Page 55 of Leaving the Station
The few other passengers in the observation car grumble as they stretch their tired legs and make their way off the train. I’ve never felt a stronger sense of solidarity with a group of people than I have here, sitting together, watching the view or waiting for it to reappear.
Once Oakley cooled down after dinner, I dragged her back to our usual seats—a little bit because I wanted to hang out in the observation car and a lot because I didn’t want to be alone after what I told her. She didn’t push me to keep talking about my thoughts on my gender—or lack thereof—and I haven’t brought it up since. It was a sleeper-car confession, not fit for public consumption.
When the train pulls into the Twin Cities, I settle into my seat.
“You’re not getting off?” Oakley asks.
“I’m perfectly happy here,” I tell her, motioning around the observation car. “In my kingdom.”
She bounces up from her seat. “Nope. Come on.”
And when she walks away, I can’t help but follow.
“There’s a park by the station I want to check out,” she says as we huddle against the cold.
We stopped by the sleeper car to grab her jacket and gloves, but all I have is the same shell I wore in Chicago.
“You have aparkyou want to check out?” I ask. “It’s freezing cold.”
She looks me up and down. “You didn’t bring enough layers.”
“Who are you, my dad?”
“Just a concerned citizen.” She removes her overlayer and hands it to me. It’s a puffy coat, under which she’s wearing a fleece—she was prepared. I was not. “Take this.”
“I’m not wearing your jacket,” I say as a huge gust of wind blows past and nearly knocks me over.
“You sure about that?”
I take the jacket. “Fuck you.”
She has a shit-eating grin on her face, but it’s worth it for the warmth of her coat.
The park follows the Mississippi River and features a cobblestone path interspersed with fountains and trellises.
Oakley stops us in front of a fountain that’s illuminated from below. Her skin twinkles along with the lights as they blink on, off, on, off. Then she pulls off her gloves, reaches into the fountain and flicks her fingers at me.
I scream at a volume I didn’t know I could produce.
“I’m not having a water fight in negative-one-thousand-degree weather,” I tell her, wiping the freezing fountain water off my cheeks. “You’re on your own.”
“Fine,” she says, pouting. “I guess I’ll skinny-dip in the Mississippi River by myself, too.”
I cross my arms. “Have fun getting an incurable fungal infection.”
“I will.”
She’s smiling now, and there’s some part of me that’s ridiculously happy that I’m the cause of her happiness. This doesn’t feel like those glimmering moments with Alden when I could see a different path for us, one where we were two dudes goofing off.
When I’m around Oakley, I don’t feel self-conscious about who I am or how I’m perceived. With her, I’m just an underdressed person with a bad haircut, standing in an empty park.
“Back in New York I went on a date with a girl who would swim in the ocean off Coney Island every day.”
I didn’t think I would be jealous, hearing about a date Oakley went on with someone else, but I am. I hate this open-water swimmer. She probably has great shoulders.
“We didn’t go on a second date,” Oakley says after a moment. “She ghosted me.”
“Sorry,” I say, though inside I’m perversely delighted.
