Page 31 of Crazy About Love (All About Love)

The ground iscoveredin graffiti art.

“Badass,” I say under my breath, stepping out onto the roof, tentative since I don’t want to stand on such amazing artwork, but there’s nowhere elsetostand.

She makes her way to the basketball hoop. There’s a rack of basketballs hanging out in the corner of the roof lot, like this court is used often, though no one would ever guess from the state of the building. And like it knows I’m judging it, something clangs behind me. I whip around, but no one’s there. Must be that fire escape finally biting the dust.

“Ten years in the making.”

“Huh?” I ask, still surveying the area behind me. Rian laughs, and I turn back around.

“This one.” She taps the ground with her foot, and I ignore the ominous clanging and make my way over to her. “I know you can’t really see it.” She waves up at the burned-out roof lights and the very minimal moonlight we’re getting.

“Easily resolved,” I say, pulling my phone from my pocket. I ignore the notifications and turn the flashlight on to shine it at our feet. Dark blue paint mixes in with lighter blues in unbelievably realistic waves, yet the whole thing looks abstract at the same time. I follow the patterns, walking up and down the court. Rian stays where she’s at, rubbing her arms a little. I wish I’d taken my jacket just so I could offer it to her.

“This is incredible,” I tell her, and she gives me a small smile. Something that looks a lot like worry flashes across her expression, and she looks down at the ground just above my light.

I move my phone across the court. The blues and greens of the background meet the hard outline of a figure floating in the water—a small girl with colorful hair as long as her body. Her eyes are a piercing green, wide open, and her mouth is formed in an imperfect O. Starburst shapes cascade over her cheeks and hands and feet; her skin almost looks crystallized.

I crouch down, running my hand over the microscopic lines along the girl’s neck. They look a lot like…

“Gills,” Rian says, her breath warming my shoulder. She squats down next to me. “They’re small, to make you think that, from a distance, she’s going to die here. That she might already be dead. That she will be permanently stuck under the water.”

“That’s very morbid of you,” I say with a sideways glance.

The corner of her mouth twitches upward. “But if you lookrealclose, you can see that…she’ll be okay.”

Damn. When people say stuff like that, the air shifts and folds and flops you around until you’re in that moment with them.That’swhat I meant by something real. I find myself wanting to pull her closer, so I settle my hand in hers again.

“That’s morbidly beautiful,” I correct myself, and she shakes with silent laughter. “Who is she?”

“The girl?” she asks, and I nod. “Me. You. Everyone, I guess. We all have our challenges in life.”

“Like being in love with the wrong person?”

I mean to say it like it’s not a big deal, but I feel the air snap back to before her realism. Her hand feels foreign in mine. Like the artwork, I feel trapped underwater and I’m desperately searching for the same air Rian is breathing.

“I don’t think that’s accurate,” she says, pushing on her knees to stand upright. I follow after her.

“Which part?”

“The ‘wrong’ part. What makes you think she’s the wrong person? Because she doesn’t feel the same way?”

“Well…yeah,” I say with a laugh.

She shakes her head, smiling up at the starry sky. “There are a million people in the world. How many have you loved?”

“I don’t know. A fair amount.” Butinlove? I guess that’s an entirely different answer—one I don’t know. I always thought that for you to be in love, the other person had to love you back in the same way. Maybe I’m wrong about that; I’ve yet to experience a two-sided kind of love.

“Loving someone isn’t wrong,” she whispers, more to herself than to me. Her eyes drift down to the girl in the water briefly before she takes in a large breath and holds it, looking back at the sky.

A shadow moves across the court, but when I look to see the source of it there’s nothing there. Probably my mind playing games, since it seems to love doing that tonight. Trying to distract me, no doubt. Because it knows that my cement heart isn’t going to beat for someone else for a while.

“She’s mostly me, though,” Rian says, and I wonder if I’ve zoned out on half the conversation again.

“Sorry?”

“The girl.” She nods at the ground. “When I was fifteen, I almost drowned.”

My eyebrows move upward. She says it so matter-of-factly and she’s caught me so off guard that whatever the proper way to respond to a revelation like that is, it doesn’t exactly come to me easily. Or at all.

---