"Jennie, move!" I yell.
She snaps back, "Don't tell me what to—"
I collide with her, yanking her off the tracks and rolling down the embankment, into the thick grass that grows around the trees. She's on top of me, her hair lifting in the breeze as the train speeds past us, whistle blowing, the sound filling my ears and my senses, her eyes wide.
The clang and rising dust around us should be chaos, but all I can see is her and all I can feel is her heartbeat against mine. It's the strangest sensation: my heartbeat slowing to twin hers, our breaths mirroring. My hand reaches out and I tuck her hair behind her ear.
She doesn't pull away. She doesn't flinch.
She leans into my touch as I cup her cheek. Her eyes close, and when her hand covers mine, it's like I know the meaning of relief, finally, after what's felt like an eternity.
This is how it's supposed to be.
The whistle begins to fade, the train disappearing around the curve, and I'm still lying there, blanketed by her body, held by her hand, my heart beating in my body even though it's hers.
She pushes herself up, just a little, freeing me of her weight when I don't want to be free, so I follow as she goes, mirroring her. We lie there in the tal grass, side by side, our legs still tangled together.
She doesn't push away again.
"Are you okay?" she asks.
I nod.
"I should've been paying attention. I'm sorry."
"It's okay. It's not like anyone would really miss me if I got flattened by a train."
She shakes her head like the idea is impossible, which cheers me. But then she says: "Your dad—"
"We talked about that," I interrupt her. "He's not really—"
"I thought your dad was nice," she says, overlapping me, almost puzzled.
"Huh?"
"When I dropped you off the morning after the party? Your dad was making pancakes. He was nice."
"I guess."
"Is he trying to do dad-ing better?" Jennie asks, her eyes getting big and thoughtful. "It's what you deserve, Lis."
I tell myself she's drunk and high on adrenaline. That's why she's pushing like this, when I made it clear last time I didn't really want to go there.
"What about your mom?"
I go very still, and her body tenses against mine but doesn't move away. Instead, she shifts closer, like she knows that soon she'll have to be the one supporting me.
"You never mention her," Jennie says.
"She's gone," I say, because I still haven't found a good way to say it. You never think of these things until you have to. You never realize how many questions could crop up that you suddenly have to change your answers to. "I mean. She died."
Jennie's fingers flex on my arm, a gentle I'm here squeeze as we stare at each other in the stretching shadows of the trees. We breathe together, our bodies rising and falling in the same rhythm, like we've got the same heart, even for just a breath.
"Was there an accident or..." Jennie pauses. "Can I even ask ... I'm sorry. I don't ... I'm not very good with this stuff. But you can talk to me. I can try. I want to try. I want to be good for you."
It's like she's looking right through me, holding out exactly what I need.
It's the only way I can say it out loud.
"My mom killed herself."
Silence. I wish my words could float from my lips to the water, the current carrying them away to a river or an ocean, to become part of this great big marble. Mom liked to call the earth that. They gave me her ashes, and I know she'd hate to just be in an urn; she'd want to be somewhere living and growing and beautiful. But I can't bear to even look at the urn, let alone open it. I'm such a fucking failure sometimes.
"Lisa, I'm so sorry."
I nod, because I've heard that a lot. What else can you say, really?
"She wasn't ... she was really sad. She went through cycles of depression. She'd be really up and then down, but she always pulled out of it. And then—" I stop again, staring at my hands. The weight of her against me, so warm and familiar, keeps me going. Because I need to talk about it, don't I? "I don't think she was trying to. I think ... she was just trying to numb the pain and she took too much, and I—" I let out a long breath. "I missed my first bus," I say finally. "I usually took the two fifteen, but I missed it and had to get the two thirty, and every day since, I've wondered ... if I'd just taken the two fifteen like I was supposed to, maybe I would've found her in time...."
Tears trickle down my cheeks, but I can't even bring myself to wipe them away, exhausted from finally saying the thing that's been churning in the choppy waters of my mind.
But then, I find I don't have to.
Because she's reaching out. She's cupping my face like I'd cupped hers, her thumb wiping away each tear like it's precious. Like I am.
"Oh, Lisa, no." I have never known gentleness before, not until her thumb, smearing wet against my cheekbone, carrying my tears away on her skin. "You did everything you could. If you had to find her—oh my God, I'm so sorry." Her forehead presses against my temple, and I can feel tears trickle down my cheek that aren't mine.
Our tears mingle, our foreheads touch, and here, in our pain, we are one. There is no me. There is no her.
There is just us.
"I can't believe what you've survived," Jennie whispers against my cheek. "Do you know how incredible you are?"
Her hands cup the back of my neck, her thumb stroking back and forth at the base of my skull, sending shivers of emotion down my spine.
I can't stop the sound in my throat, this choked sob that just erupts from me. It's like she's drawing out everything I've been bottling up with her touch and words and assurance. I'm a shaken champagne bottle, exploding everywhere.
"I know that the reason you're here in this town is tragic, and I'm so sorry about your mom," Jennie whispers. "But I'm really happy you're here with me. That I get to know you. That you trust me enough to tell me."
I pull back, my out-of-control breath puffing across her skin as my eyes meet hers. She smiles, her hand moving from the back of my neck to tuck my hair behind my left ear, like I did for her earlier. But her hand doesn't drop. It just stays there, her fingers stroking down my jawline. I shiver. No one's ever touched me there before, and my thighs clench together as her touch softens but still doesn't part.
"Hey," Jennie says. "Olive juice."
I frown. "I—"
"Ah-love-juice," she repeats, slowed down.
I love you.
My laughter is hidden behind a wet sniff. "Oh my God," I say. "You're a total cornball."
"I am not!"
"You are. You try to hide it. But I see it." I catch her hands as she tries to pull away, mock-angry and pouting. "I see you," I say, and her wrists are caught in my hands between us, and her entire body tilts toward mine like it's where we belong.
"Olive juice, too," I whisper, because this is a moment for a whisper. This is a moment to remember.
This is the softest skin on her body that I know so far—the inside of her wrists, delicate veins and the bump of bone. This is the hitch in her breath as she leans in, her eyes drifting but not shutting, fixed on my lips.
I see her. The girl she tries to hide.
The girl who watches my lips like she wants to devour me.
"I've never met anyone like you," she says, hushed in the silence we've created in this little bubble of us. I can't even hear the trickle of the water anymore. If a train were coming and I was tied to the tracks, I wouldn't hear the wail. I'd be a goner for sure.
But fuck, what a way to go, in her arms, her lips just inches away.
The only thing better would be what I still can't dare to think. We're on the edge, like all the other times, but she's pulled back each time. And if I push forward, I could lose.
I could crash.
Or I could stay here forever, staring into her eyes.
Is it her or me who moves? I don't know. I think it's both of us. A breaking point in sync, she and I are one heart in this moment—one breath, one pulse.
Our lips brush. Just brush. Barely there, retreat, and then back again. My lips skim over hers, a stone skipping across a still pond, and then she makes this noise, it hooks deep in my stomach, just seconds before her tongue's against mine, and then—
Oh.
Then.
Tangled fingers and legs, her thigh sliding between mine like that night in bed, like it was almost familiar and oh so needed. My fingers wrap in her hair before hers do the same to mine, and oh so strange and marvelous at the same time, mirroring each other. Her hand skating across my collarbone—lower, lower, the sighs she makes—and my fingers mimicking the movement against hers.
It pounds inside me, swirling in my head like her peony-shampoo smell and the dizzying heat of her mouth. Those three little words, stripped of wordplay. The truth of them beating in my chest like a drum as we kiss and kiss and kiss.
Olive juice.
Olive juice.
I love you.