There’s no way in hell I’m telling her what actually happened to my head. Or my knee. Gah, I feel like such a creep now that she’s in front of me and I think of her every time I make myself come.
“Not quite.” I shake my head and continue: “I fell in the shower. But I like your version better. Definitely makes me sound cooler.” I chuckle, looking down at her.
My answer humors her and she bounces on the heels of her bright pink Nikes. The yellow check mark on her shoes matches her sports bra and the pink matches her tiny, tiny shorts.
“So what are you up to? Do you want to get a coffee or something?” she asks.
Her eyes dart across the street and she stares at the couple I saw earlier. Their hands are intertwined as they trot down the streets of Brooklyn. It’s a romantic sight, him wrapping his coat around her shoulders, leaning down to kiss her hair.
Dakota looks back up at me and I wish I could hear what’s going on inside her head. Does she miss me? Does seeing that couple happy and holding hands make her want my affection?
She wants to hang out with me now—what does that mean? I have absolutely nothing to do, but I probably should act like I have somewhat of a life outside of school and work.
“I have some free time now.” I shrug my shoulders and she loops her arm through mine and leads the way. During the walk, I try to compile a list of normal conversation starters that would be nearly impossible to make come out awkward. I say “nearly” because if anyone has a talent for turning normal situations uncomfortable, it’s me.
The walk to Starbucks is only a couple of blocks, but Dakota has been next to silent the entire time. Something is off with her, I can tell.
“Are you cold?” I ask. I should have asked her earlier. She has to be cold, she’s barely dressed.
She looks up at me, and her Rudolph nose gives her away even though she’s shaking her head.
“Here.” I gently pull away from her and pull my sweatshirt up over my head and hand it to her.
It cuts me a little when she smells the gray fabric, just like she always used to. She was obsessed with wearing my hoodies when we were in high school. I had to buy one every other week to keep up with her thieving ways.
“You still wear Spicebomb,” she says, not asking.
She bought me my first bottle of cologne for our first Christmas together and one every year after.
“Yep. Some things never change.” I watch as she pulls my sweatshirt down over her. Her curls push through first and I help yank the fabric down over her mass of hair. The sweatshirt hits her just at her knees.
She looks down at the design printed on the front.
“Deathly Hallows.” She touches the tip of the triangle with her unpainted nail. “Some things really do never change.”
I wait for her to smile, but it doesn’t come.
She smells the sweatshirt again.
“Is it because you like the smell, or because you probably still have a stash from me?” Dakota laughs finally, but, again, it’s off.
“You grab a table and I’ll get the coffee,” I offer. This is what we always did back in Saginaw: she would pick a table, usually by the window, and I would order our matching drinks. Two mocha Frappuccinos, an extra pump of liquid sugar for her, an extra shot of coffee for me. I always ordered two pieces of lemon pound cake and she always ate the icing off of mine.
My tastes have changed over the years, and I can’t bring myself to drink the sugary milk shake disguised as coffee anymore. I order her Frappuccino and grab myself an Americano. Two lemon pound cakes. While I’m waiting for my name to be called, I look over at the table where Dakota is sitting staring off into space with her hands tucked under her chin.
“A mocha Frap and an Americano for . . . London!” The cute barista yells out the wrong name. She’s perky as she sets the drinks on the counter, a huge smile on her face, the same as with all employees I see working for the mermaid chain.
Dakota sits up slightly when I reach the table. I hand the large plastic cup to her and she examines mine.
“What’s that?” she asks.
I sit down across from her and she brings my cup to her lips.
“You’ll hate that—” I try to warn her.
It’s too late, her eyes are already closed and her face is already crumpling. She doesn’t spit it out, but she wants to. Her cheeks are full of the espresso-and-water mixture and she looks like an adorable little squirrel as she struggles to swallow.
“Ew! How can you drink that?” she exclaims when she finally gets it down. I slide her cup closer to her for a chaser. “It tastes like straight tar—ew!”
She’s always been a tad dramatic.
“I like it.” I shrug, sipping the coffee.
“Since when do you drink fancy coffee?” Dakota scrunches her nose in disgust again.
I chuckle. “It’s not ‘fancy.’ It’s only espresso and water,” I say, defending my drink.
She snorts. “Sounds fancy to me.”
There’s something behind her words. I can’t pinpoint it yet, but it’s like she’s mad at me for something that I’m not aware that I did.
It’s like we’re still dating.
“I got you some lemon cake, too. Two pieces.” I slide the brown paper bag across the table to her. She shakes her head and pushes her hands out, moving the bag back to my side of the table.
“I can’t eat stuff like that anymore and I’m already having this coffee as my lunch.” She scrunches her nose and I remember her complaining about the change in her eating habits she had to make for her academy. She has to keep a strict diet, and lemon pound cake doesn’t fit anywhere into that.
“Sorry.” I wince and fold the edges of the bags to close them. I’ll take it home and eat it later, when she’s not around to witness my gluttony.
