Golden light slipped through the car windows. Its luxury spread, bathing her skin like satin and reflecting off her deep burgundy dress. Her head was in my lap, her legs propped up on the leather seats.
It was Finn’s car, or his dad’s, or something like that. Everything was tinted sunset orange; we watched the lights in the car pass in cycles and the shadows rotate. I realized I could watch the light crossing Abigail’s face for hours.
We were ignorant of our loss of blue skies to a love of golden street light. We were saying good-bye to the open, cloudless skies we used to lie under in warmer months. I remembered how it felt as though the endless blue sky hovered above us, just out of reach. We curated sunlight in the summers, but we couldn’t hold onto it. Now we just held onto a darkness of artificial glow we could slip into quietly without the bustle of shadows and feet on concrete.
I’m sure there was glitter in my hair. There were specks on her face, running across the bridge of her nose and cheekbones, like they were meant to be there. My right hand was playing with her dark hair while she twisted the ring on her pointer finger. It was sapphire, her birthstone. She reached to run her fingers along the palm of my hand, reciting knowledge she had found on the Internet about palm reading, the kind you’d get in a room at the back of a tattoo shop.
“I’m considering a career in this stuff.” She could hardly get through a phrase without laughing. She was laughing somehow lightly and heavily at the same time, the way she had when we were in middle school and awake at three in the morning on a Saturday.
I laughed too. “It probably pays well.”
She laughed until her eyes shone with tears, despite nothing being all that funny. Effortlessly, she changed her expression to a pout. “You can’t insult my career choices.” I shook my head and turned my eyes upward, waving away the last bit of my laughter. I felt Abigail relax.
We heard conversations and quiet happiness from the front seat. Finn was switching the radio station and Claire was leaning toward the space between the two seats, her palms gripping the left side of the leather. They were like magnets. It was all too easy for them.
Abigail and I were a mess.
Finn and Claire opened the front windows and cool air poured in, sipping up the warmth. But it was early March and the air felt good. I waited for it to seep into my skin and purify me, or at least spare my confidence for this one night, save it from the dive it was taking since we left the party.
We’re not much for parties, but really we’re not up for much of anything most of the time. We lie around and waste away and talk about wasting away, and we only talk about the things that are hard to talk about when we’re in the dark. We kiss; we don’t tell anyone. We go to parties because it’s easier to be in iridescent houses with iridescent bodies than it is to be alone.
Despite how many messed-up things we’ve done, being in crowds of people full of drunk courage makes it easier for us to feel better about our sober selves. Abigail and I had sworn off drinking in seventh grade, when our parents sat us down before her father’s funeral. I never told her about wine at Christmas dinners.
Finn and Claire closed the windows, and the warmth returned slowly. Fear built up in waves and washed away with the changing lights and shadows, and in the back of that car we watched the stars hang down from the sky on pieces of thread.
Inside that party, crammed between pearlescent bodies and the truth that they were all just kids, understanding somehow crept up on us and bit its teeth into our shoulder blades. It wasn’t the first time. We would joke about running away or growing up, about becoming part-time gypsies in the back of tattoo parlors, but we were only finding comedy in our fears.
We were stuck in this adolescent game where if I wanted to be kissing somebody, Abigail was a good substitute for that. I was convinced if I was kissing her, it was because I wanted to hurt her, and if I wasn’t, it was because I loved her. We were imitating our parents and all the people we said we hated. We were imitating the people we didn’t want to end up like, and we had worked up the ability to be absolutely amazing at hurting each other.
At some point, Abigail had asked me why we hurt the people we love.
We only talk about the things that are hard to talk about when we’re in the dark, and we were, but I didn’t answer. I don’t think she wanted me to, because our bodies were awake in that car. Our lungs and minds and hands felt, every part demanding attention, buzzing with life and lust and a certain calmness. I just wanted to watch the light cross her face for hours.
We both knew the answer to her question, and I knew that Abigail’s happiness wasn’t mine for the taking. My plain body ached to be like the iridescent bodies, to kiss Abigail if it would make us shimmer like them, but they were just kids under the colors.
Maybe we were ready to bloom, but at least then, while there was still glitter next to her eyes and early March air waiting to be breathed in, we were complacent with being.