the sun seemed to set faster in the spring than it did in the summer. something about the equinoxes and solstices, the tilt of the earth and how it interacted with the angle that you perceived our resident ball of glowing gas in the sky. it wasn’t really what i needed to be focused on in that moment. 

“hawthorne.” Mr. Lindecum called again, his voice just a touch higher having had to repeat my last name. 

“here.” i called back. he was used to me spacing out, in class, in the hall, even at breaks when he tried to get my attention with a wave hello. we had discussions about it. my parents were even involved at one point. somebody had suggested i be taken to see a specialist for the tapping feet and bouncing knees, things that i always assumed everyone else did. 

it was not normal to space out in class, to feel the bounds of the lecture zoom away and escape to a fantasy. the internal world where gravity was at your beck and call, physics bent to your will and flight was a reality. i spent a majority of my time in that world. 

school without friends meant spending time by yourself, enjoying solitude, or being driven mad by it. i was lucky, a person who could sit in the library for hours and read until the weirdly fast spring sunset bled itself dry on the canvas of the horizon. it became a feedback loop.  

struggle to socialize, struggle to keep friends, enjoy time by myself, start the cycle over. things became habitual, then routine, and before i knew it i was entering my last year before high school with only one real friend to my name. 

her name is Charlotte Cunningham and she has the most beautiful eyes.  

i scrawled those words into a leatherbound journal. the cover only read ‘lace’ in extra thick sharpie, bordered by frills i had hot glued to the cover. it was beaten, scuffed, scratched and worn. an item i kept all to myself between the mattress and the box spring. a gift from mom. 

the first few pages were torn, ripped out when i was too young to write. the next were scribbles and shapes, stick figures of a small girl holding the hand of a larger boy. eventually pages coalesced into entries, 15 turns deep a table of contents, and within that table, denoted firmly in the same stylized sharpie as the title, two names. Cain and Charlotte. 

“creative writing can happen after you finish your assignment today, ms. hawthorne.” 

“sorry.” i mumbled. Mr. Lindecum handed me a piece of paper with algebra problems on it. the symbols on the page leered and dove around each other. i decided to make the b² go to war with the x. to everyone else, lacey hawthorne was hard at work. to lacey hawthorne, b² had just decapitated x and was holding the + triumphantly. 

“fifteen more minutes.” Mr. Lindecum called out to the class. my pencil dragged on the paper in an ugly, mishappen way. writing, erasing, thinking, erasing more. it was difficult to perform calculations when it seemed so much more fun to make the silly little symbols battle each other for the princess’ ransom after the equals sign. 

i finished, barely. half of it was probably wrong. the important part was that it looked like i had tried; there was plenty of numbers and a lot of eraser marks. the grades had become meaningless to me, a distraction and a nuisance that only served to track the time between bells. 

Mr. Lindecum collected the worksheet. he always smiled whether i’d completed the work or not and i felt bad in the pit of my stomach handing the paper over. a slug had crawled down my throat, stifling my response and closing the airway. it sunk down deeper and buried itself in the fast-developing nugget of anxiety i usually began to feel towards the end of class. 

break. a game, of sorts. avoid the sandra twins, avoid charlie and angel, avoid kelsey most of all. hide my bag, lest they take it and search it. hide my face, hide my body, hide in my keep; the upstairs of the pinecrest library. 

when the bell tolled i was the first out of my seat. a lightning flash that probably rivaled my older brother. it was just starting. i was alone in the halls for a brief and unadulterated second. then the noise came, the tsunami of chatter that hit me like a freight train as dozens of doors opened at the same time. 

rule number one of the game: don’t get caught. rule number two: earplugs are your friend. i had already put them in and i walked through the tsunami like it wasn’t there. rule three: speed is key.  

the twins were down the hall. i was already two doors past them, past rows of identical lockers, and had almost beaten charlie to her usual territory. i would have to cut right, down the hall towards the main office, and loop back to the library to avoid being intercepted by angel who was almost certainly closing in from behind.  

