Juliet Takes a Breath (15 page)

“Attention, the Multnomah Library will be closing in 15 minutes.”

I made my copies and checked out my books. I walked right out of the library and then remembered about Kira offering to take me home. I made a hard U-turn and found myself back in the bathroom. Again, wild baby hairs and a nervous me. It was fine. It was just going to be a walk to the bus stop. I splashed cold water on my face and used wet hands to pat down stray baby hairs again. Pulled my black curls into a ponytail. The look: Severe. Slick. Cool. Unfazed. I pulled out black eyeliner, smudged a dark line along my eyelids, the slate grey light of the bathroom not helping bit. Then mascara, fluffed out long lashes, looking less
Little House on the Prairie
and more
Mi Vida Loca
. I used apple blast lip-gloss on my lips and took a look at myself. Better. Fresh faced, I stared hard into the static of the bathroom mirror, trying to imagine her wanting to kiss me. I looked again and saw myself and it was okay. I'd kiss me.

The air outside was cool on my face. People spilled out of the library alone or with their children. The sky cracked into pieces of neon orange and soft pinks. Two teenagers made out on the street corner. So jealous. They were leaning against a mailbox. I watched the bus I normally took fly by the stop. Damn, I'd just have to catch the next one.

I sat on the front steps of the library and waited for Kira. The flurry of people exiting the building slowed. The soft pinks pulsed into blood-orange hues, the sky moved west and rolled clouds with it. Still no Kira. From down the block, a motorcycle engine revved, sounded like a street bike of some sort, maybe a Kawasaki or a Honda. For the first time, I missed the Bronx. That sound reminded me of my next-door neighbor, Big B. He rode with the Ruff Ryders bike crew and fixed motorcycles for a living. The sounds of engines revving and tires being spun out for hard turns and endos filled my summer nights. I wondered what he was up to tonight. So lost in wishing I was home, I didn't notice the bike until it pulled up right in front of me. It wasn't a street bike, though. It was an old Harley, something you'd see in a movie from the ‘70's or something. The rider wore tight blue jeans, and a black hoodie under a black leather jacket. The black boots looked hella familiar.

“Hi, hope you weren't waiting long,” a voice said. She took off her helmet.

I stepped closer to her, mouth agape. This was definitely happening to me. Hot chick on a motorcycle. My mouth went dry, other parts of me not so much.

“Still up for a ride home?” Kira smiled at me, holding her helmet on her hip.

“I would love one.” I said. My brain was fuzzy. I felt all hot and twitchy. How were words even coming out of my mouth?

I told her Harlowe's address and pulled the straps of my book bag tight against my back. Kira only had one helmet and she made me wear it. Chivalry was not dead in Portland. I wrapped my arms tight around her waist and breathed in the leather of her jacket. She zipped through the downtown area, a comet hurtling through the darkness of the galaxy. The
vrooms
and squeals of her bike as she accelerated and made turns thrilled me, made my thighs ache in that good way. I needed this noise to refuel. She felt like home, like the hum of a hundred street bikes and the neighbor who was more like a brother to me. Eyes closed, I imagined Kira zooming up the Bronx River Parkway and ducking under the elevated train on White Plains Road.

“You doing okay?” she asked, stopped at a red light.

“I'm amazing.”

She put her hand over mine for a moment. Dinosaur-sized butterflies fluttered in my stomach. She smelled like citrus and leather. I was so into it. The whole scene made me feel like I wasn't myself. I was on the back of a vintage Harley, riding down the middle of a street I didn't know with a beautiful biker librarian. I was free of self-doubt. No question of whether I deserved this or if this was even my life. No one was yelling at me or trying to make me feel inferior. No one was telling me this was just a phase or that I needed to be better about knowing my history. I wasn't worried about my mom or my girlfriend or anything.

I held onto Kira's waist as she accelerated through the intersection. She weaved in and around the streets, down quiet back roads. Her path to Harlowe didn't follow the bus route. It might have been a little longer, but I didn't care. She could have taken me on a road trip and I would have been just fine. Every time we stopped at a red light or a stop sign, she put her hands over mine. Each time made me weak, like for the first time ever I was swooning in real life.