“How have you been?” I ask her after a long stretch of silence. It’s like neither of us knows how to act when we aren’t dating. We’re acting as if we’re strangers. We were friends for years before we dated; our friendship grew as her brother and I became best friends. A chill runs down my spine and I wait for her to answer.
“I’m okay.” She sighs. Her eyes close for a moment and I know she’s lying.
I reach across the table and rest my hand next to hers. It wouldn’t be appropriate to touch her, but I want to, so badly. “You can tell me, you know.”
She sighs again, refusing.
“I’m your safe place, remember?” I remind her of her claim on me. The first time I found her crying on her front steps with blood in her hair, I promised that I would always keep her safe. Neither time nor a breakup would change that.
That’s clearly not what she wanted to hear, and she pushes my hand away with a “don’t.”
“I don’t need a safe place, Landon, I need . . . well, I don’t even know what I need because my life is fucking failing and I don’t know how to fix it.” Her eyes are dark now, waiting for my response.
Her life is failing? What does that even mean?
“How so? Is it school?”
“It’s everything—literally every damn thing in my life.”
I’m not following. That’s probably because she hasn’t given me any information to allow me to help her.
When I was about fifteen, I realized that I would do anything to make sure she was okay. I’m the fixer, I’m the one who fixes everything for everyone, especially the curly-haired neighbor girl with an asshole for a father and a brother who could barely speak in his home without getting a bruise for the effort. Here we are, five years later, out of that slow, eroding town, away from that man, and some things really never change.
“Tell me something that I can go on.” My hand covers hers and she pulls away, just like I knew she would. I let her. I always have.
“I didn’t get the part that I’ve been training and training and training for the last two months. I thought this role was mine. I even let my GPA drop because I spent so much time rehearsing for my auditio
n.” She lets out a forced breath at the end and closes her eyes again.
“What happened with the audition? Why didn’t you get it?” I need more pieces of the puzzle before I can form a solution.
“Because I’m not white.” She says it loud, certain.
Her answer presses against the small bubble of anger that only holds things that I’m helpless over. I can fix a lot of shit, but I can’t fix ignorance, as much as I would love to.
“They said that?” I keep my voice down, even though I don’t want to. They couldn’t have possibly actually said that to a student?
She shakes her head, huffing out a held-in breath.
“No, they didn’t have to. Every single lead they choose is white. I’m so tired of it.”
I lean my back against the wooden chair and take the first sip of my coffee.
“Did you speak to someone?” I ask timidly.
We’ve had this talk before, a few times. Being biracial in the Midwest didn’t trouble anyone in our neighborhood, or hardly anyone at our school. The population of Saginaw is pretty even when it comes to race, and I lived in a predominantly black area. But still, there were a few times when someone would ask her or me why we were together.
“Why do you only date white guys?” her friends would ask her.
“Why don’t you date a white girl?” trashy girls with white eyeliner and gel pens shoved into their mock-designer Kmart bags would ask me. Nothing against Kmart, I always liked that store before it closed down. Well, except the sticky floors—they were the worst.
Dakota slurps on the end of her straw for a few seconds. When she pulls away, she has a dot of whipped cream on the corner of her lip. I fight my instinct to gently swipe it away.
“Remember when we would sit in Starbucks in Saginaw for hours?”
And just like that, she’s closing off her real complaint. I don’t push her to talk about it any longer. I never have.
I nod.
“And we would give them fake names every time.” She laughs. “And that one time that lady got so pissed because she couldn’t spell Hermione and she refused to write our names on the cups anymore?”
Her laughter is real now and suddenly I’m fifteen, running down the street after a rebellious Dakota, who has leaned over the counter and stolen the woman’s marker right from her apron. It was snowing that day, and we were covered in dirty brown slush by the time we made it home. My mom was confused when Dakota shouted that we were running from the cops as we ran up the stairs of my old house.
I join her soft reverie. “We actually thought the cops would waste their time on two teenagers stealing a marker.”
A few customers look in our direction, but it’s pretty packed in here, so they are quick to find something else to look at, something more entertaining than an awkward coffee date between two exes.
“Carter said that the woman told him we were banned from there,” she adds, her gaze growing somber.
The mention of Carter prickles at the back of my neck.
Dakota must see something in my eyes, because she reaches across and puts her hand on mine. I’ve always let her.
Taking a page from her book, I change the subject. “We had some good times in Michigan.”
Dakota tilts her head and the light above us hits her hair, making her glow. I haven’t realized just how lonely I’ve been lately. Aside from Nora’s quick touch, I haven’t been touched in months. I haven’t been kissed in months. I haven’t even hugged anyone except Tessa and my mom since the last time Dakota came to visit me in Washington.
“Yeah, we did,” she says. “Until you left me.”
chapter
Seven
I’M WONDERING IF MY EXPRESSION looks anything close to how I feel. I wouldn’t be surprised if it did. My neck definitely jerked when she said that. She had to have seen that, is all I can think as I stare at her incredulously and wait for her to take back the harsh words.
“What?” she asks, deadpan.
There’s no way she actually . . .