kelsey was the wild card. as much as she lit the fires of my hatred, stoked the coals and managed the flame each day, i had to admit that she was terribly, awfully, smart. she kept groupies who were just desperate enough for what she had access to that they would follow her orders. lackies that, filled with their own insecurity, would take any excuse to vent it at an acceptable target. 

kelsey was the master designator, i the innocent bystander. she was a hall monitor with access to corridors and passages that i did not. she used them. 

i tried to anticipate how to cross campus as i left the core building, gauging for the exits her minions had no doubt split up to cover. time was on my side, but the clock was ticking. i gambled. the back of the admin building was the most direct route to the library, assuming i had seven or eight seconds of lead time, i could make it before kelsey came through the fire escape to cut me off. i lost. 

the door opened in my face, almost hitting me, and kelsey waltzed out. she looked pleased, more pleased than i would have allowed her to be, given the perfect read on my heading and direction coming out of homeroom. 

her jeans had more holes than my rattiest sweaters, scraps of thread barely clinging to her legs. her midriff was out, against dress code, and the crop was a size too small to accentuate her pushup bra. she had worn her usual sparkly makeup and tinted eyeliner. 

“i don’t think boob glitter is allowed in the student handbook.” i snarked. it was better to start things off like this, get her talking, reduce the amount of time i would spend cornered. 

“at least i have boobs to put glitter on, washboard.” 

“how original.” i replied. 

“ohhhhh, lacey!” a shrill voice called out behind me. angel and charlie, almost exactly on time. angel had been the one to call my name, i knew from her tone and the fact that she did it several times a week before screwing up my hair. the hand came next. 

angel was a larger girl, not fat, but heavyset. it meant that her hand coming down on my head made me flinch, eliciting a trio of shrill giggles from the group. charlie was anemic, or at least she appeared to be, with rail thin arms and legs matched by a gaunt fauce usually covered in foundation a shade too light. she rarely spoke but to repeat something kelsey or one of the twins had said. 

“awww, whats wrong munchkin? scared?” angel asked. 

“scared?” charlie repeated. i sighed softly, taking a step back and trying to move towards the opening to my left. kelsey, of course, cut me off.  

“ugh, god, gross. did you fucking shower in that cheap ass perfume?” 

“no sandra’s today? down in the popularity rankings, are we?” i asked in response. 

“they had a thing.” angel said. 

“a thing.” charlie repeated. 

i wasn’t looking at angel, instinctively knowing she would be one step behind me, charlie another step to my right. i considered dashing for it, imagining myself tripping and spilling the contents of my bag in front of kelsey. 

“you’re late with my assignments, nerdass.” kelsey said. “isn’t that, like, the only thing you’re good at?” 

“you kept me up all night.” 

“don’t talk back to her!” angel barked, shoving me from behind. 

“yeah, don’t!” 

“fuck off.” i growled, stumbling. the trio erupted into shrill, giggling laughter again.  

“i need these done, tonight.” kelsey spoke. the word tonight said like it was a dagger she hoped to plunge into my chest. she handed me a crumpled scrap of paper. i took it and waited. “tonight.” she repeated, with more of a hiss but the same vitriol. 

“tonight.” charlie said. she moved a strand of thin blonde hair away from her face, thumb brushing the foundation and running a line through it. i had to squeeze my pinky inside my hoodie so hard that my eyes watered to avoid laughing. 

“i got it.” i said meekly. kelsey sneered. she snapped her fingers, turning on a heel and collecting her goons. i watched them stalk, lumber, and amble away respectively. 

the momentary comedy from seeing charlie butcher her makeup flooded out of me. it took the strength in my knees with it and i sank to the ground. the wetness around my eyes became real tears and i bawled until the bell rang. when it stopped buzzing i took out my earplugs. 

the crumpled note kelsey had given me was the same list as before with one more item added to the bottom. a three page paper, expected to be delivered tonight alongside two other, longer papers. i grit my teeth and contemplated kicking the wall of the admin building out of frustration. 

instead, i got up and started walking, to the chain link at the end of the field behind the gym, over it, across the roadway, down to the bank of the aqueduct that ran parallel to our school. in the late morning it was still hot out, uncomfortable enough that i ducked underneath the raised walkway pedestrians used to cross the channel. i sat, cried, wrote, and cried again. my phone buzzed. 