Kira stopped her bike in front of Harlowe's house. I didn't move. I felt her hands on mine again. I thanked her in a rush, slid off and headed up the front porch steps. She waited for me to get inside the house.
Again with the chivalry, who was this girl?
I couldn't let her leave. I wanted to pull her inside with me. Instead, I spun on my heels, bounced back down the front steps and hugged her. Her leather-clad arms pulled me close; she felt strong. We took a minute to look at each other. Our lips were so close together. If I had licked mine, I would have touched hers. I couldn't even breathe.

“You know that this means we have to go for another ride soon,” Kira said, her green eyes staring into mine.

“Word,” I said and nodded, trying not to kiss her even though that was all I wanted to do. “
Word”? That's the best I could do…?

Kira smiled. “Got a pen?”

Unable to formulate words, I pulled a sharpie out of my bag and handed it to her. She wrote her number on my forearm.

“Call me whenever,” she said, meeting my gaze. My body temperature increased by about ten degrees.

And then she kissed my cheek, revved her engine, and rode off.

This girl could ride. I watched her until she was a speck of magic dust in the distance. Deep breaths calmed my hands but didn't ease the fluttering in my chest. I could still smell her hair and her leather jacket.

A small package awaited me on Harlowe's front porch. The return address was Lainie's home address, not the one for her internship. I picked it up, still breathless from being that close to Kira. The package felt out of place in my hands, like it didn't belong in this moment. Lainie didn't belong in this afterglow that someone else created. She'd never kissed me on the cheek like that. Kira's kiss was thoughtful and gentle and why did Lainie have to arrive on this doorstep at this moment anyway?

I sat on the porch with her package on my lap and caught myself. Two girls wanted to get with me and have my attention and be sweet to me. This was a never-before-seen-in-real-life situation for me. Two brilliant, foxy girls. One curious, chubby Juliet. Besides, I'd been craving Lainie's attention this whole time and here it was. So what if I had someone else's kiss on my cheek? I walked into the quiet darkness of Harlowe's home smiling, ready to take in Lainie's words and hopefully listen to a love-filled feminist power lesbian mix tape.

 

* * *

 

Dear Juliet,

 

There are five crumpled pieces of paper on my desk. I'm hoping this won't be the sixth. I need to get through this. You deserve it.

I know I've been a little cold and distant. I've been dodging you, my parents, other friends. All that matters is this internship and our politicians and their campaigns. Nothing and no one else matters.

That's a lie. Sarah matters. Sarah is a girl from Texas that I met at the White House.

Wait let me start over. Can I start over?

Before I tell you about Sarah, you have to know that my heart's been yours since the second you walked into Dr. Jean's Women's Studies class. I loved you from that moment, Juliet.

You need to know that I ignored Sarah at first.

You need to know that I tried to fight my feelings for her.

You need to know that I never for a second thought that this feminist, power-lesbian mix tape would become a breakup CD.

I love you, Juliet, but I haven't been honest with you.

I've been seeing Sarah and I'm in love. She's the one I want my parents to meet as my girlfriend because I think she's my forever person.

I never meant to hurt you, Juliet. Never ever.

I'm so sorry. I hope we can still be friends.

 

See you in September,

Lainie

 

 

 

To love another woman is to streak naked across the sky, swallow the sun in one bite, and live aflame. To love another woman is to look at yourself in the mirror and determine that you are worthy of the galaxy and its fury. To love another woman is to love yourself more than you love her.

