Just Us

Good Seed/Bad Seed | Charlie Van De Moortel | Oil pastels

Just Us by Tessa Barbero

Anna

I pull up to her house and hit my hands against the wheel.

Once.

Twice.

I take a shaky breath.

Then I call her.

“Babe.” She answers instantly. I hear the forced cheeriness in her voice, picture the quivering smile she holds in place. It breaks me (but reminds me why I’m here).

“Come out.”

She’s confused, “I—”

“Come outside.” She doesn’t hang up, doesn’t answer. Her silence is answer enough. Through the phone, I hear the door to her room creak open and her soft steps padding down the stairs, slowly, quietly.

The front door opens. She steps outside and carefully shuts it.

Then she turns to me, and I see her soft green eyes, usually bold and daring, burning red with tears. She smiles when she sees me, sitting in my car, waiting for her. It’s a genuine smile — the first, I suspect, to have graced her lips all day (is it selfish to be glad?).

She says my name like she’s surprised I’m real — like she didn’t dare hope I’d be here.

Then she takes one step forward. Another. And she keeps coming. She’s not running, crying, laughing, and screaming “F*** YOU!!!” to her parents like I imagined (hoped?) she might, but she’s still walking toward me. She’s still choosing me.

“Hey.” She’s holding the door open — waiting, like she needs an invitation to dive into the passenger seat of my 2015 blue Honda Accord.

I smile softly at her.

“Hey,” I reply. “Sit.” She obeys immediately, folding into the seat like she’s trying to take up less space. Once she’s sat down in the passenger seat and folded her hands in her lap, I lean over the divider and across her shoulder to grab the seatbelt. She watches me, stiff, waiting to be directed.

I let out a small sigh before clipping the buckle in with a firm click. I tug it once, just to make sure. Her shoulders rise and fall quickly, just once, and a little huff of half a laugh leaves her mouth. I lift my eyes to her face, her chin dropped to her chest and her eyes wet with quiet tears. Feeling my gaze, she picks up her head and a half smile flits across her face before fading away.

I sit back into the driver’s seat, clip my own seatbelt, and drive. It takes me a few minutes to get out of the winding roads of her neighborhood, but then we’re on the highway. I don’t have a destination set on the GPS, but I don’t need one.

We’re heading west, to the shore (her favorite place).

Where the sky meets the sea and the wind slices our faces and tussles our hair.

Where we can play in the soft sand, and salty sea and our worries feel smaller.

Maybe we’ll kiss. Maybe we’ll fight and argue and break into shattered pieces.

I don’t know what will happen. I just know I have to try to keep her safe.

Even if I don’t know how.

Emery

You’re looking straight at the road ahead of you. Not at me. You haven’t even glanced over at me since I got in the car. Your fingers are drumming slightly on the steering wheel — dancing along, I assume, to some tune in your head, oblivious to the problems of the world around you — yet you assume you can fix them all with a few sunny words and the right intentions.

I envy you.

I wish you hadn’t clipped my seatbelt in. Maybe then the universe would’ve decided for me, and my head would fly through the window, and you would’ve blamed yourself for surviving. For not having the foresight to make me buckle up. But alas, you did. Congratulations, Anna! I’m alive. You do everything right. You’re the perfect girl. Except when you’re around me.

I turn you into this rule-breaking, parent-defying, class-skipping girl who cheats on tests because she was too busy texting me to study. A girl who drops her plans to show up at my door and ferry me away to who

knows where because she sensed something was wrong without me even needing to tell her.

Maybe that’s why I love you.

That’s why I shouldn’t.

I don’t know if it’s you or me who says it first.

I love you.

Or maybe we say it together.

And as if those are the magic words, you’re smiling, joking, teasing, laughing, talking. About your days. About the things we can talk about with anyone. Your sister made cookies and your brother is obsessed with this game. Your mom is in Florida and your best friend broke up with her boyfriend.

I smile and nod and frown when required.

And we talk about your family and friends and the sky and the road and absolutely everything but entirely nothing. It feels comfortable, but not perfect. Not with memories haunting me.

You still haven’t told me where we’re going.

West. You say. We’re going west.

West to… where? It’s been at least two hours. There are no cars around here.

Just be patient, baby, you say. Look, there!

So I turn and look.

The sign says: Beach. Right turn in 4 miles.

The beach? You hate the beach.

Yeah, maybe a little, you admit.

I love the beach, I whisper, for your ears only— like there’s anyone else in the car. Isn’t it too cold for the beach?

You make a turn. I watch your hands on the steering wheel— funny, how you fascinate me with such a simple movement.

I think I could be lost in your eyes forever. Deep ocean blue— like the sea in wintertime. I don’t understand how you could hate the beach so thoroughly when your eyes reflect the waves so perfectly.

Watching you drive, letting myself feel okay, just being with you? It feels good.