messages from cain. he always checked in around lunch, asking if i needed a food delivery or a hug. i never accepted either, but i was grateful. doing so would mean getting him in trouble, taking away time that we could spend together. i texted him a backwards smiling face with the colon and the left parentheses. he responded with a mirrored version of the same. our A-OK signal. 

cain and i had developed a system of check-ins, knocks, and signals to let each other know things discreetly. it was just something that we did, at first, and over time they began to mean things. the smile texts were no different, i don’t think either of us had meant for them to come to mean what they did now, but they had. 

i took out my journal and my fountain pen. the ink flowed onto paper and i let the pen dictate the size, the spacing, and the arrangement of the letters. the poem wilted, sliding towards the right corner of the page and the last line trailed off into the margin. 

a sad girl, 

seldomly shows her, 

true colors. 

3-5-3 poetry, english haiku. brevity, space, the distillation of a feeling. i shook the pen, dropping it to the page again and let myself feel every bit of that acidic hatred left over from my sobbing. 

hungry dogs will bite, 

even the hand that feeds them,  

accidentally. 

a true 5-7-5. with time i might have followed the initial constraint, but the end result was so pleasing to me that it didn’t matter. a perfect juxtaposition, a snappy finish.  

cain texted me again. he wanted to know if i needed to be picked up today. i left the message read, he would understand. even if i went back to class now, lied about where i had been, accepted the detention or lunch duty or whatever else awaited me back at pinecrest, sitting in the aqueduct felt so much more appealing. i wrote more, journaled, scribed another few lines about charlotte, and took a nap. 

when i woke up, school still had another 25 minutes in session. i blinked sleep from my eyes and checked to make sure everything was where i had left it. my bag still leaned against the concrete pillar holding up the walkway, and my phone was still next to me. 

no more texts from cain, but charlotte had noticed i was gone at lunch and messaged me to check in. 

Char: heyyyy, normal spot? 

Char: girlllll where u? 

Char: goin 2 usual table 

Char: okayyyyyy, hope ur okiiii byeeee 

Char: my place 2day? orrrrr,,, 

i felt guilty having forgotten to text her i was hiding out today. she wouldn’t be mad, she understood. charlotte had encouraged me to go to teachers about the bullying, she offered to vouch for me. i knew that kelsey would just ramp things up where school couldn’t help. 

Lace: bridge troll day;; 

Char: ughhhh, stupid bitches?,, 

Lace: usual bs 

Char: kayy, my place forsuresies 

that settled it. i was glad i hadn’t asked cain to pick me up. i needed to sit in her arms, hear her ramble about whatever coding project she was working on. 

charlotte was a genius with software. she had made apps for me that looked like calculators, but punching in a password and hitting AC three times would open a hidden photo folder. it helped me keep digital copies of my journals. there were other things in those locked folders too, selfies, body shots, other things. things that made my face heat up thinking about them. pictures of cain at track, arms high and face contorted into the goofiest expressions ever. pictures of char. pictures of both of us in lingerie we had ‘borrowed’ from VS. 

she was the smartest, most gorgeous girl i knew. i loved her, like…more than i think even she knew i did. we had touched each other, kissed, confided how exciting it all was and how weird. she liked me, but i don’t think she liked me the way i liked her. it was tough. she talked about a love she couldn’t have that her heart had been made up for, and in so many words, i understood. though, in that moment i hadn’t. 

realization came later, after cain moved upstairs. after i saw him less around the house and he was more a chauffer than my brother. i realized how much i missed him, missed his sports and his stupid documentary TV shows that felt like only old people should enjoy them. 

we hadn’t hung out in weeks, a break from the old norm of spending time on the couch together or running errands. part of it had been the bullying, the comments about our proximity and our touch. people had asked why i stood so close to cain all the time, why we held hands at our age, why this and why that. 

i couldn’t tell them how i felt. he was my brother, i loved him. why wouldn’t i want to hold his hand? that didn’t magically change because i was freshly 13 and tromping through my last year of primary school. the thoughts clouded and buzzed around me like insects. i had to swat them away and shake my head until it was clear again.  

charlotte met me in the back parking lot and her older brother picked us up in his parent’s sedan. she was the type of girl who could pull off wearing the optional school uniform almost exclusively. a plaid vest and pleated skirt with tights would make most seem plain, but charlotte was always prim and proper. she had her hair flat ironed and worn down with a white headband that contrasted well against auburn. it played nice with a tucked in dress shirt she had chosen over a vest, probably on account of the heat. 

