Page 92 of This Time It's Real
“Feels like home,” Caz remarks as I push him gently against a cabinet of disinfectants and shut the door behind us. The space is even smaller than the janitor’s closet at our school; a few more inches, and we’d be touching. We’re standing so close, in fact, that I can feel the subtle change in his breathing when he looks at me. “So. What were you saying before?”
All this time, I’ve prided myself on my ability to lie, to spin a story out of nothing, to act like I don’t care about anything. But insincerity is easy. Bullshitting your way through things is easy. It doesn’t require any emotional attachment; there aren’t any stakes involved. It can’t hurt you, because you never believed in any of it anyway.
But telling the truth—sayingexactlywhat you mean, how you feel, to the people you care about most . . . That’s one of the hardest things in the world. Because you have to trust them. Trust that they won’t hurt you, even when they have the power to.
I take a deep breath. Open my mouth.
My only source of comfort is that I’ve already done this with Zoe, and it didn’t kill me. Maybe, just maybe, I can do it again.
“Before I came here,” I begin, reaching for the right words, “I was actually watching that interview we did. With the confession scene. I mean, okay—that was, like, the catalyst, but I guess I’ve been thinking about this long before . . . But I just didn’tknow it, you know?”
Caz’s brows crinkle faintly, and I realize I’m making no sense. God, I’m terrible at this.
I flush, try again. “What I mean is—well, first, if I’m going to be serious about my writing, I don’t want my whole career to be built around a lie. More than likely the truth is going to come out one day, and I think . . . I was just trying to delay it, because I’m a total coward, and there are too many people out there I didn’t want to let down. Except by continuing the lie, I was letting them down anyway.
“Second, I realized that—and trust me, believing you were dead for a few moments back there has really reaffirmed this—I don’t want our relationship to be built around a lie either. I want to be with you,” I say, and my voice softens on its own, like the words are too sacred to be spoken aloud in this dim, cramped room of bleach and feather dusters and tangible longing. I move forward, tilt my head up. The excruciating distance between us narrows down from three inches to two to one. “For real, this time.”
The seconds that follow are some of the most terrifying ones in my life. Maybe I’ll always be scared. Maybe the fear of getting hurt, of being left alone, will never truly go away. But even if it’s my default setting, I can fight it. So many beautiful things lie on the other side of fear.
Like love.
Like this.
Caz stares down at me for forever, the look in his eyes asking and answering everything. Then he brings his fingertips slowly to my jaw, as if he’s not entirely convinced I exist. “Really?”
“Really.” I inhale. It seems impossible that half an hour ago I felt like I would die, and now here I am, more alive than I ever thought I could be. “Hey, your face isn’t injured or anything, right?”
He stills, confused. “No, why—”
“Good,” I tell him, smiling, and I press my lips to his.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
And now comes the real damage control.
After I get home, I write out a quick email to Sarah telling her that I have a plan for my second piece. It’ll be different from my personal essay, I explain, and much longer in length, but I’m ready to pour my whole heart into it.
All of this is true.
There’s an idea that’s been brewing in the back of my mind ever since I entered the cleaning closet with Caz, and it’s risky and absolutely terrifying, but I’m learning that most valuable things are.
Around midnight, Sarah sends me a reply.
I look forward to reading it.
Once I have the green light, I get to work right away. I open up a blank Word document and title it “THIS_TIME_IT’S_REAL.docx.” Then I start from the very beginning. Theactualbeginning, including—
The English assignment I didn’t want to do. The parent-teacher interviews. Stumbling across Caz out in the corridor. Every awkward, heart-pounding, embarrassing detail.
It’s a confession and an apology and a love story all wrapped in one, and the more I write the more I realize that I was wrong before. Writing isn’t a form of lying—not the good kind anyway, the kind that makes you feel something.
Writing is a means of telling the truth. Both the beautiful and the ugly.
It also occurs to me that maybe,just maybe, I meant half the things I wrote in my original essay. Maybe there is some small, weak part of me that wants to be wanted, to hold hands with someone beautiful in the blue-dark, to breathe and hear its echo, to walk through the alleys of Beijing with another shadow falling naturally beside mine.
No, not weak. This is what I need to get into my head. Hope is not weakness. It’s oxygen, a crack in the window, the pale slash of moonlight across a dusty room.
Maybe I should start learning to invite it in.