All too soon, we’ve arrived. You park your mom’s old car in an almost empty old beach parking lot that’s more sand than asphalt. The pavement is cracked and little half-dead grasses are growing around the edges. In a way, it’s beautiful. I wonder if you see it too.

You open your door and climb out of the car after grabbing a towel from the back seat. I wait before opening my own. When I do, you’re waiting for me, holding out your hand.

I take it.

And then before I know what I’m doing, my mouth is on yours, my hand is in your hair, and you’re dropping that towel to grab my other hand. I wrap my arm over your shoulder and deepen our kiss.

You place one hand on my waist, then push me away.

You tell me to follow you. I do, slowly, my lips still tingling — and forming a smile. Your hand takes mine again.

Okay.

Anna

“Okay,” she says.

“Okay.” I look up to see her fingers pressed against her lips, gazing at me with a dreamlike stare. I’m sure I blush.

“Follow me,” I repeat. I guide her out of the shabby parking lot, past an old lifeguard base, and onto the real sand. There’s an old beach chair on the deck nearby, and half-torn flags flapping in the cold wind.

We get just out of sight of the empty parking lot before I wrap my arms over her shoulders in a tight hug and push her backwards to lie flat against the cold sand.

She lifts her hand to my face, and her gentle gaze meets mine.

And then movement catches my eye. Just a slight shifting of the light, but… My eyes track the tear I saw down her cheek as it leaves a trail behind it and rolls down to her chin.

“Emery,” I whisper, sorrow lining my voice. “Oh, Em…”

She sits up, and I can’t tell if she’s trying to push me off or get closer, but I lean back and slide off her so we’re sitting across from each other in the sand.

“What’s wrong?” She shakes her head, then shrugs, then tucks her chin down, making her hair fall lightly in her face. I reach up to brush it aside, but she pushes me away.

“It’s okay.” Her voice breaks. She forces a smile. She pulls her knees up to her chest. She stretches them out again. She stands up and carefully brushes the sand off her legs and back.

I stand, too. I reach my arms out, wrap them around her, burrow one hand in the back of her hair, and draw her towards me. She caves with little resistance, dropping her head to my shoulder.

I whisper in her ear, stroking her soft hair slowly. “It’s okay,” and “you can cry” and (most importantly), “I’m here.”“I’m here.”

Emery

Your shoulder is warm. It’s wet too, thanks to me. I cannot stop the salty tears flowing from my eyes down your shoulder soaking into your sweater.

Please stop I don’t wanna feel this I don’t wanna think let’s go back to rolling on the sand with your hands and lips and eyes on me.

I don’t want to cry.

I don’t want to feel this weak.

But with you I’m okay. You can hold me

together.

You’re enough. But I’m too much, my love.

I’m too much.

And I sob into your shoulder.

You’re here, you say.

You’re here.

Anna

If we were in a musical, this would be when we’d sing. Perfectly harmonized, fixing everything in an awe-inspiring three minutes. And then.. what?

“Do you want to talk?” I offer quietly.

I think she nods (it’s hard to tell). I take a step back.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t… I don’t know,” she whispers, her voice broken.

“Okay. Start at the beginning.”

“Well, on the 26th of one cold February—” I shove her.

“Seriously.”

“Seriously,” she smirks, beautiful even with tears in her eyes.

“Emery. Please, baby.” She rolls her eyes.

“It’s nothing.” Her tears are dry now. Her face is quiet and closed off. Her smile is forced.

“Emery. Talk to me. Now.”

“Fine.” She’s scared, but she needs this. I think.

I don’t know if I’m helping her or just trying to feel needed. “Em…” I place a hand on her shoulder.

She flinches, just barely. I pull back, and her face tightens again (not good say something).

“Your brother?”

“He’s okay.” Her parents would never hurt their perfect son. If they tried, she would never let them. “He was at a friend’s house.”

“Good. You?”

“Mm.”

“Emery.”

“Here.” She pulls up her sleeve to reveal a large growing bruise on her upper arm, dark and fresh across her skin. “And here,” I can barely hear her voice, so timid and tired she is. She lifts her shirt to show me a bruise on the left side of her ribs, and one by her hip.

I don’t know what to say.

“It’s okay.” She lowers her shirt again. “It was only Papa this time.”

“I had no idea.” My voice cracks. I stare out at the winter-blue ocean, trying to stop my own tears.

“That was the point. I don’t want you to try to fix me, or fix my life.”

“Don’t say that.” I whisper. “You’re not broken.” Then a thought occurs to me. “What would you say if I asked you to run away with me?”

“Yes.”

“I love you.” I whisper. “I’ll always be here for you.”

“I love you too.”

“Run away with me?”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“Just us?”

“Yes.”

She nods. “Yes.”

For a moment, it feels like that might be enough — her hand in mine, the wind and waves washing away our footprints. My car, crunching on gravel while we pull out of the empty lot. The turn signal clicking — once, twice. And then the waves are gone, and it really is just us.

But still, I see the tears lingering in her eyes, and wonder if either of us knows what that really means.