“hi jason.” i smiled. 

“hi lacey.” he replied. i got a firm look over from him in the mirror, same as charlotte. 

“trouble today?” he guessed. 

“yeah.” 

“always is with those whores.” charlotte said. she looked pissed on my behalf. 

“don’t call them whores.” jason chastised. he said the words, but you could tell from his tone he barely cared. it was contrarian, a fight picked on principle alone. charlotte made a movement with her hand like a talking mouth and he rolled his eyes. 

i was alone in the back seat. charlotte had her hand on the center console and jason placed his on top. neither of them spoke, one driving and the other staring off into space. it was always like this, quiet, normal. jason dropped us at their house and sped off to get to his own plans.  

the cunningham house was a bit larger than ours, newer, and so the inside was more chic. i liked the upstairs hangout space. it had a collection of game consoles and all of their videogames organized by genre. charlotte was the curator, jason didn’t really play much anymore. 

video games were my guilty pleasure. i used to play them with cain, super mario galaxy especially, but when the living room got renovated and the wii no longer connected to the new flatscreen i would have had to continue playing on the CRT in his room. it wasn’t something i was opposed to, it just felt like overreach. a boundary that i hadn’t worked up the courage to test.  

it wasn’t like i never went in there. sometimes i would sit on the old fold out couch, under a blanket that still had his scent on it, and just pretend. it wasn’t a perfect replacement, but it was enough that i could deal with his being out of the house so much more often. 

“hey, spacegirl, wanna like, come down to earth?” charlotte asked me, tossing a controller my way. i fumbled it and the item bounced into my lap. 

“sorry. thinking.” 

“if you think too much your brain’ll get stuck.” 

“what are we playing?” 

“you pick. i didn’t deal with skank squad.” 

“mario? the newer one.”  

“ugh, 3D world again?” charlotte said. she made a face. 

“or we could trade off on sunshine?” 

“except, like, you would just be playing for 40 minutes.” 

“and you’re just gonna try to get in my jeans.” 

“like, duhhh.” charlotte answered, plopping down next to me. 

we gamed for a while, till jason came home and tramped up the stairs. he was out of his jeans and graphic tee, soaked in sweat that made the workout clothes stick to his skin. i noticed charlotte looking, but i didn’t mention it. 

“need a ride home later, lacey?” he asked. 

“yeah, thanks. cain needs to study and i don’t wanna bother him.” 

“see, told you your brain was gonna stick.” charlotte cut in. she was mashing the controller to get up on a ledge. 

“i’ll come get you in an hour?” jason asked again, ignoring charlotte. 

“perfect.” i answered, giving him a smile. he returned a thumbs up and disappeared into his room. “i do not think about cain that much.” 

“well, like, i didn’t say you did.” she muttered. an enemy had her trapped against a wall and she was failing to get around it. 

“oh come on, you implied it.” 

“don’t know whaaaat you’re talking about. fuck, your turn.” she swore, handing me the controller.  

“you can keep going.” i told her, wrapping my arms around her waist and snuggling into the plush couch. charlotte took the controller back and continued playing. the pleated skirt she wore was made of a thick wool and even though my face kinda itched against it, i really didn’t want to move. “did you ever get rid of those bugs?” 

“in the flatpak thing?” 

“yeah.” 

“mhm, it’s like, almost done but, i’m a perfectionista yaknow?” she asked rhetorically. i nodded in her lap. she rambled a bit more about the implementation, some i understood, most i didn’t. it was exactly what i needed. a little bit of that rosewater perfume, the wisps of her hair brushing my cheek and neck as the game got her more animated, an infodump about something she really cared about. 

eventually jason took me home and i went straight to my room to work on kelsey’s assignments. normally i would have regretted staying late and having to be up past midnight, but my stepsister was still talking to her 6 or 7th boyfriend this year. i had lost count. none of them ever came over, she never seemed to do anything but go to their houses a few times a month, and obviously she never introduced me. 

