Page 30 of The Lovers
This isn’t high school.She knew what she’d said as soon as the words tripped off her tongue. High school is a trigger.Bang bang, here’s a whole lotta pain.I don’t have a right to be upset when I was the one who walked away, but I ache with the memory.
MaybebecauseI was the one to walk away when I should have stayed.
Me and Harry, both fucking tools.
But not just because of what happened that summer after senior year. The pain slips in just as easily when I think about every bright moment, transparent whisper, shared truth that lived and breathed between us, and how I’ve never been as close to another person, longed for anyone’s attention, desired another’s approval, like I did hers.
The warm, sunny sound of Suni’s flute calls everyone to attention. She plays a few bars of something that sounds an awful lot like the chorus to John Lennon’s “Imagine” before she sets the flute aside in favor of the metal cup containing her cacao. She holds her cup close to her heart, and after a few seconds everyone in the yurt follows her lead. Including all the sound bath virgins.
“The ceremonial cacao in these cups is ethically sourced from a small collective of female growers in Southern California. InAztec culture, cacao beans were more sacred than gold, as we believed they were given to us by the gods. Ancient Mayans believed cacao could open the heart chakra, helping us to release past traumas and heartbreaks that still live in our hearts.”
My eyes drift back to Julia, but hers are already fixed on the spot where I hold this cup close to my chest. The jolt of heat that shoots through my core drags an exhale through my lips. Caught, she yanks her attention away, focusing those unearthly aquamarine blues back up on Suni.
“Science backs up the notion because cacao contains theobromine—a cardiac stimulant that both relaxes the blood vessels and stimulates the heart muscle.” Julia looks inside the cup with suspicion. “Each cup was prepared with the loving intention that whatever you came here burdened by will fall away, and the space left behind will come alive with possibility.” Suni takes a pause as her eyes search across the faces of the bachelorette party, touching on Julia, drifting over me. “Everyone close your eyes,” she says.
It should be easy to let mine drift closed—taking part in spiritual practice isn’t new to me. Trusting a guide with Suni’s experience level should feel natural, simple. But as soon as my eyelids drop, it’s not meditative, focused darkness that I see.
It’s Julia.
“Drink as slow or as fast as you like and let the heart chakra open as you listen.” Suni’s raspy voice falls away, replaced by the lilting, dancing song of her flute.
Let go of the burden.I take a long drink from my cup.
Julia, then. Hair shoulder-length and messy, holding a buzzer to her head as she shaves a section of her dark locks away.
I sip.
Julia, now. White buttons up the front of her blouse, face tight with focus.
Sip.
Julia, then. Her face close to mine, the sun beating down as we swing back and forth together in a hammock.
Gulp the rest down.
Julia, now. Face washed in moonlight, hair wild, fingers pinching the thick strands that brush back and forth over the small rise of her breasts beneath her pin-striped shirt.
My eyes fly open; she’s right there, looking straight at me, remnants of cacao rimming the curves of her mouth.
Faintly, I hear Suni instruct everyone to feel free to move about, let the natural rhythm of their bodies act according to the sounds. She takes a seat, readying herself at the bowls, but only faintly do I even realize she’s started.
My heartbeat pounds in my ears, drowning out the singing of her bowls.
My skin is too small and tight around my bones.
My mind races, running from Julia, chasing after every single memory of her face.
I stand up from my cushion, and I’m not moving with the rhythm of my soul, I’m trying to get the hell away.
I burst through the door to the yurt and into the chilly dark of the desert night. The low light of the lanterns and the soft silver of the moon should be soothing, but still my heart sprints laps around my chest. I close my eyes, try to get a grip, picture the curve of the lakeshore, the sway of those giant fir trees, but my closed eyes aren’t safe.
Behind them I see nothing but Julia’s face.
“Fuck fuck fuck,” I say to the sky. “The timing of this is thefucking worst that could ever fucking exist.” I start to pace like a man in the ’50s in a hospital waiting room anticipating the birth of his baby, except I’m not wearing a three-piece suit or smoking a cigar, so I just look manic. And not the cute kind John Green wrote all those books about.
Not the kind Kit Larson is so good at playing in her own life.
I was doing justfinein my little bubble of self-denial until Mom popped it by bringing her secret truth out into the sharp light of the midday sun. I was doingfinedating guys, falling in lust that almost felt like love—it was good enough, sometimes great. It was eventually, for sure, going to lead me to Mr. Goddamn Right.
