment ago.” I gesture over my shoulder as if that is where the past is kept.

“Right. Right.” He exhales. “It's been a long time since I've spoken of her as anything else. I guess now she's just Angie.”

“So why did you run if she is a
had
and not a
have
?”

“Little bit of everything. I want to stay friends—I love her.” Miles looks up, searching my eyes for anger but finding none.

“I don't think she believes me.”

“She's scared of losing you. I would be too.”

I can feel the rain running down my back, and I wonder if it is okay to hang out in a heated pool during a storm? Probably not.

“Yeah,” Miles says, his touch on my hand distracting me. I should pull away so I can concentrate on what he is saying, but I selfishly stay. “Taj and Danny know, but it's not my place to tell her friends, and . . . and I just didn't want to lie and I didn't want to think about it anymore because part of me did have doubts; because I'm seventeen and what the hell do I know about love, right? What if I'm just messing it all up? It's not like there isn't other shit on my shoulders and I can't lose Angie, but she deserves better.”

“So do you.”

“Hmmm.” His breath deepens. I watch his chest rise, droplets rolling down. He jumps back in with me, still holding my hand like it contains the answers he needs. Turning
it over, he runs his fingers over my palm pausing on the crescent-shaped scar just below my thumb then up to my wrists, bringing it up to his lips, kissing it. His lips are soft, wet; my pulse beats against the touch. He pulls me forward, and I thank God we aren't talking anymore because who can form sentences at a time like this?

He wraps his arm around my waist, so perfectly warm even as the rain and bitter wind try their best to chill us to the bone. We are flush against each other, lips just a hairs-breadth away. I am mesmerized by every bit of him and wonder if I've possibly just made him up, a figment. Miles traces his lips against my cheek, dropping his head on my shoulder, taking in the feel of my skin, and I follow with mine on his. We sway a bit, the water lapping around us. The rain pricks, but it is nothing like the feel of his skin below my hands. If I could dive into him and disappear I would. I can feel Miles playing with a strand of my hair, the gesture both calming and possessive.

He tilts my mouth up, running his fingers over my lips. He traces the raindrops as they run down my face, my mouth. He brings my lips to his, encompassing. And though the rain doesn't disappear and the wind doesn't cease, they are nothing compared to his lips, his body with mine, to the heat under my hands.
You are nothing, storm. Try as you might, you are nothing.

The melody to “My Darling Jean” plays in my head, and I hope the whole world can hear it.

Little Miss, I,

I don't know how—I

had never seen

such a bright thing

with fairy wings. I—I

couldn't breathe.

We felt the sway,

the tug and play

of the Midsummer scene.

So it wasn't long

just a couple of songs

before we became

a couple of flickering lights

in the heat of the night

in the heat of everything.

Little Miss, I—I

don't know how, I

had never seen

such a bright thing

with fairy wings. I—I

couldn't breathe.

And even though our

history is shorter

than it's ever been.

When you take my hand, I—

I can see that our paths

were meant to cross.

So, Little Miss, I—I

ask you to stay

and help me be.

Because with you—I

have been the brightest

I've ever been.