“are you done yet, washboard?” 

“printing.” i replied with as little emotion as possible. 

“maybe if you ate more you’d be less rectangular.” kelsey laughed. 

she knew about my food preferences. my textural issues with soft and mushy things, leftovers, issues eating the same food twice in a row. calling them preferences seemed so silly, it wasn’t like i could choose to ignore them if i wanted to keep the food down. a popup on my laptop let me know that the job had been completed. 

“it’s in the office.” i said. kelsey didn’t respond, though i knew she had heard me, and continued blabbing to her boyfriend over facetime.  

it was just past 1am now. i was exhausted. the nap earlier should have helped but i was defaulting on my sleep debt and it hadn’t. there was pretty much no way i was going to get to sleep with the way she was talking and her side eye every few sentences was already starting to piss me off. 

i had been sleeping in the living room more and more, it wasn’t so bad, but it wasn’t restful sleep either. the futon upstairs folded out into a bed, but the thought made me shiver. i hadn’t ever asked to use the bed before and it scared me. what would cain think? what if other people found out?  

there was nothing weird about it. i was being squeezed on all sides, stressed out of my mind, eating less in spite of it and sleeping less than that. another giggle from kelsey galvanized my resolve. i texted cain. he responded immediately and i went upstairs with my pillow and blanket to pass out. 

the futon wasn’t as comfortable as the couch. even still, it was a nice temperature in the attic and the room smelled like cain. it put me to bed faster than i had expected. when my head rose to the screeching of his 6:30 alarm, i wondered why it had taken me so long to ask. 

a few weeks later i went back to the futon, back to my mind palace. i knew cain would be at track that day and i would have a few hours to myself. away from kelsey, away from everything. hitting some keys unlocked the hidden folder in my fake calculator app and i scrolled through journal entries, sections of text in messy blocks with unformatted dialogue stringing them together.  

scenarios, true and false, some more fantasy than reality. i began to write. i lost track of time, didn’t hear cain pull into the drive or come up the stairs, and when the door opened i jolted. it was a defensive reaction from being deep in the midst of a scene. i felt heat spark across my face and yanked the blanket over myself like it was an invisibility cloak. 

cain was sticky with exhaustion, not showered and kinda stale. we exchanged words, though he was too exhausted to really interrogate why i was here and took a long shower, returning wrapped in a fluffy towel. i had ditched the blanket, feeling childish and a bit stupid for even trying to hide underneath it. 

he grabbed casual clothes and i tried my best not to stare at his muscles. they weren’t large, like jason’s, but toned and extremely defined. if you squeezed him between two panes of glass, surgeons could use his body for an anatomy chart. the idea of my brother as a pressed flower made me smile a bit. if he noticed i couldn’t tell, i was staring out the window and not anywhere near his direction by the time he had turned around. 

it was difficult to even bring up what i wanted, especially now. i resorted to teasing him a bit, trying to break the tension. i made an excuse about being in his room because of kelsey. it didn’t really look like he believed me though. he had put on music, not the kind i liked, and i wondered if that was a signal to get lost. 

he sat down next to me after he changed, though. it didn’t feel like i was bothering him. the car rides with charlotte and jason were fresh in my mind right then and i put my hand out in his direction. seemingly without thinking, he clasped it his own and i leaned into him a bit. 

“hey, cain?” 

“yeah, lace?” 

“can i sleep in here tonight?” i asked. the words came out softer than i’d wanted, much less confident.  

“aren’t you worried about connotations?” 

“well, yeah. but the last time i did it was the first time i really slept in ages.” 