“I didn’t want to leave . . . it’s not like I had a choice.” I keep my voice quiet, but I hope she can hear the sincerity in my words.
The guy at the next table looks up at us for a second, then turns his attention back to his laptop.
I grab both of her hands on the table and gently squeeze them between mine. I catch on to what she’s doing. She’s upset about school, so she’s projecting her anger and stress onto me. She always has, and I’ve always let her.
“That doesn’t change the fact that you did. You left, Carter was gone, my dad—”
“I wouldn’t have gone anywhere if I had a say in it. My mom was moving, and staying for my senior year of high school wasn’t a convincing enough reason for her to let me stay in Michigan. You know that.”
I’m gentle with her, the way I would be with a wounded animal lashing out at anyone who approaches.
Her anger is deflated instantly and she sighs. “I know. I’m sorry.” Her shoulders slump and she looks up at me.
“You can always talk to me about anything,” I remind her. I know how it feels to be a small person in such a big city. I haven’t really heard her talk about any friends except Maggy, and now I know she’s friends with Aiden for some awful reason that I don’t understand but I don’t think I want to inquire too deeply about. The way she spun for him . . .
Dakota looks toward the door and sighs again. I’ve never heard a person sigh so much in my life. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine. I just needed to vent, I guess.”
That’s not enough for me.
“You aren’t fine, Baby Beans,” I say, instinctively using her old nickname. Her wince quickly shifts to a shy smile and I sit back and let the familiarity of us take over. She’s softening now, finally, and it makes me feel less awkward around her.
“Really?” Dakota’s chair drags against the floor as she moves it closer to mine. “That was a cheap shot.”
I smile, staying silent and shaking my head. I didn’t use the name in order to gain some advantage. I had called her that by accident one day—I honestly have no idea why—and it just stuck. She melted then, and she’s melting now. It just slipped out without me thinking, but I can’t say that I’m not happy when she leans her head against my arm, wrapping her hand around it. The silly, accidental nickname has always had the same effect on her. I’ve always loved it.
“You’re so solid now,” she says, squeezing my biceps. “When did that happen?”
I’ve been working out more, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want her to notice, but now that she has noticed, together with her nearness, it makes me slightly shy.
Dakota’s hands run up and down my arm and I gently brush her curly hair away from my face.
“I don’t know,” I finally respond, my voice sounding much softer than I intended. Her fingers are still playing at my skin, tracing phantom shapes onto it, making goose bumps rise. “I’ve been running a lot and my building has a gym. I don’t use it often, honestly, but I run almost every day.”
It feels so good to be touched. I had forgotten just how good it feels to have simple companionship, let alone actually feeling the warmth of another person. The image of Nora’s nails raking down my stomach flashes through my mind and I shiver. Dakota’s touch is different, softer. She knows just how to touch me, what I’m used to. Nora’s touch sent waves through me; this touch is calming.
Why am I thinking about Nora?
Dakota continues to caress me while I try to push Nora from my head.
I feel slightly embarrassed by her attention, but at the same time, it feels really good to have my hard work noticed. I’ve changed my entire body over the last two years, and I’m glad she seems to appreciate it. She was always the prettier one in our relationship, and maybe my new physique will make her want to touch me more, maybe even spend more time with me.
It’s a shallow, desperate thought, but it’s all I’ve got right now when it comes to holding on to Dako
ta.
She’s even more beautiful now than she used to be, and I imagine she will continue to grow more and more beautiful as she transforms into a woman. We used to plan becoming adults together. We would have two kids, she said, even though I kind of wanted four. The world felt so different then, and this idea that we could grow up to be anything we wanted seemed so tangible. When you’re submerged in a small town in the Midwest, bright lights and big cities seem so farfetched to most—but they didn’t to Dakota.
She always wanted more. Her mom was an aspiring actress who moved to Chicago to get into a theater production and thereby become a massive star. It never happened; the city stole her soul and she became addicted to the late nights and the things that keep you awake to enjoy them. She never managed to get out, and Dakota has always been determined to do what her mom couldn’t: make it.
She leans closer. Her hair tickles my nose and I sink farther back into the chair.
“Tomorrow my meltdown will seem funny,” she says, sitting back up in her chair, turning the conversation away from me.
And truth be told, I’m glad for it. I tell her I agree that tomorrow everything will look different, better, and that if she needs anything, I’m only a call away.
We sit in comfortable silence for a few minutes before Dakota’s phone starts to ring. As she talks, I push a napkin around the table and then start tearing the paper into little pieces.
Finally, she chirps into the phone, “I’ll be there, save me a spot” and shoves it into her bag. She abruptly stands and throws her bag on her shoulder. “That was Aiden.” She takes a long slurp of her Frappuccino. My chest tightens and I stand up, too. “There’s an audition and he’s going to save me a spot. It’s for an online ad for the academy. I gotta go, but thanks for the coffee—we need to catch up again soon!” She rests her hand on my shoulder when she kisses my cheek.
And after that flurry, she’s gone. Her half-full Frappuccino remains across from me, mocking my loneliness.