I scrub a hand up my face and ruin my hair, muttering a harsh curse. Peering at her through my fingers laid over my eyes, I mutter, “Like heck I want to leave you. Like heck I want to leave that school. Iwantto be an actor. The idea of becoming new people and living different lives and endlessly learning the randomest stuff to better exist in endless narratives is my messed up little brain’s idea of heaven. But—”
Calypso sets my ukulele aside and glides toward me, a rushof fabric that looks like an ocean. Her lips meet mine, and they taste like strawberries. “No buts,” she whispers, settling into my lap, just an endless river I can never hope to hold onto. I still try. She kisses me again, and I melt into the action, smitten, hers.
“No buts,” she repeats, her body molding to mine, wrinkling my suit in ways I’ll never be able to fix. “Stop muting your passion. Stop pretending you’re going to leave everything you find behind.”
I wrap my arms around her, tipping back and letting her kiss me against the hard floor. Her full weight presses into me.
She dots kisses against my jaw. “This doesn’t die. This doesn’t disappear or go away. It’s too fluid.”
Fluid. Like her dress in my hands. It can slip free at any moment. Or maybe it’s too big. Maybe I never needed to hold on. Maybe, from the start, it consumed me, stole my breath, and changed my whole world in ways I can never escape.
Her fingers graze through my hair, and when I peel myself from the daze long enough to open my eyes, she’s looking down at me, surrounded by a curtain of flowers coming undone. Lifting one hand off her waist, I steal her glasses away before they might slip completely off her nose.
Her fingertips trace my face. “Say it.”
A defeated smile spreads my tortured lips. “I’m not going anywhere. This doesn’t get to die. I will be everything you see in me. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”
She trails the very tip of her nail around my mouth, then bends to take it with her lips again. “I think the world of you,” she whispers into the headiness. Every inhale cloys with her scent; my every breath redefines where she rests on my chest. “You must know that.”
I fix a strand of her hair back behind her ear and caress the backs of my fingers down her cheek. Her beautiful eyes, so much larger lined with wings, bear nothing but honesty.
“I know. I just don’t understand.”
Her cheek descends against my shoulder, and she kisses my neck, overriding every sensation in my body until it’s allher. “Maybe that’s just the way it is.” Her breath caresses my throat. “I’ll never understand what you saw in me either.”
Fair enough. I’m not certain I’ll ever figure out how to put that into words. It was a feeling. And it still lingers. Between our touches, among our breaths. We are a hum of souls singing in perfect harmony. A vibration that rocks me to my core.
Calypso
~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Weeks away,” Agatha purrs, and I’m not entirely sure how I ended up boxed in by her. I hoped to end up with Lex, but somehow Lex is on the other side of the stage, tucked behind the curtain over there, out of reach.
I don’t know what to do. These last months, Agatha’s words have melted off me, never seeming to hit close enough to hurt. If something twinged in my chest, I ran to Lex, closed my eyes in the quiet, and let him kiss everything away. So long as Lex knows the truth and still wants to touch me likethatnothing else in the whole world matters.
But this time, as anxiety builds, as we’re finishing all rehearsals and looking at our final full runs of the entire play, Agatha has found words to scare me once more.
Weeks away.
Mere weeks away.
The finals that everyone else worries about center on calculus and research papers that are too long and too dull, too menial. The only one that looms over my head and worries me is the play.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I imagine crowds of people filling the stands, each and every person realizing the same thing at once—I’m not anything special. I should have let Agatha take my place. It’s pointless of me to try.
I don’t have the will necessary to make anything I do mean something. I’m just sliding by, content to amuse myself alone between my bed and the wall in my room. I can’t handle the pressure of greatness.
I’m useless.
“Are you planning to choke before or after you ruin the play?”Agatha asks, raising a finger to her chin. “It would be confusing if Harriet changed after you freeze in the first scene. You better not even come.”
No. I already decided I’m going to go. I’m going to act with Lex. And then… And then… And thenwhat?
Nevertheless, I squeeze my eyes shut and try to block her out. Relentless. She’s relentless. No matter what I do, she never wants me to have anything. And the world always bends to her will.
But not this time. This time, I’ve crafted the world she wants so badly to play in myself. That has to mean something. Right?
“I know your secret,” she whispers, and my eyes snap open, finding her far closer than I ever would have expected.