“okay.” he said. no pushback, not even a joke about it. i studied his face intently. his brows were knit in concentration and he was working his jaw in a similar way. if he was too distracted to think critically about it then i wasn’t about to argue. 

weeks went by like that, with me sleeping on the futon. it helped me a lot, my grades, my after school independence. even having to do kelsey’s homework felt manageable when i didn’t need to hear her stupid boy chatter or take the insults. 

there was an incident with dad. he had caught me leaving cain’s room one night on a trip to the toilet. i was too anxious to pee in the shower, it felt a little weird, and the bathroom was close anyway. despite his intense interrogation, some gross implications about cain forcing me to be up there, he seemed to believe me about feeling pressured with stress and kelsey’s judgement. it wasn’t like anything super strange was happening, anyway. i was let go. 

cain stopped caring about finding me in his space, i spent more and more time up there, and we hung out more even if it was just silently working together. the longing i had felt hadn’t dimmed though, and if anything the constant exposure to him and his space was making it worse. 

he was out late one night, probably at a party or on a drive. i don’t know if i felt like i needed to seize the opportunity or if i was simply overcome by the intensity of that longing, but i took my chance to do something i had been thinking about since the nights on the futon began. 

his bed was so much more comfortable than the futon. it was like being surrounded by him, blanketed. i could burrito myself and imagine his strong arms totally enveloping me. the combination of my exhaustion and total comfort lulled me into sleep and i was only woken up by the sounds of cain retching in the hall bath.  

he didn’t notice me when i tried to get his attention and when he came out of the shower naked i hit an olympic 180. we checked in, i asked what was wrong. the response shocked me so badly i almost turned all the way back around to smack him. 

drinking was bad enough, i knew he was a party boy, but driving like that? it blew me away. made me wonder what the hell he had going on that he wasn’t telling me about. i had forgotten entirely about whatever excuses i had for coming into his room and the only thing on my mind was comforting him as he slipped under the covers. 

i sat on the edge of his bed and tried to swallow the slug. my mouth felt dry, i couldn’t even look at him. part of me knew that what we were doing was a step too far. still, the aching to know he was okay, the longing i had been battling on the futon, and every other little scrap of feeling in my body waged war to overpower that vocal minority. 

it was still embarrassing. it still took all of the resolve i had built up spending time in the attic and sleeping up there to ask. he seemed baffled, but allowed it, and when i felt his arms pull me into an embrace close against his body i could only shudder and exhale while my vision swam. it was the best sleep of my life. 

we did it for months, till the end of april when i went up to see him not realizing kirsten was over. i had no idea why he loved her, or maybe he didn’t and she was just something to relieve stress. 

kirsten was much prettier than me. she was tall, tanned, manicured and curvy. my awkward facial features, crooked nose and lack of hips or bust stood out like oil on water in comparison. they were things i agonized over daily in the full body mirror when kelsey wasn’t around. things that people made comments about at my expense. washboard, flatass, lego brick. a revolving suite of ill-meaning nicknames that i heard enough times to become numb to. it didn’t stop them from making me self-conscious. 

i felt like a bundle of stress lines and undereye circles. a rectangular, too flat barbie doll who couldn’t quite get her hair to look right. no amount of brushing, setting, sprays or other products seemed to control the frizz and eventually i gave up, submitting to the flat iron. it was no wonder he preferred her company. 

the sound insulation in the attic was great; it sat above the hall bath and not any rooms. that meant you really couldn’t hear inside unless you were next to the door like i was then. i don’t know what kept me there, maybe the sounds from kirsten that, even in my wildest calculator app fantasies, i couldn’t put into words. maybe it had been the intermittent “you like that?”, among other phrases from cain, that made my face warm to the point i thought i’d pass out. 

it was dumb, i got nothing out of it but the sinking feeling i was betraying his privacy and he had caught me because i was too lost in my own delusions. it destroyed everything. all the time and effort i had put in to fighting off the rabid feelings clawing at the back of my mind day in and day out. validating the whispers of voices saying we were too close and too clingy. 

it encouraged them. it showed me that they were right and i turtled. i deleted all the photos of cain in my calculator, i stopped going to his track meets. we had set boundaries that i agreed, sobbing, to abide by and now i felt completely caged out of his life by them. my sleep quality got worse, i left school more, i avoided him on principle so i wouldn’t have to hear that mocking ‘i told you so’ in my head. 

we still watched TV together, i still tried to fight back against the tide of anxiety that raged around my thoughts of him. it was nice when he would tousle my hair, even if that messed it up, and it made me freeze when he put his hands near or on my face. 

