It was the night I was caught unaware.
I step through the gate, led by the smiling birthday girl, her raven hair framing her face as if it were a painting—some kind of revelation, a masterpiece that had just hit the light. I'm cold. Even though the sun's still out, its beams still caressing our side of the sky, I feel a shiver up my arms, the fabric of my sweater apparently not enough to keep the warmth trapped within me.
We walk towards the front of her house, and she chirps on about how excited she is—how fresh sixteen feels, how the thought of it makes her skin glow. She mentions a boy who's stopping by, a guy we all swiped from Instagram, and I grin as her voice lilts into face-breaking joy. Some part of me wants to know how that feels—to have googly eyes for a boy you've only seen on a screen, to want your fingertips to graze against something you haven't touched in the flesh. I've only seen traces of it; the lingering stare as a boy walks by, the voice that caves in and out when someone who your heart swelters for awaits an answer.
This girl is air, cool and confident, floating even as her feet hit the ground. She is made for love.
She introduces me to her closest friends. They're the early ones, the people that were here long before the party started, helping her set-up, aiding each other with makeup and outfit choices, sedating one another with stories of their weeks, uplifting each other with a well-placed hand and a resonating voice.
When I see him, I don't feel it. Not at first; not when all I know is his name, not when I'm too busy acknowledging everyone else. I feel his gaze linger when I step away, I hear her voice fade into nonentity as I return. It doesn't hit me, not yet, not even in the slightest.
The sun sets, and the party begins. My classmates pour into the garden, their figures barely illuminated by the fairy lights strung across the trees, and the floor lamps flickering in the winter wind. I spend my time in the tent, where the food is, happily biding my time with a girl whose laugh pierces the air like a knife to a neck, and nearly shatters my eardrums. I pretend it doesn't rub me the wrong way—a good cut of meat tends to sedate you that way, make you impenetrable.
He finds his way to me. I still don't feel it, but I know that he's beautiful; in how his voice soothes the atmosphere, even as he belts out the wrong lyrics to the right song, how his hair magically stays out of those blue, blue eyes, how he walks as if God hovers behind him, spurring him on, beckoning him forth.
I don't feel it as we speak, a conversation that gradually becomes everything and nothing; up in the air, and right here, on the ground. I find myself laughing more than I usually do, speaking more than I care to. In the moment, it warms me, replaces the cold writhing around my body.
Everyone lulls into the tent, drowsy from either corner-side kisses or the iced bucket of alcohol lingering on the other end of the tent, far enough from him and me to prove unworthy. The birthday girl brings blankets, and he unfurls one over us, that tranquil aura never missing a beat.
He slithers away, for a moment, and I'm left swaying to the beat of a vaguely familiar song, one that forces a few of my peers to rise to their muddied feet. Boys run around, sipping beer and whispering into reddening ears, making crude jokes and slapping each other on the back. It's strange, how there are boys and then me, how I've managed to separate one from the other, as if they did not operate within the same spectrum, did not exist within the same earth-dusted body.
I'm not sure when it happens—when the feeling hits, when I'm drowning in it—but my eyes find him in the crowd as he strolls back into the tent, a mug in each glorious hand, donning a jacket so wonderfully creased, I imagine my fingers smoothing over each bump in the fabric, exploring every valley and every cave. He's talking to someone, the birthday girl, but I can't hear their voices—I can't hear anything except the song, pumping through my ears, begging to be heard. He's tall, almost taller than me, and as they draw nearer, something swells within me, growing and growing until everything—the world, the music, my thundering heart—comes to a timely halt.
"Tea?" he says, coolly, an arm reaching down, hoping to place the mug in my quivering hands. I stare up at him, into the blue eyes that smile down at me, and as I accept the mug, my fingers curling around the warmth as everything glides back, and the swelling explodes.
He slips back into the blanket, and birthday girl vanishes, a smile on her birdy face.
"What?" his voice blares into my mind, and I blink, finding my eyes trained on him—on the jaw, the cheeks with a few pimples dotted across them, the nose that reddens as he raises his mug, the lips that mould around its ceramic edge. I soon realize that my brain is jotting things down; the way he smells (like an ocean, a fresh wave of something new), the way his eyes shift their gaze from one of mine to the other, the width of his hands, the blackened edge of that one fingernail. I hear his voice again, hear words accompany it, and I find myself shaking my head, muttering a return, sipping quietly from my mug.
When we wiggle back into conversation, I find myself staring at him again. Except, this time, I know what it is—an exponential growth of emotion, a little voice in the back of my head saying, in a voice that's out of breath, Yes. Here he is. Finally, here is my dream.
☀
I sing on the way home.
Mother's too tired to notice anything, to drained from driving at this time of night, but the colours are swirling within me, crashing against each other like waves to the shore, painting the membranes of my heart something new, drenching my insides with something more vibrant that the silky burgundy that pulses through my veins.
I sing in my room.
Mom's already asleep, the lights in the rest of the house flicked off, while my voice hums in the air, along with that enchanting tune, declaring the lyrics that held the hope I began to hold tightly, desperately, longingly, in the dip of my palms.
I sing at school, I sing before I fall asleep, I sing and sing and sing until Mother turns one night, her thin-rimmed glasses perched on the arm of the couch as she stares me down with squint eyes. It's late—late for her, at least—and my heart is still throbbing along to this hopeful song, to this dream, to him. From the way her brows furrow once I catch sight of her, I know she doesn't suspect anything. Not of this calibre; not the my son has just met someone that set his soul alight thought that other parents could pick out easily. It's not her fault, though; when my fire fades, I cower in the darkness, unwavering in my solitude.
"What's going on with you?" she asks, her voice laced with fatigue. I shrug, sending her a small smile, humming as I lift her empty teacup from the floor.
"I'm just happy," I whisper, recklessly. This is new ground for us; me, letting her know that flowers are beginning to bloom within me. "You should sleep, it's really late."
She mutters a response, a soft I will, I will, before she rises from the couch, the blanket wrapped loosely around her. She's a small woman, one of a fire I have yet to see—my sister talks about it all the time, how alive my mother is, how she twists and turns and explodes the way I know I do. Maybe it's something in our blood, something flammable, something that ignites when love is scratched against it.
I begin to wonder if love my mother as much as I say I do.
"Goodnight," she whispers, a small smile gracing her face.
Something pours out of my heart, and I nod, before telling my mother that I love her. She responds with the same graceful air, the same genuine tone, before the bedroom door shuts, and that song—the one that has stirred in my heart for what feels like forever—bursts into the air again, like boulders crashing through sheets of glass, the beauty glinting and shrieking in the sheer chaos.
I let the breadknife lather a final swath of butter onto my lunch before slipping into the heavy blanket. In the darkness, with nothing visible, with everything dancing giddily inside of him, I whisper his name, and find that I adore the way it tickles my lips in the dead of night.
☀
Here is the first situation. I wanted to add more, but I felt like I was robbing these moments of something.
Fun fact: for days after, I sang and listened to nothing but Enchanted. Everyone was slightly annoyed, and I didn't care in the slightest.
Sometimes I long for those days again, but that's just nostalgia—I'm good where I am. I'm better where I am.
Thank you for reading. I love you.
Dedicated to taylor, my favourite e v e r.
—jay.