Raging Flower

 

* * *

 

My first breakup. I drowned in pictures of her, in the replays of our last night together, and in every note of that fucking awful mix tape she made me and the one I never got a chance to send to her. Lainie was in love with another girl. Sarah. Sarah. Sarah. She'd tried to fight her feelings, so shit was strong between them. All I saw in my head was what I imagined Sarah to be. Probably white, straight hair, blond, perfectly feminine. Everything I wasn't. Everything I'd ever hated about myself came out of my pores. Sarah was going to meet Lainie's parents as her girlfriend, no wait, excuse me: her forever person. I wasn't good enough. Thick-bodied, bespectacled, cautious, overtly Puerto Rican and brown-skinned, book-nerd, daydreamer. Were all these elements the sum of why Lainie refused to bring me home for real? Why she fucked me in the dark and in the back of her mom's car but never brought me to the table as more than a school friend? Why she had a fucking new girlfriend named Sarah take my place?

For three full days, I hid in Harlowe's home, under blankets in the attic. No library. No showering. Cell phone off. My stomach ejected most of what I put into it, which was almost nothing. I cried during the day while Harlowe and Maxine moved about the house as usual. They checked in on me, asked what I needed, and left when I needed to be alone. I cried at night when it was just me and the attic and all my thoughts. My Discman spun her mix CD and then mine and then hers again. When I wasn't crying or trying not to dry heave, I wrote and re-wrote response letters to Lainie. I crumpled them. I tore them to bits. In my dreams, I lit them on fire.

I didn't have a girlfriend anymore. Nothing was going to change that. And by putting her parent's address on the breakup package, Lainie blocked me from responding. She made sure I couldn't invade her magical little safe haven Democratic bullshit internship. She made sure that no part of me could drop in on her and her forever person. Every time I thought of that phrase, I gagged a little and wanted to punch them both. “Forever person.” I wanted to scream at Lainie and tell her to go fuck herself and ask her how she even dared to include that cutesy hyperbolic shit in a breakup letter to me. What a self-important, miserable, cheating-ass human being. How could she do me like that?

I called Ava and cried, like straight up wept into the phone when she said hello. She let me cry. Ava listened to all the sniffling and the wheezing and the cry/yelling I had in me. She didn't even make any cracks about me deserving this because Lainie was white and no one told me to date a white girl. She didn't do any of that. Ava listened to me as I read Lainie's letter to her and the tracklist to the breakup mix tape. She offered good advice; she called it “self-care.” Ava told me that it was important to cry it out so that all the emotions didn't creep up on me later and with more intensity. She made me promise to eat more food and take a shower if I could. We hung up only when I swore I'd take care of myself and call her again.

I smoked a little weed to try and clear the nausea out of my belly. I thought about calling Mom but couldn't bring myself to do it. I didn't need someone who wouldn't understand why I was crying over a girl. The sun rose through the split in the curtain. I wasn't sure what day of the week it was. It was another day of crying, not eating, and writing awful letters I was never going to send to Lainie. I fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion and dreamt of drowning in a river. The dream wouldn't let me go. I slept until I hit mud and rocks, until the argument happening in real life shook me awake.

“Maxine, I want to make sure this conversation is grounded in respect and understanding,” Harlowe's voice echoed up the attic stairs, “I'm not insecure about your love for Zaira, what makes me uncomfortable is how often you've been seeing her instead of spending time with me. We have specific nights for a reason.”

“I know, I want to apologize for disrespecting you, Harlowe. But you should know, and I've been wondering about how to tell you this, that my feelings for Zaira are bubbling to an irrepressible point. I've been a bit reckless in my actions but it's all been fueled by love.”

My eyes snapped open. Still wrapped in blankets, I crept towards the steps to listen.

“So basically, you're falling into goddess love with Zaira and you don't know how to handle it?”

“I know how to handle myself, Harlowe. I just got a little carried away and careless with the arrangements of our relationship. I can recall a few moments when the same has happened to you.”

“Do not bring up Samara,” Harlowe's voice grew shrill, “I've already apologized for Samara. It's not fair for you to throw her in my face.”

“I wasn't. I was merely reminding us both that we've been in situations where our passion for others has clouded our judgments.”

“Max, you don't have to remind me of anything. And this conversation is about your fuck-up, not mine.”

I sat with my hand over my mouth, trying not to laugh. Their argument provided temporary relief from Operation: Wallow In My Sadness Forever. The way they argued was so civilized. I'd never heard two people speak to each other that way.