what if he knew that i wasn’t put off? had i somehow telegraphed that i wanted that from him? i knew how wrong it was, i knew he was mr. boundaries. of course i knew that he loved and cared about me. protected me. i couldn’t fathom cain initiating of his own volition because of that.  

worst of all, i still had no idea what his feelings were. my brain was short circuiting in the moment and i ran away, which made everything more confusing. it forced him to back off, to avoid touch, to shy away when i sat next to him on the couch in the following weeks. the hot and cold treatment was tearing me apart and slowly it dawned on me that it was my fault. i was always taking opportunities to be with him or his friends, run errands or have him drive, and then my freeze-ups would have us awkwardly icing each other out.  

even after we developed a stigma, which started out as jokes, and got normalized into something that made it easier to keep doing, i still felt a hesitancy to reciprocate any of the gentle reaching out he did. 

it changed over the summer with him taking me to the beach, getting burgers and eating them together on the sand. he had found this sweet little cove where we could be alone and relax. no prying eyes, no annoying bitches, no parents and no judgement. 

even when his friends would come with, we still found little ways to connect, to show each other how we felt. the teasing, the joking, the freedom from stress and pressure, it all broke down the walls we had built around the other person and it inspired me to go back down the path i had sworn to abandon. 

i worried he would resent me. it tore me apart thinking about the fact that i might go too far and accidentally widen the distance between us again. giving him the wrong look, reciprocating a little too much, anything that might throw things out of balance. i waited, balanced, tried to keep things neutral and normal. 

to my complete and utter shock it was cain who had pushed the boundary first. i was just happy to have gotten to be held in the ocean, though i had no plans to express it. he apparently did, and when i heard that, everything i had been trying to hold back suddenly spilled out all over the place. i invited him to the fucking dad-daughter formal, and he said yes! well, he put it back in my court a bit, but i was taking what i could get. 

we started going to the beach more. alone. the no touching rule became more of a suggestion, even around his friends. my thoughts got spun up into a frenzy over what was too far and what i could reasonably try and pull. i knew that it wouldn’t matter if i had the thoughts, there was almost no way for me to find the confidence to actualize them. even if he was taking me to a dance, or touching my face again, anything past that was purely in the realm of fantasy. right? 

“hey.” 

“yeah?” cain asked between bites of burger. 

“kill, fuck, marry. Mrs. D’leone, the weird janitor guy at pinecrest, and principle Rhinde.” i said, staring off at the waves. we had the picnic blanket out far; the tide would come in soon and wash it away if it were closer. 

“that’s a bit insane. probably boink the janitor because i really love comb overs, marry Rhinde and get you out of study hall more, and then kill D’leone because, good god her home ec class was miserable.” 

“you really thought that out.” 

“i’m thoughtful.” cain said. it was obvious he had a smile on his face. i laid down in his lap and looked up. the july sun had tanned him nicely and his hair was just starting to sun bleach. 

“what are you thinking about?” i asked. 

“stuff. things.” he answered absentmindedly. his free hand moved to cup my cheek, fingers underneath my chin. i’m stuff, i thought. it made me giddy. 

“if you tickle me, i swear to god, cain.” i warned. he was busy chewing and forced himself to swallow before responding. 

“relax.” 

“i’m very relaxed.” it was true, i could close my eyes and drift off. even the sand that was stuck in the creases of my one-piece couldn’t bother me right now.  

cain cleaned his hands and tossed the trash, pulling me up by the shoulders to put me in his lap. it was a little awkward, but it felt great to be hugged, to put my head up under his chin. i really did want to drift off, but i pushed to stay awake and consciously enjoy it. 

“weird question.” cain said, more a statement than a question.  

“sure.” 

“this dance thing, is it like…a date?” 

“you mean like on the calendar…” 

“god, don’t make me say it out loud.” he whined. 

“yes.” i huffed, a bit under my breath. this guy and passing me the baton, like, seriously! come on dude. 

“good.” cain replied. my heart fluttered. 

“we haven’t really talked about…” i trailed off. 

“what that means?” he asked. 

“yeah.” 

“well, i think we’ve been going on dates.” he said. his arms hugged me a bit tighter and i tried not to let my breathing show how ecstatic i felt. 

“what about kirsten? i’m not gonna put up with two timing.” i sniffed. he squeezed me again and kissed the back of my neck. my heart skipped, leapt practically. 

“we’re not exactly an exclusive thing, she just isn’t seeing anyone else right now.” he murmured and after a pause continued. “i don’t think it’s going to work out, we basically broke up around the time you and i started…” 

“no, i’m giving you this ball right back. your turn to say the awkward shit.” 

“dating.” he finished. i could feel how uncomfortable it made him and i prayed that it was just nerves, that i could trust his lips against my skin and his arms holding me as close as he was. 

“it doesn’t change anything.” 

“what do you mean?” 

“about us, for me.” i answered. 

“same, it just means i can express it more without feeling so fucking guilty.” cain exhaled. he let things lull for a moment and then spoke in a more serious voice. “i just can’t wrap my head around it i guess, that we feel the same.” 

“it’s weird…” 

“you think so?” 

“well, duh.” i laughed. “i keep trying to pinpoint when i started feeling like this and every single time i just can’t.” 

“i hate thinking about it, honestly. i love you of course, just, thinking about why and when tears me up.” 

“why?” 

“what if…what if i did this? being overprotective, trying to raise you?” 

“nobody else was going to.” i murmured, stroking cain’s hand and giving his wrist a gentle squeeze. 

“that’s my point though, you might’ve never developed these feelings if we had a normal life.” 

“if and might don’t matter, we only get this life.”  

cain had started to tremble, his intake of breath shaky against my back. it was still comforting to be held, to know that he was struggling through these feelings too. one of my anxieties had been his rejection, his condemnation. seeing cain just as torn as i was gave me the confidence to reassure him. 

“well, yes.” he sighed, kissing the back of my neck again. he nuzzled his face into it and mumbled something i only caught the end of. “-did my feelings come from?” 

“you love me.” i answered, not bothering to get clarification. “you love me and you haven’t been able to really love anybody else.” 

“that’s…an analysis.” 

“think about it, cain. you’re so busy trying to get shit done you never give yourself any time for normal things, you barely date-” 

“not true!” 

“kirsten was convenient and fit into that little niche you carved out for relief.” 

“don’t say it like that, like i used her.” 

“it was reciprocal i think, i’m not saying you’re a villain. it just makes sense to me that you’d fall for the one girl you centered your entire life around.” 

“see, it’s my fault. i cloistered you.” 

“you don’t say it like that. yeah, it’s fucked, and yeah it’s probably your fault, but you didn’t get much of a choice. i didn’t either. we did the best we could with what we had, and the end result was a lot of being smushed together. we can pretend we don’t feel like this and be miserable or we can be honest and accept that sometimes things are fucked.” 

“you’re not supposed to the levelheaded one.” cain whispered, placing his chin back atop my head. i didn’t feel levelheaded.  

i wanted to kiss him, to turn around and grab his face and just lock lips. there were so many things i’d dreamed and written about that could become reality now, and all of them were jockeying for room amongst the rational thoughts i was struggling to prioritize. some of them were enough to make me so dizzy i had to totally rely on his embrace keeping me upright. maybe later, maybe when i was more confident and we were more…official. 

i wouldn’t get the chance. our beach dates, and our dates in general came crashing down around me. it was my fault. i hadn’t been thinking about the tracking data in my phone and i hadn’t enabled charlotte’s spoof before leaving school way back when. cain got the car taken from him, he shielded me from what should have been a beating. i got off with a month assuming good behavior. 

a month in that room with her, with insults and torture and pain and no sleep. i pushed cain away, maybe it was the wrong thing to do, but i felt so responsible for the fact that we were back where we started that it killed me to be around him. what if i made it worse? what if i got him in more trouble? he was always going to take the bullet for me and i couldn’t bear watching him bleed out. 

instead, i flailed. ran away again. sat under bridges and cried like the lace of the past because it seemed so much easier than trying to confront the fact that i was the one who had fucked everything up.